This just in from my colleague Dr. Andrew Bostom.

My blog from this past February on “moderate” Bosnian President Izetbegovic

It is worth recalling that our “moderate” Bosnian Muslim ally in the 1990s, was President Alija Izetbegovic. Mr. Izetbegovic was a youthful recruiter for Himmler’s Nazi Bosnian Muslim Handschar Division, pious Muslim polygamist with four wives (as David Binder’s N.Y Times obituary [10/20/03] noted, “He is survived by his first wife, Halida, who lives in Turkey; a son, Bakir; two daughters, Leila Aksami and Sabina; his second wife, Melika; and his third wife, Amira, whom he married in 1993 under Shari’a, the Islamic code of law. In February 1995, the newspaper Slobodna Bosna published congratulations to him on his fourth marriage, without naming the woman.”), and author of the 1970 Islamic Declaration—in which he openly avowed support for a revived Caliphate—under Shari’a—of necessity including, of course, a vigorous re-Islamization of the Balkans. Here are some of Izetbegovic’s “moderate” views, including his wish to destroy Israel (“occupied Palestine”), as expressed in this 1970 Islamic Declaration:

http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/02/22/our-kosovo-folly-more-fulfillment-of-izetbegovic%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cmoderate%E2%80%9D-vision/

Our Kosovo Folly: More Fulfillment of Izetbegovic’s “Moderate” Vision?

February 22nd, 2008 by Andrew Bostom

Izetbegovic (d. 2003): Are We Helping to Realize His Caliphate Dreams ?

The intrepid Julia Gorin details why US support for an independent Kosovo is dangerous folly. Kosovo is a narco-jihadist vipers nest bent on ethnically cleansing its residual native pre-Islamic Serb inhabitants, in fulfillment of regional, and perhaps larger Islamic goals.

My forthcoming “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” includes a poignant description of the chronic plight of Serbs under Muslim rule—a plight shared with Balkan Jewry, as per the system of dhimmitude—by the early 20^th century sociologist and geographer Jovan Cvijic. In La Peninsule Balkanique, Paris, 1918, his detailed psychosocial analysis of the Serbian and other Christian dhimmis under Muslim, including, notably Albanian rule, Cvijic described how the fear of recurrent violence accentuated their submission, engendering prototypical dhimmi adaptive behaviors:

[they became]…accustomed to belonging to an inferior, servile class, whose duty it is to make themselves acceptable to the master, to humble themselves before him and to please him. These people become close-mouthed, secretive, cunning; they lose all confidence in others; they grow used to hypocrisy and meanness because these are necessary in order for them to live and to avoid violent punishments. The direct influence of oppression and violence is manifested in almost all the Christians as feelings of fear and apprehension. Whenever Moslem brigands or evil-doers made their appearance somewhere, entire districts used to live in terror, often for months on end. There are regions where the Christian population has lived under a reign of fear from birth until death. In certain parts of Macedonia, they don’t tell you how they fought against the Turks or against the Albanians, but rather about the way that they managed to flee from them, or the ruse that they used to escape them. In Macedonia I heard people say: “Even in our dreams we flee from the Turks and the Albanians.” It is true that for about twenty years a certain number of them have regained their composure, but the deep-seated feeling has not changed among the masses of people. Even after the liberation in 1912 one could tell that a large number of Christians had not yet become aware of their new status: fear could still be read on their faces.

It is worth recalling that our “moderate” Bosnian Muslim ally in the 1990s, was President Alija Izetbegovic. Mr. Izetbegovic was a youthful recruiter for Himmler’s Nazi Bosnian Muslim Handschar Division,   

Folks: To continue: Press on Dr. Bostom’s link above.

As for me: I’m on vacation and “going fishing” for while now.

EARLIER THE SAME DAY:

Folks: I am getting many articles on the Balkan Mess. I am still no expert but what must be admitted is this: The West, including America, has been “had” in terms of signing on to only one acceptable narrative: The Christian Serbs are the evil aggressors and the Muslim separatists and imperialists are the innocent victims. (Where have we heard this before?)

The truth: That all sides committed war crimes but not genocide is apparently too complicated to bear. Anyway, I am reposting an entire article that has just appeared. Once again, dear reader, tell me what you know and what you think about this.

READERS PLEASE NOTE: I will post no comments that insult other commentators or that insult me. Good will must be assumed or I must assume an absence of civility on the insulter’s part. Also please note: This is not a legal tribunal. And calls for “evidence” must bear this in mind.

What are the lessons we must learn from the article? Please read the Comments posted at the Trifkovic article below.

Source http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=673

Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed

by Srdja Trifkovic

The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable.

This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition of Karadzic’s alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the Bosnian war.

UNRESOLVED ISSUE OF WAR GUILT

The imbalance is more than merely unfair. The talking heads gloating over Karadzic’s capture no longer need to suppress the thought that different U.S. policies could have prevented the horror of “Bosnia,” because no such thought—however pertinent in this case—ever occurs to them. Yet the fact remains that in the spring of 1992 the late Warren Zimmermann, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia before its breakup and civil war, materially contributed—probably more than any other single man—to the outbreak of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The facts of the case have been established beyond reasonable doubt and are no longer dosputed by experts.

Nine months earlier, in June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, a move that triggered off a short war in Slovenia and a sustained conflict in Croatia where the Serbs refused to accept Tudjman’s fait accompli. These events had profound consequences on Bosnia and Herzegovina, that “Yugoslavia in miniature.” The Serbs (34%) adamantly opposed the idea of Bosnian independence. The Croats (17%) predictably rejected any suggestion that Bosnia and Herzegovina remains within a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia.

Alija Izetbegovic, the leader of the Muslim community (43%), had decided as early as September 1990 that Bosnia should also declare independence if Slovenia and Croatia secede. On 27 February 1991 he went a step further: “I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.” The process culminated with the referendum on independence (29 February 1992). The Serbs duly boycotted it. In the end just over 62 percent of voters opted for independence, overwhelmingly Muslims and Croats; but even this figure was short of the two-thirds majority required by the constitution. This did not stop the rump government of Izetbegovic from declaring independence on 3 March.

Simultaneously one last attempt was under way to save peace. The Portuguese foreign minister Jose Cutileiro organized a conference in Lisbon attended by the three communities’ leaders, Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, and the Croat leader Mate Boban. The EU mediators persuaded the three sides that Bosnia-Herzegovina should be independent but internally organized on the basis of ethnic regions or “cantons.”

The breakthrough was due to the Bosnian Serbs’ acceptance of an independent Bosnia, provided that the Muslims give up their ambition of a centralized, unitary one. Izetbegovic appeared to accept that this was the best deal he could make—but soon he was to change his mind. When he returned from Lisbon, Zimmermann flew post haste from Belgrade to Sarajevo to tell him that the U.S. did not stand behind the Cutileiro plan. He said it was a means to “a Serbian power grab” that could be prevented by internationalizing the problem. When Izetbegovic said that he did not like the Lisbon agreement, Zimmerrmann encouraged him to renege. State Department subsequently admitted that the US policy “was to encourage Izetbegovic to break with the partition plan.” The New York Times (August 29, 1993) brought a revealing quote from the key player himself:

The embassy [in Belgrade] was for recognition of Bosnia and Herzegovina from sometime in February on,” Mr. Zimmermann said of his policy recommendation from Belgrade. “Meaning me.” … Immediately after Mr. Izetbegovic returned from Lisbon, Mr. Zimmermann called on him in Sarajevo… “He said he didn’t like it; I told him, if he didn’t like it, why sign it?”

l

Please press on the link above to continue reading this long and thoughtful article.

But fiction and exceptions aside, ethnic and religious feuds have simmered and boiled over between the Christians of different nationalities in the Caucasus and between Christians and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia.

I have now received and posted the most challenging comments in response to my piece about the capture of Radovan Karadzic.

What I do know about the recent warfare in the former Yugoslavia is that many girls and women were brutally and repeatedly gang-raped. I know this because I spoke with their lawyers and with feminist counselors and I read everything about their plight that I could find. Had there been funding enough to protect the raped women witnesses, I might have testified to the Court in The Hague about Rape Trauma Syndrome.

Other than this, and like everyone else, I believed that, although atrocities were committed by all sides, that the Bosnian Serbs were the ones who mainly committed genocide, “ethnic cleansing” and the gang-rapes. Now, Mr. John Peter Maher writes here that the massacre in Srbrenica was a Big Lie propagated by masterful Muslim deceivers. Several other commentators, including Felix Quigley here compare this lie to the lie about a massacre in Jenin which never really took place. They claim that in fact, most of the allegedly dead Muslim boys and men made their way to Tuzla where they joined or were protected by Muslim jihadists.

I have begun to ask my sources whether any of this is true or whether none of this is true. So far, I have been told that “some” of this might be true; that “none” or “little” of it can be true; that this might be the beginning of a masterful disinformation campaign to support Karadzic’s testimony at trial; and that the disinformation campaign was begun long ago by Islamists who are covetously eying Europe.

Friends: This is not my area. Do I have any Balkan experts out there? If so, please weigh in.

When FOX-TV recently aired their excellent documentary about honor murders in America, they showed a photo of the murdered girls’ mother when she married Yaser. She was fifteen years old and Yaser was thirty. “Tissy” (Patricia) Said looked young enough to be Yaser’s daughter. She now looks old enough to be Yaser’s mother.

I can only wonder why.

But, amazingly, in Dallas, Tissy is now allegedly living with another Muslim man–this one is from Iraq. No, they are not lovers. He is her protector and/or guard. I am told that Tissy has also sometimes been seen wearing hijab and has long ago been forgiven by her father-in-law, Yaser Said’s father, whom Tissy lives near and whom she often visits.

“Forgiven?” Yes, he has forgiven her for having run away with her daughters and their Christian, so-called boyfriends who were only trying to help the girls save their own lives.

Tissy’s Muslim captor/protector has allegedly threatened to kill some Christian members of Tissy’s family. Islam, Yaser and Tissy’s son has allegedly threatened to blow up Gail Gartrell’s house.

Gail Gartrell, whom I have quoted many times, and who is Amina and Sarah’s great-aunt, believes that Tissy’s flight with the girls may have been a planned ruse since, after all, she then subsequently lured them to their deaths. She has also been profiting from their deaths. “She played the sympathy card.”

For example, the Lewisville High School students took up a collection for both Tissy and Islam to help them “start new lives.” I am told that the total sum may have amounted to $1700.00 in cash. Tissy has allegedly used that money to buy gas, clothes, and to eat out. Tissy has also rented out her previous home to tenants who have been paying the rent. Tissy however has allegedly not been using that money to pay the bank and her tenants may eventually be evicted.

According to Gail Gartrell, at least three to four Christian relatives now confirm that Tissy was neither tearful nor filled with grief at the grave site of her two daughters.

They also confirm that when they went over to help Tissy fix up her latest marital home in order to rent it out that they discovered the following:

There were holes in the walls and doors punched there by both Yaser and Islam Said in fits of rage and to terrorize the girls. Their brother Islam, broke Sarah’s desk in half with a hammer, yelling that “the whore bitch deserved what she got.” These relatives confirm that Islam’s rage is highly volatile and “at fever-pitch 95% of the time,” and continues to this day.

Tissy took possession of Amina’s two computers. One is now hidden, the other she destroyed. Again, I can only wonder why.

Stay tuned. I may write more about the history of violence in the Said family. The reason this domestic “soap opera” is important to track is that this may be the first time that anyone involved in an honor murder in America is trying to re-create the family history and publicly share the unfolding details of how the Muslim parents, siblings, and extended Muslim family (uncles, etc.) behave both before and after an honor murder has been committed.

Yes, I wrote “Muslim parents.” Gail Gartrell now believes that Tissy converted to Islam long ago and therefore does not mind “lying to infidels” or collaborating in the honor murder of her own daughters.

Westerners are in denial. And, the deniers are even more afraid of Jihad and terrorism than those of us who are crying out against it. Thus, like battered women, they seek to appease the violent offender; they also engage in self-blame in the misguided belief that if they do not “offend” their batterer that he will not batter them.

Thus, if the West had not published the “inflammatory” Danish cartoons and had not allowed the state of Israel to come into being and to stay right there, a mote in the eye of envious, corrupt, and lazy Muslim nations–then Arafat would not have launched his terrorist campaign, Muslim immigrants in Europe would not have launched their various Intifadas, and Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood would not have gained in strength.

Deniers also tend to blame it all on American foreign policy, Wall Street and the CIA. They rarely blame anything on Islamic gender and religious apartheid or on Jihad Rising.

What else other than fundamentalist Islam explains the Iranian stonings to death of perfectly innocent girls and women for the alleged crime of prostitution which is how female rape victims, those who dare allege rape, women who are not sufficiently “covered,” or who demonstrate for women’s rights– are all viewed. Read my book, The Death of Feminism for a longer discussion about this.

Read the foreign press. For example, I have just learned that the Saudi, UAE, and (to a lesser extent) Iranian governments will not allow female athletes to compete in the upcoming Olympics. This decision has nothing to do with the CIA. However, I would agree that America’s policy towards Saudi Arabia must radically change, both because of their mistreatment of women and in terms of our being held hostage to grossly inflated oil prices such that we have been funding the Islamist war against the West.

I have just also learned that the Pakistani-based Taliban has demanded that un-Islamic businesses “shut down” within fifteen days or “face dire consequences.” The businesses targeted are CD shops, internet cafes, and cable service providers. And, the Taliban are threatening any woman who is not wearing proper hijab with disfigurement by acid. (Read about it in the Daily Times of Pakistan).

Contrary to myth, the U.S. did not fund the Taliban to fight against the Soviet invaders. In fact, after the Soviet military withdrawal in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington simply washed its hands of Afghanistan. The Taliban did not even exist until about 1996, when Pakistan created them for its own purposes.

Finally, also in the Pakistani Punjab, (are we really allied with this awful country?–yes we are, and there is no choice), two Christian sisters, aged 10 and 13, were abducted by Muslim men who married them and forced them to convert to Islam. The local police refused to help the parents find their children. Now, a judge has ruled that the children cannot see their Muslim husbands or their Christian parents and has placed them in a woman’s shelter.

The persecution of infidels, forced conversions, and forced marriage to female children is typical of 7th century Islam which alas, is still alive and well today.

Folks: It’s not our fault. We didn’t break it (Islamic fundamentalism) and we may not be able to fix it. But we do have to prevent it from invading our shores. If not, all the Western women will be veiled, the intellectuals silenced, the technology used only for jihad, and not to spread modernity.

“The only problem I have with this article is that Chesler assumes that mentally ill people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. She also makes some comments about “inbreeding” among Arabs that I think are just meant to be mean and are not factual. But most troubling to me was the calling of these women mentally ill and thus furthering the stigma that mentally ill people must face all the time.”

I see. So Emily defends the moral agency of mentally ill people who, in her opinion, “know the difference between right and wrong.” Thus, I have “stigmatized” the female suicide bombers by daring to suggest that they have not made a free, rational, and moral choice about blowing themselves and others right up. She does not focus upon the ideological indoctrination, or on the exploitation or manipulation of vulnerable women; she sees only free women making free choices. Just because these women may be mentally ill does not mean that they have not made an independent and moral decision to kill.

Emily describes herself as a “mentally ill woman who has a mentally retarded son.” Thus, she is defending her own, so to speak.

I will take no cheap shots here since I agree that mental illness does exist; that it is painful, and often crippling; and that forced treatments are inhumane. However, I also think that when someone is actively hallucinating or is clinically depressed or in a rage that they do not make wise decisions.

In her second comment, Brink minimizes the increase of female suicide killers by saying that girls and women are also more violent in the West. She writes:

“This conversation seems one-sided, examining the crimes of female suicide bombers as if our own culture didn’t have its own epidemic of violence by women. For lots of years now there have been a rise in female violence in the West, whether it be in the form of girl gangs or women killing their children or spouses. its just not as dramatic and political as strapping a bomb to your chest, but its the same thing. Women still want to be equal to men, and sometimes that frustration comes out in the form of violence.”

Another comment, by “Fred” addresses Brink’s point as well as anything I might say. Here it is:

“But the kind of violence that Ms. Chesler is getting at is more than the usual criminal kind of violence that ensnares women as well as men in our cultures. This kind of violence is ideological, theological, cosmological. It is the act of holding a gun or sword to the heads of other human beings with the aim of exacting “divine” punishment. It says, “If you don’t adhere to Allah’s demands, we will kill you and indeed we are already in the process of taking your lives.”

It does not matter if men are doing this or women are doing this. This is POLITICAL violence. I don’t label it religious violence because I do not consider Islam to be a religion. It’s a totalitarian cult, founded by a personality disordered narcissist who put words into “Allah’s” mouth to justify his every whim. I’m not making this up and these are not my ideas. There are prominent former Muslims who have stated this and much, much more.

Using women as shaheeds is not an astonishing thing. These people will do anything and stop at nothing to wage jihad. They will use children. They’ll use animals. They will use ANYTHING to advance the violence and there are no ethics in the Qur’an and ahadith to restrain them, because YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO A KAFIR OR A MUSLIM APOSTATE. This is something that is particularly difficult for Westerners to wrap their minds around.”

Finally, in her comment today, Brink reveals her hand (and more ignorance). She writes:

“I am ashamed to even be in this conversation. Islam is a noble religion and culture, and several people here have completely dismissed it as backward and invalid, which is exactly the sort of cultural chauvinism that keeps the bombs flying, in my opinion. I’d point out that Islam enjoyed a golden age while Europe was still in the dark ages. Islam pioneered women’s rights during this time and made many important advances in mathematics and literature, and jews and christians who lived under the Moors enjoyed complete religious freedom. I think the comments here on Islam are totally racist.

Muslims from many walks of life will tell you it is America’s support for Israel that enrages them. I believe that if we stopped that, it would go a long way towards reconciliation. But I know that is not going to happen, because of the large and vocal Jewish population in the U.S.”

Ah, Emily Brink. There was never a Golden Age nor has every Muslim or all Islam traditionally behaved in “noble ways.” They have been genocidal toward infidels and genocidal towards each other in terms of Sunni/Shiite feuding. Perhaps Brink should read the works of Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Nonie Darwish, Steve Emerson, Ibn Warraq, Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, and countless others on this precise point.

A dead giveaway: Brink capitalizes Moors, Islam, and Muslims but presents Jews and Christians in lower case form as jews and christians.

Only leftists and Islamists do this. Or, perhaps Brink might argue, the “mentally ill” do so as well.

BREAKING NEWS:

Friends:

Emily keeps writing, comment after comment. (See the Comments below). She says:

“I wish that Chesler would remove her inflammatory assessment of me and clear my name.”

“Inflammatory?” Have I penned the equivalent of the Danish cartoons?

I have not defamed Emily and will not remove my remarks which are fully protected under the First Amendment. However, I will not be posting any of Emily’s future comments if they continue along these same lines.

Let her get her own flagpole.

MORE BREAKING NEWS

Emily keeps posting and I have not censored her except in one case when she talked only about herself and not about the issues at hand. However, in her latest post, which I published, Emily explains, perhaps with pride, that she studied the work of Edward Said–which tells me all that I need to know. Said was a consummate propagandist and Big Liar. Read Ibn Warraq’s brilliant book about Said titled : Defending the West. A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism.

The problem lies in the liberal arts and social sciences academic curriculum in the West. It has indoctrinated so many people who are now, on the basis of that politically correct indoctrination, making common cause with totalitarian and fascist Islamists.

LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS

I think people should stop focusing on Emily who has probably absorbed quite enough criticism. Even if we are telling her the truth and are within our First Ammendment rights to do so, there are too many of us and only one of her.

Therefore, for those who want to address the issues raised by my post, please continue to do so but let’s leave Emily out of it from now on. Okay?

This should no longer surprise us. Like men, women are human beings and are therefore as close to the apes as to the angels. Thus, like men, women are as likely to nourish as to destroy. Still, we live in a culture that on the one hand, suspects women of being sneaky, “bitchy,” even evil but on the other hand, idealizes women as morally superior to men and as Natural Born Mothers, not as Natural Born Killers.

And, we are used to hearing that women in the Third World, including the Islamic world, are victims, not killers. How can they be both? They can.

According to the U.S. Military, in the last five years in Iraq, 43 women carried out suicide bombings.Women hide their explosive belts and bombs under their flowing black abayas–one more reason that such outerwear should be banned in the West. Actually, Muslims kill more Muslims than anyone else does. This latest attack was apparently launched by Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims. It might be in the interests of Islam to ban such clothing which has been used to disguise both male and female terrorists.

Of course, The New York Times suggests that “despair” and “spousal grief” drives women to become suicide terrorists.

Not so fast.

Women who have been despised and abused since birth may be especially vulnerable to the kind of ideological and religious entrapment which promises them glory (and their families money). Also, due to inbreeding/first cousin marriage and family violence, they may be mentally retarded, already terrorized, or prone to depression and therefore easy to manipulate. Or, female suicide killers may be filled with rage–enough rage so that they want to scapegoat strangers to avenge themselves against family intimates.

True, some women are mourning the loss of brothers, fathers, and sons but what about Islamist ideology? What about al-Qaeda handlers who tempt women with glory just as they tempt men? What about the Palestinian members of Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigade, Hezbollah and Hamas (al-Qaeda does this too), who exploit depressed, mentally ill, and mentally retarded women into strapping on an explosive belt and blowing themselves up? What about a culture in which being born female is often a capital crime, a culture in which girls and women are honor murdered for the slightest, alleged infringements of the patriarchal rules? If someone feels she is already a marked woman, why not redeem her shame by going out in a blaze of glory and taking some infidels along with her?

Yesterday’s huge blasts in Iraq were carried out by four different women and few infidels were involved. These women continued the centuries-old feud between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims. If anyone still believes that women are more compassionate than men, think about this: According to the International Herald Tribune,

“The second (female-launched) attack occurred inside a tent that provided shade and rest for female marchers. The female bomber walked into the tent, sat down and, according to a police official, Abu Ali, read the Koran with the women sitting inside. When she exited the tent, she left a bag behind, and moments later, it exploded. ”

The woman sat down and prayed with them and then sent them to their deaths.

I remember two films, one by my friend Pierre Rehov, the other by a promising newcomer, Shaun Beyer. Both filmmakers had interviewed Palestinian female terrorists in Israeli jails. None of the terrorists showed any remorse. Many were proud of their murderous or potentially murderous attacks. They all seemed quite religious. One woman had assumed a leadership position; she and her enforcers policed and punished the other women with enormous cruelty.

These women were ideologically empowered, both politically and theologically, to commit violence. They saw nothing wrong with doing so–just as the families of their culture see nothing wrong with honor murders.

My friends: We are up against a formidable enemy who worships death, despises life, and lives only to fight. We must prove equal to the task.

I would like to acknowledge my colleague, Dr. Nancy L. Kobrin, for her analysis of Arab and Muslim culture in terms of its psychological effect on both boys and girls, and on men and women.

FOX was the only national media outlet that really covered the honor murder of Sarah and Amina Said in Dallas Texas early this year. Kudos to them for their interest in this subject. The crew told me that I was the only domestic violence expert willing to say that honor murders have something to do with….Islam and with Muslims.

The Fox team was utterly amazing: Friendly, professional, exceedingly well prepared. About six or seven serious men arrived with lights, cameras, and computers and they turned my home into a studio-quality locale. I was interviewed by the very beautiful and brainy Lauren Greene but as I now understand it, the program will also be hosted by Megan Kelly. Let me thank Justin Laffer and Byron Garoufalis for providing excellent backup.

I would welcome your views of the program and the subject right here at my blog.

Yes, I know, the film has been out for awhile. Call me old-fashioned but I think that some things are worth thinking and writing about forever, not just as breaking news and potential fish wrap.

I wanted to see how well the film portrayed immigrant Muslim life in London. Would it focus only on British-Caucasian racism or only on Muslim charges of “Islamophobia?” The film shows us both realities–but since it is a work of art, not merely another television-like piece of entertainment, it shows us much more, but very quietly, softly. The film is told from it’s heroine’s point of view.

When she is seventeen, a young, shy, quiet, modest, and uneducated Bangladeshi girl, Nazneen Ahmed, is sent off to London to marry a man, Chanu, whom she has never met, who is old enough to be her father, and who looks about three times her size. She has lost her mother to suicide and her father has now separated her forever from her sister, who is also her best and only friend, and with whom she corresponds, almost daily.

The film’s first magic trick is to show us how, over time, an arranged marriage (in this particular case, or in the case of those who accept this custom), can both “work” and even lead to love.

Nazneen’s husband, (played by Satish Kaushik), is an educated man, pompous, decent, hard-working–a domestic tyrant but not a physically abusive one. He does not have a prayer of succeeding in England. He is never promoted. His pride forces him to quit his civil servant’s position; unwisely, he borrows money from a scavenger, a bottom-feeder–a Muslim woman, a usurer, who enriches herself at the expense of other Muslim immigrants. Chanu, who reads Hume and Proust, finally gets a job as a bus driver.

Nazneen lives in profound but uncomplaining isolation. When her husband quits his job, she decides to work for money sewing clothing at home. Chanu does not approve of this but he does not stop her. Nazneen–who thinks of the Bangladesh of her childhood when she is having marital sex–has extraordinary chemistry with Karim, the young British-born Muslim man who brings her the garments to sew. Karim, (played by Christopher Simpson), views Nazneen as “the real thing,” a simple village girl. The chemistry between them is extraordinary and they are inevitably drawn to each other. Our shy girl enjoys a brief and unexpected adulterous affair.

“Oh-oh,” my companion and I thought: It’s a Bangladeshi Anna Karenina. How wrong we were. What happens is nothing short of amazing.

Nazneen refuses to divorce her husband to marry her beautiful lover, who has become an angry Muslim anti-Western activist. And, when her husband, who cannot bring himself to condemn England, finally decides to return to Bangladesh after 9/11–Nazneen decides to stay in London without him! And she does so at precisely the moment it becomes clear to her that she really loves her husband.

Then Chanu matches her. Playing against type, he lovingly blesses her decision to remain in London together with their two westernized daughters.

And yes, our hero wears hijab. For those who know my work, let me assure you that this film has not led me to approve of forced veiling (or even of veiling), but that is not the issue in this film and the hero is indeed a hero and she does wear hijab.

This film is a powerful female coming-of-age story and a fine feminist drama. We care about these people, they are “real.” They are with me still and might remain with me for a long time.

Kudos to director Sarah Gavron, to her peerless cast, and to Monica Ali, who wrote the novel upon which the film is based.

I urge you to see Brick Lane or to rent the DVD. It stands head and shoulders above all the violent and cynical Hollywood re-runs that dominate our screens this summer.

The man, nay the fiend, is a psychiatrist and as luck would have it, I actually knew a woman who once was his patient. She was an educated Muslim woman, married to a Christian man, in a time when Belgrade prided itself on its sophistication and tolerance.

How could Karadzic turn on Muslims who were once his patients? (How could Nazi doctors turn on their Jewish patients and teachers? How could Mengele do what he did? How could the British-based Muslim doctors try to blow up the Glasgow airport?)

It is not unusual for ideologically and militarily empowered people who were once your employees, employers, neighbors, and friends, to be the first to turn you in to the police, participate in beating you up, plunder and occupy your home, kill you to eliminate the possibility that you might one day return to claim what is rightfully yours. Sometimes, more rarely, your former neighbors and friends might save you.

Karadzic enjoyed sixteen years of power and safety. His genocidally massacred victims did not. Those girls and women who survived his (and Radko Mladic’s) “gender cleansing” policies of repeated, public gang-rapes have been tormented every day since then. One such woman, “Jasmina,” says that under Karadzic’s rule, “we were raped every day.”

She lived in Bijeljina and in 1992, Karadzic’s soldiers took over her largely Muslim city and began to torture and kill the population.

Jasmina never saw her mother again. The men in her family were beaten. She and ten other women were gang-raped in front of their children. When she begged the soldiers to kill her, they laughed and said “We don’t need you dead.”

However, in Jasmina’s case, after one year as a sexual slave, a Serbian soldier who had known her parents rescued her (he purchased her as a “private prostitute”). You may read about Jasmina Here.

Many of the raped Muslim women became pregnant. Many were rejected by their families because they had been dishonored. Depression and suicide were real risks. In Jasmina’s case, she felt that her husband should have rejected her but they got around that by never discussing what had happened to either of them during the war.

But, she has attempted suicide three times and to this day, “cannot look her husband in the eye.” The “ethnically cleansed” Muslims do not wish to return to the region where their tormentors live and have been peacefully re-located elsewhere.

I was once on tap to testify about Rape Trauma Syndrome in the matter of the former Yugoslavia. Although rape is now considered a war crime, the international criminal tribunals (in the matter of Rwanda and Bosnia) remains pitifully under funded.

Do not expect Dr. Karadzic to be any more apologetic than his pal, Slobodan Milosovic, was. Eichmann in the Jerusalem dock was unashamed, unruffled, even proud of his “efficiency.” Expect that Karadzic will justify what he did as “self defense,” as a Serbian Bosnian nationalist equivalent of a political honor murder.

Those who commit evil on a grand scale are the kinds of people who do not think it is wrong. Dinko Sakic commanded a notorious death camp in Croatia where 2,000 Serbs, Jews, and gypsies were murdered. Sakic fled at the end of World War Two and lived openly for half a century in Argentina. He even gave interviews boasting about what he had done. Sakic said that he would gladly do it all over again. When he was finally caught and tried, he laughed at the verdict.

Sakic just died at age 86. I hope there is a special circle in Hell for the likes of Sakic, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Milosevic, Karadzic and for all those, world-wide who committed similar crimes against humanity. On the other hand–maybe it would be more instructive, more punitive, to condemn them to the company of angels and saints.

Please read the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom report on Saudi textbooks. Here And read Ann Applebaum in the Washington Post Here.

Newly revised Saudi fourth-grade textbooks still teach children (both in the Kingdom and in Saudi funded madrassas and mosques around the world), that a Muslim cannot “love” an infidel but must instead “hate” him.

How can rational Westerners continue to delude themselves about the “peaceful” intentions of Islam, a “religion of peace?” Yes, theoretically, Islam can evolve and be interpreted in more peaceful ways but that has not yet happened. Don’t listen to me. Ask any Muslim or ex-Muslim dissident. Ask the heroic Wafa Sultan (who must live in hiding in America) or Aayan Hirsi Ali (who must live with permanent, around-the-clock security). Why would they have to hide from a religion whose practioners are “peaceful?”