I wonder if the ACLU will sue for mixing church and state? Hezbollah Marshals The Young Via Scout Troops

On a Bekaa Valley playing field gilded by late-afternoon sun, hundreds of young men wearing Boy Scout-style uniforms and kerchiefs stand rigidly at attention as a military band plays, its marchers bearing aloft the distinctive yellow banner of Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement.

They are adolescents — 17 or 18 years old — but they have the stern faces of adult men, lightly bearded, some of them with dark spots in the center of their foreheads from bowing down in prayer. Each of them wears a tiny picture of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Shiite cleric who led the Iranian revolution, on his chest.

“You are our leader!” the boys chant in unison, as a Hezbollah official walks to a podium and addresses them with a Koranic invocation. “We are your men!”

This is the vanguard of Hezbollah’s youth movement, the Mahdi Scouts. Some of the graduates gathered at this ceremony will go on to join Hezbollah’s guerrilla army, fighting Israel in the hills of southern Lebanon. Others will work in the party’s bureaucracy. The rest will probably join the fast-growing and passionately loyal base of support that has made Hezbollah the most powerful political, military and social force in Lebanon.

Does this remind you of someone elses idea and followers?

So, I go and read the whole NY Times story a few times, which fawns on these tea drinking AK-47 carrying Mahdi Scouts, who are just oh-so-faithful, and ya know, I seem to be missing several issues. The writers fail to mention the inherent violence, the anti-semitism, the anti-Israel and pro-radical Islam fervor, and the fact that this is the next generation of Islamic terrorists.

It’s those uber-fashionable Islamic insurgents!

Islamic insurgents seized a strategic port city in Somalia on Wednesday, raising fears that they were gearing up for an assault on the capital, about 50 miles away.

The fighters, wearing red head scarves and chanting “God is great,” marched into Marka without firing a shot. Government troops had fled the night before upon hearing that an attack was imminent, residents said.

I hear that they also had very chic green smocks and some of those cool shoes that Don Johnson always wore in Miami Vice.

The seizure of Marka comes amid peace talks between the government and one opposition faction. But the most dangerous insurgent group, Shabab, which has acknowledged ties with Al Qaeda, has rejected the negotiations and vowed to overthrow the government.

The same group took responsibility for Wednesday’s seizure. Several local government officials have been assassinated in the city in the last month, including the acting governor and a deputy police commissioner.

“Our martyrs are in full control of the town,” Mohammed Awil, a Shabab commander, said by telephone from Marka. “We will govern all of Somalia through Islamic law, reaching our goal step by step.”

So, they weren’t just Islamic insurgents (props to the LA Times for even going that far in the title and the story), but Al Qaeda. Good to know. And a great fashion sense.

As Rusty Shackleford writes

These would be the same people who publicly stoned a 13 year old girl to death last month. Since the “real enemy” is in Afghanistan, I wonder if the new Obama administration will turn a blind eye to what is happening in the Horn of Africa?

WWBD?

Now that the election is over, and it is a few months for Senator Neophyte starts really screwing things up as president (”say, ah, um, er, folks, I initiated this 3am conference call to see what I should do about the Iranians announcing they just exploded a nuclear weapon. Any ideas?”), we can take some time to discuss other fun issues

My dad’s not a monster and I’m not a pole-dancer, says firebrand preacher Omar Bakri’s daughter

When the daughter of firebrand Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed was revealed to be a topless pole dancer, the conflict between their two lifestyles could hardly have been more stark.

Bakri, exiled from Britain in 2005 for inciting hatred, is infamous for his radical interpretation of Islam, which includes denouncing Western ‘depravity’ and claiming the British people brought the 7/7 outrages on themselves.

In allegedly choosing to lead a secret double life stripping for money in seedy London bars and nightclubs, Yasmin Fostok appeared to have rejected her father’s views in the most extreme way possible.

Yet while ‘friends’ described her passion for flaunting her cosmetically enhanced figure in front of men, and her colourful love life, to the Press in September, Yasmin was overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of publicity and terrified by a slew of messages on the internet from extremists angered by her lifestyle and threatening to harm her.

The story goes on to say that Yasmon claims she was never a stripping pole dancer.

Yet although Yasmin’s upbringing was undoubtedly strict, and characterised by many of the tensions common to children growing up torn between two cultures, when she speaks of her father, it is not of the fanatical ‘Tottenham Ayatollah’ vilified for ranting about the destruction of Western values and praising the ‘magnificent’ September 11 bombers.

Instead, she describes him as a warm, kind and funny man who simply tried to protect his children from negative influences, like any other caring parent.

‘As a child I was aware that my dad was important to the Muslim community, but I didn’t know what he did,’ says Yasmin.

‘He was very keen not to bring work home with him and he would never discuss it with us. The phone rang constantly for him but he would take the calls in private.

Why does that remind me of the way Mafia figures are always portrayed as acting in movies and non-fiction books?

Anyhow, she went on to learn about the London clubs, loved dancing, and eventually, she was employed dancing, and the agency she worked for also employed escorts. And did I mention this mother of 2 started wearing tighter, more revealing clothes, and then got breast surgery to go to a DD?

Nope, that title is not a joke. And it is not that far off.

Charging that principles of Islamic law are being introduced in the United States by stealth, critics on Thursday will protest outside a U.S. Treasury Department seminar on shari’a-complaint finance.

Although this is not the department’s first “Islamic Finance 101” seminar, it comes amid a new push by Muslim figures in recent weeks to promote Islamic finance as a response to the debt-fueled global financial crisis.

Controversial Sunni scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading advocate of shari’a-complaint finance (SCF), told a conference in Qatar last month that Muslims should take the opportunity provided by the crisis to replace capitalism with an Islamic financial system.

Now, people will go, so what, they are just looking at it.

Islamic financial products are those that comply with shari’a, the Islamic legal code associated with notorious punishments including the death penalty for apostasy, and stoning and amputations for other offenses.

In essence, SCF bans usury – the collection and payment of interest – and discourages heavy borrowing.

Other then the penalties, that does actually look like a system that the Democrats would prefer. Except if you are rich. Then re-education camps for you! And, in Liberal World, if you get a pay check, you are rich.

Of course, this is the way Islamisism works: creeping in to a country till all of a sudden people start realizing late what is happening. See England for a good example. Multiculturalism and politicalcorrectness enable this, as subtle and tiny steps are implemented. Islamic religious schools get a bit more radical every year, Muslims demand the removal of certain items from public view, they start calling for sharia law in their communities. And it is liberal/progressive policy which allows it.

Welcome to the next 4 years.