Alleged FBI Entrapment Scheme

I was stunned reading this story in the New York Post, about the four jihadis that were arrested in New York for plotting to bomb synagogues in the Bronx. If this is true, then they need to do some series reviews of FBI policies. (read)

Cassandra McKoy, girlfriend of accused co-conspirator David Williams, insisted that the men were duped into the plot with the lure of a cash payday and that religious hatred had nothing to do with it.

"They aren't radicals. They were just financially motivated. They aren't terrorists. If Maqsood wasn't in the picture, they would've never come up with this idea," she said.

"This was not their idea. They make it sound like they sought him out and said we want to do this when he's the one who approached them. He enticed them with money.

"Maqsood wasn't even allowed inside the mosque, he waited in the parking lot for them and offered them $25,000 to join."

(...)

But during the course of the year, Maqsood kept trying to steer Cromitie down a path to jihad -- giving him religious pamphlets, clothing and prayer rugs. In the end, it seemed that cash and gifts worked better.

She said Maqsood promised to get Cromitie jobs and once said he would give him a black Mercedes-Benz. On repeated occasions, he gave Cromitie cameras, cash and even drugs, she said.

"Maqsood gave him a lot of marijuana," she said.

An FBI spokesman did not return a call for comment on the alleged gift giving.

The FBI bribed and organized these clowns, and then plotted the whole thing for them? Is this a joke? If true, this is an absurd entrapment scheme. I'll await updates on this story.

Alarm Bells In Europe

A surprisingly candid and hard hitting op-ed by Bruce Bawer in the Wall Street Journal. Heirs to Fortuyn?

Yet instead of encouraging these immigrants to integrate and become part of their new societies, Western Europe's governments have allowed them to form self-segregating parallel societies run more or less according to Shariah. Many of the residents of these patriarchal enclaves subsist on government benefits, speak the language of their adopted country poorly or not at all, despise pluralistic democracy, look forward to Europe's incorporation into the House of Islam, and support—at least in spirit—terrorism against the West. A 2006 Sunday Telegraph poll, for example, showed that 40% of British Muslims wanted Shariah in Britain, 14% approved of attacks on Danish embassies in retribution for the famous Mohammed cartoons, 13% supported violence against those who insulted Islam, and 20% sympathized with the July 2005 London bombers.

Too often, such attitudes find their way into practice. Ubiquitous youth gangs, contemptuous of infidels, have made European cities increasingly dangerous for non-Muslims—especially women, Jews and gays. In 2001, 65% of rapes in Norway were committed by what the country's police call "non-Western" men—a category consisting overwhelmingly of Muslims, who make up just 2% of that country's population. In 2005, 82% of crimes in Copenhagen were committed by members of immigrant groups, the majority of them Muslims.

Non-Muslims aren't the only targets of Muslim violence. A mountain of evidence suggests that the rates of domestic abuse in these enclaves are astronomical. In Germany, reports Der Spiegel, "a disproportionately high percentage of women who flee to women's shelters are Muslim"; in 2006, 56% of the women at Norwegian shelters were of foreign origin; Deborah Scroggins wrote in The Nation in 2005 that "Muslims make up only 5.5 percent of the Dutch population, but they account for more than half the women in battered women's shelters." Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch advocate for democracy and women's rights, would no doubt say far more than half: When she was working with women in Dutch shelters, she writes, "there were hardly any white women" in them, "only women from Morocco, from Turkey, from Afghanistan—Muslim countries—alongside some Hindu women from Surinam." When she and filmmaker Theo van Gogh tried to highlight the mistreatment of women under Islam in the 2004 film "Submission: Part I," he was killed by a young Muslim extremist.

(...)

The past few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it—criminalizing "incitement of racism, xenophobia or hatred against a racial, ethnic or religious group" in 2007, for example—and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

Read the whole thing. A very important article on many levels.

Our Friends the Saudis

Foreign Policy wonders what a world without the Saudis would look like:

But when it comes to the third element -- Wahhabism -- a world without the Saudi regime is hardly an upsetting thought. Years after the September 11 attacks, the kingdom is still a center of ideological indoctrination, incitement, and terrorist financing. "If I could somehow snap my fingers and cut off the funding from one country, it would be Saudi Arabia," Stuart Levey, U.S. Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told ABC News in 2007. Thanks to the kingdom's policies, countless young boys are brainwashed to hate Christians, Jews, and other "infidels" in Saudi-funded madrasas from Bangladesh, to Bosnia and Herzegovina, to Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Spain, and even in the United States. Pakistan, perhaps of the most concern, has some 12,000 madrasas, many of which are Saudi-funded. Wahhabism provides not only the breeding ground on which Islamist terrorism flourishes, but it also threatens to overshadow other, more moderate traditions within Islam. As Lawrence Wright described in The Looming Tower, with a little over 1 percent of the world's Muslim population, the Saudi Wahhabis support 90 percent of the entire faith's expenses, radicalizing many bastions of moderate Islam beyond recognition.

Despite all that, because of the kingdom's chokehold over the global economy, Washington has had to accept its abysmal human rights record, its treatment of women and non-Muslims as second-class citizens, its brutal attitude toward gays, and its financial support for radical Islamist institutions. Without the Saudi state, the veneer of political correctness that has characterized the U.S. attitude toward Wahhabism would quickly dissolve, and the United States would be free to fight back against radical Islam openly and decisively. Such a world might not be free of terrorism, but at least it would spare Americans the indignity of paying for both sides in the war on radical Islam, classifying 28 pages in the congressional report that dealt with Saudi Arabia's role in the September 11 attacks, and watching one U.S. president after another, Democrat and Republican alike, bend a knee before a human rights-abusing tyrant.

We think the alliance with Pakistan is troubled. Saudi Arabia is even more so. It's the epicentre of jihad, but on paper is the key US ally in the Arab world.

Canadian Convert Beheading Threat a Fraud?

I posted last week about a Canadian woman who is facing beheading: Grim Irony: Canadian Islamic Convert Woman Facing Beheading in Pakistan

The anti-terrorism site, the Jawa Report, have known about her for years, and openly wonders if this is a set up:

We've been following the story of Beverly Giesbrecht (aka, Khadija Abdul Qahar) fairly closely for years now. As the owner and operator of the "Jihad Unspun" website, she wrote countless stories about how US and Canadian troops were the "real terrorists" and how the Taliban were simply anti-imperialist freedom fighters -- the "resistance" as she liked to call them.

I actually knew Beverly was on her way to Pakistan as she and I crossed paths at some Islamist forums. She was at the forums looking for video and trying to hook up with "resistance fighters" who could help her and Phil Rees -- who she claimed to be working with --- on their "documentary" about "Islamic resistance". A "documentary" she claimed would show the "resistance" point of view.

So, if Beverly really was kidnapped by the Taliban and if she is about to be beheaded, how come nothing happened to Phil Rees? Presumably the Taliban would be more interested in killing an infidel who is sympathetic to their cause before they would want to kill a sister who is sympathetic to their cause?

Let me say publicly what every one I know is saying privately: are you really being held hostage Beverly or is this some elaborate scam to raise money for the Taliban (or for yourself and your failing website)?

Yes, I am skeptical. What would the Taliban have to gain from beheading a woman who is on the record as a supporter? Jihad Unspun used to deliver Taliban press releases unedited. The whole thing seems rather fishy.

Of course, there remains the possibility that this is exactly what this seems. That the Taliban really are holding Beverly hostage and that they really are going to behead her if a ransom isn't paid. If that is the case, then I really do feel sorry for "Khadija". Even fools deserve our pity sometimes.

Yes Beverly, the Taliban really were the bad guys all along. A hard lesson learned, and possibly too late on your part.

Grim Irony: Canadian Islamic Convert Woman Facing Beheading in Pakistan

Khadija Abdul Qahar, formerly know as Beverly Giesbrecht, was kidnapped by the Taliban in northern Pakistan. The Globe and Mail has the details, with hostage video:

BANNU, PAKISTAN and TORONTO — A Canadian held hostage after she travelled to the lawless tribal belt of northern Pakistan says the Taliban will behead her by the end of the month if a ransom isn't paid.

In a new video provided to The Globe and Mail, Beverly Giesbrecht expresses fear for her life if her captors aren't paid.

“I have been advised and asked to make this video. We have very short time now and I am going to be killed, as you can see,” she says, gesturing at the dagger on the wall behind her, pointed at her head.

(...)

Ms. Giesbrecht, who is also known as Khadija Abdul Qahaar, has been a captive for four months. The West Vancouver resident converted to Islam after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and runs a website, Jihad Unspun, that says it provides information “devoid of the constraints of mainstream media.” Her visa application to Pakistan said she was a freelance journalist working on a documentary for the Al-Jazeera television network.

She was captured by gunmen last November, reportedly by the Taliban commander Gul Bahadur, who leads fighters in the volatile North Waziristan region.

“I need some kind, someone to help me, the Pakistani government and my own country and somebody must move now, because my life is going to be over. I want to go home. So, these people are serious. Please help me,” a wavering Ms. Giesbrecht says in her latest video.

I checked out her website, and it is unapologetically pro-jihad, including a sick musical video of a US personnel carrier being blown up. The site is jihadunspun.com. Sample:

Here is a new video release from the Islamic State of Iraq that shows Mujahideen detonating an IED at a US Bradley in Baghdad that completely destroys the vehicle. Please be patient as this Windows Media file downloads to your computer.

I hope she gets out of this and realizes the errors of her way and drops the jihad posturing.