BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Johann Hari This is a column condemning cowardice – including my own. It begins with the story of a novel you cannot read. The Jewel of Medina was written by a journalist called Sherry Jones. It recounts the life of Aisha, a girl who was married off at the age of six to a 50-year-old man called Mohamed ibn Abdallah. On her wedding day, Aisha was playing on a see-saw outside her home. Inside, she was being betrothed. The first she knew of it was when she was banned from playing out in the street with the other children. When she was nine, she was taken to live with her husband, now 53. He had sex with her. When she was 14, she was accused of adultery with a man closer to her own age. Not long after, Mohamed decreed that his wives must cover their faces and bodies, even though no other women in Arabia did. You cannot read this story today – except in the Koran and the Hadith. The man Mohamed ibn Abdallah became known to Muslims as "the Prophet Mohamed", so our ability t...

by Ralph Peters Salaam aleikum, dudes! I thought I knew a little bit about the Middle East. Boy, was I wrong. Last week, President Obama set me straight. Here's what our president taught me during his Middle-Eastern pilgrimage: There is no more terrorism. Wow, cool! No more security checks at airports, right? It's unclear which side won, but it's all over. Obama didn't mention terrorism a single time in his star-turn speech in Cairo. Only a few "violent extremists" (our own troops?) remain at large. America tortured. I thought there was still a debate about that, but I guess not. And no regime in the Middle East tortures anybody, ever. Our bad. Churches and synagogues are about to open in Saudi Arabia. Since "Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance" and there are "over 1,200 mosques within our borders," I can't wait for the first Baptist hymn-sing in Riyadh. Sign me up! Behind closed doors with Saudi King Abdullah, our president must...

Doctors of Death by Oliver North On July Fourth, President Bush told the troops and families of the 167th Airlift Wing in Martinsburg, W.Va., that, "Our first Independence Day celebration took place in the midst of a war — a bloody and difficult struggle that would not end for six more years before America finally secured her freedom." He urged "more patience, more courage, more sacrifice," to achieve victory in Iraq. If we were to quit Iraq before the job is done," the president explained, "the terrorists ... would follow us here," and he reminded his critics: "These people want to strike us again." What he didn't do was describe just who "these people" are. In the aftermath of last week's botched terror attacks by eight medical professionals in Great Britain — explaining who "these people" are has became more difficult, and the potentates of the press aren't about to help him. Mainstream media coverage of th...

WHITEWASHING RADICAL ISLAM by Timothy R. Furnish As of this writing I am watching C-SPAN2's "Book TV." Lawrence Wright is interviewing Raymond Ibrahim, who works in the Middle East section at the Library of Congress and just published The al-Qaeda Reader, containing translations of Usama bin Ladin's and Ayman al-Zawahiri's writings. Wright is trying, at every turn, to refute Ibrahim's analysis. For example, Ibrahim was just discussing the fact that UBL and his ilk justify their violence from the Qur'an and the Hadiths. Wright interjected "but of course every religion has violent tendencies: in Christianity you're supposed to stone homosexuals." Amazing. I've read the New Testament numerous times, and I've yet to find that passage. Wright is a noted and best-selling author and alleged "expert" on the war on terror and the Middle East--and a guest host on C-SPAN--yet he is incredibly ignorant (or simply misrepresentative) of...