The Iconoclast

SPAIN'S CULTURE, SOCIETY AND HISTORY (no direct link)
       Norman Berdichevsky
       Santana Books, Malaga, Spain
       270 pages, color illustrations, 2nd ed. 2005
       
       I wrote Spanish Vignettes as a cultural guide to the many English speakers who live part or most of the year in Spain but have very little knowledge of its language, society, institutions, traditions, literature, music, cuisine, sports, religious character, holidays and way of life, or the current social, political and economic issues. This target audience comprises at least half a million Brits who now live in Spain. It is also a book that will be of interest to many Americans of Spanish heritage and those who are generally unaware that in the last few decades, Spain has equaled or surpassed Britain, France, Germany and Italy in almost every area associated with “quality of life” and standard of living.
       
       Spain is the "Florida of Europe." Both places have a very large population of recent migrants, many of them retirees from more northerly climes. This analogy also applies to the amazing rise in living standards, economic development and house prices in both places. The large demand is driven by the migrants who are competing with the locals for scarce resources--especially land and water. It explains the presence of so many golf courses and the skyrocketing cost of new construction for housing along the Spanish Mediterranean Coastlines--Costa Del Sol, Costa Blanca, Costa Calida and Costa Brava. A big difference however is that water is a scarce commodity in Spain and as important as oil, whereas in Florida we often hear complaints that there is too much rain.
       
       Spain has fascinated many Americans, particularly writers ever since the dawn of American independence. Our earliest bestseller was Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving, who stayed several years in Spain and worked for the American embassy in that country. Ernest Hemmingway wrote some of his greatest work while living and visiting Spain including the powerful anti-Fascist tribute to the republican cause, For Whom the Bell Tolls, made into an epic Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. Another of Hemmingway’s classics is Death in the Afternoon Hemmingway’s homage to bullfighting.
       
       It is not simply a large country (three-and-a-half times larger than Florida), it is a very diverse one. Yet most Americans, like the Brits before their arrival, have a monolithic, stereotyped image based on the scenes of bullfighting, gypsies and fortune telling that come from the opera Carmen by the French composer George Bizet. To the small degree that these images are valid, they reflect a limited part of Spain--the dominant region of Castile whereas Spaniards in other parts of the country usually will take offense if these facets of Spanish culture are applied to their part of the country.
       
       One of the worst offensive remarks ever made about Spain was the comment by another Frenchman--the writer Alexander Dumas--who said that “Africa begins at the Pyrenees.” Spaniards are proud in their heritage and traditions. They have shared in the contributions brought to their country by the Carthaginians, Basques, Romans, Greeks, Germanic Visigoths…and, after considerable soul searching, acknowledged a debt as well to the “outcast” peoples--the Gypsies, Jews and Moors. Cordoba was a magnificent city of more than a quarter of a million population in the eleventh century when London and Paris were hardly more than rough towns of less than fifty thousand.
       
       Spain is a country of many languages, cultural traditions and customs--perhaps more than any other nation in Western Europe--and it has been able to create a vibrant democracy that also gives a maximum of local self-expression to this cultural diversity. But before we turn to this side of the coin, let’s look very briefly at the major dimension of physical geography that cuts the country in two. It is a north-south division, and therefore much like the division in the United States before the Civil War based on the issue of slavery: Its expansion or limitation, Spain’s major domestic political issue, is in the allocation of water between the humid, green north and the water-starved, arid south. The last few national elections have revolved on this question as the major divisive issue in domestic politics.
       
       The south depends on irrigation for its rich agriculture: It is a major producer of citrus fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers, artichokes, grapes, lettuce and melons. Moreover, the wealthy retirees from northern Europe have flocked to the south to take advantage of the beneficial warm but arid climate. They have contributed a large share of the prosperity that has engulfed Spain and elevated it into one of Europe’s wealthiest countries today. Their needs are tied to more water for population growth and golf courses and full swimming pools. In these areas of Spain, one is more likely to hear more English than Spanish in many cafés and restaurants. Traditionally, the south of Spain is an arid area where evaporation exceeds rainfall. This means that water must be brought by pipeline, canal and tunnel from the north from a great river system--the Ebro in the northeast--to the tune of 100,000 million liters.
       
       The political football of this plan is environmentalist opposition by those who live in the north who resent the diversion of a resource they consider their own to feed development in the south for the benefit of many foreigners. For them, the issue is complicated by the demand these foreigners generate, driving up house prices for all Spaniards--even in those regions such as the north where there are relatively fewer foreigners.
       
       Spain’s cultural diversity is even more astounding. The first thing Americans must remember that what we call Spanish is Castilian--the native language of the central upland region of Castile. All Spaniards speak it but the regions of Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque country are proud of their own distinctive languages and cultural traditions. They may be looked upon as the movements in a symphony that have different keys and rhythms but bear the same melody.
       
       Castile is the historic core region; the heart of the modern Spanish state. It was characterized by a wealthy landowning aristocracy reflecting the values of medieval society, devout Catholicism, haughty pride, and the exaggerated sense of honor associated with the military and the code of chivalry, as well as a disdain for manual labor and trade--in the tradition of Don Quixote.
       
       Catalonia-Aragon is along Spain’s “Levantine” coast, facing Italy with its six million people. Its distinctive language, Catalan, is more different from Castilian than Portuguese, and the regions peoples have always had very different values: respect for ambition, industriousness, commercial astuteness, finance, investment, individualism, innovation (such as that found in the works of Antoni Gaudi and Salvador Dali), involvement in foreign trade, and a close affinity for French and Italian fashion and architecture. For many Catalans, bullfighting is rejected as an imposed “Castilian eccentricity.”
       
       The book is divided into thirty-four themes that may be read in any order. They are also cross-referenced and include an intimate insider look at Spanish football, bullfighting, Basque pelota (Jai-alai), religion, the Muslim minority in the shadow of Bin-Laden, the foreign influence along the coasts, the pilgrimage to Santiago de Campostela, and the question of just how Catholic Spain is today.
       
       Other topics covered include:
       --the controversy over Gibraltar;
       --Spain’s exclaves within Moroccan territory (Ceuta and Mellila);
       --the Basque nationalist cause and ETA;
       --the Jewish contribution to Spanish culture;
       --the achievements of the Golden Age of medieval Spain and the Three Religions;
       --the Reconquest and expulsion of the Jews and the Moors;
       --the causes and consequences of the Civil War;
       --the works of Garcia Lorca, Gaudi and Dali, and other great Spanish artists and writers; and
       --the regional languages and cultural distinctiveness, including Spanish wines and cheeses, the vast fishing industry, the national water diversion project, the Huerta Valenciana, the outdoor markets, and the many festivals and holidays. 

Sunni Arab Jihadists come in various kinds. There are those who have received the most attention in the American press: the volunteers who arrive from outside Iraq, and who are considered to be part of the local succursale of Al Qaeda. There are the supporters of Saddam Hussein and his regime (often called Ba'athists). There are those Sunnis who are Iraqis, who were never treated well by the regime, but who nonetheless do not wish to see a transfer of power (and thus of money) to the Shi'a.

Many, in all three groups, are convinced that if only the Americans leave, they will be able to inherit Iraq. But they are wrong. And it is wrong to simply assume that they know what they are talking about, and that an American withdrawal would lead to a "victory for Jihadists" (i.e., for Sunni Arabs -- we'll get to the Shi'a in a minute).

Why? Why should we all be fearful of withdrawing, or fearful of voting for candidates who support such a withdrawal, if such a withdrawal will not lead to a "victory for Jihadists" but rather to such constant warfare, of all sides against all sides, that in the ensuing chaos there will be no chance for some "Jihadist victory"?

Those who blackmail us into supporting the continued American presence in Iraq keep referring to the "victory of the Jihadists." They appear, that is, to share the convictions and predictions of the Sunni Arabs who are now fighting against the Americans as the symbol and support of the current Shi'a-dominated regime. But if the Americans leave, what will happen? Will the Shi'a Arabs be readier to compromise? Or will they be able to unleash their own forces without the staying hand of the American soldiers, who carefully observe all the rules of warfare and try to get the hopeless Muslim soldiers to do the same?

Will the Shi'a, who outnumber the Sunni Arabs by more than 3 to 1, suddenly cease to outnumber them? Will the weaponry they have acquired, from Saddam Hussein's armories, from the Americans, and from the Iranians, suddenly cease to exist? Will the training they have received as "Iraqi" soldiers and "Iraqi" police over the past few years simply be forgotten? Will they not know how to defend themselves, or to go on the offensive? And what country shares the longest and most important border with Iraq, the one most easily reached and most easily crossed, the one that is not reached by a long trek through the desert? Is it Sunni-populated Jordan or Saudi Arabia or Syria, or is it rather Shi'a-populated Iran?

Many simply do not think beyond the horizon of whatever phrase is repeated to them often enough. Told again and again that "if we pull out, the Jihadists will win," they then proceed to believe, or to think, or to think they think, "yes, that's right, if we pull out the Jihadists will win, won't they, and we musn't let that happen." How many will ask: what does this phrase "the Jihadists will win" mean? Who are these "Jihadists"? Is it the Sunnis? Is it the Shi'a? Is it various kinds of Sunnis and various kinds of Shi'a? What does it mean when the word "Jihadist" is used to apply to some Muslims, but not others, in Iraq or elsewhere? And if the "Jihadists" are, say, Sunni Arabs, and if the Sunni Arabs constitute only 19% of the population while the Shi'a Arabs constitute 60-65%, with almost all the rest being non-Arab Kurds who have their own need to supplant the Sunni Arabs in Kirkuk and Mosul, then just how easy will it be for those "Jihadists" to prevail? And with Shi'a Iran next door, will they be able to prevail? Or will they instead have to rely on aid -- money, volunteers, and weaponry -- from such Sunni states as Egypt, Jordan, and above all, Saudi Arabia? And if that is to happen, won't Iran supply the same to its co-religionists? And then what?

Does it matter "then what?" Does it matter if the Muslim states are forced to use up their men, their money, their war materiel, their attention, and to worry about Shi'a revolts in eastern Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and worry about Hizballah volunteers arriving? And wouldn’t the Maronites, and the Druse, and the Sunnis of Lebanon, breathe a sigh of relief as those Hizballah volunteers marched off to Iraq?

Impossible, you say? Not at all.

Bad, you say, because Turki al-Faisal and King Abdullah and Mubarak and all their friends and sympathizers -- James Baker, Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton (no, he's more in the 'two-state-solution' line, the line being promoted evderywhere, behind the scenes, by the very active Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group) --- e tutti quanti say it would be bad?

"Instability" is bad in the Muslim countries, is it?

Was the Iran-Iraq War a good thing or a bad thing? Tell me.

I mean, of course, good for Infidels, not good for the Camp of Islam. Please don't confuse the two. Not now. And not ever again.

Maliki is a disaster.  The support for Hezbollah, the kissy-face routine with Ahmadinejad, and the clear illustration that he is being controlled by Sadr — not the other way around.  Not only does he appear to do nothing to help us find our missing soldier, he affirmatively obstructs the effort.  And he dares to refer to himself as "the general commander of the armed forces" — as if he (having taken his orders from Sadr) is empowered to give orders to our troops.  And even worse for our representatives on the ground over there, he takes this outrageous action right after meeting with our National Security Adviser.

Like a lot of people who supported the Iraq invasion, I believed — and continue to believe — that the mission is to kill and capture terrorists and vanquish their state sponsors, and that Iraq is one phase (the second phase) in a much wider war.  Bringing democracy to the Middle East is something I hope can happen someday, but it is a generational transformation and it continues to be nothing but a theory that democracy itself (much less the messy transformation thereto) is an effective weapon against jihadism (which has been shown to thrive in democracies).  I don't deny that democratization has been part of Bush's overall Wilsonian policy, but I never thought democratizing Iraq was a policy priority because I never thought it was something that could be accomplished in short order in an Islamic society.  Now, it seems to be the policy priority.

This is a long-winded way of saying that many of us who support the war do not care whether Iraq is democratized quickly, and therefore do not see why propping up its current, Iran-friendly government should be driving our policy.  (The Bush administration did not seem to think it was too important that the United Arab Emirates is not a democracy.)

If Maliki continues to be the face of what "victory" means, according to the administration, in Iraq, then it is going to be impossible to sustain support for the war.  And I say that as a supporter.

"Ajami was once pro PLO or close to it. Then he switched to his current story. He is an opportunist, but he is also an Iranian nationalist. He wants us to fail in Iraq and Iran, and he wants Iran as the dominant nuclear power. He wants it for national pride. Iran's nuclear engineers likely feel the same nationalist pride."-- from a reader

No, you are wrong. If Ajami was once, long ago, in Lebanon, an ardent Nasserite -- and he loves to tell these "what it was like to be young and an Arab in Beirut in those days" stories, the personal narrative as a substitute for an amassing of evidence, and the application of intelligence to arrange and make sense of that evidence. One should not be hard on him. He is not a historian of the Carlo Ginzburg-Arnoldo Momigliano or the Joseph Schacht-Snouck Hurgronje level, but who is these days of latter day unsaints, and who could be, given the educational standards everywhere, right up through the graduate level (as compared to the world which produced Panofsky or Momigliano or Snouck Hurgronje) that one sees everywhere (see, for example, "The House of Intellect" by Jacques Barzun, or "Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard Weaver).

What Ajami specializes in is what was started a few decades ago. It is the "personal narrative" that substitutes for sustained history. Patricia Williams got the ball rolling in law schools. To be permitted (i.e., to be accepted as the "tenure article" by law faculties in Williams's case) the "personal narrative" has to offer the "perspective" of the author, a "perspective" that is supposedly valuable because of the special background -- i.e., ethnic or religious -- of that author. In Fouad Ajami's case, he is by now almost a professional "former-Nasserite-Arab-from-Lebanon" who, being very intelligent, and also very clever, found the best people in America with whom to study, is because of his intelligence, moral sense, and general admirableness, did not end up as one more Khalidi or Massad, or member of MESA Nostra, but became an intelligent appreciator of the West. It helped to come from Lebanon, where the Christian -- and other Western presence -- helped to lift the general tone, even among the Muslim population. He was brilliantly effective in showing up the nonsense and lies of Edward Said, who detested him, and whom he detested.

The problem is that Fouad Ajami still does not see, or cannot say that he sees, that Islam as a belief-system is the problem. He could not see, or could not say, that aside from scouring Iraq for weaponry, there was no point in trying to bring "democracy" to Iraq, that Islam teaches its adherents to locate the source of legitimacy not in the expressed will of the people, but in the will expressed by Allah, as reflected in the Qur'an, as demonstrated in the acts and words of Muhammad. He can't do it, any more than Taheri --another secularized and westernized man (Vali Nasr is much more of a Believer, a troubled one, but a Believer nonetheless, than either Taheri or Ajami)-- could point out that it is more important to destroy Iran's weapons project than to refrain from acting in the hope that a new, less malevolent regime will come to power, because no Muslim state, and certainly not Iran, can from now on be allowed to acquire major weaponry. Why? Well, what if Iran under the Shah had acquired, as he wished to, nuclear weapons? Then where would we be?

The personal narrative that Ajami offers is young-Arab-worshipper-of-Nasser who has to readjust his thinking after the Six-Day War defeat, comes-to-America, gets unreligion (never said, always implicit), and begins to see things from a different, i.e. non-Muslim, perspective.

Ajami has been useful, but his interests and the interests of Infidels differ. Yes, he is good on the "Palestinians." Yes, he was Edward Said's worst nightmare for those talk-show discussions and other debates, but the truly unanswerable replies to Said are given not by Ajami but by Robert Irwin in his new book (see this review by William Grimes in today's Times) and even more by the forthcoming, to-be-waited-for-with-baited-breath study by Ibn Warraq.

And on Islam, the subject about which Ajami is always silent, and has to be -- he may offer up some such formulation for self-identification as Kanan Makiya does, claiming to be an atheist but also a "cultural Muslim" -- i.e., I love my Muslim parents and I won't reject them and therefore out of filial piety, as well as the realization that my career would suffer, and so might I, if I fully declared myself to be a lapsed or former Muslim, so I won't -- he is less and less useful. For he cannot tell us as some of us can, that Islam itself, spread through demographic conquest and Da'wa, is a permanent menace to Infidels, and he cannot conceivably advise the American government to regard with equanimity, or even grim satisfaction, the ethnic and sectarian fissures within Iraq, and to withdraw in order that they may be exploited for all that they are worth.

As to your other claims about Ajami, they are wrong. He is not Iranian and certainly not an "Iranian nationalist." Why would you think such a thing? Because he likes, and has helped, the charming Ms. Nafisi? For god's sake, I like, I would help, the charming Ms. Nafisi if I could (I doubt if she would do the same for me, for I have expressed a little impatience with the success of her book, for extra-literary reasons, and further suggested she turn over part of her royalties to the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov, for obvious reasons). Why do you say he "wants us to fail in Iran and Iraq"? This is nonsense. He would like to believe that Islam is not Islam, that the tenets of Islam (locating legitimacy in the will of Allah and not the will of mere mortals), and the attitudes of Islam (the attitudes of victor/vanquished, of winner-take-all, of no compromise with the enemy, which is what the Shi'a are showing with the Sunnis, and the Sunnis are showing to the Shi'a as they refuse to acquiesce in their new status in Iraq) are not what they are, and he would vastly prefer not to see the American government take the position, as I argue it must, to weaken and divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam.

You have got Fouad Ajami wrong. He's a good guy. He likes Bernard Lewis (which is, despite Lewis's own failings, born of such things as vanity, a good sign). He has two sons at West Point. He is perfectly content to see Israel survive and thrive. Some of his best friends are...you fill it in.

But he cannot see Islam as the problem -- or at least not in the way that Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Walid Shoebat, and a cast of ten thousand former Muslims -- see it. He cannot even quite come to grips with it in the way that Magdi Allam, an Italo-Egyptian who is now a managing editor at the Corriere della Sera and frequently on the RAI, does -- even though Magdi Allam also calls himself, still, a "Muslim" and refers to his kind, humble, loving parents, who were Muslims of the kind that do not wish to focus on, or even know about, much beyond the rituals of individual worship. Unfortunately, the days when people born into Islam could behave in such a manner are gone. OPEC trillions, Saudi-financed mosques and madrasas, audiocassettes and videocassettes, satellite television channels and the Internet, make such things unlikely or impossible.

Time to choose, for those "cultural Muslims" such as Fouad Ajami who have stayed away from the subject of Islam.

But without addressing the nature and menace of Islam, one is no longer quite so useful in the formation of policy, even if one still has one's uses in the defense of what the Americans have tried.

The "personal narrative" stuff one can live with; the "Foreigner's Gift" as the misleading title one can live with. The avoidance of head-on discussion of Islam -- but Fouad Ajami has never studied Islam, nor the history of Islamic conquests, nor the history of the treatment of non-Muslims in the lands subjugated by Muslims. He's a big shot at the Johns Hopkins Center for Thisanedthat. He has Bradley Foundation money, money being flung at him from every which way.

He has the leisure, he has the well-stocked library, he has every opportunity, if he wishes, to find out all about those matters. And not to substitute some fond memories of Muslim parents or grandparents for what has to be treated at a less personal level.

One finds Fouad Ajami altogether attractive and winning. But he has his limits, and the biggest one is the subject of Islam. Can't go there. Not yet. Possibly not ever. Not in the way we will have to go, if we are, in this race, to stop the islamization of Western Europe, and to cease squandering men, money, matériel in vain hopes to win minds, win hearts that cannot be won, and to begin to exploit, often by doing far less than is now being done, the natural fissures -- ethnic, sectarian, and economic -- within the Camp of Islam.

I realize it's a bit early, but this Thanksgiving (in the U.S.), particularly if one is a younger son or daughter low in the toasting order, why not raise a glass or three to two Englishmen who set the tone for the most successful warfighters in the hemisphere?  That would be Miles Standish and John Smith, hired, respectively, in New England and Virginia to promote peace with the Indians.  From H. W. Crocker III's delightful new book, Don't Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting:

DW draws attention to an episode of the rather silly BBC drama series Spooks, in which evangelical extremists are portrayed as murdering Muslims. Of course this is absurd. It has become a commonplace joke on anti-jihad websites to talk about "those Amish terrorists" or "those murderous Quakers". The worst thing a bunch of evangelicals will do to you is play their guitars badly and make embarrassingly earnest jokes.

The post has brought a predictable avalanche of anglophobic doom-laden comments including:

 the BBC has never broadcasted anything close to the reverse of this, portraying muslims in such a negative way. The criticism is entirely justified and legitimate.

In fact, about two years ago the BBC broadcast an episode of Spooks which did just that. A mosque had been taken over by "extremists" who were diverting funds towards terrorist causes and a young boy was groomed to be a suicide bomber. Muslims, predictably, were "outraged".

The difference, of course, is that the earlier scenario is true to life, whereas the episode about violent evangelicals, perhaps an attempt by the BBC at "balance", is nothing of the kind.

Still, it is good to set the record straight.

Sometimes a youth is a youth and sometimes he's a Muslim. The Telegraph reports that Britain's youths are "among the worst behaved in Europe":

UK teenagers rate worst, or close to worst, for a range of bad-behaviour indicators including drugs, drink, violence and promiscuity, according the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

In a series of studies conducted over a number of years, the IPPR found British 15-year-olds are drunk more often, involved in more fights and a higher proportion have had sex, compared with their counterparts in Germany, France and Italy.

One study suggested that in 2003, 38 per cent of 15-year-old Brits had tried cannabis, as opposed to 7 per cent in Sweden and 27 per cent in Germany.

The research found that teenagers in Europe spend more time with their families, whereas British youngsters are more likely to be found out with their friends.

In Italy 93 per cent of teenagers eat regularly with their families, compared with 64 per cent in the UK.

This is an important point. When I was a teenager our family nearly always ate together, usually at the table although often in front of the TV. And we ate what we were given. Now many parents seem to ask their children what they would like to eat - a recipe for disaster if ever there was one - and family members eat whenever they want to.

Whereas 45 per cent of 15-year-old boys in England and 59 per cent in Scotland spend most evenings with friends, in France that figure stands at just 17 per cent.

However, French youths are not without their behavioural difficulties. At least some French youths. From this Telegraph article, it seems that "youths" are "challenging the French state":

Symbols of the French state, including policemen, firemen and postmen, are under intensified attack from disaffected youths as the country faces the worst race relations crisis in its history.

Hardly a night passes without gangs — many of them from immigrant families — attacking police cars, buses and emergency rescue teams.

Would this be Vietnamese immigrants?

The banlieues' inhabitants include millions of immigrants. Some police representatives, notably the small, fringe trade union Action Police, squarely blame radical Muslim imams for whipping up the violence, talking of an "intifada" in the banlieues. But a leaked report by the French police intelligence service, the Renseignements Généraux (RG), concluded last year that Islamists had "no role in setting off the violence", which it described as a "popular revolt" against the authorities.

A popular revolt against the authorities? Wrong but wromantic? Come on, Telegraph, you can do better than this. Don't be so coy. In a sense it may be correct to say that it is not the Imams that are whipping up the violence. The revolting youths are quite capable of reading the Koran for themselves.

I think I prefer our home grown yobs.

From the BBC.

A man has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for the genital mutilation of his two-year-old daughter, in what is said to be first such case in the US. Khalid Adem, an Ethiopian immigrant, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children by the court in the state of Georgia.

Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter's clitoris in 2001. The girl, who is now seven, had testified on videotape that her father "cut me on my private part".

The daughter's mother had said she did not discover that the child was mutilated until nearly two years later. "This was a violation of her rights as a child, her rights as a woman, and most of all her rights as a human being, she will never be the same," Fortunate Adem said in the courtroom, according to a tape recording broadcast by local radio station WSB.

A US women's rights group described the verdict as a victory against female genital mutilation worldwide.

I mean that's the way to deal with perpetrators, not perform the mutilation, you understand.

From The Telegraph

Four Muslims were arrested outside the Old Bailey yesterday during angry protests against the trial of a man allegedly involved in protests against Danish cartoons.

Anjem Choudary, who helped organise the anti-Danish protests, was once more involved as was Abu Izzadeen, (not so clever Trevor opens his big mouth again) who confronted John Reid, the Home Secretary, on a recent visit to East London. Mr Choudary said afterwards: "We should not be surprised at people doing something like 7/7. How else do you expect Muslims to express themselves? We are a community under siege. It's going to blow up one day in everyone's faces."

Male demonstrators, most wearing scarves across their faces, held placards reading 'Cartoonist free at large, protesters criminalised', 'Freedom to insult Mohammed, no freedom to defend his honour', and 'Biased government, biased CPS, biased police, biased judges'. Female protesters, in a separate enclosure from the men and wearing full veils, held placards reading: "Shariah — the only option for the UK." I can’t find any photos yet, if and when I do I’ll drop one in.

The demonstration was being directed away from the Central Criminal Court by police when one of the men allegedly assaulted a cameraman. . . The protesters were objecting to the arrest of Mizanur Rahman, 23, a web designer from Edmonton, North London, whose trial began yesterday for allegedly soliciting murder and using threatening, abusive or insulting words to stir up racial hatred during a demonstration. Rahman is said to have called for "another 9/11" in Europe.

On NPR the other day one Anisa Mehdi, whose cheerful American voice reassures  (and whose ignorance about the meaning of Jihad may be, but I doubt is, genuine), appeared yet again. She had been on before, and this was merely a repeat of her January 7, 2005 broadcast, in which she brightly informed us that "Jihad" does not mean "holy war" or anything violent, that those who use it as such are wrong, that it means instead, what she, Anisa Mehdi, had always been taught it to mean, that struggle to "be a better person" and so on that is a staple of Islamic apologetics.

Oh, and what was supposedly the real point of the tape? Anisa Mehdi had found the way to end violence, or to appeal to Muslims not to engage in violence. What way was that? Not to allow the appropriation of the word "Jihad" by that handful of extremists who somehow seem able to manage quite well, and who are never challenged by appeals to chapter and verse in Qur'an, or by the stories in the hadith, or by the example of Muhammad, that warrior who was constantly conducting Jihad raids. And that way is to stop using the word "Jihad" to apply to Muslim terrorists, and rather to call what they do by the name "hibara." For "hibara" is illicit, "hibara" is wrong. So if only what Muslims and now some intelligent non-Muslims call "Jihad is no longer called "Jihad" but called instead "hibara," that will, in Anisa Mehdi's presentation, simply knock the stuffing out of the seemingly unstoppable popularity and appeal of those who talk about "waging Jihad" when, as Anisa Mehdi knows, all they are really doing is "waging hibara" because Jihad, of course, is a spiritual, internal struggle with one's own soul.

Fascinating to find NPR re-running this again, as if a booster shot of the most extraordinary apologetics was necessary at this point, because too many hitherto unwary and ill-informed Infidels, even those considered to be the kind of audience NPR appeals to, are beginning to get the picture, beginning to see the light, beginning to think not "why do they hate us" and "we need to end poverty among Muslims" but, rather, what is it about Islam that causes Muslims to be so violent toward Infidels, and why is it that their belief-system so obviously divides the world, as it does, between Believer and Infidel,and what is the goal of "Jihad" and what are its instruments, and what, furthermore, is the fate of non-Muslims in lands conquered, by whatever means, by Muslims?

Yes, it's getting just a bit uneasy, so it was time to run Anisa Mehdi again.

Who at NPR is behind this? Who's running this deliberate campaign -- of which this the tiniest sample -- of desinformatsiya?

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From The BBC.

Council officers are collecting bat droppings to help keep the animals safe during town centre building work. The dirt will be used as a "homing beacon" following the demolition of their current home in a sports centre in Burnley, Lancashire.

The droppings will be moved to a new roost, set up by the council, to help the protected bats bed themselves in with a familiar scent. Although they have currently left the centre, they are expected to return in the Spring.

Farida Ahmed, the council's head of property consultancy, said: "We've been working closely with bat experts to get their advice on how to best protect the bats that have used the Thompson Centre as a home probably for many years.

"We've been advised to collect some droppings before demolition starts and store them so that when the time comes for the bats to return we can put the droppings in the new roost and the returning bats will pick up the scent."

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