If we want to build the country, maintain our dignity and solve economic problems, we need the culture of martyrdom.

- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran replies to his critics (also quoted by Mick Hartley)

I am not sure if there is an upsurge in what the BBC inaccurately refers to as

part of a popular trend in some Muslim societies of seeking to find Koranic precedents for modern science.

The impact of scientific theories upon Islamic beliefs has not acquired attention from the media. There are strands of creationism in this religion, and an unsurprising bout of natural theology has come to the fore. This differs from arguments concerning design in the nineteenth century, since these accepted and celebrated the successes of natural philosophy, the forerunner of today's sciences.

Indeed, the attempts of Islamic scholars is to wed Quranic and scientific authority with some perverse results:

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice. One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

The odd combination of divine jurisprudence and natural authority is welded by the Islamic scholar in a bizarre Copernican alchemy.

A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.

These attempts to appropriate and distort the sciences are not the easy option of science versus religion. Let us avoid the old bugbear of faith versus evidence, since most scientists combine the two without difficulty. They do tell us that schools of Islamic jurisprudence recognise science as a source of power and a rival authority.

It is called "Ijaz al-Koran", which roughly translates as the "miraculous nature of the holy text".

The underlying belief is that scientific truths were also revealed in the Muslim holy book, and it is the work of scholars to unearth and publicise the textual evidence.

If Islamic scholars attack scientific knowledge, they will sound backward and primitive, reducing their own influence over a society that becomes more literate and educated year after year. The other strategy is to co-opt this power, a power required to strengthen Islam, yet ensure that it does not undermine the truths of the Qu'ran that they perceive as poor.

Science will go hand in hand with awkward manifestations of Islam. But the premutations can amuse:

The meeting also reviewed what has been described as a Mecca watch, the brainchild of a French Muslim.

The watch is said to rotate anti-clockwise and is supposed to help Muslims determine the direction of Mecca from any point on Earth.

AntiCitzenOne comments on this posting at David Thompson's blog, thus:

I think we should give Muslim men with self control problems horse-blinkers, rather than cover women from head to toe.

The posting itself makes a vital point about how to defeat intimidation by Islamofascist zealots, which is not to leave anyone they pick on isolated. Thompson links back to this excellent piece.

This is why a general piling in with the insults against Islam and Islamic nastiness (the former leads directly to the latter in my opinion) is so important. Quite aside from being true and worth saying and a valid contribution to the debate and all that kind of stuff, these insults establish the principle that we can do them, and you can not stop us. There can be a debate. If and when you stop with the death threats, we will make the insults less insulting and more decorous, and some of us will go completely silent on the subject. Your choice.

This also explains why I do not denounce Christianity nearly so often or nearly so harshly. On those occasions when anyone does do this, the Christians do not respond with riots and death threats. So, beyond the occasional polite criticism of their (I think) odd theological views, together with praise for their more positive qualities, leave them alone, I say.

Michael Totten has yet another great article from Iraq, this time about Fallujah, once the scene of such bitter and intense fighting. The article is a condensed version of the material he has published on his web site and if you wanted to really get a feel for the place, this is the article to read

The whole article is interesting (as ever) but in my opinion the 'money quote' is to be found in the final paragraph:

That said, Fallujah’s worst days are likely behind it. "The al-Qaida leadership outside dumped huge amounts of money and people and arms into Anbar Province," says Lieutenant Colonel Mike Silverman, who oversees an area just north of Ramadi. "They poured everything they had into this place. The battle against Americans in Anbar became their most important fight in the world. And they lost".

Read the whole thing.

I brought prejudices acquired during the Cold War to the struggle between civilisation and Islam, but tried – and try still - to be careful to see the differences as well as the similarities between the two struggles.

In this spirit, I at first thought that whereas Soviet communism was ideologically breakable, Islam is not breakable. More than a billion souls believe in it, and however true it might be that it is evil and repulsive nonsense, saying this would accomplish very little. It would merely poke the hornet's nest with a stick. But slowly, I have been coming round to thinking almost the complete opposite. Not only does denouncing Islam as evil nonsense establish the mere right, of us civilisationers, to denounce Islam - along with our right to say anything else we might want to say - true or false, nice or nasty, sensible or daft. Such talk also, I am starting to believe, strikes a dagger into the heart of the enemy camp, by spreading doubt in it about basic beliefs and hence sewing discord and confusion. I used to think that Islamists were indifferent to such ideological attacks. Now, I am starting to believe that they fear them very much. Hence all the murder threats. They sense that this is one of their weakest and potentially biggest fronts in the struggle. The biggest front of all, in fact.

And even if only a few "apostates" materialise, they are of huge significance, for they bring with them deep knowledge of the enemy we face and how we can see the enemy off.

Another advantage of ideological attacks on Islam is that arguments about - and in favour of - "apostasy" unite civilisation, and divide its enemies. We civilisationers argue fiercely with one another about how to oppose Islam, but almost all of us believe that if you want to criticise a religion non-violently you should be allowed to, and that if you want to abandon a religion you should be able to do that without getting extremely violent grief, or even the threat of it, from those who still do believe in it. Talking like this or doing this may be rather daft, and very unwise, and get you shunned by polite society (i.e. scared society), but ... yes, it should be allowed. I am content to regard all who say that they disagree with the claims in this paragraph as the enemies of civilisation that they are, not just from the point of view of the mere truth, but on tactical grounds. Put such cretinous pro-Islamist fellow-travellers on the defensive also, I say.

And now I read this article (linked to about a week ago by Instapundit) in which it is claimed that the trickle of converts from Islam that was all I had so far noticed is actually whole lot more than that. It tells of a spectacular growth in the number of converts from Islam. Conversions have been happening in a steady flow for decades, but recently they have become a torrent, world-wide. Mostly these people are converting to Christianity, but sometimes just to not-Islam. Bossiness and terrorism and constant fighting is, it seems, not just repulsive. It actually repels. People are leaving the religion of war and joining the religion of, approximately speaking, peace - or joining no religion at all. Islam is only still growing numerically because it is growing so quickly by purely biological means. As far as the flow of converts is concerned it is now in headlong retreat.

So, is this true? Is this allegedly huge exflux really happening? I have heard nothing about it before, but that could merely mean that I am ignorant. Or is the exflux just wishful thinking on the part of Christians, talking nonsense to keep their spirits up?

Now this is something I look forward to seeing, at least virtually:

The Mile High Tower will be double the height of its nearest rival, and will be almost seven times the height of the Canary Wharf tower in London. Visitors will be able to see Africa from the top of the tower, the Sunday Times newspaper reports [...] The project will push architecture and engineering to new limits, as the tower must be robust enough to withstand the extremes of temperature and strong desert winds in the region.

What a pity it is going to be in Jeddah as much as I would like to see it up close, not even that marvel could induce me to set foot in that theocratic hell hole.

I suspected this much would happen but perhaps not quite so quickly.

In the post below, I provided a link to 'Live Leak', the only internet video site that was willing to host the movie. Apparently, YouTube and Google were approached but their joint and several response was to hastily gather up their skirts and run away screaming like a pair of Victorian maiden aunts.

The owners of Live Leak are clearly made of stronger stuff but they can hardly be blamed for pulling the plug once their lives had been threatened. The film has been removed from their server. Their official statement says:

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

[Emphasis mine].

I cannot say that I am entirely surprised by this development but what I do find discomforting is the reference to 'certain corners of the British media'. Which 'corners' are they talking about? I think we ought to know. Does anybody have any details here?

Anyway, it seems that the film is now being spread virally on all manner of mirror sites so, if you are interested, you will still be able to find it, albeit that you may have to dig a little deeper.

Fitna. The film made by Dutch MP Geert Wilders.

Make of it what you will.

WARNING: May not be worksafe.

Michael Totten's latest from Iraq is up and as usual highly recommended:

The Middle East beyond Israel strikingly lacks anything resembling political correctness. I hear much more severe denunciations of radical Islam there than I do in the U.S., and I don't mean from Americans. I hear it from Arabs, and from Persians and Kurds. I hear it in Lebanon all the time, and in Iraq too.

Sabah Danou walked with Commander Summers and Admiral Driscoll. He's an Iraqi who works for the multinational forces as a cultural and political advisor in Baghdad. "Look," he said to me and gestured toward a local man with a long beard and a short dishdasha that left his ankles exposed. "He's a Wahhabi," Danou hissed. "He is linked to Al Qaeda. That's their uniform, you know, that beard and that high-cut dishdasha. God, what pieces of shit those fuckers are."

In less dissembling mealy-mouthed times, that would simply be described as saying it the ways he sees it.

...rather a lot actually.

Michael Totten continued to climb in my estimation after a very good article called The Israel of the Balkans on the interesting parallels between Kosova and Israel.

Strongly recommended.

Islam is winning.

According to Jane's:

Evidence emerges of Iran's continued nuclear weapons research Documents shown exclusively to Jane's indicate that Iran is continuing its pursuit of the advanced technologies necessary to develop a nuclear weapon, regardless of Tehran's claims that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful. Jane's was shown the information by a source connected to a Western intelligence service, and the documents were verified by a number of reliable independent sources in Vienna.

Who'd a thunk it?

Iran is also the theatre of very optimistic developments. Hashem Aghajari is an Islamic revolutionary-turned-history-professor. He was one of the student activists of 1979 who later fully participated in the brutal repression after Khomeini's coming to power. He is now challenging the infallibility of the ruling mullahs and calls upon Iranians to think for themselves instead of blindly accepting whatever is preached in Friday sermons, a piece of advice for which he has been sentenced to death. But he is now supported by the students and professors at most of the country's universities and thousands of ordinary citizens, workers, and cultural leaders.

Where Aghajari wants to reform Islam; the students want a total separation between mosque and state. He wants an Islamic Reformation, but the demonstrators are interested in the creation of a secular civil society. He is a reformer, but they are revolutionaries.

- Ibn Warraq who is both optimistic (as in the above quote) and pessimistic (as elsewhere in the same piece) about whether the Muslim world can become civilised

Michael Totten's latest bloggage from Iraq is as informative as ever, but the thing that fascinated me most was a brief but interesting discursion into the use of the English word 'Supermarket' on a sign in a small town in Iraq.

What struck me about the sign on that store, and on many other stores in Iraq, was the English word “supermarket.” The only people in Saqlawiya who find English helpful are the Marines. And me.

I’ve seen this far beyond Iraq. Even in small towns in Libya – one of the most closed societies in the world – I found store signs in English. The amount of English in a genuinely cosmopolitan city like Beirut is even more striking, though no longer surprising. Beirut, at least, has a huge tourist industry. Imagine how differently you would think about Arabic civilization if small towns in Kansas and Nebraska – not to mention large cities like New York and Chicago – had storefront signs in the Arabic language even though no Arabs live there. Perhaps the word “imperialism” wouldn't seem so much like a stretch. Of course no one forces Iraqis or Libyans to put English words on their signs, so it's telling that they do so anyway, and that they did not choose Chinese or Russian.

I disagree with Michael's use of the word 'imperialism' and I think he answers that point himself in the very next sentence. An even more demotic variation on the inexplicable prevalence of English puzzled me many years ago BB (Before Blogging). I spent some time in a few fairly rough parts of Croatia and one can hardly miss the prevalence of racist and sexist graffiti on the communist-era concrete tower blocks. The odd thing is that mixed in with the usually 'Jebi Se' varient epithets in Croatian, you will find floridly racist threats or extravagant anatomical references in more or less grammatically correct English. And this in an area that was not exactly a magnet for English speaking tourists, particularly in the middle of the then on-going war.

The huge number of people who speak English in Croatia can be easily explained by the ubiquity of satellite dishes, which is why I often referred to the local Croatian English dialect as MTV English. But that does not answer the question of why in a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous area (such as unlovely New Zagreb in Croatia or Saqlawiya in Iraq), people use written English when there is no commercial or political pressures to do so.

Interesting.

If you do not regularly read Michael Totten's Middle East Journal, you really are missing out on something you just do not see in the MSM. He delivers straightforward reportage not just of The Big Issues when they happen but of the mundane realities of what it is to be in the Slums of Fallujah with the USMC.

Lieutenant Lappe overheard our conversation. I think he was worried that I was getting nervous. "No one can lay down an IED anymore without somebody calling it in," he said.

Very revealing.

If you like his stuff as much as I do, consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal button and support truly independent journalism.

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Marion Cotillard, Oscar-winning actress and qualified electronic engineer:

Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winning French actress, will not apologise over remarks she made describing the 9/11 attacks as a conspiracy and believes that the comments had been taken out of context and misunderstood...

Cotillard said that the towers were destroyed not as part of a terrorist plot, but because it would have been too expensive to rewire them. She also reheated an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing never having happened.

Of course, working in the entertainment industry does not disqualify Ms. Cottilard from having opinions, nor (heaven forbid) should she ever be restrained from expressing them. However, and equally, I am not disqualified from calling her an ignorant jackass. I hope she spends the rest of her career in French dinner-theatre emoting pointlessly before an audience of coughing, hawking, shouting, farting, senile old-age pensioners who are slupring down a mediocre bowl of bouillabaisse before shuffling home to die alone in a heatwave. How do you like them pommes, Ms. Cotillard?

Michael Totten has a superb article up that compares the approach to counter-insurgency followed by Israel under the dismal Ehud Olmert, and that of the US in Iraq under General David Petraeus.

What Totten points out is that the policies promised by Barack Obama for Iraq (in essence remove the army and drop bombs on anyone who seems to be the Bad Guys) is essential the same as the demonstrably failed approach used by Ehud Olmert in Lebanon. Israel blew the crap out of Lebanon from the air and achieved precisely zero of its war aims.

Read the whole article.

We get emails! Some people still entertain the idea that it is possible for sharia law and its adherents to operate cosily alongside a code such as the English Common Law. I have already described why I think sharia and a liberal legal tradition on matters of marriage and treatment of women are like oil and water; it is also remiss for the Archbishop not to spell out what criteria he would use to judge which bits of sharia are okay in England and which are not; he is far too vague on the latter point. Rod Liddle, writing in this week's Spectator, points out that is rather presumptious for the Archbishop to lecture Muslims about which bits of sharia are legit and which bits are not in England. As Liddle says, it might be a more productive use of this man's time to focus on preaching the message of the Gospels, although I accept that talking about the love of Jesus, sin, redemption and all that boring stuff is so, well, Bible-Belt, dahling.

Anyhow, a gentleman wrote the following email to Samizdata HQ:

Johnathan Pearce criticized Archbishop views on sharia law but didn't seem to actually have read Dr. William's speech, which seems to me eminently reasonable from a libertarian point of view.

Alas for this correspondent, I have read the speech all the way through - all the way through its tortured logic, non-sequiturs, question-begging expressions and the rest. A second reading or a third does not improve one's experience. Dr Williams' feeble grasp of the subject means a second or third read is like the experience of drinking another glass of an indifferent red wine; it only tastes good if you are already slightly pissed.

Matthew Parris, a libertarian to the core, has also read the speech. In his civilised, gentle way, Parris states what is painfully obvious: the Archbishop of Canterbury is not a particularly intelligent man. Having a white beard does not make one smart or benign.

You have heard about the captured 'Diary of a Despondent Al Qaeda' but have you had a chance to actually read the whole thing?

I also recommend you download this DOD Blogger Press Conference Audio which includes well known war bloggers such as Austin Bey talking to USAF Col. Donald Bacon, live from Iraq.

Enjoy!

Andrew Sullivan, one of the most prolific and widely read bloggers, has not been exactly slow off the mark to attack the US administration of George W. Bush, the Republican Party, and certain conservative bloggers and writers, of encouraging what he calls "Christianism". He has a certain point: there is no doubt that the influence of Christianity, at least in its more evangelical forms, has increased in parts of the Right. The US, despite what some historians like Paul Johnson might claim, is not just a product of Christianity but is also a child of the Enlightenment, with all the scepticism about religion that implies, and long may it remain so. Sullivan is right to call for a clear separation of church and state to be preserved. Ironically, that separation is one of the reasons why religion flourishes Stateside, while is often tepid over here.

But I have to say, given the appalling treatment of gay people by fundamentalist Islam, that Andrew, a gay man recently married to his other half, has been remarkably silent about the remarks by the Archbishop of Canterbury on allowing sharia law to become the law of this country, at least for certain folks benighted enough to fall under its ambit. Sullivan has certainly been ferocious about the Islamic treatment of gays, and women, before, so it is a bit odd that he has not written about this issue now. However infuriating Sullivan can be with his volatile punditry - one minute hailing George W. Bush as a potential Truman, the next damning him to eternity - he is one of the great voices of the Anglosphere. Go on Sully: fire a broadside at Lambeth Palace.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Human Rights has recorded the death of 133 women in Basra, 79 for breaking 'Islamic laws' and 42 'honour killings', though this does not add up to the total number of deaths. In 2007, the grip of conservative Shi'a militias on Basra tightened after the withdrawal of the British army and hastened the atmosphere of fear that grips the women of that city.

Sawsan, another woman who works at a university, says the message from the radicals to women is simple: "They seem to be sending us a message to stay at home and keep your mouth shut."

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sawsan says, the situation was "the best." But now, she says, it's "the worst."

"We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror."

The control of the militias has resulted in barbaric and violent actions designed to cow the inhabitants of Basra and enforce the power of the gangs. The punishment of infractions is designed to ensure that the militias maintain their control over their neighbourhoods, their families and their women. Such examples are deemed to be required by the militia since well-educated, civilised women had more freedom and, therefore, more to lose. The insecurity of the militia fuels their violence:

One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another.

"I think so far, we have been unable to tackle this problem properly," he says. "There are many motives for these crimes and parties involved in killing women, by strangling, beheading, chopping off their hands, legs, heads."

"When I came to Basra a year ago," he says, "two women were killed in front of their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6-year-old son, another in front of her 11-year-old child, and yet another who was pregnant."

The killers enforcing their own version of Islamic justice are rarely caught, while women live in fear.

Boldly splattered in red paint just outside the main downtown market, a chilling sign reads: "We warn against not wearing a headscarf and wearing makeup. Those who do not abide by this will be punished. God is our witness, we have notified you."

The security forces in Basra are unable to protect the population from the actions of the gangs. Western charities may wring their hands and salve their threadbare consciences by blaming the security forces for not achieving miracles. Yet, these militia members are cowards and maim or kill their victims because they are defenceless. These barbarians would think twice about inflicting pain if their victims were well-armed rather than unarmed and could shoot back.

It is of lasting shame that Britain scuttled back to the airport and left Basra in the hands of these lunatics.

If you do not read Michael Totten's blog regularly (and why the hell don't you? It is one of the best damn things on the internet!) then you may have missed this treasure.

And this comment is pretty good too:

This video proves that the surge has failed miserably. The Iraqis are running wild with their scissors and refuse to drink milk and wear seat belt. The pitiful American forces can't even muster the courage to summon insurgents to a shootout themselves. Instead, they have to order random drivers on the road as "human invitation cards". This is sickening.

Heh indeed.

Following on from my post yesterday, I scanned the front pages of the main British papers today; with one or two mild exceptions, the headlines - including the Guardian - were pretty damning (David Blunkett was admirably blunt; proof that the former Home Secretary has his good points). As far as the general thrust of commentary is concerned, as well as the straight news reports, the tone is that the Archbishop has made a right royal berk of himself.

I disagree with fellow Samizdata contributor Guy Herbert that the Archbishop is not an 'ass' but guilty at most of over-optimism; frankly, a man of such supposed learned views as Dr Williams should know that a religion that has a legal code that applies to women in the way that it does is outrageous; doubly outrageous, considering that the Church, with all its faults, has in the past acted as a moral beacon on stirring up consciences on issues like the slave trade. I am sure there are admirable aspects of sharia: it is hard to believe that it would not have died out were it not to have contained such features. But let's be crystal clear: if the Archbishop thinks it is right that whole groups of the UK population can choose to deal with issues like marriage, divorce and treatment of women outside the structure of the English Common law and its insistence upon treatment of women as consenting adults in matters of marriage, then he might as well hang up his cassock.

I do not know if he will resign over this, or indeed if it is right and proper for anyone to call for his sacking. Some commenters might know of how these things work, but it seems to me that the General Synod of the Church of England might want to discuss this issue, vigorously.

Whooptie-Fuckin-Doo!

...Good.

It is also insensitive to Catholic feelings, Nazi feelings, Buddhist feelings, Communist feelings, Capitalist feelings, Manchester United Supporter feelings, Surrealist baboon trousers, Scientologist feelings, Creationist feelings, Darwinist feelings...

"Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group."

The whole point of a reference book or reference wiki, is to present information regardless of anyone's 'feelings'. And if some Muslims do not like that... tough shit, here is a link to the 'Mohammed Cartoons' for you because to my mind it is not enough to just ignore them, intolerant Islam must be confronted and loudly defied. I could not care less whose 'feelings' get hurt by publishing something and thankfully to their credit neither could Wikipedia.

In yesterday's Pentagon Press Briefing, Commander, Nato International Security Assistance Force Gen. Dan McNeill had this interesting comment:

I'm also reminded of the headlines that said there was a resurgent Taliban, there was a coming spring offensive, and they were going to hold sway on the battlefield. And I think a retrospective look at calendar year '07 says that clearly was not the case. They did very little on the battlefield. They were very successful in staying in the press, and they continue to be, but they have done little on the battlefield.

Do the Taliban have sufficient strength to pull off another Spring News Offensive or have we precluded this by sufficiently weakening the elite al allah al Press Relations over the preceding year?

If you are of a conspiracy orientation, you are going to love this report I just picked up off a network admin mail list:

A fourth submarine cable in the middle east was damaged Sunday between Haloul, Qatar and Das, United Arab Emirates.

This is in addition to the damage affecting FLAG, SAE-ME-WE4, FALCON cables.

After reviewing surveillance video of the area, Egypt's ministry of maritime transportation is reporting no ships were near the FLAG or SAE-ME-WE4 cables 12-hours before or after the cable damage near Alexandria, Egypt. The reason for outage of the cables has not been identified yet.

Did anyone notice the NSA black-ops sub leaving the area (I should add a smiley here... I think)?

More information can be found here. There has also been a suggestion this report may be an 'echo' of a previous report caused by mis-communication across language barriers. I have no idea myself.

We now cue the Secret Squirrel theme and search for our tin hats as 'The Galloping Beaver' asks: "Where is the USS Jimmy Carter?"

There was an interesting but infuriating article in The Times by Simon Jenkins today where he describes the current state of affairs in Afghanistan. The shorter Jenkins is that things are not going very well. The crux of the problem is that Nato's force in Kabul is in shambles with the United States and the United Kingdom in disagreement over their basic strategy, the Canadians having had enough, and the Continental Europeans contributing more trouble then they are worth.

But what really struck my nerve with this article was the praise that Jenkins heaps on the Taleban adversaries. He describes them as the 'toughest fighters' on earth. I am admittedly not qualified to pass judgement on that score, but I would have to question the real fighting skill of men who are barely literate, fed or able to maintain basic hygiene. Given the disarray that NATO forces are in, and the difficulties that they are inflicting on themselves, it is no wonder that a numerically larger, motivated and home based insurgency is able to maintain a serious military challenge.

If the challenge posed by the Taleban is to be met by NATO or the government of Afghanistan, then NATO have to take this crisis seriously. The chances of this happening are approximately zero, of course, so the rational thing to do is to look forward to the day when the Taleban regain power in Afghanistan. Given the total bankruptcy of NATO's military strategy and the weakness of the United States, it is likely that terrorists will regain their safe haven in Central Asia in the medium term.

Such an outcome would be to the total discredit of Western political leadership. Had they committed a serious military effort to Afghanistan, and united behind a common strategy, Afghanistan would have settled down under corrupt but peaceful leadership years ago. But there is no evidence of any politician in the West taking Afghanistan seriously.

Iraq is still in a descent to normalcy according to this DOD report:

Weekly attacks in the Baghdad security districts for the past 15 weeks matched levels last seen consistently in 2005. Bombings increased last week, but remained below the long-term average for the 23rd week in a row, he said. Throughout Iraq, weekly casualties decreased by three percent last week, continuing to remain below the long-term average for the 21st week in a row, Anderson said. Civilian casualties have dropped from 1,700 in January 2007 to 170 this month.

I think I can speak for the rest of the Samizdatistas when I raise my glass and say to our armed forces: "Well done lads!"

The perception of Islamic science, perhaps properly called natural philosophy, has been shaped by Bernard Lewis and his strong programme of senescence instead of renaissance. The development of scientific knowledge follows a pre-ordained path to scientific revolution and those cultures that failed to ignite need to be explained. Is not exceptionalism the oddity? A review in the Times Literary Supplement adds to our understanding:

After all, the scientific and industrial revolutions did not occur anywhere in the world except in Europe, and therefore one needs to explain the peculiarity of European history, rather than adduce some kind of Islamic brake or blinker.

We know that Islamic philosophers acted as a conduit for preserving part of antiquity's heritage and transmitting mathematics and other ideas from India and the Orient to Europe. Some of this work was achieved by non-Islamic philosophers working within the Caliphate or Moorish kingdoms. There is evidence of scientific innovation up to the late Middle Ages and one can see equivalents to natural theology; one of the drivers of the Scientific Revolution in Europe:

He [Muzaffar Iqbal] points out that the Arab scientific movement in the eighth century pre-existed the translation movement of the ninth and tenth centuries. He draws attention to a curious genre of literature that developed later, called shukuk, which was devoted to casting doubt on the findings of the Greeks, and he has no difficulty in adducing instances of Muslim scientists improving on, empirically testing or refuting Greek ideas.

But Iqbal is successful in arguing that the "Quran itself lays out a well-defined and comprehensive concept of the natural world, and this played a foundational role in the making of the scientific tradition in Islamic civilization". Faith impelled rather than impeded the Islamic scientist. The Koran commands man to study Allah's creation. The eleventh-century cosmologist al-Biruni wrote: "Sight was made the medium so that [man] traces among the living things the signs and wisdom, and turns from the created things to the Creator". At a more practical level, astronomy and mathematics were studied and further developed to assist in such matters as the orientation of mosques, the determination of prayer times and the division of inheritances according to Islamic law.

Islamic science appears to have a developed a heliocentric system before Copernicus and continued its mathematical traditions up till the fifteenth century. We should debate the causes of the decline in these traditions during the Middle Ages and their replacement by religious debates. Robert Irwin, the author of the review and Middle East editor of the Times Literary Supplement provides his own big picture around complacent empires, religious education and a lack of resources that could kickstart an industrial revolution.

Only part of this big picture rings true.

I [Irwin] would suggest that the spread of the madrasa, or religious teaching college, throughout the Middle East in the central and late Middle Ages led to a certain narrowing of intellectual horizons. While scientists continued to do research and publish, they do not seem to have founded scientific societies of the sort that proliferated in Western Europe in the seventeenth century.

The Ottoman Empire, as a strong state, did not allow the flourishing of a civil society as we see in Europe during the Reformation and the Wars of Religion. Printing presses were effectively banned. In Europe, scientific societies could publish journals off printing presses and contribute to an increasingly literate population, supplemented by the Republic of Letters. There are no equivalents in the Middle East, as permanent institutions of polymaths would be viewed as dangerous innovators; perhaps similar to the attitude that Oxford took to Locke.

Through comparison, we can understand some of the general causes of Islam's path, but greater detail is required to comprehend whether we see a continuation of a long-term preference for religious debate to natural theology in current Middle Eastern attitudes to science. Perhaps we over-emphasise religious factors at the expense of poor education, parasitical elites and populations raised on Nasserite nightmares rather than capitalist dreams.

In 2004 in this space, Gabriel Syme noted some disturbing revelations from an FBI translater, Sibel Edmonds. It turns out that Edmonds had, in fact, plenty more to say, but had kept her own counsel. Until now.

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The allegations, to say the least, are explosive. The FBI has denied everything, as you might expect. But a disturbing picture is emerging, and given the fairly dodgy reputation of American government officials to start with, it is not hard to believe that Edmonds, if anything, understates the scale of the dirty dealings going on between the United States and various regimes.

Would sharia law be preferable to the regime that our current ruling class has in store for us?

I just do not understand it. When Spain capitulated to attacks from Islamic fascists and elected a socialist government who promptly pulled its troops out of coalition operations... a policy we have been told by many that the USA and UK should follow in order to stop provoking the Islamists... that should have been the end of Spain's non-Basque terrorist problems. Presumably the nice people from the Al Qaeda Global Franchise were utterly delighted by the developments in Spain and were certain to fulsomely reward this behaviour. After all, we are often assured by writers in both the mainstream media and paleo-conservative/paleo-libertarian circles that this is what governments in the West must do if we are ever to sooth Islamic sensibilities: we leave them alone and they will leave us alone, right?

Yet strangely, far from redirecting their efforts and assets to ply their 'trade' against the more active members of the coalition, Islamic militants continue to get arrested in ever so repentant Spain.

Gosh, one might almost think that leaving them alone is not enough! Surely some misunderstanding?

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has been in Tehran talking to the regime there about it's nuclear program. He asked a few questions about Iran's intentions. The response? We'll get back to you- see you next month.

“We will try to solve all the outstanding questions by mid-February before Mohamed ElBaradei presents his report in March to the Board of Governors,” the head of Iran's atomic energy organisation Gholam Reza Aghazadeh told the ISNA news agency.

“We are hoping that all the past and present questions about our dossier will be solved and that we will return to a normal situation,” Mr Aghazadeh said.

If Iran's intentions are within the parameters set by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, why will it take Iran a month to answer the IAEA's questions?

The incident reported the other day of Iranian Pasdaran threatening the USN has produced an Iranian rebuttal of the US version of events.

Press TV said the video, released by Iran's Revolutionary Guards a day after the force dismissed the Pentagon video as fake, included a recording of what it said was the exchange between the two sides. Guards Brigadier General Ali Fadavi said Iran's boats had only approached the US ships to examine the registration numbers as they had been unreadable, Press TV said.

My take on this? The incident probably did happen but from what I have read, unlike the Iranian regular navy and the army, the Pasdaran only has tenuous control over its own people, who are more or less by definition religious nutters. The incident in question may well have horrified the powers-that-be in Iran as much as folks in the west. If I am correct, the possibility of a war due to an incident that neither Tehran nor Washington wants is a very real one. Maybe a good time to have a few Crude Oil call options tucked away if you have some spare cash.

If you are not a regular reader of Michael Totten's truly outstanding Middle East Journal (and why not?), I recommend his latest offering The Rings on Zarqawi's Finger.

Michael is going to be able to dine out on this time in the Middle East for a very long time, methinks. Damn, I wish blogs were around in the 1990's.

The latest antics by the Iranian Pasdaran in the Strait of Hormuz doing their damnedest to get the USN to fire on them has me a tad baffled. In this era of near omnipresent video footage, the chance of this being a questionable 'Tonkin Gulf' incident is greatly reduced (so please, if you have Bush Derangement Syndrome, resist the urge to comment), therefore it does seem like this was a real action by the Iranians... so presumably they are doing this for a reason rather than some desire to get themselves shot full of holes just for the hell of it. But what reason is that exactly? Or even approximately?

So what is the upside for Iran in this in military or political terms? This is not a question I have an answer for. If they actually want to start a war, all that will take is a single Silkworm missile launch, so what is this idiocy setting out to achieve? Also whilst the USN clearly showed commendable restraint, I am astonished that they did not fire on the Pasdaran boats given the descriptions of what they did and given recent memories of what happened to the USS Cole.

As I sit here warm and safe at Christmas I cannot help but think of those of you who are far from home and have placed your lives on the line to make the world a better place. There is every appearance we are well on the way to Victory In Iraq this coming year and I sincerely hope you are all home and safe with your families this time next year.

I send my very special Merry Christmas to our rough men and women on the frontiers.

This remark was made by some individual called jsbachUSA at the Guardian's Comment is Free site:

But if the Arabs choose to attack Israel with conventional weapons and Israel loses, so be it. As the cliche goes those that live by force die by force. Even if Israel ceases to exist, as long as it doesn't nuke the world in a spasm of anger in the process, Jews will still be welcome and prosper in many part of the world, just like they did for thousands of years. The end of the Israel mistake will not be a bad thing.

"Just like they did for thousands of years".

Priceless.

Some time ago I wrote a piece here about whether Mark Steyn had exaggerated the threat of a fast-growing Muslim population in Europe (I argued that demographic prediction is a notoriously inexact science); I argued, and still do, that it is a bit odd for a conservative skeptic on doomongering scares like global warming to be so keen on pushing a doomongering prediction of his own. But I also maintain that while Steyn may be guilty at most of extreme pessimism, he's no racist. Islam is a body of ideas (including some very bad ones); it makes universal claims about the place of men and women in the world that are designed to apply to the entire universe. If humans had terraformed Mars, you'd be certain that radical islamists would be keen to convert the people who lived there. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with race.

So to accuse him of racism on the basis of a quote not by Steyn but by someone else is pretty stupid. And to then not issue a short, honest apology but then to more or less recycle the racism charge in a long, meandering post, is even worse. And that is what the blogger, Jim Henley, has done. I used to read his blog quite a bit; I disagree partly with his strict non-interventionist foreign policy although I think his argument that "Hayek does not stop at the water's edge", suggesting that intervenionism is as dumb in foreign policy as it is with domestic affairs, is generally wise. But in this latest case, Jim has made a royal ass of himself over this issue and continues to dig a hole in the ground for himself. A shame, because there is a reasonable case to be made criticising Steyn, but this is not the way to do it.

A Muslim lawyer in Canada is trying to use the profoundly illiberal notion that 'contempt and hatred' should be criminal offences (which are by definition 'thoughtcrimes'), to silence Mark Steyn for his critical remarks about Islam. Bizarrely, the move to sanction Steyn is being billed as a 'human rights' action. That said, I suppose it is indeed a 'human rights' action in the perverse sence that the intention is to abridge Steyn's human right to express his opinions in favour of allowing Islamists to have a veto over anyone printing anything they dislike.

Well, that sort of fascistic behaviour makes me both hold the likes of Faisal Joseph and the Canadian Islamic Congress in utter contempt and to hate them. I suppose I better give my lawyer a heads up then. Or then again, as it is their behaviour which makes me hold them in contempt and hatred, can I sue them for making that happen? Would that actually be any more unreasonable than what they are doing?

Just askin'.

Of course do not kid yourself that thoughtcrimes do not get prosecuted in Britain, or that it is only something Islamofascist lawyers do to us non-believers, because sadly nothing could be further from the truth.

On the BBC Newsnight television programme on Wednesday evening, the host, Jeremy Paxman, was joined by a Sudanese government official working in Britain, and a young fellow from the Muslim Council of Britain, to discuss the plight of a woman who faces the prospect of being jailed or flogged with 40 lashes for the crime of allegedly insulting Islam.

You can read the details of her supposed misdemeanour here. At the very worst, this woman is unwise for not realising the depths of mental insanity that is gripping the country she has chosen to live in, but she is guilty of nothing in my eyes. Quite what the British government does about this, including the possible use of military action, is another matter. At the very least this country should persuade any remaining Britons to get out of Sudan, break off diplomatic relations.

What I found so interesting about the BBC show last night was Paxman's performance. He sat in the middle of these two men as they "debated" the issue of whether the thugs of the Sudanese authorities should show "mercy" to this woman. The Sudan government guy, who spoke with a subtle hint of a grin, kept going on about how this woman should have realised the "sensitivities" of the situation; his performance was one of the most hateful that I have ever seen on such a show. The MCB guy, who seemed very young and almost terrified, was pleading in the most abject fashion for the punishment not to be carried out. No wonder, this story hardly is going to make folk think well of his faith, now is it? All the while, Paxman, who is usually an aggressive interviewer to the point of gratuitous rudeness, sat almost dumbfounded as these two men spoke. But maybe it was deliberate: from his body language I could tell that Paxman thinks that Islamists like the Sudanese official are beneath contempt. Sometimes you are glad of Mr Paxman being around for a programme like this.

Grayson Perry to be exact, a Brit artist, of the sort that makes you want to reach for the sneer quotes. But, I do give this Other Perry two cheers if not three for saying even this much:

"I’ve censored myself," Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund. "The reason I haven't gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat."

This may seem like a half-arsed attack on Islam and/or Islamism, but it is way better than nothing, I think. Half an arse is better than no arse at all. These kind of remarks are adding up. The project of denouncing Islam as the evil crap that it is gradually gains ground, inch by inch, and what Other Perry says is another inch advanced. And I do mean attacking Islam, rather than merely those accused of 'betraying' it by... doing what it says. The word is gradually spreading.

If you are a serious Islamist, who does believe in doing what Islam says, we infidels, even our artists, are starting seriously to understand you. Watch out. We take our time to understand these kinds of things, but we get there, and when we do... On the other hand, if you are, as so many Muslims are, a nice person, and accordingly not a serious Islamist, but if you merely say periodically in a self-hypnotic way that you do believe in Islam, then for goodness sake read the damn stuff properly and stop saying that you believe in it. You are trying to have it both ways. Stop this. Stop encouraging something that you say you don't believe in. Make up your mind.

A good first step in denouncing Islam as the scary stuff that it is is to admit that you are scared of it, and not in any 'phobic' way but for good solid reasons. Grayson Perry has admitted this, and rather than complaining that he goes no further, I say, good on you mate, for at least going this far.

A Muslim is somebody who believes that a man called Muhammad… passed on certain revelations and instructions directly from God Himself. By logic, a non-Muslim is somebody who does not accept that Muhammad was any such prophet, and thereby rejects his teachings as not having come from God�