Community Magazine November 2009

the name “the Ayyildiz team” seized control of the website of Uganda’s defense minis- try, posting messages condemning what they called Israel’s “genocide” against the Palestinians. In another incident, a group calling itself “Lebanese Shee’a Hackers” destroyed a page on Facebook belonging to teenager Todd Snider. The site, which Snider cre- ated in the summer of 2008, was entitled “I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People who Support Israel,” with the inten- tion of generating a strong, united, pro-Israel front online. The group attracted 180,000 members by mid-February, when webjack- ers obliterated the site’s content and replaced it with obscene and threatening pro-Islamist propaganda. As reported in an article in the Front Page Magazine website, the menacing message was datelined in South Lebanon, and warned users against joining Snider’s pro- Israel movement. Snider claimed that hun- dreds of enraged group members petitioned Facebook to rescue the page. Inexplicably, Snider said, Facebook did nothing to stop the attack or restore his site. More Islamist hi-tech mischief was report- ed by an Albanian-language newspaper in Kosovo this past summer. The newspa- per’s website was disrupted for 10 hours on Tuesday, August 10 th . The invaders left a message urging the “anti-Islamic newspa- per” to stop “ridiculing” Muslims. Not surprisingly, the paper had not been ridiculing Muslims. What kindled the ire of the hackers, it seems, was the paper’s coverage of a court case in North Carolina, where a Kosovo citizen and six Americans were standing trial on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks in Jordan, Pakistan, Israel and Kosovo. The newspaper had simply published transcripts and photographs used by the prosecution as evidence of the group’s violent plans. The Other Jihadists The centuries-old term “jihad,” or “holy war,” is usually used in reference to the Islamists’ violent, military struggle against the “infidels” (non-Muslims) with the intent of forcefully spreading Sharia (Muslim law) throughout the world. But while long ago this was achieved solely through con- ventional warfare, the new realities of mod- ern times have brought about a change in strategy. In addition to bloody massacres of civilians and armed aggression, today’s jihadists also work through cyber terror, intimidation, and media manipulation. Aside from the outward attacks on the web, among the hallmarks of these modern- day Jihadists is the intimidation of those who write or publish content deemed offen- sive to Muslims. This tactic received wide- spread media attention in 1989, when Iran’s religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious ruling) ordering Muslims around the world to kill British novelist Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses , whose title refers to a series of passages from the Koran, was considered an affront to Islam. Though Rushdie has lived to tell the story, the response among Islamists was telling – and frightening. Two large bookstores in London that carried the novel were bombed on April 9, 1989. Other bombings targeting British bookstores took place later that spring. Here in the United States, the FBI was notified of no fewer than 78 bomb threats against bookstores in early March, 1989, 30 of which were aimed at the B. Dalton chain. Numerous countries around the world, including democratic nations such as India and South Africa, banned the book out of fear. More recently, another wave of violence followed the publication of a series of car- toons in the Danish Jyllands-Posten news- paper four years ago. The cartoons, drawn by different artists offering their impres- sions of Mohammed, were introduced by a brief essay explaining their purpose – to curb the disturbing trend of reluctance among free countries to criticize Islam: The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incom- patible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where one must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor impor- tance in the present context…We are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him… The newspaper’s editors could not pos- sibly have foreseen the extent to which their observation would be proven correct. Fires were set to the Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, deadly rioting erupted throughout the Muslim world, and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip burned the flags of Denmark and other European coun- tries. Fatwas were issued calling for the execution of the cartoonists and the editor of Jyllands-Posten , all of whom reportedly live in fear to this day. London Freedom is Falling Down Islamist censorship-through-intimidation raised its ugly head yet again last year, in response to a novel written by journalist Sherry Jones, entitled The Jewel of Medina . The book presented a fictional, yet glori- fied, account of an elderly Mohammed’s marriage to a nine-year-old girl. Random House, a well-respected American publish- ing company, had paid $100,000 for pub- lication rights, but cancelled its plans just days before the book’s scheduled release in August, 2008. In an official statement given by Publisher Thomas Perry, Random House explained in eloquent and delicate terms that they cancelled publication because, quite simply, they were scared of Islamist violence: “We stand firmly by our respon- sibility 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 delibera- tion, to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.” Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch and author of several books on the Islamist threat, presented this rather frank analysis of Random House’s decision, in an essay published at HumanEvents.com: “Random House was smart enough to figure out, in these post-Salman Rushdie, post-Muham- mad cartoons, post-Pope Rage days that 34 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE