With Iran’s presidential elections set for June 14, Mohammad Yazdi, a clerical member of the Guardian Council — Iran’s constitutional watchdog — has said the constitution rules out women being presidential candidates. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current, two-term president of Iran, also is forbidden to run for a third term, but is advancing the candidacy of one of his aides.
Two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been found guilty of plotting to attack Israeli and American targets in Kenya. Iranian nationals Ahmad Abolfathi Mohammad and Sayed Mansour Mousavi were picked up by Kenyan police last year and found to have 15 kilograms of deadly explosives and plans to cause harm.
Islamic activists in Bangladesh have called for an anti-blasphemy law to be put in place as a reaction to secular bloggers. One of their demands includes the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.
Richard Perle, Resident Fellow for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, discusses the latest threats from radical Islamic groups. The motivations and techniques used by Islamist organizations to affect America are spelled out clearly in the “Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America.”
Do Americans suffer from Islamophobia? Or are they simply exhibiting a rational “Getting Blown Up Phobia?” Or a “Using Airplanes as Weapons of Mass Destruction Phobia?” Sensitivity trainer Joe Dan Gorman presents his diagnosis, and also administers some castor oil to leftwing media ideologues, in this edition of Intellectual Froglegs.
Italian police have arrested four Islamists they suspect belonged to a militant cell planning attacks in Israel, Italy and the United States. Police said the men, mostly from Tunisia, are suspected of conspiracy to commit international terrorism and inciting racial hatred.
CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday started to say that deceased Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev had posted “Islamic videos” online before apologizing and calling them “terrorist videos.” “We know that both the CIA and the FBI were told by Russia, their counterparts, ‘You got to look at this guy, we think he’s been radicalized. We think he’s a terrorist,’” the State of the Union host told panelists. “Then we have the fact that up came these, at some point after a trip to Russia and before it, up came Islamic videos — or, I’m sorry, terrorist videos on his website. … At least one department, Homeland Security I believe, knew he’d either come or gone to Russia. And he’s putting up, you know, in praise of terrorism. Why in the world didn’t anybody think, oh, wait, this is a danger sign?”
In recent days, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has made it abundantly clear that he favors treating Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant. Even though the White House said Monday that they will not do so, Graham took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to reiterate his case. Tsarnaev’s ties to “radical Islam,” he argued, are justification enough.
“We’re at war with a radical ideology that hates everything that we stand for,” Graham said. “As a matter of fact, radical Islam is regenerating. And the way they are coming after us, is to find people in our own backyard and turn them against us. How could we have missed this?”
With many unanswered questions surrounding the Boston bombings and the Tsarnaev brothers, Australia’s SBS Dateline gets expert analysis on the story behind the attacks.
“If you really want to know people, start by looking in their bedrooms,” says Shereen El Feki, author of the new book Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World.
El Feki, who was raised in Canada and is a practicing Muslim, is the former vice chair of the U.N.’s Global Commission on HIV and Law. Born to an Egyptian father and Welsh mother, she was motivated by 9/11 to seek a better understanding of her Arab and Islamic heritage.
El Feki found that demonstrators for political freedom in Tahrir Square during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution had little interest in also promoting sexual freedom. That’s because most Arabs derive their sexual mores from their religious beliefs. The only way to bring more sexual freedom to the Arab world, she argues, is through Islam, which was far more tolerant of the needs of the flesh a thousand years ago than it is today. H/T Reason TV
