C L O S E R

Protected: Trouw, hetNieuws| nederland – Zembla / Vanwaar die verontwaardiging?’

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Protected: Trouw, hetNieuws| nederland – Zembla / Vanwaar die verontwaardiging?’

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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C L O S E R – Land of Confusion

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News, Public Islam, Some personal considerations.

It is remarkable how many references there are to Hirsi Ali as a beautiful woman. I agree with these men (?), don’t get me wrong but why is that important? It’s very rare to see such a comment for a man. Does it contribute to her authority? If it does, it’s no wonder I have less authority :).

Meanwhile, several conspiracy theories have emerged. For example ZachtEi (which has an excellent overview of the events by the way)

The VVD party knew AHA had to be sacrificed to fend off a left-wing takeover of the country during the 2007 elections. Rita Verdonk added insult to injury because it increases her own chances of winning the party leadership, and the VVD honchos stand by idly because they know the hugely popular Verdonk may be the only thing standing between Labour Party leader Wouter Bos and four years of social-democratic misery.

So, a set up to lose two people who are standing between Labour and their victory in the election. According to Peaktalk:

The tone of the documentary called “Saint Ayaan” made by the VARA – which is a left-of-center public broadcaster affiliated with both the Labour Party and organized labour – clearly underlines its intent: to take down Hirsi Ali. Leon de Winter points out in his blog that the left may have been down but hardly out, and is now in full swing to restore the Dutch age of politically correct consensus by publicly executing Hirsi Ali.

That is a correct assumption. But what has not been discussed in detail is that the Dutch right, and notably Hirsi Ali’s own liberal party (VVD) may have decided that it is time to get shot of her. Ayaan’s lies will now be the subject of a formal investigation by Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, who as it happens is also part of the VVD and is in the middle of hotly contested leadership struggle (to be concluded later this month) in which she faces a more moderate and centrist candidate. So, if Verdonk’s aim is to gain control over the VVD she will have to not only make sure that by investigating Hirsi Ali she is living up to her ‘going by the book’ reputation, but she will have to placate her party’s more centrist members. As such, Hirsi Ali is of no real use to her, and it is Verdonk herself who has grabbed the “less-government, tough on immigration” mantle that has been vacant following Fortuyn’s and Van Gogh’s respective murders. Hirsi Ali has served her purpose by formulating a number of highly controversial positions, something that no one previously dared saying, and now that the word is out it is up to others to take the message forward.

The other aspect that should be underlined here is the deep resentment that success and ambition usually generate in The Netherlands. Dynamic careers, success, outspokenness, standing out in the crowd are things that have always been frowned upon, although that has changed a bit in recent years I guess. Still, the Dutch coined the phrase “act normal, that is strange enough” and a very ambitious black Muslim woman who built up a spectacular political career with international allure by holding a mirror in front of the complacent and politically lethargic Dutch was of course not something that would be rewarded with eternal gratitude.

For other it is just an ‘islamist‘ victory; something that keeps puzzling me: how did they end up here? The Muslim Contrarian has a different opinion, taking issue with Hirsi Ali’s lack of credibility:

It is clear that the credibility of Ayaan has taken a serious hit from these revelations. How easy could it be for her to falsely accuse Islam, a religion and a people she obviously hates, if it was so easy for her to lie on her refugee claims? To the neoconservative Christians who jump up to defend her, is it not said “thou shalt not bear false witness?”

Not only is she untruthful, but seemingly hypocritical. Herself an immigrant, she became a vocal critic of immigration as a member of the right wing Dutch VVD party. It was, in fact, her own party member, hardline immigration minister Rita Verdonk that called for her passport to be revoked. I suppose principle rarely gets in the way of politics and ambition.

In a way, I feel sorry to see her go out this way, used and betrayed. It is, however, understandable considering that western world, despite claims of freedom, justice, and equality, have a history of systemically exploiting and lynching Africans (Dutch apartheid, European colonialism, American slavery).

And not to forget others such as, Umar Lee:

The favorite Muslim of the West, that is an apostate who has become wealthy and famous scapegoating Muslims, Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has admitted that she lied in order to get her Dutch Citizenship and will now be kicked out of the parliament and will likely be stripped of her Dutch Citizenship. Who says good things never happen?

Yesterday, a writer I really enjoy, Steve Dunleavy (a real guy), apparently was smitten by the lying Ali, who now that she is being kicked out of the Netherlands is going to try and take her fraudulent act to America with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Maybe she can handicap the battle going on in the streets of Mogadishu right now between an Islamist group, with local support, and a group of criminal gangs being funded by the West.

There is something to be said, for all these accounts. Problem is that in all of them facts and fiction seems to be blurred. This is no wonder, since to documentary with which it all begun, also mixed facts and fiction. Let’s try to deconstruct it and see what we know and don’t know:

1. We know Hirsi Ali lied about her history
2. We know if you lie about your credentials, your citizenship will be annulled.
3. We know that television program Zembla, for the first time questioned several facts of her past in one program
4. We know Hirsi Ali several times has mentioned that she lied.
5. She is leaving parlaiment because of this affair.
6. She is not leaving the country because of this. She already planned to go to the US and in case of losing her Dutch nationality, she still could stay because she is a refugee.

We do not know:

1. If she was forced to marry a man she did not want: it is her word against that of her relatives and her ex-fiancee
2. We do not know if there was a conspiracy within the VVD or by the left wing VARA (broadcaster of Zembla), labour party and ‘het journaal’ (Dutch news bulletin).

So what is left? Not much actually. Luckily there is Sunny on Pickled Politics, where there is always an attempt to look at things from a distant perspective.

I think it is important to take the Ayaan Hirsi Ali saga as a way to examine internal change.

Ali has always been presented as a ‘fearless woman’ who said ‘the truth’ about Muslims and would stop the Netherlands ’sliding into dhimmitude;’ etc. Certainly her choice of friends were suspect sometimes.

Whatever her detractors say, society certainly needs people who stick their neck out and say what they feel at the risk of antagonising relations. We need the BNP as much as we need the likes Harold Pinter. We also need the likes of Ali because she stopped Netherlands from bending over backwards excessively in the name of political correctness.

Let’s not gloss over the fact that there is still widespread instances of female genital mutilation and wife-beating in the Middle East, South Asia and Latin America. Domestic abuse is a serious problem in this country too. Ali may have lied about her personal circumstances but she did not make up the death threats.

But what Ali did was take advantage of the anti-Muslim climate, conjure up a story that would play well with them, and exploit them for her own agenda. It says more about those ‘anti-dhimmis’ because they want to hang on to what she said, rather than accept she simply lied to get in. If her political leanings went the other way they would be up in arms. they are the ones being taken for a ride.

The bigger question is how do you deal with such hardline ‘reformers’.

[…]

The problem for us who refuse to take a hardline against anyone is this. We know that if you want to reform a system, to attack it without knowing anything about it and demonising the people involved doesn’t work. It is a tactic that rapidly pushes you into the arms of people with ulterior motives and produces an ‘us and them’ barrier that becomes stronger than get broken down.

We know that change has to come, but it must do so on a platform of empowerment, not demonising. Ali did nothing to help the Muslim women who need power to reform their communities. She made it harder for them to stand up and take the middle ground.

If we all stood on a podium and waxed lyrically about how rubbish Asian values and culture was – nothing would change. And we can’t do that anyway, we still belong to that world.

Maybe it was the right time. Netherlands stopped letting in the religious fanatics who simply wanted to get on social security, but relations between Christian and Muslim Dutch people could never improve with a person so hell-bent on demonising all of them.

Finally, as someone at Pickled Politics says, a voice of reason. Some questions however (when we look back at the facts) are still unanswered.

1. Since it was well known that Hirsi Ali lied, why did it took so long for journalists to dive into the matter?
2. Was there a particular reason to it now?
3. There was nothing substantial new in the program, so why did they air it?
4. Because there was nothing new in it, and most of it was well known, why did the Hirsi Ali ‘supporters’ conceive it as a dirty personal attack? What I mean is if someone tells you over and over in that for example he has been cheating his wife, and there comes a tv program in which this is presented as a new fact and dozens of women are interviewed stating that they have been his mistress…you would laugh at the journalists probably. Old news! So why such a fuss?
5. Why did her opponents make such a problem of it, since they also knew?

7 comments.

Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Egypt: Blogging Behind Bars

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by .
Categories: Misc. News.

Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » Egypt: Blogging Behind Bars
Egypt: Blogging Behind Bars
Middle East & North Africa, Egypt, Weblog, Blogger News, Cyber-Activism, Human Rights, Protest, International Relations

On May 10, Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, the award-winning blogger detained three days earlier for participating in peaceful protests in Cairo, became one of the first people to blog from prison.

“Today it hit me,” Alaa began his post, “I am really in prison. I’m not sure how I feel…The way fellow prisoners look at me tells me I do not feel well but I can’t really feel it.”

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MEMRI – Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Internal Debates, International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Inquiry and Analysis Series – No. 275
Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Introduction

Most of the media in the Arab world – newspapers, television, and radio – are affiliated with various political forces, whether governmental or opposition, operating from within the country or outside it. These media are an important tool in the power struggles among the rival political forces behind them.

With the development of the Internet in the Middle East, websites have become yet another tool in the struggle between rival Arab forces. One prominent example of Internet use as part of this struggle is the campaign by www.tajdeed.org.uk – which belongs to the Saudi Islamist opposition operating in London and is directed by Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mas’ari, who also heads the Al-Tajdeed Al-Islami organization – against www.alhesbah.org, a leading Islamist site that is a conduit for messages from Al-Qaeda and other jihad organizations. [1]

Al-Tajdeed accused Al-Hesbah of working for Arab and Western intelligence apparatuses to expose and arrest contributors to the jihad web forums. According to Al-Tajdeed, Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the founders of another Islamist website, www.al-ansar.org, including “bin Roma” and “Irhabi 007.” Al-Tajdeed also asserted that Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the members of the Global Information Media Front (GIMF) [2] directly after they posted an announcement, on behalf of Al-Qaeda, taking responsibility for the February 25, 2006 Abqiq operation (an attempt to strike at the Saudi oil fields), and that Al-Hesbah had brought about the killing of the perpetrators of the operation by Saudi security forces.

Al-Hesbah stopped operating on March 17, 2006, and restarted on April 13, 2006. It is common for Islamist websites to disappear from and return to the web, and this is part of the dynamic of Islamist Internet activity. However, Al-Tajdeed took advantage of Al-Hesbah’s temporary disappearance to step up its attacks on it. Al-Tajdeed recommended that jihad supporters visit alternative websites that, it claimed, were more reliable and on which there was no hostile intelligence activity. When Al-Hesbah returned, Al-Tajdeed warned visitors to the site to take precautions lest their identities be discovered, and gave detailed instructions for doing so.

Another jihad website, www.alburak.net, came to the aid of Al-Hesbah, posting an article accusing Arab opposition elements, including Al-Mas’ari as well as Dr. Hani Al-Siba’i and Dr. Sa’d Al-Faqih, also London residents, of attempting to destroy the jihad websites and to smear those active on them. (Two weeks previously, Al-Tajdeed had accused Al-Burak of “becoming a copy of Al-Hesbah.” [3] )

The sharp rivalry between Al-Tajdeed and Al-Hesbah reflects the struggle between the two rival political forces behind them. In the case of Al-Tajdeed, this force is Saudi Islamist opposition activists. Al-Hesbah claims to be an independent religious site, but in light of the platform it gives to slanderous postings about Saudi opposition activists such as Al-Mas’ari and Al-Faqih – even going so far as to accuse them of heresy and treason – it can be identified as a site affiliated with a religious or political rival of the Saudi opposition, such as the Saudi regime itself. (According to its own report, the Saudi regime is active on the Internet. One example of this activity is the Saudi Ministry of Religious Endowment’s Al-Sakinah campaign for on-line dialogue with extremists [4] ).

Al-Tajdeed, which as mentioned belongs to Saudi opposition elements, also features postings by oppositionists from other Arab countries. According to the Al-Burak website, “Omar bin Hanif,” a contributor to Al-Tajdeed (see below), is Egyptian Islamist opposition member Dr. Hani Al-Sib’ai, head of the Al-Maqrizi Institute in London. If Al-Sib’ai is indeed “Omar bin Hanif,” he joined Al-Tajdeed’s struggle against Al-Hesbah with a posting titled “A Series of Exposures of Spies,” which lay the groundwork for the accusations against Al-Hesbah.

In addition, Al-Burak identified several other Al-Tajdeed contributors, also posting under pseudonyms, as oppositionists from various Arab countries. For example, according to Al-Burak, “Al-Fikr Al-Rashid” is in fact Egyptian Islamist Yasser Al-Sirri, who heads the Al-Marsad Institute in London; Al-Ansar contributor “bin Roma” is Algerian sheikh Abdallah Al-Ghamdi; and “Sami 9000” is Mansour Al-Halabi, a Syrian residing in Libya.

The following report, from MEMRI’s Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project’s initiative on Monitoring Islamist and Jihad Websites, analyzes the conflicts between the Islamist and Jihad websites. These multi-faceted conflicts, which involve an array of individual postings, should not be looked at as a phenomenon of individual Islamist participants battling on the Internet (as has been done thus far by various media and research outlets). Rather they should be seen in a larger context, as a phenomenon reflecting the conflicts between rival Arab and Muslim political forces in whose service these websites operate.

0 comments.

MEMRI – Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by .
Categories: Internal Debates, International Terrorism, Religious and Political Radicalization.

Inquiry and Analysis Series – No. 275
Al-Tajdeed Versus Al-Hesbah: Islamist Websites & the Conflict Between Rival Arab & Muslim Political Forces

Introduction

Most of the media in the Arab world – newspapers, television, and radio – are affiliated with various political forces, whether governmental or opposition, operating from within the country or outside it. These media are an important tool in the power struggles among the rival political forces behind them.

With the development of the Internet in the Middle East, websites have become yet another tool in the struggle between rival Arab forces. One prominent example of Internet use as part of this struggle is the campaign by www.tajdeed.org.uk – which belongs to the Saudi Islamist opposition operating in London and is directed by Dr. Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mas’ari, who also heads the Al-Tajdeed Al-Islami organization – against www.alhesbah.org, a leading Islamist site that is a conduit for messages from Al-Qaeda and other jihad organizations. [1]

Al-Tajdeed accused Al-Hesbah of working for Arab and Western intelligence apparatuses to expose and arrest contributors to the jihad web forums. According to Al-Tajdeed, Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the founders of another Islamist website, www.al-ansar.org, including “bin Roma” and “Irhabi 007.” Al-Tajdeed also asserted that Al-Hesbah had brought about the arrest of all the members of the Global Information Media Front (GIMF) [2] directly after they posted an announcement, on behalf of Al-Qaeda, taking responsibility for the February 25, 2006 Abqiq operation (an attempt to strike at the Saudi oil fields), and that Al-Hesbah had brought about the killing of the perpetrators of the operation by Saudi security forces.

Al-Hesbah stopped operating on March 17, 2006, and restarted on April 13, 2006. It is common for Islamist websites to disappear from and return to the web, and this is part of the dynamic of Islamist Internet activity. However, Al-Tajdeed took advantage of Al-Hesbah’s temporary disappearance to step up its attacks on it. Al-Tajdeed recommended that jihad supporters visit alternative websites that, it claimed, were more reliable and on which there was no hostile intelligence activity. When Al-Hesbah returned, Al-Tajdeed warned visitors to the site to take precautions lest their identities be discovered, and gave detailed instructions for doing so.

Another jihad website, www.alburak.net, came to the aid of Al-Hesbah, posting an article accusing Arab opposition elements, including Al-Mas’ari as well as Dr. Hani Al-Siba’i and Dr. Sa’d Al-Faqih, also London residents, of attempting to destroy the jihad websites and to smear those active on them. (Two weeks previously, Al-Tajdeed had accused Al-Burak of “becoming a copy of Al-Hesbah.” [3] )

The sharp rivalry between Al-Tajdeed and Al-Hesbah reflects the struggle between the two rival political forces behind them. In the case of Al-Tajdeed, this force is Saudi Islamist opposition activists. Al-Hesbah claims to be an independent religious site, but in light of the platform it gives to slanderous postings about Saudi opposition activists such as Al-Mas’ari and Al-Faqih – even going so far as to accuse them of heresy and treason – it can be identified as a site affiliated with a religious or political rival of the Saudi opposition, such as the Saudi regime itself. (According to its own report, the Saudi regime is active on the Internet. One example of this activity is the Saudi Ministry of Religious Endowment’s Al-Sakinah campaign for on-line dialogue with extremists [4] ).

Al-Tajdeed, which as mentioned belongs to Saudi opposition elements, also features postings by oppositionists from other Arab countries. According to the Al-Burak website, “Omar bin Hanif,” a contributor to Al-Tajdeed (see below), is Egyptian Islamist opposition member Dr. Hani Al-Sib’ai, head of the Al-Maqrizi Institute in London. If Al-Sib’ai is indeed “Omar bin Hanif,” he joined Al-Tajdeed’s struggle against Al-Hesbah with a posting titled “A Series of Exposures of Spies,” which lay the groundwork for the accusations against Al-Hesbah.

In addition, Al-Burak identified several other Al-Tajdeed contributors, also posting under pseudonyms, as oppositionists from various Arab countries. For example, according to Al-Burak, “Al-Fikr Al-Rashid” is in fact Egyptian Islamist Yasser Al-Sirri, who heads the Al-Marsad Institute in London; Al-Ansar contributor “bin Roma” is Algerian sheikh Abdallah Al-Ghamdi; and “Sami 9000” is Mansour Al-Halabi, a Syrian residing in Libya.

The following report, from MEMRI’s Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project’s initiative on Monitoring Islamist and Jihad Websites, analyzes the conflicts between the Islamist and Jihad websites. These multi-faceted conflicts, which involve an array of individual postings, should not be looked at as a phenomenon of individual Islamist participants battling on the Internet (as has been done thus far by various media and research outlets). Rather they should be seen in a larger context, as a phenomenon reflecting the conflicts between rival Arab and Muslim political forces in whose service these websites operate.

0 comments.

Protected: Trouw, hetNieuws| nederland – ’Hirsi Ali gered, dan wij ook’

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

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Protected: Trouw, hetNieuws| nederland – ’Hirsi Ali gered, dan wij ook’

Posted on May 18th, 2006 by martijn.
Categories: Misc. News.

Enter your password to view comments.