'It is fitting & symbolic that this newly-minted American-citizen-jihadist scumbag crawled into a boat on dry land in order to escape. Just like his stupid, fucked up, eleventh-century based, twisted, pseudo-religious cause, it's going nowhere -- these morons and all the others like them are nothing more than backward, ignorant, pieces of shit. Bon voyage, asshole.'

Europe in general has been slow to learn a multi-part lesson: You should not only let immigrants move wherever they want, you should allow them to assimilate fully into society both through law and custom; sure, the host country or society or group will be changed too, but that's just another great up-side to immigration. And no one should be protected because their religion or heritage or feelings are hurt by words.

Since 2004, 40 Christian churches and institutions have been bombed, according to the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America, seven alone on the eve of Orthodox Christmas in 2007.
...

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), the only Assyrian member of Congress and a close friend of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), remembers well listening to her grandparents' stories of family members being slain or fleeing the region, as they did when they came to the United States.

"History is repeating itself," the congresswoman somberly told The Hill.
...

Before the ouster of Saddam Hussein, there were about 1.4 million Christians in Iraq, comprising about 3 percent of the population, said Eshoo. Today, through a mass exodus and violence that has included a dozen clergy killed or kidnapped, about 400,000 remain.

"The numbers are stunning," Eshoo said. "We are really struggling to have the issue taken as seriously as it should be taken."
...

"What you're seeing is the eradication of the Christian community," [co-chairman of the Religious Minorities in Iraq Caucus, Rep. Frank] Wolf [R-VA] said. "The world has pretty much turned away."
...

"It matters not what area of the country anyone is from, what their denomination is or what their politics are," Eshoo said.
...

"As we celebrate the birth of Christ in the U.S. I think we need to be mindful and pray for those that celebrate it in different parts of the world, even in a part of the world where many Americans don't realize that history did not stop," Eshoo said. "Christianity was born in the Middle East. [Iraqis are] suffering enormously because they are Christian."

"They were just caught between the political winds and then the savagery that has broken out there," she said.

[A 28-year-old, blind Muslim woman's] strictly religious parents would not allow a dog in the house, considering the animal unclean.

But then Miss Ramouni stumbled across a website article about miniature guide horses in April 2008.

'It was something that I never thought about for myself,' she said.

It's an odd situation: Throughout the greater Middle East, frank discussions about Islam are easier to have than they are in Washington, D.C. -- especially among government officials. Ask someone in the Obama administration about jihad and, unless the official knows the conversation is off the record -- and sometimes even if it is off the record -- that official likely will become a bit panicked, nonplussed, and try to change the subject.

It's been 18 months since Mr. Obama became president; thirteen months since he gave his Cairo speech and rolled out his "New Beginning" approach to the Muslim world. Primary result: In the nation's capital, conversations have become boring, lightweight, and sometimes inane.

Although it's deeply politically incorrect to say so, intellectually, things were better under the Bush administration.
...

President Obama's operating philosophy toward the Muslim world appears to be that being "offensive" towards Muslims can?t be good for Muslim?non-Muslim relations. Mr. Obama's dispensation more or less follows the arguments made by a wide variety of liberal intellectuals while Mr. Bush was president.
...

Now it's possible that President Obama's play-nice approach to the Muslim world won't leave us in any worse shape than we were in when he arrived in the White House. It is, however, questionable. When Mr. Obama's attorney general twists himself into knots trying to avoid juxtaposing the word "Islam" with the word "terrorism," and when the president's senior counterterrorism advisor gives speeches on Islam that would be more appropriate on "Sesame Street," you gotta wonder whether the dumbed-down level of public Washington discourse is the visible sign of internal bureaucratic rot.

Everything about this is an utter, unmitigated disgrace -- the attack on Vilks, the excruciating passivity of most of the crowd, the sheer thuggery of these shrieking, lunatic, barbarian bastards, and of course the killer moment at around 8:45 when they win. Do note, too, how the Aggrieved alternate between vicious threats and civil rights, warning the cops against brutality and reminding them that they pay taxes too. That?s a familiar pattern nine years after 9/11. They'd have torn Vilks apart with their bare hands if they could have but they're all about proper procedure, you see.

It's almost not worth noting the media double standard applied to violence by "sympathetic" groups versus unsympathetic groups, but Ace did note it so go read his post. Needless to say, everyone associated with the decision to stop the film should be fired immediately.

Lars Vilks, a Swedish cartoonist whose sketch of the Prophet Muhammad enraged many Muslims, was head-butted today while giving a lecture about freedom of speech.

Vilks, who depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in 2007, said he was assaulted by a man sitting on the front row as he spoke at the University of Uppsala, about 70 kilometers from Stockholm.

A spokesman for the Uppsala police said about 20 people tried to attack Vilks after interrupting his lecture, adding that the police had to intervene to stop them. Two people were detained.

"Why are the Christians claiming Allah?" asks businessman Rahim Ismail, 47, his face contorted in rage and disbelief. He shakes his head and raises his voice while waiting for a taxi along Jalan Tun Razak, a main thoroughfare in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital. "Everybody in the world knows Allah is the Muslim God and belong to Muslims. I cannot understand why the Christians want to claim Allah as their God," Rahim says as passers-by, mostly Muslims, gather around and nod in agreement.

The reason for their anger is a recent judgment by Malaysia's High Court that the word Allah is not exclusive to Muslims. Judge Lau Bee Lan ruled that others, including Catholics who had been prohibited by the Home Ministry from using the word in their publications since 2007, can now use the term. She also rescinded the prohibition order freeing the Malay language edition of the Catholic monthly The Herald to use Allah to denote the Christian God. After widespread protests, however, the judge granted a stay order on Jan. 7. The same day the government appealed to the higher court of appeal to overturn the ruling.

The anger seemingly turned violent late Thursday night after masked men on motorcycles firebombed three churches in the city, gutting the ground floor of the Metro Tabernacle Church located in a commercial building in the Desa Melawati suburb of the capital. The attacks, which police said appeared uncoordinated, were condemned by the government, opposition MPs and Muslim clerics alike. On Friday Muslims demonstrated in scores of mosques across the country but the protest was peaceful. In the mosque in Kampung Baru, a Malay enclave in the city, Muslims held placards that read "Leave Islam Alone! Treat Us As You Would Treat Yourself! Don't Test Our Patience!" This, amid cries of "Allah is Great!"
...

Despite Malaysia's diverse national complexion, political Islam is a growing force and the country operates under two sets of laws, one for Muslims, the other for everyone else. The authorities regard such compartmentalization as essential to maintaining social stability.

A new poll from World Public Opinion pretty much confirms everything we thought we knew about the Muslim world: that while not directly supporting al Qaeda, large majorities of Muslims around the world support many of al Qaeda's goals, hate the US, are clamoring to replace secular repression with religious repression, are paranoid conspiracy theorists, and have no problem with killing US soldiers.

The full report is here [pdf file].

The good news, of course is that large majorities in Muslim countries reject killing American civilians. But that's about where the good news begins and ends.

The worst news? Support by Muslims for attacks against American civilians has actually increased over the past two years.

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

... at the end of the day, terrorists often are just acting on what they sense the majority really wants but doesn’t dare do or say. That is why the most powerful deterrent to their behavior is when the community as a whole says: “No more. What you have done in murdering defenseless men, women and children has brought shame on us and on you.”

A faithful adherent of the root-causes theory of crime -- mass murder, in the case at hand -- Dr. Chopra pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that most of the terrorism in the world came from Muslims. It was mandatory, then, to address their grievances -- "humiliation," "poverty," "lack of education." The U.S., he recommended, should undertake a Marshall Plan for Muslims.

Nowhere in this citation of the root causes of Muslim terrorism was there any mention of Islamic fundamentalism -- the religious fanaticism that has sent fevered mobs rioting, burning and killing over alleged slights to the Quran or the prophet. Not to mention the countless others enlisted to blow themselves and others up in the name of God.
...

For advocates of the root-causes theory of crime, the central story is, ever, the sorrows and grievances of the perpetrators. For those prone to the belief that most eruptions of evil in the world can be traced to American influence and power there is only one subject of consequence.