Another civil war in Afghanistan?
By Michael Petrou - Friday, June 17, 2011 - 6 Comments
Many Afghans are saying no to any deal with the Taliban
Mikhail Galustov/Redux
Rust-crested skeletons of Russian tanks line the road that snakes through the mountainous Panjshir Valley, 100 km north of Kabul. More lie among the wheat fields, grapevines and tulips that cover almost all of the flat spaces between cliff walls and the silty river rushing between them. The tanks are war trophies and perhaps a warning.
It was here that the Afghan mujahedeen fought the Soviets to a standstill during the 1980s before forcing them from the country, and here also that Afghanistan’s anti-Taliban resistance retreated when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Despite support from Pakistan and Osama bin Laden’s Arab Brigade, the Taliban never subdued the valley. For five years, they were held back here by Ahmad Shah Massoud, the military commander known as the Lion of Panjshir. Massoud rejected the Taliban’s harsh interpretation of Islam and the often-murderous ethnic Pashtun supremacism that went with it. He was assassinated by al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists days before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and never lived to see his soldiers march back into the Afghan capital two months later.
Today, Massoud lies in a hilltop tomb visited daily by dozens of Afghans from all over the country. The Panjshir Valley remains an anti-Taliban heartland. Insurgents rarely penetrate it—though in some of the villages below its mouth they are said to have spotters who watch for kidnapping opportunities. But many Panjshiris, among other Afghans who opposed the Taliban during its time in power, are angered by developments elsewhere in the country that they see as a betrayal—namely President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to make peace with the Taliban, and concessions they fear he might offer to strike a deal.
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British anti-Islamists coming to Canada
By macleans.ca - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 at 5:18 PM - 72 Comments
Violent right-wing group invited to rally in Toronto next week
The English Defence League, a UK-based group responsible for violent anti-Muslim protests and whose members include football hooligans, has been invited to hold a “support rally” in Toronto next Tuesday. The EDL’s leader, Stephen Lennon, was charged with assaulting a police officer last November, but will speak to the rally remotely via the web. The controversial Jewish Defence League, classified as a “right-wing terrorist group” by the FBI in 2001, invited EDL supporters to rally at the Toronto Zionist Centre, based on their unconditional support for Israel and their militant stance against political Islam. Bernie Farber, CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, expressed “disappointment that the JDL would support an organization whose record in the U.K. is one of violence and extremism.” While its supporters are typically described as being from working class districts of northern England with little interaction with diverse communities, the EDL says it welcomes all other faiths and ethnicities, as long as they are active in confronting Islam.
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Extremism in the schools
By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 2:40 PM - 20 Comments
Some startling revelations about the radical nature of the curriculum being taught
Getty Images
An investigation into more than 40 part-time Muslim schools and clubs in the U.K. has uncovered some startling revelations about the radical nature of the curriculum being taught. Materials obtained by the BBC include textbooks that detail the application of sharia law, such as how to chop off a person’s hands and feet if they are caught stealing, along with whether the best punishment for homosexuals who engage in sexual activities is for them to be stoned, burned or thrown off a cliff. Other materials ask children to list the “reprehensible” traits of Jewish people and note that non-believers will end up in “hellfire” when they die.
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Islamism's growing strength in Britain
By Michael Petrou - Friday, August 6, 2010 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments
A confidential briefing paper for the British government, prepared by a Muslim “counter-extremism” think tank has identified a large number of mosques and Muslim organizations in Britain — especially those that seek to partner with local and national governments — as sharing the same Islamist ideology as al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Continue…
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Major Nidal Hasan had an enabler
By Mark Steyn - Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 1:10 PM - 255 Comments
All those red flags but no one did anything. Political correctness took the lives of 14 people.
Ever since this magazine attracted the attention of Canada’s “human rights” regime, defenders of the system have clung to a familiar argument. In a letter to Maclean’s, Jennifer Lynch, Q.C., Canada’s chief censor, put it this way:
“Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given free rein. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred.”“Hateful words” can lead to “unspeakable crimes.” The problem with this line is that it’s ahistorical twaddle, as I’ve pointed out. Yet still it comes up. It did last month, during my testimony to the House of Commons justice committee, when an opposition MP mused on whether it wouldn’t have been better to prohibit the publication of Mein Kampf.
“That analysis sounds as if it ought to be right,” I replied. “But the problem with it is that the Weimar Republic—Germany for the 12 years before the Nazi party came to power—had its own version of Section 13 and equivalent laws. It was very much a kind of proto-Canada in its hate speech laws. The Nazi party had 200 prosecutions brought against it for anti-Semitic speech. At one point the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Hitler from giving public speeches.”
And a fat lot of good it all did.
