Taken to its logical conclusion, such lawfare would wipe out mosques and Islamic learning centers as well. The rules of engagement in the Establishment’s War on Religion have a funny way of changing to accommodate Islam, however, so perhaps those hypothetical logical conclusions will never be reached.
Over the weekend, military bases across the United States were placed on higher alert for domestic terror attacks, in response to a surge in threatening chatter from ISIS and its sympathizers. “It is the highest level of security since the tenth anniversary of September 11,” notes Fox 13 News in Tampa Bay, home of MacDill Air Force Base. “No specific threat has been announced, but the alert comes after an FBI warning that there are hundreds of known, active ISIS supporters in the United States.”
This sudden concern for religious sensibility from the media elite is astounding, since it seems like only yesterday they were gleefully encouraging hate mobs to trash Christians who dared to politely assert their own religious beliefs. The media elite has no problem whatsoever with cartoons, and other forms of entertainment, designed to offend Christians.
Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states hit the Obama White House with a stunning vote of no confidence on Monday, as Saudi King Salman and three other regional leaders announced they would skip President Obama’s Camp David summit, scheduled for later this week.
The New York Times reports that former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s effort to have his corruption charges overturned by an appeals court has failed, as the court reconfirmed his three-year prison sentence on Saturday. However, Mubarak might be leaving jail soon anyway, given the total amount of time he has spent in detention since 2011.
As Time notes, prison riots in Iraq are not uncommon occurrences, often beginning with attacks on the prison compounds by militant forces seeking to rescue their comrades.
Tajikistan’s curious anti-Islam campaign has already seen the government cracking down on beards and hijabs, the traditional female garment in Muslim culture. They have also asked imams to include praise for the secular government in their sermons and applied travel restrictions to Muslim citizens seeking to make the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The beard ban has reportedly been taken as far as the forcible shaving of illegally luxurious facial hair by security forces.
The Wall Street Journal’s tech blog sees the new anti-hacking mutual defense treaty between Russia and China as a headache for United States intelligence analysts. Not only will the two notoriously aggressive Cyber War powers be able to concentrate their hacking fire on other targets while pooling defensive resources, but the Internet balance of power continues to shift away from the U.S., just as critics of the Obama administration’s decision to hand over Internet domain control to a nebulous international body predicted.
Daily Pakistan reports that the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan organization has claimed responsibility for a deadly helicopter crash in the mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Reuters reports that a Brooklyn cab driver named Mohammad Ajmal Choudhry has been sentenced to life in prison for arranging two “honor killings” in Pakistan. Given that Choudhry is 62 years old, he is unlikely to see the outside of a prison again.
Nadir Soofi was, by all accounts, the junior partner in the Texas Terror jihad attack. His roommate Elton Simpson was a “known wolf” who was very much on law enforcement’s radar screen, which is giving rise to some awkward questions about why counter-terrorist agencies could manage little more than a last-minute heads-up to the Garland police.
Skeptical scientists, facing demands from witch-hunting enforcers of climate-change orthodoxy to total up their lunch receipts for the last decade or two, pointed out that global-warming true believers are hardly free of their own conflicts of interest.
The Surveillance State faces stiff criticism in the United States. Limiting domestic surveillance, or at least subjecting it to more extensive oversight, is likely to be a prominent feature of several 2016 presidential campaigns. But in France, Parliament just took domestic surveillance up a notch, granting internal intelligence services “their most intrusive domestic spying abilities ever, with almost no judicial oversight,” as The New York Times puts it.
It seems Texas Terror shooter Nadir Soofi was quite a “heartthrob” during his teenage years in Pakistan, according to AFP’s interviews with his classmates.
Liberals don’t think Christian pizzeria owners, bakers, or florists are likely to avenge insults with violence. In other words, they submit to sharia law because they fear it will be enforced.
The UK Telegraph reports that Dutch politician Geert Wilders, a guest of honor at the Mohammed Art Exhibit in Garland, Texas, has asked his parliament to stage an exhibition of the Mohammed cartoons from the event.
According to a U.N.-endorsed report from the Norwegian Refugee Council, 38 million people were displaced by conflicts around the world in 2014, including 2.2 million Iraqis forced from their homes by the rise of the Islamic State.
Saudi King Salman has been on something of a good-manners mission of late, disciplining members of the royal family and its employees for rude behavior. The latest to earn his ire, and get a pink slip in the bargain, was Mohammed al-Tobayashi, the head of royal protocol. Tobayashi made the mistake of thinking “royal protocol” included slapping a photographer in public.
As the investigation into the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 continues, a review of data from the aircraft’s previous flight suggests co-pilot Andreas Lubitz rehearsed his murder-suicide plan.
Belief in a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment is a perfect expression of power over principle, because the power to define and suppress “hate speech” would be enormous. We don’t have to imagine its dimensions, because every totalitarian regime in recent history claimed such powers.
Counter-terrorism authorities are naturally interested in whatever connections Garland shooters Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi might have had with international terrorist organizations – such as ISIS, which has claimed responsibility for the attack on Pamela Geller’s Mohammed Art Exhibit. Social-media activity by the slain terrorists is being carefully examined.
The mayor of Garland, Texas has attacked AFDI President Pamela Geller for hosting a free speech event in his town, arguing that the “Draw Muhammad” contest had “invited” violence and that Geller’s “ideology,” and not that of the jihadist attackers, had “put my police officers at risk.”
International Business Times reports that Abdul Basit Usman, said to be “one of the most wanted Islamist terrorists in the Philippines,” has been killed by one of his bodyguards for a million-dollar bounty from the U.S. State Department.
If China’s talk of rebuilding the legendary “Silk Road” trade route is a means of asserting dominance over Asian land and water, it is hardly the only muscle Beijing is flexing. Reuters reports that the Chinese are accusing the Philippines of violating a largely informal code governing the South China Sea by constructing military and civilian facilities on certain disputed islands. The Philippines Foreign Ministry levels the exact same charge against China.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry was critical of Governor Greg Abbott’s position on Jade Helm. Perry is considered to be a possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate.
