 Allegations that a former Pakistani military officer was closely involved in a suspected terrorist plot with a Canadian are raising new concerns about where Pakistan stands in global counterterrorism efforts. Indian officials have long suspected that Pakistan was somehow connected to attacks in Mumbai in 2008 that killed 166 people and wounded hundreds more. The New York Times reported this week that a previously unidentified player is a recently retired high-ranking Pakistani military officer. The report is expected to put further strain on Pakistan's relations with India, but also with the United States. "It's an excellent illustration of how deep the Islamist sympathies run in the Pakistani military," said Professor Tristan Mabry, an expert on India-Pakistan relations with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. Prof. Mabry estimates that the United States gives Pakistan about $1.5-billion in economic aid each year plus $1.5-billion in military funding. This infuriates India, he said, which sees itself as a victim of Pakistani-supported terrorism. An FBI affidavit unsealed this month makes repeat references to someone it identifies only as "Individual B." Citing sources, The New York Times reported that the individual is an ex-military officer, but did not give a name. The affidavit was filed after the arrests of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-born Canadian who has lived the past 10 years in Chicago, and his boyhood friend David Headley, who was known as Daood Gilani until three years ago. None of the allegations against the two men has been proven in court. Based on intercepts of phone calls and e-mail exchanges - primarily between Mr. Rana, Mr. Headley, the ex-Pakistani military official and two men listed by the U.S. as senior terrorism figures - the FBI arrested Mr. Rana and Mr. Headley last month under suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The FBI's case focused primarily on claims the two men planned to attack the offices of the Denmark newspaper Jyllands-Posten over cartoons of the prophet Mohammed that infuriated many Muslims. The FBI's affidavit notes, however, that the plot appeared to shift this fall to an attack in India. New information about Mr. Headley surfaced this week in a profile by the Philadelphia Examiner. The paper had interviewed Mr. Headley's mother, Serrill Headley, in 1974. According to that 35-year-old interview, Ms. Headley, who grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Bryn Mawr, said she married a Pakistani diplomat and lived in Pakistan for 10 years, but the marriage fell apart and she lost custody of her children. In 1977, she brought her son to Philadelphia, but she said he had a hard time accepting that she ran a bar because of his Muslim upbringing. In recent years, Mr. Headley and Mr. Rana both posted regular messages on a Yahoo message group for former students of a military school in Hasan Abdal, Pakistan, according to the FBI. In one 2008 post, Mr. Headley wrote that Islam should not be mocked, and that he was "disposed toward violence" against the Danish cartoonists and authors Sherry Jones and Irshad Manji, a Canadian. Globe and Mail 
By Tom Kelly | July 08
A fanatic who once paraded his baby in an 'I love Al Qaeda' hat was yesterday jailed for firebombing the home of the publisher of a novel about Mohammed.
Sentencing Ali Beheshti, 41, and two accomplices to four and a half years, Mrs Justice Rafferty told them: 'If you choose to live in this country, you live by its rules.'
'There is no such thing as "a la carte citizenship" and, in your case, there is no such thing as "a la carte obedience" to the law.'  Notorious: Ali Beheshti, posing with a gun in this Metropolitan Police photo, admitted conspiracy to endanger life Beheshti, a follower of hate cleric Abu Hamza, poured diesel through the letterbox of Martin Rynja's £2.5million house and set it alight to 'punish' him for agreeing to release The Jewel of Medina, a fictional account of the Prophet's child bride.
Beheshti achieved notoriety three years ago at a protest against Danish cartoons of Mohammed when he was photographed with his 18-month-old daughter, Farisa, whom he had dressed in a pink bonnet celebrating Al Qaeda.
Beheshti, who has a previous conviction for the attempted murder of his father, described her to reporters as the youngest member of the network.
Last September, with accomplices Abrar Mirza, 23, and Abbas Taj, 30, he attacked the five-storey home and office of Mr Rynja in Islington, North London. Cab driver Taj of Forest Gate, East London, acted as the getaway driver as Beheshti and Mirza, a mobile phone salesman of Walthamstow, North East London, poured diesel into the house.
A small fire began but nobody was hurt because police and fire crews arrived in time to smash down the door and put it out. The defendents used diesel as an accelerant, causing damage to the front door of the publisher's house The arsonists were seized by armed police as they fled the scene in what officers described as an ' intelligenceled operation'.
Yesterday Andrew Hall QC, for Beheshti, said it was 'an act of protest born of the publication of a book felt by him and other Muslims to be disrespectful, provocative and offensive'.
 Novel 'The Jewel of Medina' motivated the extremists to commit the arson attack Before his arrest Beheshti lived with his family in Ilford, East London. He described himself as a pilot on Farisa's birth certificate.
Beheshti and Mirza had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life at a hearing in April. Taj was convicted of the same offence at Croydon Crown Court in May.
At a sentencing hearing yesterday Mrs Justice Rafferty, sitting at London's Royal Courts of Justice, praised Mr Rynja as a 'principled man' who had exercised critical judgment on a literary work, and stood up to be counted, knowing that publishing it put him at risk.
Mr Rynja's publishing company, Gibson Square Books, bought the rights to the novel after Random House dropped plans to publish it, fearing it could 'incite acts of violence'. Miss Jones said her book was respectful to Islam, and Mr Rynja said last October that he felt its publication was part of a liberal democracy.
Before his arrest Beheshti lived with his family in a smart semi detached house in Ilford, east London, where a 2007 Mitsubishi 4x4 sits on the drive. He described himself as a pilot on Farisa's birth certificate.
His wife, Hannah, 28, is the daughter of a sales consultant for an engineering firm who grew up in a smart home in a Bristol suburb.
Beheshti and Mirza, a mobile phone salesman of Walthamstow, North East London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to recklessly damage property and endanger life.
Cab driver Taj of Forest Gate, East London was convicted of the same offence at Croydon Crown Court in May .
They were sentenced at the Royal Courts of Justice for administrative reasons. Source: Mail Online
H/T JihadWatch
 December 31, 2008
THE media took great delight in reporting the encounter between US President George W. Bush and a pair of flying shoes during his final visit to Iraq two weeks ago. But the great bastions of free speech missed the true significance of an Arab reporter throwing his shoes during a press conference in Baghdad.
Bush has long maintained that it would be a fine thing to see the emergence of some basic Western values in the Arab world. Values such as freedom of expression. Perhaps the return to Iraq of a bit of shoe-throwing as the ultimate sign of Arab disgust is a healthy sign of a democracy, warts and all, taking hold. Iraqis had to wait until Saddam Hussein was dead before they threw their shoes en masse at his toppling statue.
Puerile as it is as a form of expression, Iraqis can now throw shoes freely at any leader, including the outgoing leader of the free world. So maybe Bush’s final visit to Iraq is, after all, a healthy sign of democratic values taking root. What a shame those same values have, over a period of years, been uprooted in the West.
If 2006 will be remembered as the year the West rolled over when tested on free speech - think the Danish cartoons, which large swaths of the media refused to publish for fear of causing offence - two years on, things are worse.
The year 2008 deserves to be seen as a year of anticipatory surrender, a year when the West decided to roll over on free speech of its own accord. Just in case. No threats. No demands. Just suppress controversial speech in advance, just in case it causes offence. You understand, we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. In fact, such a trashing of core Western values is difficult to understand.
In no particular order, an audit of 2008 must begin with the comments of Mark Thompson, director-general of the BBC, who announced in October that Islam deserved different coverage in the media compared to other religions because Muslims were an ethnic minority.
While a spokesman for Thompson tried to play down the significance of what the head of the British public broadcaster had said by claiming that his boss was not calling for preferential treatment of Islam by the media, it’s hard to interpret Thompson’s words any other way.
The fact that a religion is identified with one or more ethnic minorities should surely have no bearing on other people’s freedom to probe, question and indeed lampoon that religion, in the same way that Christianity is regularly subjected to criticism and comedy spoofs.
It is deeply troubling that in response to claims by British comedian Ben Elton that the BBC would “let vicar gags pass but not imam gags”, Thompson said that it did take a different approach to Islam. A public broadcaster that openly admits self-censorship of important issues may get a mark for honesty, but the price is taxpayer-funded vandalism of Western values.
The same rank capitulation occurred in the private sector when, in August, Random House pulled the publication of The Jewel of Medina, a book by Sherry Jones that told the tale of Aisha, the child bride of Mohammed.
The publisher had received no threats, just “cautionary advice” that publishing the book “might cause offence to some in the community (and) incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment”.
Perhaps Random House took comfort, in a “we told you so” kind of way, that the publisher who did finally print the book in Britain, Gibson Square Books, was set on fire.
But instead of surrendering to perceived threats and real violence aimed at ideas and words, the West ought to be stiffening its resolve, declaring such barbarism unacceptable in a free society committed to freedom of expression. That is not happening.
When Somalia-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali arrived in Australia in early August to talk about free speech and her right to criticise Mohammed, she was still accompanied by security to protect her from those who regard violence as a legitimate response to words and ideas.
Hirsi Ali won’t be silenced. Neither will Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who is also surrounded by security. The release in March of his short film Fitna, which is critical of Islam, was followed by a fatwa from al-Qa’ida, boycotts against Dutch products, and attempts by Muslim countries to censor the film from the internet.
In the face of real threats, the tendency to curtail free speech even before threats arrive rather than offend minority sensibilities is spreading like a virulent cancer. Recall the case of the controversial Dutch cartoonist who was arrested in May and interrogated for his cartoons that mocked Islam. At least Gregorius Nekschot did not suffer the fate of Shafeeq Latif, who was sentenced to death in June by a Pakistani judge for insulting Mohammed.
But the West is killing free speech slowly - by more subtle means - through state-sponsored censorship under the grand name of protecting human rights.
The insidious role of human rights commissions was exposed in June when Mark Steyn and Canadian magazine Macleans were hauled before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for islamophobia.
While the complaint was ultimately dismissed, the fact that words warrant oversight by a state tribunal points to a rank attitude to free speech where a person is required to spend copious amounts of time and money defending words and ideas.
The same thing had happened in April, when the Ontario Human Rights Commission dealt with complaints against Steyn and Macleans. And in January, when conservative commentator Ezra Levant had to defend his publication of the Danish cartoons to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission.
As Steyn wrote of his experience of heavy-handed state censorship, the media “seems generally indifferent to a power grab that explicitly threatens to reduce them to a maple-flavoured variant of Pravda ... As some leftie website put it, ‘defending freedom of speech for jerks means defending jerks’. Well, yes. But, in this case, not defending the jerks means not defending freedom of speech for yourself. It’s not a Left-Right thing; it’s a free-unfree thing”.
If large sections of the media - normally devotees of free speech - cave into what the BBC’s Thompson called the “growing nervousness about discussion about Islam”, that self-censorship ripples out to all corners of society.
After the Danish cartoons fiasco, the onus was on the West to show its spine, to reassert its faith in freedom of expression. So far it has failed on that score. Let’s hope 2009 is a better year for free speech and the West’s confidence in itself.
Postscript: Beaufort Books of New York is the publisher of The Jewel of Medina. Miss Jones contacted me overnight saying the following:
Dear Ms. Albrechtson,
Your article on the West’s capitulation to radical Muslims on free speech was very thought-provoking—and you could have included many more examples! I applaud you for speaking out on this crucial issue. Silence is consent, the saying goes, and if we don’t exercise our freedom of speech to protest these attempts to muzzle it, we will certainly lose it.
I would like to make one minor correction regarding my novel, “The Jewel of Medina.” Gibson Square Books has not published it—nor, as far as I can ascertain, does publisher Martin Rynja intend to do so. Shortly after the Sept. 27 arson attempt at his London home office, Mr. Rynja issued a statement declaring that I had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of my book. This assertion, of course, was untrue. Although we have corresponded with Mr. Rynja, neither my agent nor I have been able to coax from him a prospective publication date or any indication of his intentions for the book.
My only English language publisher at this time is Beaufort Books of New York. With my consent, this courageous publisher published my book in a hurry, on Oct. 6, in order to counter the dangerous rumors that my book was pornographic. Our strategy appears to have worked, for the threats and tirades against “The Jewel of Medina” and me have ceased for the most part.
“Jewel” has been published in five countries—the US, Germany, Denmark, Serbia, and Italy—with no repercussions. We have had good sales throughout. In Serbia, the book was the number-one bestseller for at least two months and continues to sell well. It will debut in Spain Feb. 4.
For more information, feel free to visit my new website.
Thank you for standing up for this most important of rights—freedom of speech and expression. And thank you so much for your attention here. I wish you a very happy and healthy New Year!
Warm regards,
Sherry Jones
Author/Journalist
http://www.authorsherryjones.com Source: The Australian
By Luke Johnson The credit crunch and shareholder activists are not the only challenges business has to face. There are rather more dangerous protesters out there than the occasional hedge fund manager who wants some shares to go up. Last week at Borders, the UK and Irish bookstore chain owned by Risk Capital Partners, we received several threats from an extremist Islamic group saying we would suffer if we sold the controversial novel The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones in our shops. Read more ...Source: Financial Times
 It may not be the preferred genre for readers of sites like this, but today's release of The Jewel of Medina is worthy of support. If you'll remember, Random House pulled out of its agreement to publish this first novel by journalist Sherry Jones, saying it feared "it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment." The novel focuses on A'isha, the youngest wife of the Prophet Muhammed. After the Random House withdrawal, Jones quickly secured new publishers in the U.S. and England. But the London home of Gibson Square publisher Martin Rynja was firebombed in late September. Three men are in custody. "It is a sad and dangerous precedent," Jones said in an interview with the London Telegraph. "We seem to live in a culture of fear and I think that's threatening the future of freedom of speech in the West." In response, Beaufort Books pushed up the U.S. release date to today in an attempt to thwart any violent backlash here. We wanted people to have a chance to read the book," Beaufort President Eric Kampmann told the Associated Press. "Once they read the book, we thought the violence part of this story would disappear and people would be focusing on the story, and the book and Sherry." The Times of London calls it "a breezy historical romance." The Los Angeles Times isn't impressed:
"The Jewel of Medina" is a second-rate bodice ripper or, rather, a second-rate bodice ripper-style romance (it doesn't really have sex scenes). It's readable enough, but it suffers from large swaths of purple prose. Paragraphs read like ad copy for a Rudolph Valentino movie."
Other readers may gobble it up, lost in Jones' narrative and efforts to portray a story true to history. But that's the point. It should be judged on its merits as a work of fiction. The notion that it could be silenced by extreme voices should be challenged through our wallets. Source: IPT Blog
 By Tom Kelly and Lucy Ballinger The author of a novel about the prophet Mohammed that provoked a fire-bomb attack on the publisher's home today insisted that Muslims should read the book. Sherry Jones dismissed claims that The Jewel of Medina was 'soft core pornography' and insisted that it is respectful towards Islam. She said the attack on the £2.5million London home of its UK publisher, Martin Rynja, at the weekend was 'a reprehensible act of violence by criminals'. Muslim extremists have also warned the publisher that he faces death for going ahead with the novel about the prophet's child bride, which includes a description of the night they consummate their marriage. But Miss Jones said: 'When people read my book I fully expect the people who are going to be my biggest detractors will be the ones who hate Muslims. 'They will be unhappy to see how compassionately Mohammed comes across. 'I have not dishonoured the Prophet. I say: read the book, I wrote it with the intention of honouring him.' Random House cancelled a £54,000 book deal with its U.S. author last month, fearing a violent reaction by 'a small radical segment' of Muslims. It followed comments from Denise Spellberg, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, who claimed the book had turned a 'sacred history into soft core pornography.' But Miss Jones, a U.S. journalist demanded an apology from the academic for her 'slanderous' comments. 'She used the most inflammatory language she could possibly have used. 'If you want to incite heated emotions from any religious group you just use the word "pornography" in the same sentence as their revered figures. 'She ought to take back her words because it is in no way an accurate description of my book. 'There are no sex scenes in it.' Read more ...Source: Daily Mail
 Raden Adjeng Kartini: Debasing Her MemoryBy Andrew Bostom Having just read the Prologue (available here, not without irony, at a website whose name ends with "..Trashy Books") to Sherry Jones "The Jewel of Medina," one hopes (against hope) that perhaps ( as observed aptly by Diana West), and polygamy, but seems utterly unaware that she is doing so having adopted in her own warped fashion - albeit, not "deferentially" enough - an apologetic narrative for Islam's foundational (and living) debasement of women. Thus her "narrative" dramatization has Ali (who became the fourth "Rightly Guided Caliph, revered by Shi'a) utter to a "nervous and faint" Muhammad, "Wives are easily acquired. You will find another child-bride." For the hadith sources of this sacralized pedophilia, see the following: Sahih Muslim, Book 008, Number 3311:
'A'isha (Allah be pleased with her) reported that Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him) married her when she was seven years old, and she was taken to his house as a bride when she was nine, and her dolls were with her; and when he (the Holy Prophet) died she was eighteen years old. Read more ... Source: Andrew Bostom
 A brouhaha in the publishing world is raising the specter that violence seen in protests to Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, or in reaction to a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, could take place in the United States. The Jewel of Medina, a novel by Sherry Jones, was supposed to hit bookstore shelves Tuesday. But publisher Random House dropped the book at the last minute after being advised it could be offensive to some Muslims. In a statement, the company added: "(B)ut also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.
We felt an obligation to take these concerns very seriously. We consulted with security experts as well as with scholars of Islam, whom we asked to review the book and offer their assessments of potential reactions.
We stand firmly by our responsibility to support our authors and the free discussion of ideas, even those that may be construed as offensive by some. However, a publisher must weigh that responsibility against others that it also bears, and in this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, Inc., booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the book." Read more ... Source: IPT News
 This is a column condemning cowardice - including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did. You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability to explore this story is stunted. The Jewel of Medina was bought by Random House and primed to be a best-seller – before a University of Texas teacher saw proofs and declared it "a national security issue". Random House had visions of a re-run of the Rushdie or the Danish cartoons affairs. Sherry Jones's publisher has pulped the book. It's gone. Read more ...Source: The Independent
Random House accused of cowardice after withdrawing The Jewel of Medina amid fears of Muslim controversyBy Alison Flood The lawyer who was threatened by terrorists whilst acting for Salman Rushdie has said that Random House US should pay "substantial compensation" to Sherry Jones, whose novel about Muhammad's child bride Aisha was dropped by the publisher over fears it could provoke terrorist attacks. Jones's The Jewel of Medina was described as potentially more controversial than both Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the Danish newspaper cartoons of Muhammad. Geoffrey Robertson QC, whose latest book The Tyrannicide Brief is published by Random House US and who was under terrorist threat whilst acting for Rushdie, said: "We can't be overcritical of American publishers for cowering under terrorist threats. After all, the Guardian, like every other British newspaper, lacked the gumption to publish the Danish cartoons. But all who care about free speech have a duty to make this sort of censorship counterproductive. Random House should pay this author substantial compensation, and the book should be placed on a website so everyone can read it."  The Jewel of Medina was due to be published by Random House US on August 12, but the publisher dropped the book after consultations with academics and security experts suggested that it "might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment". The move has provoked a storm of controversy across the internet, with some bloggers calling on readers to boycott Random House, and others criticising Jones for "insulting the Prophet". In a statement, Random House said: "We stand firmly by our responsibility to support our authors and the free discussion of ideas, even those that may be construed as offensive by some. However, a publisher must weigh that responsibility against others that it also bears, and in this instance we decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House Inc, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the book." When Rushdie's The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, attempts were made on the lives of his Norwegian and Italian publishers, and the Japanese translator of the novel was killed. Read more ...Source: GuardianRandom House
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Allegations that a former Pakistani military officer was closely involved in a suspected terrorist plot with a Canadian are raising new concerns about where Pakistan stands in global counterterrorism efforts.
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