BLOGGING ABOUT THE QURAN: That is a new feature that will be starting Sunday, May 27 at Hot Air:

Starting Sunday, May 27, Hot Air will bring you a new series that we hope will foster discussion as well as become a resource for anyone who wants to know more about the Qur’an (or Koran) and its role in the Islamic world and in the ideology of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as its place in the lives of a billion Muslims worldwide. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch will blog the Qur’an as he reads through it, bringing the Hadiths and Islamic teachings and traditions into the discussion. The introductory installment will appear here at 9 am, and Robert will engage readers’ questions and responses in the comments.

Blogging the Qur’an was inspired by Slate’s Blogging the Bible project, but Blogging the Qur’an will be very different in at least one respect. In Blogging the Bible, David Plotz is blogging about the Bible as he reads through it for the very first time. Robert Spencer, on the other hand, read the Qur’an for the first time in 1981 and has been studying it and the Islamic traditions and teachings that inform students of the Qur’an ever since.

We’re hoping for a thorough and thoughtful discussion of the Qur’an, not cherry-picked but read and blogged and discussed from end to end, since the book has become a very important one in our time.

Sounds interesting.

Technorati Tag: Robert Spencer and Koran and Quran.

LIFE IN ISRAEL: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY. Courtesy of Baka Diary
[Hat tip: West Bank Mama]

Technorati Tag: Israel.

GENEVA SYNAGOGUE HEAVILY DAMAGED: Kumah has the story about a Shul in Geneva which was heavily damaged in a suspicious fire.

Technorati Tag: Jews and Geneva and Synagogue.

IS ISRAEL DENYING HEALTH CARE TO PALESTINIANS? Dr. Mitchell Bard address this myth in the following excerpt from Myths and Facts:

MYTH #264: "Israel is denying health care to Palestinians."

FACT

The Palestinian Authority’s ongoing inability and unwillingness to prevent terror attacks against Israel has required the imposition of security measures to prevent most Palestinians from entering the country. Still, Israel has remained open to Palestinians in need of medical assistance.

Contrary to frequent Palestinian claims that Israel prevents Arabs from obtaining health care, the Civil Administration in the West Bank receives and grants thousands of requests by Palestinians to visit Israeli hospitals where they are treated by some of the finest medical professionals in the world. In 2006 alone, 81,000 Palestinians were given permits to enter Israel for health reasons, an increase of 61 percent from 2005. According to the Health Coordinator responsible for responding to requests, 90 percent of the applications for permits are approved.123

In addition to providing direct care to Palestinians from the territories, Israel is also training Palestinian health care workers. Courses have been offered since 2000 and since then 200 Palestinians have taken part, including Marwan Baqer, who heads of team of ambulance workers in Gaza. Baqer was invited to participate in a course in emergency medicine. “It is excellent that people from the Palestinian territories come to participate in an Israeli course.” He added that when he returned to Gaza he would say he “learned something good.”

One of the Israeli physicians on the board of Physicians for Human Rights’, the group sponsoring the course, observed, “We have a common enemy – disease.”124

Israel is committed to providing health care for anyone in need, including not only Palestinians but sometimes Arabs from countries still at war with Israel. This concern for the individual, and willingness to cooperate with Palestinians in the field of medicine, offers hope that Israelis and Palestinians will find more common ground in the future.

Notes
123“ISRAEL-OPT: More Palestinians entering Israel on health grounds,” IRIN, (February 15, 2007).
124Corinne Heller, “Palestinians learn emergency medicine in Israel, Reuters, (November 22, 2006).

This article can be found at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths2/exclusives.html#a73

Source: Myths & Facts Online -- A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Mitchell Bard and Palestinians and Myths and Facts.

HAS THE NRP GONE TOO FAR WITH SABBATH-SUNDAY BILL? Esser Agaroth thinks they have, with a bill last proposed by Tommy Lapid and the Shinui Party.

Technorati Tag: Israel and NRP and Zevulun Orlev.

ANOTHER MUSLIM ADDRESSES THE NEW PEW SURVEY: At the Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz addresses one issue in the survey--and will be addressing others:

The focus must be on the problems discovered. 13% of US Muslims of all ages feel that there are scenarios in which suicide bombings are justified. Only 40% of all US Muslims believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. US Muslims, in comparison with all Americans, favor governmental intrusion in morality almost 2 to 1. Numbers show that the Blackamerican Muslim population does not share the financial success or the social optimism of immigrant Muslims. Homosexuals are reviled. A large number of youth, almost three times as many as in Pakistan, believe that there is an inherent conflict between faith and modern life.

Over my next couple of posts I will be evaluating just a few of the troubling and startling discoveries in the survey, starting with the one that has been bothering me the most: 25% of US Muslims under 30 support suicide bombings in some capacity.

This one has plenty of apologists. They argue that the operative question -- "Can Suicide Bombings of Civilian Targets to Defend Islam Be Justified?" -- was phrased badly, because it is perfectly natural for a religious person to want to "defend" his or her faith.

This is bunk.

Read the whole thing.
[Hat tip: Instapundit]

So who is Ali Eteraz? According to his bio:

Ali Eteraz, 26, is an international finance and human rights lawyer. During law school he worked on litigation against US defense contractors involved in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, and since represented plaintiffs defrauded by Wall Street. He is the founder of Eteraz.Org: States of Islam, a think tank and interactive web portal dedicated to cataloging and taking action on legal and legislative reform in the Muslim world (soon to be available in Urdu, Farsi and Arabic). His essays have been published in Counterpunch, Killing the Buddha, The Revealer, and Identity Theory. His personal blog, Unwilling Self-Negation, was a 2006 finalist for an International Best Of Blogs Award. He is currently working on a book about children and Islamic militancy tentatively entitled Prophets in Dust.

Technorati Tag: Pew Survey and Moderate Muslims.

NEW FRENCH PRESIDENT CHANNELS KAHANE: French President Sarkozy will pay immigrants to leave the country:

France to Pay Immigrants to Return Home

New French President Nicolas Sarkozy made immigration a central issue of his campaign. Now, his new minister for immigration and national identity says its time to start paying immigrants to leave the country.

France's new Immigration, Integration and National Identity Minister, Brice Hortefeux toured Charles de Gaulle airport on his first day on the job. He has said he intends to pay more immigrants to return home.
Zoom
AFP

France's new Immigration, Integration and National Identity Minister, Brice Hortefeux toured Charles de Gaulle airport on his first day on the job. He has said he intends to pay more immigrants to return home.
France is home to over 5 million immigrants -- and the new conservative-led government doesn't plan on making things any more comfortable for them. While the new regime in Paris is determined to curb illegal immigration, it is also looking to encourage legal migrants to reconsider their decision to stay in France -- by paying them to go back home.

This will be interesting to watch.
[Hat tip: LGF]

Technorati Tag: Sarkozy and France and Meir Kahane and Immigrants.

WHY THE EU IS WORTHLESS: From Haaretz:

[European Union foreign policy chief Javier] Solana denounced the ongoing Qassam attacks and said that, "we are living in a period of increasing violence, and we would very much like to calm the situation and show that it can be resolved diplomatically."

Technorati Tag: Israel and EU and Sderot and Javier Solana and Hamas.

SDEROT VS. LEBANON: HonestReporting's latest article covers the latest biased reporting on Sderot--and contrasts it with the sympathetic reporting on the bombing of Palestinian terrorists Palestinian refugee camps by the Lebanese Army, replete with the word 'terrorist.'

Read the whole thing.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Sderot and Lebanon and Palestinians.

A MODERATE MUSLIM ON THE NEW PEW SURVEY: Tawfik Hamid, former member of a terrorist group and now a Muslim reformer, has been accused by CAIR of being "the latest weapon in the Islamophobe arsenal."

High praise that makes his op-ed in The Wall Street Journal--How to End 'Islamophobia'--well worth reading.

According to a recent Pew Global Attitudes survey, "younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified." About one out of every four American Muslims under 30 think suicide bombing in defense of Islam is justified in at least some circumstances. Twenty-eight percent believe that Muslims did not carry out the 9/11 attacks and 32% declined to answer that question.

While the survey has been represented in the media as proof of moderation among American Muslims, the actual results should yield the opposite conclusion. If, as the Pew study estimates, there are 2.35 million Muslims in America, that means there are a substantial number of people in the U.S. who think suicide bombing is sometimes justified. Similarly, if 5% of American Muslims support al Qaeda, that's more than 100,000 people.

Read Hamid on what needs to be done.

Technorati Tag: PEW Survey and Islamophobia and Islamists and Tawfik Hamid and Islam.