Magic Statistics

Quetta, Pakistan, admits to being Taliban headquarters, but in fact the city’s residents are bitterly divided into factions supporting and opposing the NATO-backed Afghan government.

Drab urban blocks are festooned with bright flags of the two sides: Those who want to destroy the Afghan government and those who favour protecting it. Black and white stripes mark the homes, vehicles, and even children's kites of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a political party that openly supports the Taliban insurgency.

Not far away, spray-painted on a rock or worn proudly on a baseball cap, the red, white and green colours of Pashtoonkhwa indicate the supporters of Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President.

Members of the Pashtun ethnic group, who are centred in northwest Pakistan (including Quetta) and southern Afghanistan, are vilified as Taliban supporters, but they too are similarly divided.  Some back the Taliban and oppose the Kabul government, but others support the cause of Pashtun nationalism and campaign for an end to the war in Afghanistan.

Pashtun nationalists agitate on behalf of a group that feels marginalized by Pakistan's government and business elites, which are dominated by Punjabis from the country's northeast. Those same angry Pashtuns, their numbers swollen by the millions of Afghan refugees, fill the ranks of the Taliban supporters and, as they filter back and forth across the border, the insurgency itself.

The difference between the Taliban supporters and the Pashtun nationalists is that the latter's anger is directed at Islamabad, calling for either a Pashtun homeland inside Pakistan or recognition of Kabul's historical claim that Quetta as well as other territory belongs to Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI is widely believed to be providing support for the Taliban, and the Pashtun division may help to explain that.  Viewing anti-government Pashtun nationalists as more dangerous than the Taliban, the ISI aids their pro-Taliban rivals.

Pashtun nationalists denounce the ISI for encouraging the war in Afghanistan, while backers of the Taliban claim their nationalist countrymen are pro-American and anti-religious.

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• Is Pakistan breaking apart?
• In the Line of Fire? Got that right!
• NATO forces know where Mullah Omar lives

Philadelphia Inquirer book critic Carlin Romano takes Pope Benedict to task for saying nothing about the skeleton in Turkey’s closet during his recent visit there.

Pope Benedict XVI's just-ended magical military tour of Turkey - with helicopters overhead and riot police bristling on every flank lest he be plugged on his first visit to a Muslim land - revealed a profound truth: Those who forget the past sometimes simply want to forget it.

The pope didn't utter a peep about arriving in a country whose predecessor state, the Ottoman Empire, committed the largest genocide in history against Christians. Of course, it may be that the always-diplomatic Vatican Curia took possession of Benedict's mind and body, having exorcised the former Cardinal Ratzinger's well-known views about Turkey and Islam.

It may also be that the murder of more than one million non-Catholic Christians in the Armenian genocide is a non-homefield matter in the Vatican's current damage-control foreign policy toward Turkey and Islam.

But the upshot - a spectacle of supposed reconciliation between the Papacy and Islam last week that operated without moral memory or judgment - proved embarrassing to anyone who thinks there is no God but truth.

Fortunately, Taner Akcam, a brave Turkish historian, has just published a thoroughly researched and documented history of the Armenian Genocide, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.

One wishes that all involved in this last week's stagecraft between the Vatican and Turkey had been forced to read Akcam's A Shameful Act and to comment on it. Turkish Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk calls Akcam's work "the definitive account of the organized destruction of the Ottoman Armenians" by "a brave Turkish scholar."
. . .
As you might expect from an author of such courage, Akcam pulls no punches. Ottoman Turkish leaders "did deliberately attempt to destroy the Armenian population." Turkey continues to deny the genocide because many of the leaders involved in it "later became central figures in the Turkish government" and "admitted openly that the republic could only have been established by eliminating the Armenians and removing their demand for self-determination in Anatolia."

Turkish media pressed the pope to apologise for his Regensburg speech.  In truth, however, it is Turkey that still owes Armenians—and all Christians—an apology.

h/t: Martin Kramer

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Canadians and Americans complain when our judges make new laws that were neither enacted nor intended by our elected representatives.  But I guess it could be worse: We could live in Somalia, where Sheikh Hussein Barre Rage, chairman of an Islamic town court, sets a new standard for judicial activism.  Pray five times a day or you’ll be decapitated.  (I can see why he's named "Rage").

Residents of a southern Somalia town who do not pray five times a day will be beheaded, an official said Wednesday, adding the edict will be implemented in three days.

Shops, tea houses and other public places in Bulo Burto, about 124 miles northeast of the capital, Mogadishu, should be closed during prayer time and no one should be on the streets, said Sheik Hussein Barre Rage, the chairman of the town's Islamic court. His court is part of a network backed by armed militiamen that has taken control of much of southern Somalia in recent months, bringing a strict interpretation of Islam that is alien to many Somalis.

Those who do not follow the prayer edict after three days have elapsed, "will definitely be beheaded according to Islamic law," Rage told The Associated Press by phone. "As Muslims we should practice Islam fully, not in part, and that is what our religion enjoins us to do."

I hope our Supreme Court justices don’t get any ideas from that guy.

h/t: Verum Serum.

Previous related post: Jihadists take Somalia

More reports of Iraqi Christian leaders being attacked.  In Mosul, an elder in the Presbyterian Church has been killed.

The martyred churchman, identified only as 69-year-old Elder Munthir, had been kidnapped after leading worship services at the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Mosul on November 26. His body was found four days later.
. . .
Under mounting terrorist threats targeting all of Mosul’s Christian community, local sources only spoke to Compass under conditions of strict anonymity.

According to eyewitnesses in Mosul, the Protestant church elder was cornered by two cars in front of his home at 11 a.m. as he returned from Sunday worship.
. . .
The captors contacted Elder Munthir’s family later that day, using his mobile telephone to confirm that they had kidnapped him. Initially demanding US$1 million in ransom, the kidnappers negotiated over the next three days with their captive’s relatives and friends.

According to one Mosul source who described the kidnappers’ conversations, “They said, ‘We have him, and we will kill him. We will cut his throat. We will take revenge for the Pope’s words. We will take revenge on all of you. We will kill all the Christians, and we will start with him.’”

Elder Munthir was recently threatened with death if he returned to his church, but he said that no earthly enemy could hinder him from going to church.

An Orthodox priest was kidnapped and beheaded in Mosul less than two months ago.

In Baghdad, Father Samy Al Raiys, Chaldean priest and seminary rector, was kidnapped yesterday only metres from his home.

The Chaldean Patriarchate of Baghdad, which reported the abduction, launched an appeal on its website. Addressing the abductors, it asked: “We beg you not to harm him but to treat him well. We trust Father Samy in the hands of the Lord and of Providence, asking Him to help save Iraq from these kidnapping which terrorise everyone, adults and children alike”. The appeal ended by calling upon “Our Lady that She may save him and return him soon to his church and to the service of his faithful”.
. . .
The priest, who is rector at the Major Seminary of the Chaldean Patriarchate, was going to the Church of Mar Khorkhis (Saint George), where he had moved after the seminary itself had closed for security reasons.

Father Samy teaches Morality at Babel College, the Faculty of Theology in the Iraqi capital. In a few days, local Chaldeans said, he was supposed to open the seminary’s new academic year, which will not happen now.

Nothing has been heard from Fr Samy or his abductors, nor has his car been found.

h/t for Compass Direct link: Dhimmi Watch

Previous related posts:

• Another Iraqi priest feared kidnapped
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The European Commission (EC) has rejected Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan as not stringent enough, but Germany says it will ignore the ruling.

Joachim Wuermeling, a high-ranking economics ministry official said Germany planned not to implement the EC's changes.

It was up to member states how they fulfilled their Kyoto Climate Protocol targets, he said.

Germany felt relaxed about a possible law suit if the EC sued as it could take years to be resolved, which was not in the Commission's interest, he said.

Germany is the European Union’s biggest single polluting nation.

h/t: Greenie Watch and Blue Climate

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A 22-year-old Australian Muslim woman was recently named “NSW Young Australian of the Year” and is now in the running for “Young Australian of the Year”.  The awards are given for social service and community leadership.  Doesn’t that sound like someone that Muslims would want to commend as an example and inspiration to all young Australian Muslims?

But no: she is being vilified on Muslim websites.  Her offence?  To celebrate her NSW Young Australian award, she toasted with a glass of champagne.  Oh, and she refuses to wear the hijab.

Iktimal Hage-Ali (22) has been targeted on Muslim websites for drinking alcohol and declining to wear the traditional hijab. Her anonymous attackers condemned her after she drank the champagne to toast her award at the NSW Art Gallery last Thursday.
. . .
An Islamic youth website "Muslim Village" posted dozens of messages berating Hage-Ali. "A person who drinks champagne, especially unabashedly, cannot represent the Muslim community," wrote a member of Muslim community in a message posted on the website.

Another said: "She knows we don't appreciate her representing us - but it's the power that drives her. Drinking champagne, that is sick."

The accusers also criticised Hage-Ali for wearing "revealing" clothes, nail polish and make-up. "Her matching nails, eye shadow and top . . . were not . . . how Islam would like to portray a Muslim female to the wider community," one said.

I hope she goes on to win the national award.  The recipient will be announced at a ceremony on the eve of Australia Day, 26 January.

h/t: Big News Network.com - Breaking Religious News

UPDATE (14 Dec,): Later development here.

ABC News' Teddy Davis reports that Al Gore has called the Iraq war "the worst strategic mistake in the entire history of the United States".

Hmmm.  Is Mr Gore unfamiliar with the War of 1812?  The United States declared war on Great Britain on 12 June 1812; on 25 August 1814, British troops marched into Washington and torched the Capitol Building and the White House.  The rest of the city was spared only because of a deluge of rain from a hurricane and tornado (no doubt caused by global warming).

Sounds to me like a rather worse strategic mistake than invading Iraq.  That war may be going badly, but at least no foreign force has destroyed America's capital.

But what do I know: I'm not a Democrat a British subject.

Maybe Al learned his War of 1812 history from Johnny Horton's Grammy-winning 1959 hit, "The Battle of New Orleans", about the military victory over the British that propelled Andrew Jackson into the re-built White House.  (Jackson's victory was resounding but pointless, for the battle took place in January 1815—a month after the war had been settled by the Treat of Ghent.)

Previous related posts:

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