Saudi-Backed Muslim Man Admits In Court: "Basic" Islamic Behavior Is a Crime

One of my earliest memories of a negative run-in with Muslims here in America happened at, of all places, a Denny's restaurant in La Mirada, California. This was a long time ago, before Muslims were on my radar in any real sense. I knew that there were Muslims around, especially Iranians, but I really didn't give them or their religion much thought. I was, I think, around 17 years old at the time (i.e. a long time ago, as in the President was Reagan, the hot TV show was Dallas and the Specials were still recording...).

I was sitting in a booth, smoking like a fiend and drinking bad coffee, talking and laughing with my friends. It was around 2 in the morning, so the crowd was young, mostly people from the nearby neighborhoods getting the traditional post-show late-night meal.

People were coming and going and the place was crowded. The cashier was a bit harried. I strolled over to use the bathroom and pay for my separate check. In line in front of me were two over-dressed young men, white suits, too much jewelry, smelling of cheap cologne. They were talking to each other in a foreign language, the sound and cadence of which I recognized as Farsi. After a few minutes, a young woman joined the pair, coming from the bathroom. When she arrived, the two switched from their native tongue to labored but passable English. The woman (as I thought of her then, though looking back she was probably only around 22) smiled in a wary kind of way, as if she was signaling something. Like she was in trouble or something and was ingratiating herself with her smile.

My creep-alarm was just going off when one of our pair decided that he had waited in line long enough. With the flat of his hand he slapped the hard counter, startling the distracted cashier/manager and getting around half the restaurant's attention. I don't remember his exact words, but he demanded to be taken care of.

My alarm went up to the next notch. The girl began pleading. Please, she said, they're just busy, it'll just be a minute, go wait in the car, I'll take care of it.

The guy ignored her while his buddy grabbed her arm and pulled her to the side. The woman around the counter apologized, said something about being busy and informed him that she was the manager. The Iranian guy blew his cheeks out in a way that said "yeah, great, a woman, no wonder this place is a dump."

He got in her face and started in on the manager about how long they've been waiting, using cuss words. Right then, the waiter who had been serving us came from the side station and stood behind his manager. The waiter was about 6'2" and he had a look that said "you start something with her, you will deal with me."

The Iranian took out a thick wad of 20-dollar bills, peeled off two, threw them on the counter and turned around to charge out with his friend. The Farsi started up then, between them.

When they left the tension level in the restaurant subsided, and I paid my check while my friends gathered around me, waiting. We joked with the manager, who was moderately shaken up, and one of my friends slapped the waiter who had come to her rescue on the back. We left him a big tip and headed outside to our scooters.

Some of my friends went one way to a car, and I talked with two of my other friends while we were getting on our scooters. We were going our separate ways. One pulled off one way, the other the other, and I was last. Just as I made a small turn from the front of the restaurant to the aisle that led to the street I wanted, I heard a strange sound. A startled gasp, muffled.

I saw a car off to the side, its cabin light on, then off very quickly as a man slammed the door angrily.

But the light was on long enough for me to see the scene. Two men in the front, the driver slow to get in while the passenger, who had done all the yelling in the restaurant, was half-turned over the front seat where he had just administered a hard slap to the face of the blond in the backseat. Just prior to the light flicking off, he turned and saw me looking. The driver saw me as well, which is why he dove into the driver seat and had closed the door so quickly.

I stopped my scooter, unsure of what to do. Looking back, I'm ashamed at what I thought: "don't put yourself in a dangerous situation, alone, on behalf of some dumbass who is hanging out with foreign cologne boys with money." There was even a hint of "serves her right" in there, I'm sure of it.

But there was another part of me, the part that kept me rooted there, feet down on the asphalt. The car past me on my right. The driver had the heavily-tinted window down about half way, so all I could see was him. He looked at me with hatred and contempt. Then they drove off into the night. The last thing I remember noting was that they had a license plate frame from one of the big Iranian Los Angeles car dealerships that you always saw Iranian guys driving around in. They headed up Beach Blvd. towards the 5 onramp, where I guessed they were returning to L.A.

There weren't many words that had passed between any of the parties there that night, but I remember picking up from these guys their utter contempt for those not them, for having to deal with us, for having these lower life-forms ruining their world. They dripped contempt, looking at people the way people look at dogshit they've found on their shoe. I quickly forgot the episode, until earlier tonight.

That was when I read the tale of Homaidan al-Turki, a Saudi man in a spot of trouble with the good people of Colorado. According to the Rocky Mountain News, al-Turki was arrested after authorities were tipped off that he had with him a young Indonesian woman who cooked, cleaned and worked for him and provided sexual favors on command, all without pay or regard for her status as a human being.

In other words, al-Turki was keeping a slave.

A slave. In the United States. After what we've been through as a nation, after our most disastrous and righteous war. In the year 2006. A slave. In Colorado.

Al-Turki was arrested and promptly bailed by no less an entity than the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, D.C. Al-Turki, the Saudis and the wider Muslim world turned the man in to the latest Muslim victim of Western intolerance and Islamophobia, but 12 good people of Arapahoe County had the last word.

Al-Turki was convicted this summer of 12 felony counts of unlawful sexual contact with use of force, one felony count of criminal extortion and one felony count of theft. He also was found guilty of two misdemeanors: false imprisonment and conspiracy to commit false imprisonment.

Yesterday, a judge sentenced al-Turki to 20 years to life in state prison.

At the sentencing, al-Turki had this to say to Judge Mark Hannen:

"Your honor, I am not here to apologize, for I cannot apologize for things I did not do and for crimes I did not commit. The state has criminalized these basic Muslim behaviors. Attacking traditional Muslim behaviors was the focal point of the prosecution,"

What al-Turki says here is quite right. How insensitive of us to punish him, when clearly:

-- unlawful sexual contact with force = "basic...traditional Muslim behavior"

-- criminal extortion = "basic...traditional Muslim behavior"

-- theft = "basic...traditional Muslim behavior"

-- false imprisonment = "basic...traditional Muslim behavior"

-- conspiracy = "basic...traditional Muslim behavior"

You heard the man. Presumably, al-Turki is not an evil Zionist neo-con Islamophobe with an agenda.

Nope, he is a Saudi-backed, Ummah-backed, proud Muslim saying in open court what those with sense already know: Islamic values are not only not our values, they amount to a crime. Why are we allowing such people to immigrate here?

This Muslim says basic Muslim behavior is criminal.

This other Muslim says it is the duty of Muslims everywhere to kill Americans.

The Islamic Republic says its their basic Muslim duty to proclaim "Death to America".

Here's an idea: let's take them at their word and believe them.

The Pigs, They Fly

When one of the nation's leading liberal newspapers is sitting up and taking notice of objective reality, you know that conservatives have really scored a point. Liberals aren't they kind of people who say stuff like "well, you know, now that we see how things turn out I must admit that you were right after all and that my words denouncing you and your motives were not justified."

Having been proved wrong, they simply change tacks, move on to the next heart-tugging campaign for "social justice" and forget to draw any conclusions from how wrong they were. There is no downside to "social justice" and nothing is forbidden when you are fighting people who are standing against "social justice."

This is one of the weaknesses of the liberal movement, often mistaken for a strength by their conservative counterparts. It has to do with the power of the press and the elite institutions. Conservatives, targeted daily in newspapers, news broadcasts, academic papers, movies and television shows, begin to tire of the endless game. They envy the liberals who, having declared that simple and elementary welfare reform would cause the deaths of tens of millions and set off a teeming mass of riots fuelled by the penny-pinching mean-spirited conservatives, don't have to explain to anyone why that never really happened. (Instead, people got jobs, got roommates, got married, moved in with family, worked two jobs to get by, i.e. lived like the rest of us).

But never being held to account has a corrosive effect on a movement. Never having to defend itself, it finds itself both intellectually flabby (Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky are two of its leading intellectuals, TAPPED is one of its leading blogs...need I say more?) and very, very unattractively touchy when it gets just the slightest taste of its own medicine.

But, pigs do fly on occasion and today is one of them. For today, ladies and gentlemen, the Oracles of Washington, the High Priests of Sober Liberalism, the Protectors of Virtue themselves (known to you lesser mortals as the editorial board of the Washington Post) have spoken!

Behold and be amazed!

WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.

Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.

It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House--that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson--is untrue. [Remember: this was obvious from the beginning to anyone with a functioning brain, but the point here is that it is now so obvious even liberals are saying it! - NS] The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago. [Translation: Armitage whistled while conservative careers and lives were ruined. Armitage is now Senator McCain's leading foreign policy advisor. Remember that.-NS]

That's not to say that Mr. Libby and other White House officials are blameless. As prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has reported, when Mr. Wilson charged that intelligence about Iraq had been twisted to make a case for war, Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney reacted by inquiring about Ms. Plame's role in recommending Mr. Wilson for a CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, where he investigated reports that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium. Mr. Libby then allegedly disclosed Ms. Plame's identity to journalists and lied to a grand jury when he said he had learned of her identity from one of those reporters. Mr. Libby and his boss, Mr. Cheney, were trying to discredit Mr. Wilson; if Mr. Fitzgerald's account is correct, they were careless about handling information that was classified. [Ah, the silver lining. It appears that conservatives, having been made the target of a special prosecutor on the basis of an anti-White House leak to an anti-White House reporter were supposed to then take the high road and claim no knowledge of the person who the reporters were asking about. There's typical liberalism for you: we can lie, cheat and slander and you can't defend yourself. Imagine for a moment what the Washington Post would have said had the White House's response to the rumors been "we can't comment due to national security concerns". Ha! - NS]

Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.

And it's unfortunate that so many people continue to take seriously the people who took Wilson seriously.

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about all this....

...Just kidding! They won't say anything. That's the beauty, the attraction of being liberal: always on the side of the angels, never accountable, never having to say you're sorry.

I have to admit: I miss it.

Thanks, Germans! Thanks, Salman!

From Der Spiegel International, a lovely interview with Salman Rushdie:

SPIEGEL: Leading British Muslims have written a letter to British Prime Minister Tony Blair claiming that the growing willingness to engage in terrorism is due to Bush's and Blair's policies in Iraq and in Lebanon. Are they completely wrong? Don't the atrocities of Abu Ghraib and the cynicism of Guantanamo contribute to extremism?

Rushdie: I'm no friend of Tony Blair's and I consider the Middle East policies of the United States and the UK fatal. There are always reasons for criticism, also for outrage. But there's one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn't one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people. If the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, for example, were to be miraculously solved from one day to the next, I believe we wouldn't see any fewer attacks.

Let me set the record straight here. What happened in Germany a few wars back? Those were atrocities. What happened at Abu Ghraib was criminal, shocking, disturbing and revolting, but it does not rise near to the level of atrocity.

As for Salman, I'd say that it his book writing that is fatal, in more than one sense of the word. Isn't it heart-warming and oh-so-typical to see the European bad mouth the two countries in the world who have stood up for him and provided him with protection?