Daily Telegraph editorial, Sept 5th:

REMEMBER the name Mustapha Kara-Ali for a future leader of stature in this country.

For Mr Kara-Ali, a young member of the Prime Ministers’ Muslim reference group, is speaking up to set a new tone in the dialogue on Islamic concerns and Muslim issues in the broader Australian community.

Yesterday in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Kara-Ali bravely took issue with the contrary views of advisory group chairman Ameer Ali, who launched a tirade of criticism last week against Mr Howard for his remarks about the need for Muslim immigrants to learn English and to respect women’s rights.

“I am absolutely supportive of the Prime Minister on that issue,” Mr Kara-Ali said.

“Sections of the community . . . want to play the victim card so we need to be careful.”

He said people such as Dr Ali were out of touch with the broader community and were desperate to maintain their grip on the Muslim community.

“That is not the right pathway for Australian Muslims,” Mr Kara-Ali said.

Most Australians, including Muslim Australians, will have two words for Mr Kara-Ali: hear, hear.

Mr Kara-Ali previously sparked a little controversy when he declared he backed the compulsory citizenship tests for Australian migrants, proposed by the Howard Government. If fact the The Mufti of Australia, Sheikh Hilaly, at one point even threatened to have the Muslim community reference group disbanded if Mustapha were not removed.

A closer look at some of the views he has expressed in previous interviews, however, gives reason for some caution.

Just last week this in The Australian:

[Muslim Community Reference Group] member Mustapha Kara-Ali accused Mr Howard of trying to appeal to “white Australia” by playing the “politics of the lowest denominator”.

Also see his comments that “Muslims did not kill 88 people” in Bali on SBS’s Insight program, posted by a commenter here (original SBS transcript is no longer on their site) or his somewhat evasive comments on Sharia Law on Radio National earlier this year:

Mustapha Kara-Ali: [..]Let us look at Australia. I don’t want to look at Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iran and all these countries.

Stephen Crittenden: But if we go down this path, Mustapha, what you are saying is that there is not one Islam, that there is indeed an Australian Islam, where those kinds of practices are unacceptable. In other words when you’re talking about Sharia here in Australia, and the mullahs in Afghanistan are talking about Sharia, you’re really talking about two different things.

Mustapha Kara-Ali: There is one body of law. However, its applications are different in different contexts.

The Bali comment seems more an appeal to political correctness than some sort of straight out denial, and perhaps Mustapha did not really mean to make it sound like the version of Sharia that the Taliban “mullahs in Afghanistan” practiced is somehow fine in its “context”. Still, in many ways Mustapha has clearly a long way to go before becoming a contender for being a “leader of stature”.

For now its wait and see with Kara-Ali. He seems to be shaky or of two minds, if not outright flipflopping, on some issues, but is also showing himself capable of being quite spot on too. Most importantly he’s got the balls to openly challenge the “old guard” and speak out against the more radical elements in the community - something that has so far been surprisingly rare. Good on him for speaking out and hopefully others will follow.

This probably won’t be a regular feature, but this week I’ve put together a short blog round up to accompany the usual weekly opinion round up, simply because there was some great coverage of various events over the weekend that was worth bringing together. Here are some must reads.

The latest Al Qaeda video.

The Counterterrorism Blog has extensive coverage of the new video from Turds in Turbans Inc. aka Al Qaeda, urging Americans to convert to their kinky medieval death cult (I am sure all the “moderate” and “modern” Muslims will recognise thats what it is and appreciate the differentiation of this cheap and freaky immitation from the real deal). Tip for the future Propoganpandas of Jihad - Western Infidels are unlikely to take to spiritual guidance from a couple of clowns that look like some Dark Ages kiddy-fiddlers. I recommend growing some dreadlocks or something. Otherwise step away from the computer terminal and get the fuck back in your time machine, cause this shit ain’t gonna work out - the vibe just ain’t right.

One of the “counter Islam consultants” mentioned in the video, Robert Spencer muses on why Turd #1 may have singled him out:

Maybe Adam Gadahn is angry with me for describing him a couple of years ago as he appears in an old photo: as a “pudgy, long-haired American kid who appears to be locked in a desperate, losing struggle to grow a beard.” Adam, I see from more recent photos that you have won that struggle, for which I congratulate you. In your larger struggles, however, you will not prevail.

Hmm, I wouldn’t get his hopes up. No dreadlocks no joy, I am afraid.

Robert has this further reply for Adam.

One of the reason that TITs Inc have released this lengthy Jihadist smut vid is because they are being pushed out of the lime light by those nasty Shiite upstarts Hezbollah. Because lets face it, its all a bit of a dick measuring contest with this lot - those virgins up in Paradise have their needs too you know. And they don’t want no scrub. Yelling “Death To America!” from the passenger side of his best mates car bomb. The following must have had them tearing their beards out:

What are the Muslim youth in Pakistan’s mosques and madrassas saying about Nasrallah and bin Laden?

• ‘Nasrallah made us proud as Muslims, and respected by the rest of the world. bin Laden made us hated by the rest of the world and viewed as criminals and terrorists.’
• ‘Nasrallah led us from the front against Israel, the US and the UK. bin Laden concealed himself in the caves while sending hundreds of Muslims to jail and death.’
• ‘Nasrallah helped the poor Muslims and cared for them. What has bin Laden done for the poor Muslims?’
• ‘Nasrallah united the Shias and the Sunnis in a joint jihad against Israel and the US. bin Laden made them kill each other first in Afghanistan and Pakistan and now in Iraq.’
• ‘Nasrallah has every right to speak for the Muslims of the world. bin Laden has no right.’

You’re losing the kids, mang! The kids!

Yep, looks like The Balls have fucked those TITs real good.

While we’re on the subject of the mighty Hezbollah, Vital Perspective has a collection of cartoons celebrating their momentous ‘victory’. Like this one :

The arrests of Abu Abdullah and 13 other terror suspects in Britain.

Is the hopelessly-lost-in-utter-fuckwitry (official title) Abu Abdullah the only one that still loves Osama? Could be, could be. Head over to Hot Air for their coverage of the latest British terror arrests.

The Lebanese Red Cross ambulance fauxtography.

Check out the great posts from Saint at Dogfight in Bankstown and Tim Blair on this ever-evolving story. I’ve lost track when the updates hit double figures, to be honest. I was Missing in Distraction (top fun stuff like my tax return) for most of last week when all this was happening.

On Kofi Annans visit to Iran.

Over to Hot Air again for this one, in “Stoogemania: Kofi twice embarrassed in Tehran”

British air terror plot update.

Right Truth has the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

Can you tell I posted this after 2am?

Mark Day romanticises in the The Australian:

THE British magazine The Economist killed off newspapers this week in a report Mark Twain might have described as greatly exaggerated. Perhaps a more relevant question today is: Are we killing journalism?

Across the world, the future of newspapers is being studied and debated. Type the words “death of newspapers” into the Google search engine and you’ll get 52.7 million references.

[..]

A very unbalanced report, methinks, considering the words “life of newspapers” return 148 million references. Actually the words “death of newspapers” today bring up 54.7 million references, which suggests a hell of a lot Pulpus Newspapersaurus carking for a single weekend.

The phrase “death of newspapers”, on the other hand, brings up a mere 28,800 results. Which suggests a mere flesh wound, one would suspect.

I also got about 3 million results for the word “irrelevance” and 46.4 million for “computer literacy”.

Most disturbingly the words “Is Mark Day killing journalism?” returned 6.61 million references.

Recommended reading for the day comes from IDF reservist Captain Dan Gordon. Dan is the writer of such films as The Hurricane, Murder in the First, Wyatt Earp, and The Assignment.

Here’s an extract dealing with the way the Western Media was manipulated by Hezbollah.

[..]

There was, of course one other indispensable element to their war plan; the centering of their offensive capability against Israel’s civilian population within Lebanon’s civilian population. Much has been made in the Western press of Hezballah’s benign social services function in Lebanon, of the hospitals and schools it has built. Almost no notice however has been paid to the large numbers of these hospitals and schools which were built over its military bunkers and rocket launching sites.

This was perhaps both the most cynical and barbaric disregard for innocent civilian lives of all of Hezballah’s and Iran’s strategic choices. It was also the most successful. It was predicated not on its knowledge of its enemy (Israel) but its true genius lay in its knowledge of the press. The calculus was simple: launch a rocket from within a civilian population; if you kill Jews that’s a victory. If the Jews hit back and in so doing kill Lebanese civilians, that’s a victory. If they don’t hit back because they’re afraid to hit civilians, that’s a victory. Now repeat the process until you kill so many Jews they have to hit back and in so doing kill more Lebanese civilians. That’s the ultimate victory, because they know that in striking just those chords exactly what music the press will play. The awful truth, which the Western Press was manipulated to ignore or downplay, was that Iran, through its terrorist operational arm Hezballah, had invaded Lebanon from within. Hezballah did not protect Lebanon, they occupied it and they used those Hezballah occupied territories to launch Iran’s offensive in response to the West’s ultimatum to cease development of nuclear weapons.

[..]

Just as the Spanish Civil War was a preview of what European Fascism had in store for the world, so do I believe, that Iran’s offensive against Israel carried out by its Terrorist Army operational arm, was a preview of what Islamo Facsism has in store not only for the West but for the moderate regimes of the Middle East, which in case anyone forgot to notice, controls the oil on which the West survives. What they failed to gain militarily they accomplished through the manipulation of the Western Media which were their willing dupes and through the ineptitude and weakness, if not down right appeasement of the political leadership of the International community which has all but guaranteed that this war will be but round one.

Read the whole thing.

Dan Gordon actually had not one but two articles published today. Here’s a extract from his second myth-dispelling piece:

[..]

It should be noted that Lieutenant Colonel Ishai’s brigade is made up not only of Jews but Druze and Bedouin Muslims. All of these fighters came from villages in the Galilee which had been hit by Hezb’allah’s constant barrages of katyusha rockets aimed at Israel’s civilian population. For them this fight was not a political struggle, nor even a national one, it was quite literally in defense of their homes.

Lieutenant Colonel Ishai has served for many years shoulder to shoulder with Muslim troops in the army of the Jewish state. Indeed I was privileged to meet Druze commanders, who commanded almost exclusively Jewish troops. The first one of those commanders was my own company commander when I was in basic training in 1973.

The soldiers who fight for the state of Israel are not only Jews they are Christian, Druze and Moslem as well. Far from the image of a barbaric Nazi-like military, the IDF takes great pains even in war time to respect the sensitivities not only of its own troops but of the Palestinian and Lebanese civilians caught up in the cross fire brought about by the Islamist terrorists who hide behind them.

Lieutenant Colonel Ishai decided that sending bomb sniffing dogs into a Moslem mosque would be offensive to members of that religion. He thus decided that rather than do that he would send in soldiers, knowing that he was risking their lives to do so.

He gave that order and his soldiers obeyed it in full knowledge of all the implications of their actions. They would risk their lives to respect the sanctity of another’s religion and the sensitivities of another people. Those were the actions of the Israeli army.

What they found in the mosque were anti-tank missiles of the kind that had just been used to try and kill them and katyusha rockets of the kind that quite literally had been aimed at their own homes and families. [..]

A somewhat related and highly recommended article from Sunday’s Washington Post: “In Israel, a Divisive Struggle Over Targeted Killing” (hat tip Hot Air)

On Saturday morning, Sept. 6, 2003, six F-16s were waiting off the coast of Gaza. Mofaz, the defense minister, sat in his office and changed the channel on his TV from CNN to live footage of Gaza from a reconnaissance drone. By noon, several Hamas leaders had arrived at the home of Marwan Abu Ras, a religion professor who was also a Hamas activist. The Israeli cameras zoomed in to catch the details.

“Some came on foot, some came by car, some parked far away and walked,” Mofaz recalled. “They covered their faces with kaffiyehs and wore flowing clothes so they’d be hard to track.”    

A Shin Bet agent in the command center called out the identities of the men. “It was the ‘Who’s Who’ of Hamas,” said Gabi Ashkenazi, then Yaalon’s deputy. “People we’d been hunting for years.”

“It got intense,” Yaalon recalled. “The reports — ‘Here comes Mohammed Deif.’ ‘Here comes Adnan al-Ghoul.’ ‘Here comes Ismail Haniyeh.’ They said the names, I pictured each one, and I pictured blown-up buses and disco bombings, and shootings, murders of children, and kidnapped soldiers.”

Gallant, the prime minister’s adviser, called Sharon at his ranch and told him about the extraordinary gathering. “We’re talking about people responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis,” Gallant said. “They’re planning on killing hundreds more.”

Sharon was setting up for his grandson’s sixth birthday party. He asked, “Are the planes ready?”

In Gaza, the last Hamas member arrived in a white station wagon. Dichter himself had arrested him twice, “with these hands,” he said, holding up thick, calloused fingers. It was Sheik Ahmed Yassin, a paraplegic and Hamas spiritual leader. As his wheelchair disappeared into the house, an agent called the sheik by his code name: “the Carcass.”

Yaalon said to the air force chief: “Ready?”

[..]

Read what happened next.

All about the state of the war against Islamo-Fascism (or whatever it is called this week).

Sunday 27th of August:

• Mark Steyn, in the Chicago Sun Times: