veiled4allah

8ackgr0und N015e has an important diary at Daily Kos about how Palestinians are rallying in support of the Christian Peacemaker Team members who are being held hostage in Iraq:

Yesterday in Hebron Palestinians held a rally calling for the release of the Christian Peacemakers Team being held hostage in Iraq. These Palestinians are standing in solidarity with the hostages because they know that Tom Fox, one of the hostages, on many occasions had stood between Palestinian children and Israeli tanks...

...A demonstration will be held in Rammallah today at the Al Manara square 3:00 PM to call for the release of the four kidnapped peace activists in Iraq.

Speakers at the demonstration will include a representative of the Palestinian Islamic Forum, Shawkat Samha The Mayor of Jayouss (where Harmeet and Tom volunteered), Mustapha Barghouti head of the Palestinian Initiative and Kadura Fares of the National committee against the wall and settlements.

This is the second rally in support of the CPT hostages being held in Iraq. Yesterday, friends of Tom Fox in Hebron held a rally also calling for the release of the CPT hostages. A third demonstration will be held in the village of Tawani, tomorrow at 1:30, where American Tom Fox served as a volunteer.

Please do read the whole thing. We don't see enough positive reports about Palestinians in the news.

Update: In other news:

A leading British Muslim and anti-Iraq war campaigner has arrived in Iraq on a mission to secure the safe release of kidnapped Briton Norman Kember.

Anas Altikriti went to Baghdad to try to persuade the hostage takers to free Kember.

Altikriti, who is representing the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), Stop the War and CND, has the blessing of Kember's wife Pat, who said: "I much appreciate this visit." ...

...A spokesman for the MAB said Altikriti's first step would be to meet CPT in the city, after which he would talk to influential Sunni Muslim organisations in a bid to convey to the hostage takers that Kember should never have been seized.

But he admitted Altikriti, who is of Iraqi extraction, was "under no illusion" about the riskiness of his mission. "He will try to explain that by holding Mr Kember they are doing a great injustice," the spokesman said.

Later: CAIR:

The leading US Muslim civil liberties group has called for the immediate release of four Christian peace activists kidnapped in Iraq and threatened with murder.

"Those who left the comfort of their homes to advocate for the rights of others that do not share their faith, ethnicity or language should be celebrated and honored by Muslims, not humiliated by being made captives or, God forbid, killed," Parvez Ahmed, chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told a news conference Sunday, December 4.

"As a leader of the American Muslim community and the head of America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group, I make a personal appeal to the captors of the four members of the Christian Peacemakers Teams – release our brothers in humanity immediately and unconditionally," he said in a statement posted on CAIR's Web site.

Later: Via the Daily Mail:

The head of the world's oldest Islamic movement has called for the immediate release of British hostage Norman Kember. Mohammed Mahdi Akef, president of the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, is the latest leading Muslim to urge the kidnappers to release their captives.

In a message broadcast on al-Jazeera on Thursday Mr Akef said kidnapping innocent people was against the principles of Islam.

He said: "In the name of the the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide I call for the western peace activists in Iraq to be released immediately.

"Islam rejects the kidnapping of innocent people regardless of their aim, beliefs and opinion and all laws locally and internationally consider kidnapping a crime, particularly when it targets innocent peace activists who are known for their activity and solidarity for the Iraqi cause."

Mr Akef said the hostages were from a well-known Christian group which works in solidarity with Palestinian people "against Israeli aggression".

"Such people should be welcomed, not harmed, and their efforts should be endorsed," he said.

"Kidnapping will only distort the image of Iraq."

For World AIDS Day, here are some posts about Muslims and HIV/AIDS:

Muslims and HIV/AIDS #1 - If Allah accepts repentance, why don't we? Why do some Muslims ostracize people for what they did in the past?

Muslims and HIV/AIDS #2 - As a follow up to the previous entry, another personal story of how a diagnosis of HIV led a man to turn his life around. Is this what you want to shun?

Muslims and HIV/AIDS #3 - Islamic teachings that can form the basis of a compassionate response.

Muslims and HIV/AIDS #4 - Concentrating on prevention strategies.

Asharq al-Awsat reports that two women won in the first election in Saudi Arabia in which women were allowed to run as candidates:

Two Saudi businesswomen swept to an unprecedented victory in elections to the board of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the first polls in which women stood as candidates in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

"I'm happy, but I'm still under shock," Lama al-Suleiman, one of the two winners, told AFP, summing up the feelings of many election activists and watchers who had expected one woman at best to be voted into office.

"It's a big leap for Saudi women, an answer to what people want," said Suleiman, a 39-year-old mother of four.

Suleiman and fellow female winner Nashwa Taher ran on a list of heavyweight business people and industrialists which clinched the 12 board seats up for grabs, according to results released early Wednesday.

With only 100 women among the some 3,880 chamber members who cast ballots, the pair's victory was effectively handed by men.

"We should give them (women) a chance because they have little representation in society," one male voter said Tuesday, adding he had voted for four women.

May this be a good trend for the future, inshallah.

Hesham Hassaballa has a lovely post about giving thanks on this day.

There is much that I have to be thankful for, particularly my family and the fact that I make my living doing a job that I love. All praise is due to Allah, who has given my these and so many other blessings.

Work has been keeping me quite busy lately, but it's a good kind of busy. It just means I don't have as much time for blogging as always.

I hope that everybody who is still reading this blog has a wonderful day and a great weekend.

A couple examples of Muslims standing up for justice.

Free and Equal Under the Quran:

There are many devout Muslim men and women across the world who diligently work at both frontiers of activism and scholarship in order to spread these egalitarian Qur'anic principles and replace the discriminatory traditionalist Qur'anic readings in Islamic law with reformist humanist readings as a better realization of the renown classic Islamic legal maxim, "Laws change according to the change of time and place conditions." Nowhere in the Qur'an is there a blank-check given to men for inhuman, oppressive and uncivilized treatment of women, as some secular critiques such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji, falsely argue. Irresponsible, superficial and hateful attacks against the Qur'an and disproportionate presentation of Muslims' Qur'anic readings only as it is understood by some traditionalists, without providing any space whatsoever to the presentation of alternative views, will ultimately fail to change anything about the mentality and approach of the Muslim community. In the end, there can be no substitute for Muslim scholars and reformers who engage their own tradition in a rigorous, humanist, and self-critical fashion.

Another Muslim for Mukhtaran:

Even when typing the events that happened to her, my blood curdled in anger. From where did such a sentence come? How could a local village council even think about doing so to a woman for a crime her brother allegedly committed? What kind of barbarity is this? Now, of course, there are those who will claim that such a monstrosity is a natural outgrowth of Islam and Islamic justice. That is a bunch of hogwash (I want to use stronger language, but this blog is entitled God, Faith, and a Pen...).

Nowhere is sexual violence EVER condoned by Islam. Nowhere. Anyone who says so is completely mistaken, if not blatantly lying.

I am in full support of her cause, and I pray that God grants her victory in this world and the next. What happened to her is a disturbing example of how jahiliyah, or pre-Islamic ignorance, has slowly crept back into Muslim societies. Unfortunately, throughout human history, the woman has been given the short end of the stick (to say the absolute least). Muslims are supposed to know better, because the faith they claim to follow tells them that man and woman are equal before God.

Via Al-Jazeera:

Syria also condemned the attacks and reminded Jordan of its solidarity.

"We have painfully learned the news that attacks aimed at hotels lead to the deaths of innocent people," a Syrian foreign affairs official was quoted as saying by the official SANA news agency.

"Syria vigorously condemns these attacks and expresses its total solidarity with Jordan."

No group immediately came forward to claim responsibility for the bombings.

Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood strongly condemned the terrorist attacks that it said went against Islam.

"These are criminal and terrorist acts which no Muslim can accept and which go against our religion," the head of the Brotherhood, Abdel Majid Zuneibat said after the attacks.

"The enemies of the nation will only profit from this crime," Zuneibat said in a statement carried on state-run Petra news agency.

Palestinian flags were lowered to half mast on official buildings on Thursday as leader Mahmud Abbas denounced the blasts as a "crime against humanity and Arab security".

More like this

Later: Again via Al-Jazeera:

Hundreds of Jordanians have taken part in street protests denouncing terrorism in the wake of Wednesday's triple hotel bombings in the capital Amman.

Chants such as "Burn in hell, Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi" were heard from the demonstrators, referring to claims the leader of the al-Qaida in [ed. note: appears to be referring to al-Qaida in Iraq] group to have carried out the attacks...

..."Death to al-Zarqawi, the villain and the traitor," shouted the angry crowd comprising Jordanians of all backgrounds, including women and children.

Drivers of vehicles decorated with the colourful Jordanian flags and posters of Jordan's King Abdullah II honked their horns...

...Other rallies were held across the kingdom, including one in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, where attackers using Katyusha rockets narrowly missed a US ship and killed a Jordanian soldier in August.

Others were in al-Zarqawi's hometown of Zarqa and the southern city of Maan which is known to be a hub of Muslim fundamentalists.

The Amman protest was organised by Jordan's 14 professional and trade unions, made up of both hardline Islamic groups and leftist political organisations, traditionally a vocal critic of King Abdullah's moderate and pro-western policies.

"We're here to demonstrate our support of our government and express our love to our country and condemn in the strongest terms the heinous crime committed against Jordan by a group of terrorists," said Abdul-Fatah Kilani, president of the veterinary union.

Businessman Mohammed Daoud Mheirat said: "This rotten group and those killers have nothing to do with our religion."

Added: See also here.

More: The Herald Sun reports:

AT least 200,000 people marched though the centre of the Jordanian capital Amman overnight in a mass show of anger at the triple suicide bombings this month that left 59 dead, police and organisers said.

Many protestors shouted slogans against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant whose group claimed the blast, chanting, "Zarqawi, from Amman, we say to you: you are a coward."

Brandishing banners with the names of their tribes and which pledged their loyalty to King Abdullah II, the demonstrators appeared to have come from every corner of the country.

It was by far the largest show of public fury against extremism since the November 9 blasts in Amman shattered the relative calm of the kingdom.

There's a lot (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, for example) of attention on an Italian news documentary alleging that the U.S. used white phosphorus on the city of Fallujah during its assault there a year ago (November 2004). See reports here and here.

This is not new. As early as November 9, 2004, a report in the British Telegraph newspaper mentioned its use:

White phosphorus shells lit up the sky as armour drove through the breach and sent flaming material on to suspect insurgent haunts. Soldiers expressed the fear that with so much firepower the biggest danger was friendly fire.

Reports appeared in the Arab press by November 10 of chemical weapons and poison gas, and covered more extensively by independent journalist Dahr Jamail later that month. It also appeared in the alternative media.

But this isn't the first time the issue of incindiery or chemical weapons has come up. As early as August 2003, the U.S. admitted it had used napalm. Later it lied to the UK in claiming that it had not used new-generation napalm weapon MK-77. A good discussion of these issues is Fire Bombs in Iraq: Napalm By Any Other Name.

A curious twist is that Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, whose convoy came under fire from U.S. troops in March 2005 after she had been released as a hostage, was apparently investigating the use of "unusual weapons" in Fallujah:

At the time of her abduction, Giuliana was heading to an area of Baghdad where witnesses from Fallujah are staying to interview Fallujah refugees about the US assault on their city last year. Says Sermonti: "She had some information about the use of illegal weapons by US forces in Fallujah that was very sensitive. A very hot topic. There were rumors of some use of chemicals and a number of weapons that are not legal -- like [napalm] and phosphorus."

Finally, Juan Cole has an excellent legal analysis and historical background.

Update: George Monbiot provides a good summary of the evidence - from official American government and military sources - that white phosphorus and napalm were indeed used. Dahr Jamail has a follow-up, and the Independent provides a good summary of the state of play (more here). The British have WP too but claim it's only used for creating smokescreens.

Ramadan ended today for Muslims in North America and in my community. Eid al-Fitr is tomorrow.

Eid mubarak! May you have a blessed and joyous holiday. I hope that your Ramadan was spiritually fulfilling and a time during which you drew closer to Allah.

Via Abu Aardvark, an interesting article about efforts by moderate Muslims to create their own transnational networks to promote their ideas as an alternative to more radical ones: Toward a Virtual Caliphate. Some highlights:

While many hold up the specter of al-Qaida as a de-territorialized "brand name" seeking to rally the masses of the umma (the world community of Muslims) around militant religious radicalism, al-Qaida is not the only game in town in terms of the transnational forces competing for Muslim hearts and minds. Indeed, it is possible today to point to an emerging infrastructure – on the internet and satellite television, in widely-circulated books, through major international conferences and research centers – of a countervailing effort by mainstream Islamic scholars to challenge al-Qaida's global rhetoric...

...For this group, the caliphate is not so much a political institution attached to sovereign territory, but rather an ideal of pan-Islamic ecumenicism – a moderate and relatively inclusive form of lowest-common-denominator orthodoxy. In their minds, this community of shared knowledge and religious interpretation is explicitly designed as an antidote to bin Laden and the radical jihadis. Given the means of its establishment and propagation, such a tendency might perhaps best be thought of as a "virtual caliphate."

The figure at the forefront of this movement is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Qatar-based Egyptian religious scholar who trained at the venerable institution of Al-Azhar in Cairo – the Oxford of the Islamic religious sciences. In recent years, he has sought to articulate a more cosmopolitan understanding of Islam that speaks to the unique problems of the modern world while remaining firmly grounded in the traditions of Islamic law and scholarship.

Qaradawi is a figure of some controversy, something that the author of this, Peter Mandaville, discusses:

And it is here that many of his critics would claim that Qaradawi and his associates do not go far enough. They want to see, for example, stronger denunciation of terrorism and the rejection of threats against Jews and non-Muslims – and perhaps also a stronger emphasis on the need for Muslims to co-operate with the West. In doing so, however, they miss the point. The simple fact is that policymakers in the West – and progressive liberals more generally – are not always going to agree with the opinions of Qaradawi et al. Even very open-minded followers of orthodox scripturalism in Islam will often tend toward social conservatism, meaning that there will continue to be tensions regarding homosexuality and the role of women. It will also be difficult to find complete agreement with the West on more immediate political and security issues. While Qaradawi has strongly and consistently condemned bin Laden and Al-Qaida terrorism, his pronouncements on the insurgency in Iraq and the use of violence by Palestinians have certainly been at odds with Washington.

That said, however, perhaps the worst thing the West could do is to cast figures such as Qaradawi as part of the problem simply because his views don't precisely correspond with US goals. Since 9/11, the United States has appeared to want to do business only with hand picked and officially approved "good Muslims" – that is, to work with Muslims who fit US requirements as to what Islam should be. The problem, of course, is that the figures and groups who carry Washington's seal of approval often have little to no legitimacy among the constituencies the US wants to influence.

Viewed in the big picture and over the longer term, one has to wonder whether US goals and those of the emergent "virtual caliphate" might not overlap more than they diverge. After all, a vote for Qaradawi is a vote against Zarqawi. While increased recruitment into the Qaradawi camp will not by any means produce a generation of Muslims favorably predisposed to US foreign policy, it will represent a consolidated, critical mass of influential and respected Muslims with whom meaningful dialogue with the hope of tangible progress can take place.

This is a good point and one that I think Americans would do well to think on.

Unrelated: First Center for Domestic Violence Launched in Saudi Arabia. Good to see some steps being taken in this direction.

Good: American Muslims may raise as much money for earthquake relief as the U.S. government has pledged for the entire country

Abhorrent: Iranian leader calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. Istighfirullah (seek forgiveness of God for wrongdoing). More on anti-Semitism.

Muslims, let's do a lot more of the first and leave off the second, huh?

Via Procrastination, DesiPundit is organizing Blog Quake Day for October 26.

As many as 79,000 have died in South Asia because of the earthquake earlier this month and 3 million are homeless. Winter is coming and many of the regions devastated by the quake are mountainous and difficult to reach even in the best of times.

Please give what you can, and if you have a blog, consider taking part in Blog Quake Day to ask your readers to give as well.

Some organizations accepting donations are:

Islamic Relief
CARE
Oxfam
UNICEF
World Vision
Humanity First
Hidaya Foundation
International Rescue Committee
Pakistan President/s Relief Fund
The Human Development Foundation
The Association for the Development of Pakistan Earthquake Redevelopment Fund

May Allah bless you for whatever you can do.

Rosa Parks, icon of the Civil Rights Movement has died.

Some good articles about her role and her influence include:

Her Act of Courage Changed a Nation

What Rosa Parks Gave America

The Triumph and Tragedy of Rosa Parks

The struggle is still far from over, but we can also look back and see how far we've come.

There are two excellent posts on the story that American soldiers in Afghanistan burned the bodies of dead Taliban so as to desecrate them.

Hesham Hassaballa:

That being said, it always gives me pause when I learn about incidents such as this one, or what happened at Abu Ghraib, or what is currently happening at Guantanamo Bay. Our actions speak louder than our words, and incidents such as these send the message to the rest of the Muslim World, however inaccurate, that America hates Islam, that America is fighting against Islam itself. What an unnerving message to send, indeed.

So, what should be done about this? First, we must all wait for the facts to borne out of the investigations currently ongoing. But, more importantly, the Pentagon needs to examine itself and take a hard look at whether or not there is a deep-seated anti-Muslim sentiment that is pervasive among the troops. If there is, however disturbing that may be, the Pentagon has to work to eradicate it.

We Americans pride ourselves at having open minds, at living in a society where people of all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds are able to live together in peace. This noble aspect of our culture and people must also be present among our troops - all of our troops - abroad. Our soldiers are the face of America to the rest of the world, and most especially the Muslim World. If they present an ugly face, no amount of diplomatic dispatches will be able to reverse the damage done to our reputation. And we will all be the worse off because of it.

Daniel Martin Varisco at Tabsir:

These reports are in the American media not because of a fuzzy tape sent to al-Jazeera, but due to video coverage by an Australian news crew. If true, no matter that there may have been stinking corpses that needed to be buried or at least wrapped in a body bag created for safe disposal of such things, here is yet another reminder that war brings out the stupid in people. Along with humiliating male prisoners by forcing them to pile naked on one another in sexual poses, these kinds of acts reinforce the overwhelming public opinion among Muslims worldwide that the American military is, at least now, part of the problem rather than the solution... ...There is an obvious difference between setting yourself on fire for a cause, foolish as that might seem to most people, and deliberately burning the body of someone whose religion teaches resurrection and demands a proper burial in the ground. If American soldiers set on fire the bodies of two dead Muslims as an example for other Muslims to stop resisting, there is no difference with Nazi tactics or the brutal retaliations of Saddam Hussein. The end, even if it is demanding an end to violence, does not justify such means. If anything, this act is the most effective recruitment for "terrorist" volunteers I can imagine.

Varisco's post in particular gets at some questions about what is really at issue here.

Unfortunately, this story fits with too much we've heard of before. There is something very disturbingly wrong going on here.

While people are busy with other concerns, Death toll in Darfur tops 100,000 since UN directive:

More than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area.

Humanitarian agencies and the African Union are warning that the situation in Darfur is again deteriorating, with five AU peacekeepers killed in the past week and parts of the region inaccessible after an aid convoy was ambushed and the staff stripped and beaten.

Shocking new evidence of atrocities committed by the Sudanese government and its janjaweed militia allies in Darfur region has emerged in previously confidential African Union reports, and in the United Nations' own briefing papers. The evidence includes accounts of rapes, murders and the razing of entire villages - accounts which have been confirmed by AU monitors.

I believe that people will look back later and ask how we could have let something like this happen.

I haven't seen a great amount of news coverage on the horror in the Caucusus today:

Dozens of Islamist militants launched a coordinated wave of attacks on the spa town of Nalchik in southern Russia yesterday, triggering gun battles in which up to 60 people died, bringing unrest to a previously peaceful area of the north Caucasus. Police buildings, the telephone network, the airport and the security services building were among eight targets attacked by militants in a day of violence that began at 9am. Residents cowered at home as police cordoned off gun battles that intensified throughout the day...

...Yesterday, President Vladimir Putin ordered the city, which has a population of 235,000, to be sealed off and dispatched his envoy to the region, Dmitri Kozak, to Nalchik. A shoot-to-kill policy was introduced.

Alexander Chekalin, first deputy interior minister, told the Russian news agency Interfax that at least 50 militants had been killed and claimed that the remaining hostage-takers would be defeated "within the hour"...

...Arsen Bulatov, a local journalist, said last night that the bodies of the militants were still lying where they had died, waiting for forensic investigators. "Everyone is at home behind closed doors," he added.

Russia's NTV television broadcast pictures of wrecked cars. A plume of black smoke from burning buildings rose above the city centre. Despite officials insisting the fighting was over, gunfire could be heard throughout the day.

One thinks of Beslan of course, and what connection there is to Chechnya (as with Beslan, although the attacks did not take place in Chechnya, Chechen militants are said to be involved).

As always, I condemn acts of terrorism and killing of innocent civilians in the strongest terms.

Just over a year ago, I started keeping a record of news stories about American Muslims engaged in outreach activities to speak up for the truth about Islam and teach non-Muslims more about it.

This is not a complete collection. I used only one source: the daily emails I get from CAIR, which highlight these news stories. I only included stories that I could pull up at the time I checked them without getting a registration intercept. Many of the links may now be broken or the stories now hidden behind a registration wall.

But here it is.

Now, PLEASE stop claiming that Muslims are silent. That is a pernicious lie. Nearly every single day for an entire year, recorded in this log, a Muslim individual, group, or community somewhere in the United States is not only reaching out to the people where they live - but managing to get it into a newspaper. Do you and your group spend that much time on outreach? I didn't think so.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un.

As many as 30,000 dead in Pakistan earthquake. The earthquake measured 7.7 on the Richter scale.

Please give.

Update: U.S. Muslims Donate Aid for Asian Quake, Local Pakistanis seeking donations to help victims, Area Muslims join relief efforts during Ramadan, A far away disaster stirs South Bay to compassion, West Chester Islamic Center sets earthquake fund, US Indians, Pakistanis reach out together to quake victims, From a Staten Island Mosque, Quake Aid That's Made to Order, Victims in Ramadan prayers, Muslims help quake victims, Hawaii Muslims Organize Fundraising For Quake Victims, A quake felt here, Local Muslims collect funds for quake relief, Valley Muslims collect aid for quake victims, Muslim groups ask for more quake donations, Madison Muslim Community Coordinating Local Help, Local Muslim Group Organizes Pakistan Quake Relief, Michigan mobilizes quake aid, Lower Hudson Valley Muslims aid Pakistani earthquake victims, Delawareans rally to aid earthquake victims, American Muslims Raise Funds For Asia Quake Victims, Pakistani-born doctor feels pain from afar for losses of family, friends, Pakistani Immigrants Receive Scant Information but Mobilize to Assist Victims of Quake, Pakistani Americans in Metro Detroit work to help earthquake victims, Local Muslims, Pakistanis move fast to aid victims, Pakistani-Americans making an effort at quake relief, Islamic Center of Rochester goes into action to assist victims of earthquake, Islamic Center makes appeal for earthquake victims, U.S. Muslims Donate Aid for Asian Quake, US Mosques, Churches Offer Prayers, Help for Quake Victims, Charities answer call after quake in Pakistan, U.S. Muslims Urged to Help, Pray for S. Asia Quake Victims, Disasters give Ramadan charity a focus.

I recently finished reading Robert Pape's book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism. Pape is a professor at the University of Chicago and the director of the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism, which compiled a database of every suicide bombing and attack between 1983 and 2003.

An earlier and shorter presentation of his findings can be found in his article, Dying to Kill Us.

He describes the database:

This database is the first complete universe of suicide terrorist attacks worldwide. I have amassed and independently verified all the relevant information that could be found in English and other languages (for example, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Tamil) in print and on-line. The information is drawn from suicide terrorist groups themselves, from the main organizations that collect such data in target countries, and from news media around the world. More than a "list of lists", this database probably represents the most comprehensive and reliable survey of suicide terrorist attacks that is now available.

Some of his findings:

• the leading instigators of suicide attacks are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, a Marxist-Leninist group whose members are from Hindu families but who are adamantly opposed to religion
• of the 315 separate attacks in the database, 301 (95%) could have their roots traced to large, coherent political or military campaigns
• of the 384 (out of 462 total) attackers whose religious or ideological affiliation could be determined, 218 (57%) were secular and 166 (43%) were religious
• of the 381 attackers whose sex could be determined, 59 (15%) were women

The book is divided into three major sections: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, The Social Logic of Suicide Terrorism, and The Individual Logic of Suicide Terrorism. In each section he presents a thesis, which he then analyzes and presents evidence for. He argues that suicide terrorism is an effective strategy for a militarily weak group to compel a democracy to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists consider as their homeland, that it is most common when there is a religious difference between the occupiers and the occupied, which sharpens differences between the communities, and that suicide terrorists see themselves like soldiers, giving their lives to further the goals of their community. In each section he brings up alternate theories then uses the data from his database to refute or disprove them.

His conclusion:

Understanding that suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation rather than the product of Islamic fundamentalism has important implications for how the United States and its allies should conduct the war on terrorism. Since the root cause of suicide terrorism does not lie in an ideology, even among Muslims, spreading democracy across the Persian Gulf is not likely to be a panacea so long as foreign combat troops remain on the Arabian Peninsula.

As BostonJoe at Daily Kos noted, Pape's work is a reality-based criticism of every word that Bush says about terrorism.

See also Pape's discussion of the July 7 bombings in London, Al Qaeda's Smart Bombs.

Juan Cole does an excellent job fisking Bush's speech on Thursday.

One of my favorite parts:

Yes, al-Qaeda does want these things. But then the Christian Identity Movement in the United States wants to establish a massive fortified refuge for persecuted white people to escape oppression at the hands of what they in their looney tunes way consider the evil, minority-dominated Federal Government. That crackpot fringe groups have big plans and ideas is not surprising, and we only have to worry about them if it looks like they might actually succeed. But who thinks this particular crackpot plan is in any way feasible? Look at America's friends in the Middle East-- Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Yemen, Oman, Pakistan, etc., etc. Which one of them is on the verge of being taken over by al-Qaeda? Why, al-Qaeda had to plan out 9/11 from Europe because it could not operate in the Middle East! An al-Qaeda meeting in Cairo would have had more Egyptian government spies in attendance than radical fundamentalists!

Another favorite bit:

Bush's attempt to conflate the regimes he doesn't like with al-Qaeda makes nonsense of his whole vision. It would be as though someone who disliked the United States and France should posit Southern Baptist American support for the Catholic Irish Republican Army because France is a US ally and is Catholic. To anyone who knows anything at all about the Middle East, Bush has made a mishmash of unrelated things and attempted to construct a bogeyman out of them.

Eh, just go read the whole thing

Ramadan is off to a good start, al-hamdulillah. With so much craziness, injustice, and just general trouble in the world, I need some spiritual rejuvenation and Ramadan provides that for me.

You may have noticed I've started posting to A Quranic Journal again. As Ramadan is the month of the Quran, I managed to motivate myself to resurrect that blog. Inshallah, I hope to post to it every day this month.

I'm also blogging (well, writing diaries, at least) at Street Prophets, a community site for the religious left, those of us who are both religious believers or seekers and also politically liberal. The community has been very welcoming and interested in learning more about Islam, al-hamdulillah.

Can I keep all this activity up after Ramadan ends? Well, we'll see about that

Ramadan mubarak! May our fasting and prayers and other worship this month be pleasing to Allah. May He make it easy for us and strengthen us by it.

Ramadan mubarak to all those who begin their fasting on Tuesday, October 4. The official ruling followed by my community is that there was no confirmed moonsighting tonight so the the first day of fasting is Wednesday, October 5.

Ahlan wa sahlan, ya Ramadan!

Ramadan is coming soon. It's projected to start on October 4 or 5 this year. Ramadan is the Muslim month of fasting. As always, I like to plug the Ramadan section of my website. There's information there for both Muslims and non-Muslims about the month and its significance.

Terrorism in Bali. Again. Is there anything to add to what has been said so many times already?

I don't know. How many different ways are there to say that this violates all the principles I believe in and hold dear? But it needs to be said anyway, because of a Muslim's moral obligation to speak out for what's right and condemn what's wrong. And because too many people still believe that murder of the innocent is part of Islamic belief.

May Allah lead us away from the path of darkness and to the light of peace and justice, ameen.