Monday, March 31, 2008

Coming Soon to YOUR Town!!!

A MUSLIM bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could PRAY.BE SURE TO CLICK THE LINKS!

Published: 29 Mar 2008

Sun News Article

Video

A MUSLIM bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could PRAY. By ALEX PEAKE and ANDY CRICK

The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca. Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

“We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”

The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

“Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.”

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”

Muslims pray at pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.

A spokesperson for bus company London United said: “We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81.

“We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.”



The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca. Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

“We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”

The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

“Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.”

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”

Muslims pray at pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.

A spokesperson for bus company London United said: “We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81.

“We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.”


Note: I'd like to see a Muslim bus drive do this in New York City!!!

YOU MAY BE A TALIBAN IF........

Our troops in Afghanistan prove they've retained their sense of
humor with the following "YOU MAY BE A TALIBAN IF..."

1. You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection
to beer.

2. You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you
can't afford shoes.

3. You have more wives than teeth.

4. You wipe your ass with your bare left hand, but consider
bacon "unclean."

5. You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

6. You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.

7. You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives
in your clothing.

8. You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than
setting off roadside bombs.

9. You have nothing against women and think every man should own at
least one.

10. You bathe at least monthly whether necessary or not

Sunday, March 30, 2008

From Skeik Yer Mami, The Album

Abu Hamza




Click here for lyrics and info




Purchase the entire album here from Sheik Yer Mami

Ismail Ax and the Media totally off the mark









Ismail Ax attack

History of Islam in Korea

Global Security.org

Orgies of the Hemp Eaters - Women Join the Ceremony

From the New York Herald, Friday, March 15, 1895:

ORGIES OF THE HEMP EATERS.
Hashish Dreamers' Festival in Northwestern Syria Occurs at the Time of the Full Moon.

WOMEN JOIN THE CEREMONY.
Scenes at the Sacred Dance That Surpass the Wildest Ecstasy of Any Opium Dream.

THE DRUG AND ITS EFFECTS.
Standing in the outskirts of the little town of Latakieh, in Northwestern Syria, famous everywhere for the excellent tobacco which takes its name from the otherwise obscure and insignificant place -- and turning his back on the ramshackle houses the flea infested caravansary, the malodorous bazaar and garbage strewn streets, where the scavenger dogs lie stretched out [in the] noonday sun -- the traveller sees in the distance, beyond a wide stretch of green slope and alternate level, a low range of hills, on which a soft purple haze [!] seems always to linger. These hills lie between the Lebanon, where the fierce Druses dwell in their highland fastnesses, and the Nahr-el-kebir, "The Mighty River." They are known nowadays as the Nosairie Mountains, the home of the so-called Nosairiyeh tribesmen, the modern "Assassins," or "Hemp Eaters," as they should be designated from their ceremonial use of hemp, in Arabic "hashish." AT THE TIME OF THE FULL MOON. The festival or gathering of the hemp eaters is celebrated monthly, at the time of the full moon, the moon being then supposed to exert a specific influence upon human beings. The sectaries meet under a sacred oak tree growing upon a hill, about equidistant from Latakieh and the valley of the Orontes, and close to a tiny village inhabited by some twenty families of the tribe. There is an enormous drum, some three feet in diameter, standing at the entrance to the village, a couple of hundred yards off, and as soon as it begins to darken and the westering sun appears to have fairly sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean, which is clearly visible from the elevated hilltop on which the Nosarriyeh are gathered, a deafening boom comes from the instrument and rolls over the mountain tops like the rumble of thunder, rousing the tribesmen to activity, and in a moment they are on the alert. Lamps are quickly lit and suspended to the branches of the sacred oak among the dangling rags and buttons and feathers and metal scraps that decorate it. A square heap of wood is built up in front of the tree about a dozen yards from it. A sheep is brought forward by one of the men, and the rest of the tribesmen then gather around, the lamps throwing a dim light on their picturesque figures and grim countenances. The Sheikh puts his hand gently on the head of the bleating animal, it is thrown down, its throat cut, after the fashion of the Moslems, and in little more time than it takes to write the words the fleece is off, the carcass is divided and placed on the wood heap, to which fire is applied and kept up till all flesh as well as timber is utterly consumed. Now the Nosarriyeh seat themselves in a circle upon the earth, the Shiekh in the centre, with an attendant on either hand, one holding a large earthenware bowl containing a liquid, the other a bundle of stems to which leaves are attached -- the leaves of the sacred hemp plant. The chief takes the stems in his left and the bowl in his right hand and slowly walks around the circle, stopping in front of each man present, who takes from him, first the greenery, at which he sniffs gently, then the bowl, the contents of which he sips. The vessel contains a sweetened infusion of hemp, strong and subtle in its action. WHAT THE DECOCTION IS LIKE The taste of the decoction is sweet, nauseously so, not unlike some preparations of chloroform, and its first effects are anything but pleasant, for it produces a distict tendency to vomit, not unlike a strong dose of ipecacuahna. As soon as all have in succession partaken of the drink, which is termed "homa", big horns are produced containing spirits, for the Nosarriyeh are great dram drinkers. The horns of liquor are passed about and in a few moments the effects are apparent, following upon the hemp. The eyes brighten, the pulse quickens, the blood seems to bound more actively in the veins, and a restlessness takes possession of the whole body. At this moment the booming of a giant drum is heard again, giving the signal for the sacred dance which is the next item in the ceremonial of the evening. From each of the dozen parties or so into which the clansmen are divided one steps out, and the dozen individuals so designated form up against a gentle declivity in rear of them. Two of the tribe with a "reba," one string fiddle, and a tambourine, seat themselves and start a peculiar air in a minor key, which all those around take up, clapping their hands the while rhythmically, and to this rhythm the dancers, joining hands as they stand, begin to move gently to and fro. The moonlight is full on them, showing up their white nether garments, but leaving the dusky faces and dark upper garments in a semi-shadow. First the dancers move slowly, a few steps to the right and further to the left they go each time, till the movement becomes a positive allegro. Faster goes the music, faster the dancers, until with a finale furioso the men stop, panting and out of breath, at the signal of the Sheikh. He claps his hands and twelve others step out, and the figure begins as before. When these are exhausted a fresh set take their place, and this is continued until each of the clansmen has taken part in the dance. In conclusion all join hands and go seven times round the sacred oak in the direction left to right. A CRAZY FESTIVAL The solemn supper is now ready, and is served by the wives of the tribesmen, who have been busy preparing it in huge earthernware dishes placed upon the ground in the middle of each group. And the moonlight meal in the shade of the sacred oak is none the less striking by reason of its being dished up by women who wear in their shash-bands a sharp yataghan, of which the handle shows clearly, and a brace of pistols in the girdle. The plates are peculiar. First there is fried liver, eaten to the accompaniment of fiery arrack -- the favorite spirit of the hemp eaters. Then comes "leben" -- a species of sour cooked cream, with more "arak;" afterward the "kibabs" of mutton, in slices on little wooded sticks, like the familiar ware of the cat's meat man; eggs filled with a force meat of rice, tomato, mutton and onions and "pillau." Each person has a wooden spoon to eat with, and the etiquette of the table requires one to eat much and eat quickly, and to drink as much as one eats. The appetites of the Nosairiyeh are proverbial in Syria, the usual allowance of meat being a sheep or two. I can vouch for their tippling powers. Scores of them finish their pint horn of arrack in a couple of draughts, taking a couple of quarts in the course of their supper. The meal is really a match against time, and, with such good trencher men as the hemp eaters, is quickly finished. The real business of the evening now begins. The hemp, powdered and mixed with sirup [sic], is brought round in bowls, together with the decoction of the leaves well sweetened. Each of the tribesmen secures a vessel of arrack -- for it quickens and heightens the action of the drugs -- and disposes himself in the most comfortable attitude he can think of. Then, taking a good spoonful of the hemp, and washing it down with an equally good drink from the liquor receptable, he lies or leans back to allow it to operate. I take a reasonable allowance of the compound (it tastes very much like raw tea leaves flavored with sugar water), and then lie back to note the action on my own person, and watch, so far as I can, its effects upon the modern assassins whose systems are seasoned and more accustomed to the drug. Five, ten minutes pass, and there is no sensation; the men around me, with closed eyes, look like waxwork figures. Another ten minutes, and the pulse begins to beat rapidly, the heart commences to thump against the sides of the chest, the blood seems to rush to the head, and there is a sensation of fullness, as if the skull would be burst asunder at the base. There is a roaring in the ears, and strange lights, blurred and indistinct, pass before the eyes. In a moment and quite suddenly all of this passes off, leaving a feeling of delicious languor, and an idea that one is rising from the ground and floating in space. Little things assume an enormous size, and things seem far off. EFFECTS OF THE DRUG. The oak tree close by appears to be a mile off, and the cup of drink looks a yard across, the size of a big barrel. One's hands and feet feel heavy and cumbersome, and then feel as if they were dropping off, leaving one free to soar away from the earth skyward, where the clouds seem to open to receive one, and one long perspective of light shines before the eyes. The feeling is one of estactic [sic] restfulness, contented unconsciousness, suggesting the "ninirvana" [sic] of the Buddhist. This marks always the end of the first stage of hemp eating. The aphrodisiac effects, the visions of fair faces and beauteous forms, the voluptuous dreams and languishing fancies which the Easterns experience -- these are the results of larger and oft repeated doses of the drug.

Already the larger quantities of the compound, repeated many times in the meantime and stimulated by frequent draughts of arrack, are beginning to show their results upon the hitherto immobile figures of the Nosiariyeh round the sacred oak. Again and again they seize the spoon and convey it to their mouths, until the hemp craze is fully upon them. One or two stir uneasily; then another screams for "Ali, Ali!" (their founder Ali), who is identical, they say with Allah. A half a dozen respond lustily, "Ali hu Allah!" then empty the arrack cups beside them.

A few move about with outstretched arms as though they were in the clouds trying to clutch the houris, whose imaginary forms they see, and disappointed, sink back, after a fresh supply of the drug has been swallowed. From the extremity beyond, where the women are located, come the sound of singing and of laugher and the rhythmic patter of feet upon the ground. The ladies have been indulging on their own account, and the noise they make rouses the men from their dreams. Three or four jump up from the floor at a single bound, and, seized by the dance mania, begin capering away as for very life. They jig here and there, they twine and twist, and writhe and wriggle and distort themselves, awakening [...fragment missing...] blows off his matchlock as he capers merrily round, while his neighbor stretches out his fingers for the arrack.

END OF THE HASHISH DEBAUCH
In the distance we hear the sound of the women's voices as they scream and sing and dance in a noisy whirl under the influence also of the intoxicating hemp. Again and yet again the tribesmen quaff from the hashish bowl, and the riot grows wilder and madder than before. It becomes a veritable saturnalia. Flushed and inflamed, they fly from side to side, tear to and fro, whirl round on the heels, skipping in the air and jumping feet high above the ground, to the banging of the great drum in the village; the shouting of those unable to move, the screeching of the "Reba," or fiddle, which still plays on, and the crackling of the guns as they go off. Scimitars are drawn, yataghans flourished, half a dozen engage in mimic combat, slashing and cutting at each other with an all too earnest resolve to draw blood -- a result speedily obtained -- while yet another batch dance round and round on their heels spinning like tops in play. Faster and furious grows the corybantic rout, and in their mad excitement the men tear the garments from their bodies, throw away their weapons, fling the turbans from their heads and, naked to the waist, with dishevelled hair and eyes ablaze and extended arms, they continue their mad antics, until foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the nostrils, they sink to the earth and lie huddled in heaps, hopelessly and helplessly intoxicated with the hemp.

The Assassins in Syria, c.1170-1326 C.E. A Chronology and Notes

1170's: The Syrian branch of the Order appears to have initially viewed the consolidation of the fragmented states of Syria and the old Fatimid Empire of Cairo into a single state by Salah al-din (Saladin) with great apprehension. They preferred that the Arab states of Syria remain fragmented, thereby allowing them to play their potential enemies off against each other and ensuring that their own power was more on a level with that of their individual enemies.

As one aspect of Sinan’s policy, in the early 1170's (1172-73?) he sent an embassy to King Amalric of Jerusalem, proposing an alliance against Nur ed-Din and requesting in return the remission of a tribute that the Knights Templars had imposed on a number of Assassin villages. Amalric was eager to explore these overtures further, and he sent the Assassin envoys back to their homes with gifts? and the promise of a Frankish embassy to follow soon after. As the Assassin envoys moved past Tripoli, a Templar knight, Walter of Mesnil, acting with the approval of his Grand Master, Odo of Saint-Armand, ambushed the embassy and killed all its members. When Odo refused to hand over Walter for judgment, Amalric hurried to Sidon, where the Grand Master and his Chapter were staying; he and his men forced their way into the Grand Master’s presence, seized Walter, and consigned him to prison at Tyre.

On May 15, 1174, Nur ed-Din died of a quinsey [whatever that is] at Damascus. His son, Malik as-Salih Ismail, was a boy of only eleven. As-Salih fled with his mother to Aleppo, Nur ed-Din’s capital, where they placed themselves under the protection of its governor Gumushtekin. The people of Damascus demanded that Saladin be summoned from Egypt. He set out with 700 picked horsemen, crossing Sinai and the rocky valleys of Transjordan beneath the Crusader castles at Shobak and Kerak. He reached Damascus on November 26. Soon thereafter, once additional forces arrived from Egypt, he marched north against Gumushtekin, for he sought the regency for himself. He entered Homs on December 9, leaving troops to invest the castle, and reached Aleppo and commenced a full-scale siege on December 30.

Saladin presented himself as a champion of Sunni orthodoxy, and on two occasions in the mid-1170's the Assassins attempted to kill him. The first attempt took place in December 1174 or January 1175, while Saladin was besieging Aleppo, which was held by Gumushtigin on behalf of the Zangid ruler of Mosul-Aleppo, at that time a mere child. Gumushtigin supposedly sent to Sinan and offered him lands and money if he would procure the assassination of Saladin. A number of Assassins penetrated the Ayyubid’s camp on a cold winter day, but they were recognized by the emir of Abu Qubasis, who ruled lands adjoining the Assassin principality. He apparently thought their presence suspect, but they slew him when he tried to question them. The Assassins then attempted to reach Saladin, but the alarm had been given and, although members of his entourage were killed, Saladin himself surviving unscathed. Saladin afterwards had to raise the siege of Aleppo on February 1 to return to deal with a Crusader attack against the force he had left besieging the citadel of Homs.

In May 1175, with the support of the Abbasid Caliph, Saladin threw off his vassalage to as-Salih. In March 1176, Saif ed-Din of Mosul, the nephew of Nur ed-Din and the cousin of as-Salih, crossed the Euphrates with a large army and rendezvoused with Gumustekin’s forces at Aleppo. On April 12, their army clashed with Saladin’s some twenty miles south of Aleppo, and after a hard-fought battle, was completely defeated. Saladin then moved to pick off various fortresses surrounding Aleppo, first those to the west on the road to the Euphrates and then Azaz, which commanded the road to the north.

5/22/1176: Second attempt on Saladin. While he was besieging the town of Azaz, some distance from Aleppo, several Assassins joined his army and distinguished themselves in the military operations. One day, while Saladin was inspecting his artillerymen and rewarding soldiers who had distinguished themselves for bravery, an Assassin sprang from the crowd and struck at him with a dagger, but the blow glanced from his steel helmet. Saladin threw him to the ground, where he was cut to pieces by others. A second and third Ismaili then emerged from the crowd and tried to kill him, but both were likewise struck down. A fourth Ismaili attempted to flee, but he was caught and killed. Several of his emirs were killed in the struggle. After this second attempt, Saladin adopted elaborate security precautions, such as sleeping in a wooden tower with a ladder that could be pulled up by its occupant and allowing no one who was unfamiliar to him to approach his person.

[Runciman suggests that Saladin was attacked while resting in his tent (citing Beha ed-Din and Ibn al-Athir).]
Azaz capitulated one month later, on June 29. Saladin then came to terms with as-Salih and his cousins, resulting in a treaty on July 29th.

8/1176: Saladin advances against the Assassin principality and lays siege to Masyaf. Eventually, however, he withdraws without taking the fortress. According to two sources, Saladin’s uncle, the prince of Hama, successfully mediated between the two contending parties; it is not clear whether his intercession was originally invoked by the Assassins or by Saladin: the two sources disagree. Another sources suggests that Saladin’s need to withdraw was prompted by a Frankish attack on the Biqa’ Valley. At any rate, some accomodation does seem to have been reached, and thereafter the evidence suggests that Saladin and the Assassins enjoyed cordial co-operative relations (as we shall see, there is some suggestion that the Assassins may have carried out the murder of Conrad of Montferrat at Saladin’s behest).

[Runciman reports that Saladin was spooked by waking “to find on his bed some hot cakes of a type that only the Assassins baked, and with them a poisoned dagger and a piece of paper on which a threatening verse was written,” but this sounds like a fable (especially the part about the poisoned dagger).]

8/31/1177: Shihab al-Din ibn al-Ajami, the vizier of the Zangid al-Malik al-Salih in Aleppo and the former vizier of Nur al-Din ibn Zangi. This murder was attributed by contemporary Syrian historians to the machinations of Gumushtigin, governor of Aleppo, who supposedly forged al-Malik al-Salih’s signature to a letter asking him to have Sihib al-Din done away with. Some of the Assasins involved in this attempt were taken alive, and under interrogation confessed that they were only carrying out the orders of al-Malik himself. (Or this may have been a story concocted by the Assassins to foment discord and mistrust within the Zangid regime, similar to the claim that Richard the Lion-Hearted was behind the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat.) In any case, Gumushtigin fell not long afterwards.

1179-80: In 1179-80, al-Malik seized the town/castle of al-Hajira from the Assassins. They responded by sending incendiaries to set fire to the marketplace in Aleppo. They successfully carried out this mission and escaped, suggesting that they still had sympathizers on whom they could rely in the city.
1192:(April 29) Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat – perhaps the most historically significant of all the Assassins’ murders. The Assassins were taken alive, and they seem to have claimed under interrogation that they acted at the behest of Richard the Lion-Hearted – but this could well have been a bit of disinformation intended to spread discord within the Crusader ranks. The Zangid historian Ibn al-Athir names Saladin as the instigator, and specifies the sum of money paid for the work. (There was also a story that the murder was a private act of revenge arising out of Conrad’s unwillingness to pay restitution for an Assassin cargo seized by westerners off the Levantine coast.)

1192:
(April) Richard the Lion-Hearted was approaching the time he must return to England. He had reached the basis for a settlement with the Moslems, and now called a council of the knights and barons of the Crusader kingdom, to whom he offered the choice of Guy of Lusignan or Marquis Conrad of Montferrat as king. When the council voted for Conrad, he sent a mission led by his nephew, Henry of Champagne, to Tyre to notify the Marquis. Henry arrived there on April 20. Plans were made that his coronation should take place within a few days at Acre, after which he would join the Crusader combined forces in their camp at Ascalon.
But it was not to be. On the afternoon of Tuesday, April 28, 1192, the Marquis’s wife, the Princess Isabella, took longer than expected in her bath and thereby delayed his dinner. The Marquis decided to dine instead with an old friend who lived nearby, the Bishop of Beauvais. On his arrival, however, he found that the Bishop had already finished his own meal. The Bishop pressed him to stay and protested that he could have additional food prepared, but Conrad declined to put his staff to such trouble. He set out to return to his own quarters. As he passed around a corner, two men approached him, and one produced a letter or appeal for him to read. As he stopped to examine it, the other man stabbed him. Accounts of the further details of what transpired are confused: one account claims that he was carried to a nearby church, where, unseen, one of the Assassins had already fled for refuge, and this man now managed to deliver the coup de grace. In any case, Conrad died shortly thereafter.

One of the two attackers seems to have been cut down by others with Conrad almost immediately; the other was captured and put to torture. It is unclear what the other man said. He may have confessed that they were Assassins sent by the Old man of the Mountain, who was aggrieved that Conrad (or others in Tyre) had committed an act of piracy against a ship carrying a rich cargo that was the property of the Order, and moreover had drowned its crew (this is Runciman’s version). But others suggest that the remaining Assassin may have implicated King Richard, thereby casting out disinformation that would spread discord within the Crusader ranks. I find this more plausible: Saladin was still alive at this time, and he was shrewd enough to have sponsored such a maneuver. The Bishop of Beauvais, for one, accepted this suggestion. This may have resulted from antipathy towards Richard that arose from being a long-time ally of Conrad’s; or it may have been because he was privy to the results of the torture session.
(August?) Richard the Lion-Hearted concludes a truce with Saladin at which, on Saldin’s instructions, the Assassin territory is included as well.

1192-93 or 1193-94: Death of Sinan. He is replaced as head of the Syrian mission by a Persian named Nasr.
1213: Raymond, son of Bohemond IV of Antioch, is killed in a church in Tortosa. His father marches against Khawabi. The Moslems of Aleppo send an army to the Assassins’ aid, which is repulsed; they are then relieved by a second Moslem army marching from Damascus, which indicates that they were now generally in good standing with their Sunni Moslem neighbors.

1227:
Majd al-Din, the chief da’i of the Syrian mission, receives envoys from the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who brings gifts worth almost 80,000 dinars.

12??: The Assassins in Syria themselves become tributary to the Knights Hospitallers.

1250: The Assassins exchange gifts with St. Louis (King Louis IX of France) during his lengthy stay in Acre.

1252: King Louis IX (Saint Louis) of France reaches an alliance with the Assassins after he returns to Acre upon being ransomed after the disastrous battle of Damietta (Runciman, III, 277-80). The Assassins first sent a haughty embassy that demanded to be paid for their neutrality, but then sent a much more humble embassy with many fine gifts and the request for a close alliance. Louis then sent an Arabic-speaking aide, Yves the Breton, to arrange the treaty. Yves was received at Maysaf and allowed the review the Assassins’ library there, where he was fascinated by an apocryphal sermon addressed by Christ to Saint Peter. This treaty seems to have included a treaty of mutual defense, and it may have been around this time that the Assassins were released from their tribute to the Hospitallers.

1265:
Sultan Baybars, the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, demands that the Assassins pay him a portion of the tribute they received as protection money from others. Eventually, he arrogates to himself the right to choose their chief da’is. Von Hammer’s early monograph on the Ismailis indicates that Baibars made the abolition of the Assassins’s tribute a condition of a treaty he concluded with the Hospitallers in 1265, and that they then voluntarily remitted the same amount to him. That this was not entirely voluntary is shown by the fact that Najm al-Din requested a reduction of their tribute to Baibars several years later, and this request seems to have prompted his downfall.

1270: Sultan Baybars deposes the elderly chief da’i Najm al-Din and appoints in his place his more compliant son-in-law Sarim al-Din Mubarak, the commandant of the fortress of Alika. But he orders the new chief to surrender Masyaf to him. Sarim nevertheless obtains possession of Masyaf through a trick; Von Hammer reports that he possessed himself of Masyaf “partly by strategem, partly by the massacre of a number of the inhbitants.” Later, however, Sarim al-Din seems to have rebelled against Baibars, driving his governor out of Masyaf, but then was not able to hold it and he retreated to his own citadel of Alika. The prince of Hama led his forces against Alika, took the citadel, and captured, Sarim al-Din, who was sent to Cairo as a prisoner, where he soon died, possibly poisoned. Baybars then restored Najm al-Din to rule jointly with his other son, Sahms al-Din, but this dispensation did not last for long.

In February or March 1271, Baybars arrested two Assassins who had been sent to murder him; he then demanded that Najm and Shams al-Din surrender themselves and their castles. Shams launched a short-lived resistance. In May and June 1271 Baybars’ forces moved against the Assassin principality, seizing Ulayqa and Rusafga. Khawabi fell before the end of the year, and the remaining Assassin castles fell by 1273.

Von Hammer indicates the following sequence of events:
(1) Najm al-Din’s other son, Shams al-Din, was kept a hostage at the Mameluke court to ensure his father’s fidelity.
(2) On falling under Baibars’ suspicion, Majm al-Din came to court, and offered to surrender all the Assassins’ remaining strongholds; he was asked to do so, and Shams al-Din went to Kehef, but was unable to accomplish this.
(3) Shams al-Din requested that he might be given the fortress of Kolaia, if all the rest would yield; Baibars agreed, but the inhabitants of Kehef refused to yield.
(4) Baibars then laid siege of Kehef. Shams al-Din went forth to speak with him again, and was honorably received at his camp near Homs, but then Baibars heard that the inhabitants of Kehef had sent Assassins into his camp to kill him and his principal emirs. Baibars then caused Shams al-Din and all his suite to be arrested and sent back to Egypt.
(5) From this point, some of the castles (Khawabi, Sarmin) seem to have surrendered; others (Kolaia certainly, and possibly Menifa and Kadmus fell to siege or assault). The last to surrender was Kehef, which was eventually starved out.
There are some suggestions that the Mamelukes may have used the Assassins’ daggers as a foreign policy weapon of their own for a time, accounting for the the murder of Philip of Montfort in Tyre in 1270 and the wounding of Prince Edward of England in 1271 or 1272.
1270: Sultan Baibars is said by Runciman (III, 333) to have arranged the assassination of Philip of Montfort (the castle in the northern Galilee?), who was one of the most important and formidable of the remaining barons of Outremer. The Assassins were supposedly grateful to the Sultan for having freed them from payment of tribute to the Hospitallers, and they also resented the Westerner’s attempts to negotiate an alliance with the Mongol Ilkhans of Persia, who were responsioble for the destruction of the Persian cousins. The Assassins sent one of their agents to Tyre, where he pretended to be a Christian convert. On Sunday, August 17, 1270, he penetrated into a chapel where Philip and his son John were praying and managed to mortally wound the father before he was captured. Runciman says that his death was a heavy blow to Outremer.

1271: Najm ad-Din, the Grand Master of the Ismailites, is said to be part of Sultan Baibars’ army at the siege of Krak des Chevaliers from February 21-April 7.
1272: Edward I, Prince of Wales and later King of England, while on a crusade to the Levant, was attacked and wounded at Acre by a Syrian who was called an Assassin. This person may or may not have been affiliated with the Order, which by that time was under the thumb of Sultan Baibars. Runciman (III, 338) gives the following details. Prince Edward had arrived in Acre in May 1271 with a small army. He hoped to make an alliance with the Mongols and for the next year undertook small operations when he was able, but he soon came to realize that he could accomplish little without a larger army from Europe. On May 22, 1272, the Prince and the authorities at Acre reached a concluded a truce with Bairbars that guaranteed the Kingdom’s current frontiers for another ten years and ten months. However, fearing lest Edward carry out his intention of returning with a larger army, Baibars loosed an Assassin on him. The man, disguised as a native Christian, penetrated into his apartments and stabbed him with a poisoned dagger on June 16, 1272. He was ill for some months – the Sultan sent him congratulations on his survival -- and then sailed from Acre on September 22, 1272. When he returned home to England, he discovered that he was king, and was never able to return.

1326: According to Von Hammer (206ff.), the Circassian Mameluke sultans of Cairo were still using Assassins from Masyaf as instruments of their policy against the Il-Khans of Persia and their subordinate emirs. In this year the Sultan Mohammed, Baibars’ son, is said to have sent thirty Assassins from Maysaf to Persia to assassinate Qara Sonqor, the emir of Tabriz, but at least three attempts failed. They did manage to execute the governor of Baghdad at the same time. However, it is clear that these Assassins were acting for gold, not out of reliugious commitment; they sought to escape after their violent acts, and this may have undermined their effectiveness. Von Hammer reports that Qara Sonqor used Ismailites in his pay to search out the Assassins who had come to Tabriz to kill him.

Sources:
Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (1967)
J. A. Boyle, ed., The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume V - The Seljuq & Mongol Periods (1968)
Ibn al-Qalanisi, The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades (2002)
Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Volume II (The Kingdom of Jerusalem) (1952) and Volume III (The Kingdom of Acre) (1954)
Joseph Von Hammer, The History of the Assassins (1835)


Source: http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Group/586540

The Assassins in Syria, c.1095-1162 C.E. A Chronology and Notes

The history of the Nizari sect of the Ismaili Shi'ia, better known in the West as "the Assassins." The Assassin Order first established itself on a territorial basis in Iran during the 1090's, but its missionary activities in Syria ultimately led it to seek a secure territory in that region as well. Principal sources are listed at the end of the second part.

The disorder in Syria in the late 11th century, and the existing presence there of extremist groups and the close proximity of the Fatimid frontier, all suggest that it should have proved a fertile ground for Ismaili missionary activity. Nevertheless, it took close to a half century before the Ismailis were able to securely establish themselves there, and this finally happened only after several disastrous false starts. Finally, in the middle third of the twelfth century, the Assassins established what amounted to their own principality in the area known today as the Jebel Ansariyya in Syria, which in medieval times was called the Jebel Bahra’. The situation of their enclave on the border between the Crusader states of the coast and the Moslem states of the interior meant that they played a significant if shifting role in the politics of the Levant for the last century of the Crusades.
1095: Tutush, the brother of the Seljuq Sultan Malik-Shah (d. 1094) and the Seljuq viceroy in Syria, is killed in battle in the civil wars following his brother’s death. His sons Ridwan and Duqaq succeed to his inheritance in Aleppo and Damascus respectively, but this event, together with the arrival of the Crusaders along the coast the following year, contributes to a fragmentation and breakdown of central authority in Syria. Still, it seems more likely that the area was first targeted by the Ismailis because there were already extremist sects in Syria that could have provided fertile recruiting areas for Ismaili ideas; the Druzes of Mount Lebanon, who were themselves a dissident Ismaili sect (one that worshiped the early eleventh-century Fatimid caliph Hisham II), and the Nusayris/Alawis, Twelver Shi’ias in the hill country east of Lattakia.

1103: The first Nizari Ismaili missionaries, under the leadership of al-Hakim al-Munajjim, the “physician-astrologer,” seem to have established themselves in Aleppo. Ridwan allowed them to practice their religion and to proselytize. The city had a large Twelver Shji’ia population. Ridwan himself was apparently largely indifferent to religious distinctions, and he recognized the ways in which the Ismailis might prove useful to him, since in conventional military forces he was weaker than his brother and rival in Damascus.

1103: The Assassins murder Janah al-Dawla, the ruler of Homs and the estranged father-in-law of Ridwan, in the cathedral mosque of the city at Friday prayers on May 1. His assailants were Persians, who disguised themselves as sufis, and fell on him at a signal from their sheikh. Several of Janah’s officers were killed as well, as were some of the assailants. Most of the Turks in Homs then fled to the apparently safer precincts of Baghdad. Al-Hakim apparently survived, but died a short time thereafter.

Al-Hakim was succeeded by Abu Tahir al-Sa’igh, “the goldsmith”. He continued his activities from Aleppo.

1106: The Ismailis in Syria subvert the castle of Afamiya [Apamea], in the Orontes valley and west of the Jabal al Summaq. This castle, which overlooked the surviving columns of the cardo of the Seleuco-Roman city, had belonged to Ridwan until 1096, when it fell into the hands of Khalaf ibn Mula’ib, a pro-Fatimid Shi’ite. He used the castle as a base for brigandage. Doubtless with Ridwan’s assent, Abu Tahir made contact with some local Ismailis who were adherents of the Nizari branch of the sect under the leadership of a judge named Abu’l-Fath. Having determined that they would lend their support, Al Hakim sent six men to Afamiya. They got hold of a Frankish horse, mule and accoutrements, with a shield and armor, and came to Afamiya, where they announced to Khalaf that they had killed a Frankish knight and now were come to enter his service. He greeted them warmly and installed them in a house in the citadel that abutted the outer wall. The men from Aleppo broke a hole in the wall and were then reinforced by their local allies. They killed Khalaf and seized his citadel on February 3, 1106. Abu Tahir then came from Aleppo and installed himself in the castle.
Soon, however, the Crusader prince Tancred of Aleppo launched a raid upon Afamiya. On this first occasion, he was content to levy tribute and then proceed on his way (suggesting that Khalaf may have paid tribute to him?), but then he returned in September, blockaded the castle, and forced it to surrender. Abu’l-Fath was put to death by torture, suggesting that he was viewed as a rebel by Tancred; Abu Tahir and his companions were allowed to ransom themselves and return to Aleppo.

1113: The Syrian Ismailis murder Mawdud, the Seljuq emir of Mosul, who had led an army to Syria to assist the local princes against the Christians. Ridwan had not viewed his approach as welcome, and had shut the gates of Aleppo against him.
(December 10) Ridwan dies. His son Alp Arslan initially continues his policy of tolerance for the Ismailis, but popular sentiment in Aleppo was running against them. Two years before, there had been at least a rudimentary pogrom against the Ismailis after they attempted to assassinate a wealthy Persian in town who had spoken out against them. Now, the Seljuq Great Sultan Muhammad sent a letter to Alp Arslan warning him against the Ismailis and calling upon him to destroy them. Whether directly or indirectly as a result of this communication, Ibn Badi’, a popular leader and commander of the city militia, persuaded Alp Arslan that they time had come to take strong measures against this troublesome and potentially dangerous element. “He arrested Abu Tahir the goldsmith and killed him, and he killed Isma’il the da’i, and the brother of the physician-astrologer, and the leaders of this sect in Aleppo. He arrested about 200 of them, and imprisoned some of them and confiscated their property. Some were interceded for, some released, some thrown from the top of the citadel, some killed. Some of them escaped, and scattered throughout the land.”

1114:
(Spring) A force of some 100 Ismailis from Afamiya, Sarmin and other nearby places are able to seize the castle of Shayzar while its lord and most of his men are away. Soon thereafter, however, they are defeated and destroyed in a counterattack.

1114ff. Bahram of Asterabad, a Persian, is appointed the successor of Abu Tahir. For years, he lives a clandestine existence, “in extreme concealment and secrecy, so that he moved from city to city and castle to castle without anyone being aware of his identity.” Over time, however, he becomes acceptable to the ruler of Damascus and is able to carry out his activities more openly.

1119: Ibn Badi’, the anti-Ismaili popular leader in Aleppo, is expelled from the city and flees towards Mardin. The Ismailis ambush him and his two sons at a ford across the Euphrates and kill all three of them. [Von Hammer reports that two Assassins attacked Badi’ and his sons; they killed Badi and one of his sons, and wounded another; two of Badi’s sons then killed these two men; but another Assassin then attacked and gave the coup de grace to the son who was already wounded.]

1120's:
Bahram appears in Damascus openly, with a letter of recommendation from Il-Ghazi, the ruler of Aleppo. Tughtigin of Damascus cedes him the castle of Banyas, and also grants him an imposing residence in the city to serve as a mission-house or headquarters for the Syrian branch of the Order.

1125: The Assassins kill Ibn al-Khasab, a respected qadi of Aleppo.

1126: By this time, the Turkish ruler of Damascus, Tughtigin, had accepted the Ismailis into an open alliance. Ismaili fighters from Homs joined his troops in a campaign against the Crusaders in January, suggesting that Ismailis were openly accepted in that city as well. There are suggestions, however, that the Ismailis’ main supporter was Tughtigin’s vizier, al-Mazdagani, and that Tughtigin merely sought to use them for tactical purposes.

1127: Bahram rebuilds and strengthens the castle of Banyas. But he is killed while leading a raid in the Wadi al-Taym near Baalbek. Afterwards, according to one story, Bahram’s head , hand and ring were taken by one of the locals to Cairo and presented to the caliph al-Amir, who gave the bearer financial rewards and a robe of honor. Bahram is then succeeded by another Persian, Isma’il.

1128: Tughtigin dies. His vizier al-Mazdagani continues to direct the government under the reign of his son Buri (also known as Taj al-Muluk), but there seems to have been an anti-Ismaili reaction that was gathering strength in the city. Buri allies himself with the city prefect, Mufarrij ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Sufi, and the military governor or commander, Yusuf ibn Firuz, in plotting a coup against the vizier. This occurs on September 4, 1129. The vizier is murdered as he sits in council in the Rose Pavilion at Damscus, and his severed head is tossed onto the ash heap outside the Iron Gate (al-Qalanisi, at 191-92). With his protection gone, the city militia and the urban mob then commence an anti-Ismaili pogrom. By the following morning, “the quarters and streets of the city were cleared of the heretics and the dogs were yelping and quarrelling over their limbs and corpses.” [the Damascus chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi] The number of Ismailis slain was variously put at 6,000, 10,000, or as high as 20,000.
Isma’il concludes that his isolated position in Banyas between enemies in the valleys of Lebanon and in Damascus is untenable. He surrenders the castle to the Franks and himself dies of dysentery in Frankish territory the following year.

1131: Buri thereafter lived under a sword of Damocles. He wore armor constantly and surrounded himself with armed guards, but it took less than two years before two Persians, who had pretended to be Turkish soldiers and had entered his service, managed to attack and wound him (May 7, 1131). The two assailants were cut to pieces by his guards, but Buri himself died of the long-term effects of his wounds the following year.
Ibn al-Qalanisi (Damascus Chronicle at 202-04) provides the details. The Assassins sent “two simpletons from Khurasan” to kill him. These two “simpletons” nevertheless successfully disguised themselves as Turks, and upon their arrival in Damascus made their way to some acquaintances of theirs among the Turks in the city, whose good offices allowed them to secure places in the atabeg’s bodyguard. They watched for an opportunity to strike down Taj al-Muluk and on May 7, 1131, as he was returning on horseback from the baths and reached the gate of his palace in the citadel of Damascus, the members of his bodyguard peeled away to go their own residences. The two fida’i then attacked him with their swords. One inflicted a glancing wound on his neck, and the second managed to stab him in the thigh. Taj al-Muluk managed to escape inside his palace, and the two Assassins were hacked to pieces by his bodyguard. The wound at his neck healed, but the wound in his thigh became a running sore. For a time it seemed he was improving, but in the end he died from this wound.

1132-41: The Ismailis begin to gradually establish themselves in the Jabal Bahra, to the southwest and acros the Orontes, in the hills overlooking Tortosa, from the area of their initial activity in the Jabal al-Summaq twenty years earlier. In 1132-33 the Moslem lord of al-Kahf sells to the Ismailis the fortress of Qadmus on the Masyaf/Baniyas road, which he had recently recovered from the Franks but perhaps lacked the strength to hold; it became their principal headquarters in the mountains. A few years later, his son ceded al-Kahf to the Ismailis during the course of a struggle with his cousins for the inheritance of his father’s patrimony. In 1136-37 a group of Assassins managed to overwhelm the Frankish garrison of Khariba. Masyaf, which was to become the capital of the Ismaili principality, was captured in 1140-41 from the Bana Munqidh princes of Shaizar; it was more exposed than the other castles. Four other castles – Khawabi, Rusafa, Qulay’a, and Maniqa were also obtained during this period to roudn out the Ismailis’ mountain stronghold, which they would hold without serious problems for another 130+ years.

1149:
Dahhak ibn Jandal, the popular leader of the people in the Wadi al-Taym who had defeated and killed Bahram in 1128, is assassinated by the Ismailis.

- Hodgson (Cambridge History of Iran at 467) suggests that Rasid al-Din Sinan had been a companion-in-arms of Hasan II and may have been sent to the Syrian community to introduce his doctrine of qiyama (resurrection). However, he seems to have interpreted the doctrine very much in his own way, if he applied it at all, and he apparently operated throughout his career with little reference to instructions from Muhammad II.

1152: The Syrian Ismailis begin paying an annual tribute of 2,000 bezants to the Templars. According to William of Tyre, at some point the Master of the Syrian division of the order sent an envoy to King Amalric I of Jerusalem, offering that his people would all convert to Christianity if they were excused the further payment of the tribute. Amalric accepted the offer, even expressing a willingness to recompense the Templars from out of his own treasury, but the Assassin envoy was murdered by the Templars on his way back from Jerusalem.

1152: Assassination of Raymond I, Count of Tripoli.

1162-1194: The Syrian division of the Order is under the leadership of Rashid-uddin, also known as Sinan, the “Old Man of the Mountain.” The contemporary Syrian historian Kamal al-Din met Sinan and recorded a lengthy account of his early years and activities as a da’i in the Ismaili faith.

According to Kamal al-Din, Sinan originally came from a village near Basra, where he later represented his father as having been one of the local notables. He converted to the faith, and perhaps for this reason, subsequently had a dispute with his brothers which ended in Sinan either being expelled or departing voluntarily from his native village, going forth “without provision or a mount.” He made his way to Alamut, where he was received by Kiya Muhammad, who accepted him into his own family. Sinan was schooled with Kiya Muhammad’s sons Hasan and Husayn, and in all things Kiya Muhammad “gave me exactly the same treatment as he gave them,in those things that are needful for the support, education, and clothing of children.”

When Hasan succeeded his father, he ordered Sinan to go to Syria. His account of his journey there gives some sense of the difficulty of the line of communications between the Assassin mission in Syria and their home base in the mountains of Dailam:
“. . . [O]nly rarely did I approach any town. [Hasan] had given me orders and letters. I entered Mosul and halted at the mosque of the carpenters and stayed there, and then I went on, not entering any town, until I reached Raqqa. I had a letter to one of our companions there. I delivered it to him, and he gave me provisions and hired me a mount as far as Aleppo. There I met another companion and delivered him another letter, and he too hired me a mount and sent me on to Kahf. My orders were to stay in this fortress, and I stayed there until Shaykh Abu Muhammad, the head of the Mission, died in the mountain. He was succeeded by Khwaja Ali bin Mas’ud, without appointment [from Alamut] but with the agreement of some of the company. Then the chief Abu Mansur, the nephew of Shaykh Abu Muhammad, and the chief Fahd conspired and sent someone to stab him to death as he was leaving his bath. The leadership remained consultative among them, and the murderers were arrested and imprisoned. Then the command came from Alamut to execute the murderer and release the chief Fahd. With it came a message, and an order to read out to the company.”
[This is an odd account insofar as it suggests that Sinan did not actually step forward to assume command of the Ismailis in Syria for years after he arrived there. Lewis indicates (111) that a legendary biography of Sinan gives his period of waiting at al-Kahf as seven years. But if Sinan had waited seven years, Hasan would already have been dead. This account is also interesting as it suggests that the control of the Syrian mission by the Alamut authorities was always something less than absolute.] [Runciman puts the start of Sinan’s rule at Jabal Bahra in 1169.]

With regard to the doctrine of the Resurrection (qiyama) proclaimed by Hasan II and continued by his son, it reached Syria in some form, but it is far from clear that Sinan actually endorsed it. According to the Syrian historian Kamal al-Din, around 1176-77, “the people of the Jabal al-Summaq gave way to iniquity and debauchery, and called themselves ‘the Pure.’” The ruler of Aleppo sent an army against them, and they withdrew into the recesses of the hills and fortified themselves. Sinan, after making an inquiry into what had occurred, disclaimed responsibility; persuaded the ruler of Aleppo to withdraw; and then, according to the chronicler, himself attacked and destroyed the millenarialists.

We are told that Sinan consolidated the Assassin principality in the Jabal Bahra by rebuilding and strengthening the fortresses of Rusafa and Khawabi, and capturing and fortifying Ulayqa. One Arab chronicler relates that the Grand Master of the Order at Alamut sent emissaries on a number of occasions to kill him, but these attempts were never successful. Some surviving fragments of documents associated with his rule also suggest that he ultimately threw off the overlordship of Alamut (or, like some of his predecessors, found its authority very tenuous), because these documents make no reference to the Order’s Persian chiefs, treating Sinan himself as the supreme leader.


Source: http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Group/586540

The Tale of the Hashish Eater

The Tale of the Hashish Eater -- From "The Tale of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman and his Sons Sarrkan and Zau al-Makan", *The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night* Nights 142-143, Translated by Richard F. Burton.

...Then said she, "Know that I mean to pass this night with thee, that I may tell thee what talk I have heard and console thee with stories of many passion-distraughts whom love hath made sick." "Nay," quoth he, "Rather tell me a tale that will gladden my heart and gar my cares depart." "With joy and good will," answered she; then she took seat by his side (and that poniard under her dress) and began to say: -- Know thou that the pleasantest thing my ears ever heard was


THE TALE OF THE HASHISH EATER


A certain man loved fair women, and spent his substance on them, till he became so poor that nothing remained to him; the world was straitened upon him and he used to go about the market-streets begging his daily bread. Once upon a time as he went along, behold, a bit of iron nail pierced his finger and drew blood; so he sat down and, wiping away the blood, bound up his finger. Then he arose crying out, and fared forwards till he came to a Hammam and entering took off his clothes, and when he looked about him he found it clean and empty. So he sat him down by the fountain-basin, and ceased not pouring water on his head, till he was tired. ...Then he went out to the room in which was the cistern of cold water; and seeing no one there, he found a quiet corner and taking out a piece of Hashish, swallowed it. Presently the fumes mounted to his brain and he rolled over on to the marble floor. Then the Hashish made him fancy that a great lord was shampooing him and that two slaves stood at his head, one bearing a bowl and the other washing gear and all the requisites of the Hammam. When he saw this, he said to himself, "Meseemeth these here be mistaken in me; or else they are of the company of us Hashish-eaters." Then he stretched out his legs and he imagined that the bathman said to him, "O my master, the time of thy going up to the Palace draweth near and it is to-day thy turn of service." At this he laughed and said to himself, "As Allah willeth, O Hashish!"


Then he sat and said nothing, whilst the bathman arose and took him by the hand and girt his middle with a waist-cloth of black silk, after which the two slaves followed him with the bowls and gear; and they ceased not escorting him till they brought him into a cabinet, wherein they set incense and perfumes a-burning. He found the place full of various kinds of fruits and sweet-scented flowers, and they sliced him a water-melon and seated him on a stool of ebony, whilst the bathman stood to wash him and the slaves poured water on him; after which they rubbed him down well and said, "O our lord, Sir Wazir, health to thee forever!"


Then they went out and shut the door on him; and in the vanity of phantasy he arose and removed the waist-cloth from his middle, and laughed till he well nigh fainted. He gave not over laughing for some time and at last quoth he to himself, "What aileth them to address me as if I were a Minister and style me Master, and Sir? Haply they are now blundering; but after an hour they will know me and say, This fellow is a beggar; and will take their fill of cuffing me on the neck." Presently, feeling hot, he opened the door, whereupon it seemed to him that a little white slave and an eunuch came in to him carrying a parcel. Then the slave opened it and brought out three kerchiefs of silk, one of which he threw over his head, a second over his shoulders, and a third he tied round his waist. Moreover, the eunuch gave him a pair of bath-clogs, and he put them on; after which in came white slaves and eunuchs and supported him (and he laughing the while) to the outer hall, which he found hung and spread with magnificent furniture, such as beseemeth none but kings; and the pages hastened up to him and seated him on the divan.


Then they fell to kneading him till sleep overcame him; and he dreamt that he had a girl in his arms. So he kissed her and set her between his thighs; then, sitting to her as a man sitteth to a woman, he took yard in hand and drew her towards him and weighed down upon her and lo! he heard one saying to him, "Awake, thou ne'er-do-well! The noon-hour is come and thou art still asleep." He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the marge of the cold-water tank, amongst a crowd of people all laughing at him; for his prickle was at point and the napkin had slipped from his middle. So he knew that all this was but a confusion of dreams and an illusion of the Hashish and he was vexed and said to him who had aroused him, "Would thou hadst waited till I had put it in!" Then said the folk, "Art thou not ashamed, O Hashish-eater, to be sleeping stark naked with stiff-standing tool?" And they cuffed him till his neck was red. Now he was starving, yet forsooth he savoured the flavour of pleasure in his dream.

The Assassins

THE ASSASSINS – Modern Parallels


Some commentators make comparisons between the historical Assassin movement and Al Qaeda, noting the similar tactics of terror, political assassination, the promise of reaching paradise, as well as the cult-like mysticism around Osama Bin Laden. Al Qaeda s also a secret society with its leaders purportedly hiding in mountain hideouts. Martyrdom is also a key aspect of Al Qaeda's tactics. Moreover, confirmed culprits so far for 9/11 and the Madrid Bombs were all drug-users. Given the pejorative nature of the term, sympathizers of Al Qaeda would be expected to dispute the similarities.

The Hashshashin
The Hashshashin (also Hashishin), or Assassins were a religious group (some would say a cult) of Ismaili Muslims from the Nizari sub-sect with a militant basis, thought to be active in the 8th to 14th centuries as a mystic secret society specialising in terrorising the Abbasid elite with fearlessly executed, politically motivated assassinations. Their own name for the sect was al-da'wa al-jadīda (الدعوة الجديدة) which means the new doctrine and they called themselves fedayeen from the Arabic fidā'ī which means one who is ready to sacrifice their life for a cause — that term has the modern connotation of "freedom fighter". The name Hashshashin was given to them by their Muslim enemies.

Their Muslim contemporaries were extremely suspicious of them; in fact they were described in terms (Batini) which suggested they were only nominally Islamic. This constant religious estrangement would eventually see them go so far as allying with the Occidental Christians against Muslims on a number of occasions. It is even suggested that they attempted to negotiate their own conversion to Christianity with Amalric I of Jerusalem, but were foiled by Templar machinations, perhaps on the basis that this would exempt them from onerous taxes on non-Christians in the Holy Lands, which were profitable for the knightly orders. Plainly, their connection to mainstream Islam was tangential at best.

The group transformed the act of murder into a system directed largely against Seljuk Muslim rulers that had been persecuting their sect. They were meticulous in killing the targeted individual, seeking to do so without any additional casualties and innocent loss of life, although they were careful to cultivate their terrifying reputation by slaying their victims in public, often in mosques. Typically they approached using a disguise; their weapon of choice a dagger, rejecting poison, bows and other weapons that allowed the attacker to escape. However, under no circumstances did they commit suicide, preferring to be killed by their captors.

Etymology of the word "assassin"

The name "assassin" is commonly believed to be a mutation of the Arabic "haššāšīn" (حشّاشين, "hashish-eaters"). However, there are those who dispute this etymology, arguing that it originates from Marco Polo's account of his visit to Alamut in 1273, in which he describes a drug whose effects are more like those of alcohol than of hashish. It is suggested by some writers that assassin simply means 'followers of Al-Hassan' (or Hasan-i Sabbah, the Sheikh of Alamut (see below). Others suggest that since hashish-eaters were generally ostracized in the middle ages the word "Hashshashin" had become a common synonym for "outlaws". So the attribution of Hassan's Ismaili sect with this term is not necessarily a clue for drug usage. Some common accounts of their connection with hashish are that these "assassins" would take hashish before missions in order to calm themselves; others say that it helped to boost their strength, and turned them into madmen in battle. Yet other accounts state it was used in their initiation rites in order to show the neophyte the sensual pleasures awaiting him in the afterlife. The connection between their mysticism and that drug is not something subject to reliable or consistent historical accounts; this is not surprising given their secrecy and infamy.

"Many scholars have argued, and demonstrated convincingly, that the attribution of the epithet 'hashish eaters' or 'hashish takers' is a misnomer derived from enemies of the Isma'ilis and was never used by Moslem chroniclers or sources. It was therefore used in a pejorative sense of 'enemies' or 'disreputable people'. This sense of the term survived into modern times with the common Egyptian usage of the term Hashasheen in the 1930s to mean simply 'noisy or riotous'. It is unlikely that the austere Hasan-i Sabbah indulged personally in drug taking."

"There is no mention of that drug [hashish] in connection with the Persian Assassins - especially in the library of Alamut ('the secret archives')."

- Edward Burman, The Assassins - Holy Killers of Islam

History of the Hashshashin
Although apparently known as early as the 8th century, the foundation of the Assassins is usually marked as 1090 when Hasan-i Sabbah established his stronghold in the mountains south of the Caspian Sea at Alamut. A Yemeni emigrant and an Ismaili Shiite, Hasan set the aim of the Assassins to destroy the power of the Abbasid Caliphate by murdering its most powerful members. Hasan ibn Sabbah was also known as "The Old Man of the Mountain", however, this is likely to have been a mistake in translation, since "Old Man" is the literal translation of "Sheikh". Much of the current western lore surrounding the Assassins stems from Marco Polo's supposed visit to Alamut in 1273, which is widely considered mythical (especially as the stronghold had reportedly been destroyed by the Mongols in 1256).

Benjamin of Tudela who traveled one hundred years before Marco Polo mentions the Al-Hashshashin and their leader as "the Old Man." He notes their principal city to be Kadmus.

The group inspired terror out of all proportion to their scant numbers and territory. The members were organized into rigid classes, based upon their initiation into the secrets of the order. The devotees constituted a class that sought martyrdom and followed orders with unquestioned devotion, orders which included assassination. Because of the secretive nature of the order, it has often been invoked in conspiracy theories.

Most of the victims of the Assassins were Sunni Muslims. There were some extremely highly placed victims including Nizam-ul-Mulk. It is known that Saladin, incensed by several almost successful attempts on his life, besieged their chief Syrian stronghold of Masyaf during his reconquest of Outremer in 1176 but quickly lifted the siege after parley, and thereafter attempted to maintain good relations with the sect. The sect's own extant (and doubtless embellished) accounts tell of the Old Man himself stealing into Saladin's tent in the heart of his camp, and leaving a poisoned cake and a note saying "You are in our power" on Saladin's chest as he slept. Another account tells of a letter sent to Saladin's maternal uncle, vowing death to the entire royal line, perhaps no idle threat; whatever the truth of these accounts (and likely it will remain a mystery) he clearly heeded their warning, and desisted. Alone amongst the Islamic heretics Saladin so despised, the batinis would be granted leeway.

Christians were largely untouched by the depredations of the Assassins; it was not until the middle of the 12th century that they had even really heard of them, although Raymond II of Tripoli and Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, were victims. The Assassins of Conrad may have even been hired by Richard the Lionheart.

The power of the Hashshashin was destroyed by the Mongol warlord Hulagu Khan, but several Ismaili sects share something of a common lineage, such as the sect led by the Aga Khan. During the Mongol assault of Alamut, the library of the sect was destroyed, along with much of their powerbase, and thus much of the sect's own records were lost; most accounts of them stem from the highly reputable Arab historians of the period.

The word "assassin" in the English language has come to denote a murderer, usually with a political motive.

Methodology

Although Legends states that Hasan-i Sabbah, original leader of the Nizari Isamailies, used Hashish to grant "visions" of paradise to his followers, it is highly unlikely, given the fact that the use and effects of Hashish were well known during that time period, and frequent subjects of Imams in the Mosques. Marco Polo, who traveled through the area, gave an account similar to this:

Recruits were promised Paradise in return for dying in action. They were drugged, often with materials such as hashish (some suggest opium and wine as well) then spirited away to a garden stocked with attractive and compliant women (houris) and fountains of wine. At this time, they were awakened and it was explained to them that such was their reward for the deed, convincing them that their leader, Hassan-i-Sabah, could open the gates to Paradise.

In the very beginning Hasan was not likely to use doped and kidnapped individuals, as their fundamentalism prevented them from using any kind of drug, or making misbelievers become martyrs, as his operatives. But as Ismaili power grew and several Fortresses and their accompanying villages came under Ismaili rule, Hasan and his followers are believed to have begun recruiting and training assassins from birth.

Modern parallels
Some commentators make comparisons between the historical Assassin movement and Al Qaeda, noting the similar tactics of terror, political assassination, the promise of reaching paradise, as well as the cult-like mysticism around Osama Bin Laden. Al Qaeda is also a secret society, with its leaders purportedly hiding in mountain hideouts. Martyrdom is also a key aspect of Al Qaeda's tactics. Moreover, confirmed culprits so far for 9-11 and the Madrid Bombs were all drug-users. Given the pejorative nature of the term, sympathizers of Al Qaeda would be expected to dispute the similarities.

Influence
o The Hashshashin figures in several novels by William S. Burroughs.
o The Hashshashin history figures largely into the plot of Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons.
o The Hashshashin methodology described by Marco Polo figures in Umberto Eco's novels Baudolino and Foucault's Pendulum.
o The Hashshashin are the center of the Slovene novel Alamut by Vladimir Bartol.


Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashshashin

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Fitna, the Movie, working link

See the movie HERE Save it before it's taken down by the dhimmi dummies!

Obamabots for Suicide

Here is a man who's mother was a Muslim convert, a Muslim father, Muslim step-father, and all his siblings are Muslim....yet he professes to be Christian ? Is there any record of a baptism into Christianity for Obama. He now calls the white Grandmother who raised him, a racist and ..... "typical white person".

"Typical White Person" ? This isn't the perception of a man who's qualified to lead a nation of many nationalities and cultures....their is no "typical anything" in this country.

It also isn't the behavior of a man who wants to lead a multicultural nation, by joining and staying in a Church that openly hates America... and its WHITE PEOPLE. He excuses this as only a portion of the sermons given by his pastor. How many "sermons" would YOU sit through if the pastor praised the KKK and called blacks, niggers or wanted them all sent back to Africa (or worse)....about one minute would do it for me. Obama sat and listened for over 20 years !

Has anyone read Koran verse 9:3 about lying to infidels, "if it furthers the needs of Islam its permissible, and expected."

Would a closet Muslim be helping Islam by posing as a Christian, while running for President of the United States ? His proposed "changes" for America would not only bankrupt this country with his charity for the worlds poor, but surrender all the Middle East over to Muslim extremists. He knows the poor, the Communists, and the intellectually impaired of this country will accept any solution for the minute, while ignoring the larger picture or catastrophic future damage altogether.

Here is a man who has repeatedly lied to followers. He tells the people of his District that it is George Bush and the Republicans who are responsible for their poverty. He fails to mention that their District has been under DEMOCRAT control for over 40 years.

Here is a man who with his wife makes $1.2 Million a year. Yet in the years previous to his running for president donated less, LESS than 3% of his income to charity, many years as little as less than 1%. He's going to help the poor, as long as its with someone else's.... MONEY ! Last year was his biggest contribution to charity $27,000 .... to his CHURCH. Quid Pro Quo ?

In closing Obama is connected to a known and admitted racist Church & pastor, the Black Muslims, Nation of Islam, Black Panthers (they were linked from his website) and bought a house close to Louis Farakahan. His biggest campaign donor and close friend was Antoin "Tony" Rezko, the Arab-American fundraiser and immigrant from Syria, who is now indicted for felony racketeering and campaign fraud....note "immigrant from Syria", another Muslim.

If it "walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flew in with a flock of ducks, and hangs out with ducks ".... its pretty damn certain.... it a DUCK !
===================================================
Is Barack Obama a Muslim wolf in Christian wool? By Reuven Koret March 27, 2008
The glib handling of criticism of his relationship with the anti-American ("God Damn America!") and anti-Israel ("a dirty word for Negroes") Re
In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.'"Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07]
Three years later, in 1971, Obama enrolled in the Besuki Primary School, a government school, as Barry Soetoro, Muslim. In thir
According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. "I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.
d grade, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want To Be a President.' His third grade teacher: Fermina Katarina Sinaga "asked her class to write an essay titled 'My dream: What I want to be in the future.' Senator Obama wrote 'I want to be a President,' she said." [The Los Angeles Times, 3/15/07]
All Indonesian students are required to study religion at school and a young Barry Soetoro, being a Muslim, would have been required to study Islam daily in school.
He would have been taught to read and write Arabic, to recite his prayers properly, to read and recite from the Quran and to study the laws of Islam.
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," Obama mentions studying the Koran and describes the public school as "a Muslim school."
verend James Wright may have bought him a little time. But the legacy of dissimulation about his long-concealed identity is about to come crashing down around the ears of Barack Hussein Obama, courtesy of the assembled testimony of his family, friends, classmates and teachers.
The accumulated research indicates that Obama was in his childhood a devout Muslim, the son of a devout Muslim, the step-son of a devout Muslim and the grandson and namesake ("Hussein") of a devout Muslim. He was registered in school as a Muslim and demonstrated his ability to chant praise to Allah in impressive Arab-accented tones even as an adult. Just as he has not disavowed his "uncle" Jeremiah, neither has he disavowed his Muslim faith that he was born into, raised with, celebrated and never abandoned. He just covered it over with a thin veneer of his own self-styled "Christianity."
Although as an adult he would register as a Christian, and occasionally attend a Christian Church (but apparently not often enough to listen to the preaching of his pastor, or so he would claim) this was a necessary step for a man who from earliest boyhood has nurtured the precocious ambition to be President of the United States.
According to Tine Hahiyary, one of Obama's teachers and the principal from 1971 through 1989, Barry actively took part in the Islamic religious lessons during his time at the school. "I remembered that he had studied "mengaji" (recitation of the Quran)" Tine said.
The author of the Laotze blog writes from Jakarta: "The actual usage of the word 'mengaji' in Indonesian and Malaysian societies means the study of learning to recite the Quran in the Arabic language rather than the native tongue. "Mengagi" is a word and a term that is accorded the highest value and status in the mindset of fundamentalist societies here in Southeast Asia. To put it quite simply, 'mengaji classes' are not something that a non practicing or so-called moderate Muslim family would ever send their child to. To put this in a Christian context, this is something above and beyond simply enrolling your child in Sunday school classes."
"The fact that Obama had attended mengaji classes is well known in Indonesia and has left many there wondering just when Obama is going to come out of the closet."
"As I've stated before, the evidence seems to quite clearly show that both Ann Dunham and her husband Lolo Soetoro Mangunharjo were in fact devout Muslims themselves and they raised their son as such."
The Obama Campaign told the LA Times he wasn't a "practicing Muslim." (3/14/2007). But his official website says: "Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian" (11/12/2007)
That's not what his friends and classmates have said. Classmate Rony Amiris describes young Barry as enjoying playing football and marbles and of being a very devout Muslim. Amir said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. We previously often asked him to the prayer room close to the house. If he was wearing a sarong, he looked funny," said Rony.
Amiris, now the manager of Bank Mandiri, Jakarta, recently said, "Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children. All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"
Emirsyah Satar, CEO of Garuda Indonesia, was quoted as saying, "He (Obama) was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time."
"He was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion." So Obama, according to his classmates and friends was a Muslim until the confluence of love and ambitious, caused him to adopt the cloak of Christianity: to marry Michelle and to run for President of the United States.
In "Dreams," Obama sheds light on his formative years and the political views of his mother, an anthropologist and Islamophile who hated America and subsequently "went native." (It was her mother -- Barry's "other" grandmother who cared for him in his druggie teenage years -- that he would describe as a "typical white person" who was, he said scoldingly, fearful of black men and prone to making stereotypical racial remarks.)
Obama Senior also had three sons by another woman who are all Muslim. Although Obama claims Senior was an atheist, Senior was buried as a Muslim.
Barack Obama's brother Roy opted for Islam over Christianity, as the Senator recounted in his book when describing his 1992 wedding. "The person who made me proudest of all," Obama wrote, "was Roy. Actually, now we call him Abongo, his Luo name, for two years ago he decided to reassert his African heritage. He converted to Islam, and has sworn off pork and tobacco and alcohol."Abongo "argues that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." He urged his younger brother to embrace his African heritage.
In Kenya while he was a Senator, Obama stumped for his cousin, opposition leader Raila Odinga, the son of Senior's sister, a direct first cousin and nephew of Obama's father. On August 29, 2007, Raila Odinga and Shiekh Abdullah Abdi, chairman of the National Muslim Leaders Forum of Kenya signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which it pledges the support of Kenyan Moslems for Raila's election. In return, as President of Kenya, Raila agrees ... within 6 months re-write the Constitution of Kenya to recognize Shariah as the only true law sanctioned by the Holy Quran for Muslim declared regions [and] within one year to facilitate the establishment of a Shariah court in every Kenyan divisional headquarters -- everywhere in Kenya, not just in "Muslim declared regions" -- and to popularize Islam, the only true religion ... by ordering every primary school in Kenya in the regions to conduct daily Madrassa classes.
In an interview with the New York Times, published on April 30th, Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama's younger half sister, told the Times, "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim."
Obama describes his new found "Christian" faith as: (1) Suspicious of dogma (2) Without any monopoly on the truth (3) Nontransferable to others (4) Infused with a big healthy dose of doubt, and (5) Indulgent of and compatible with all other religions.
On February 27th, speaking to Kristof of The New York Times, Barack Hussein Obama said the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset."
In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in The New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, "with a first-class [Arabic] accent." The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada:
"Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that Muhammad is his prophet? "
According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim's complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam. Obama chanted it with pride and finesse.
An American Expat in Southeast Asia blog, written by an American who has lived in Indonesia for 20 years and has met with both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, contains the following:
"Barack Hussein Obama might have convinced some Americans that he is no longer a Muslim, but so far he has not convinced many in the world's most populous Muslim country who still see him as a Muslim and a crusader for Islam and world peace."
"Barack Hussein Obama's race, his staunch opposition to the war in Iraq, his sympathy to Islam and Muslims worldwide and his Muslim heritage receive the Indonesian media coverage. There is no mention of his apostasy."
"A good example of how some of the Indonesian media is reporting on Obama's religion can be found in the following."
"What I found interesting in the article was the use of the word 'mengaku' when referring to Obama's conversion from Islam to Christianity. The word 'mengaku' in Indonesian means "claimed" and as such leaves the insinuation to the native Indonesian reader being that Obama might actually still be a Muslim.
But this is how Indonesians see Obama, they don't see him as an apostate at all, they see him as a crusader for the cause of Islam."
Obama wants it both ways, has always wanted it both ways. Black and white, Indonesian and American, Muslim and Christian. He loves playing one off the other, using one to hide the other even as the traces of the truth may be assembled to reveal the whole cloth of deception and self-promotion he has been weaving so skillfully since his childhood. No wonder he is a man of change. He IS a changeling, a veritable chameleon, adapting and amending his life story to fit the circumstances.
The charm may have worked once. It still works on some. It won't work forever in the age of the Internet. The fog of ambiguity and dissimulation is dissipated by the harsh, unforgiving and scrutiny of the blogosphere and its unlimited access to historical facts and time-stamped testimony.
Many have been puzzled why Obama could claim not to be familiar with Wright's rants. It turns out the Trinity Church, like many African-American churches, happily accepts believing Muslims within its congregation. And evidently many Muslims have no problems surrounding themselves with an anti-American, anti-Israel preacher who week in and week out wins the amens of his adoring congregation.
On Feb 15/08, Usama K. Dakdok, President of The Straight Way of Grace Ministry called Obama's Church and reported the following conversation: " I then asked the person who answered what I needed to do to join. She told me that I needed to attend two Sunday School classes in a row and then I would walk the aisle. I replied, "That sounds easy. One last question please. If I am Muslim and I believe in the Prophet Mohammed, peace be unto him and I also believe in Jesus, peace be unto him, do I have to give up my Islamic faith to be a member in your church? She answered: "No, we have many Muslim members in our church."
Indeed.
Credit for these reports and revelations -- assembling the statements of those who love and admire Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama -- belong primarily to the writers, researchers, and journalists cited in and contributing to the above references. Special hat tip to Ted Belman of Israpundit for putting most of the pieces together. One can be sure that more, much more, is on the way, before the first black muslim president enters the White House. Or not.
==============================================================


Amazing, we stand on the verge of electing someone to office that represents a religion that hates us!!
Wright’s church is a good church for a Muslum to hide in. It seems to be in considerable accord with the “Black Muslims” in America. He doesn’t have to alter his beliefs much, just change the name of the Deity.
Not much doubt that he’s a Muslim, a race baiter, and an America-hater.
His reciting the Shahada convinced me. No Christian would do that, particularly not with gusto.

Pays no respect to those forced to chose to continue to be incinerated alive or leap from 1000 feet in the air to be electing Muslims all over the land. Electing this racist America hater would be an unforgivable insult!

ACT! FOR AMERICA

ISLAMOFASCISM FRAUD at WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY

Islamofascism fraud at Wright State

By Patrick Poole, FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Power has its privileges. That’s no doubt what Mohammad “Moody” Kassem, a student government officer at Wright State University, thought a few weeks ago when he devised a plan to use his student government position to help promote the extremist agenda of another organization he is also a leader of – the Muslim Student Association.

In late February, Moody Kassem posted an online poll on the Wright State student government website directed exclusively towards Muslims which asked:

If you are of Islamic faith would you utilize a permanent prayer room?

This in itself seems innocuous enough, but Kassem then began contacting Muslims all over the country – with no association or ties to Wright State University or its local community – to participate in this poll with the expressed intent to use the results of this poll to approach WSU Provost Steven Angle to pressure the university to establish a permanent private Islamic prayer room on the campus of this state university. The poll was featured prominently on the home page of the Wright State Student Government website.

Here’s the text of the email that Moody Kassem sent out to Muslim leaders all over the country:

Salaam everyone. So I need to ask a favor of every one of you. PLEASE go to www.wsusg.com and go to the poll on the right and vote for YES. This is the Wright State University Student Government website. I am conducting a survey for ANYONE to vote about getting a prayer room on campus. Inshallah, with it, the next generations after us will have an official place to pray whenever they choose. If my plan goes well, I will be presenting this to the provost of Wright State University (Steven Angle) on behalf of the Muslim community and WSU Student Government. Get as many people to vote at that poll. The more the votes the better and stronger our point will be. Please let me know if there are any questions or comments. My phone number should be at the end of my signature when I send this email or obviously shoot me an email, and I should respond within 2 hours. Please forward this to all MUSLIMS that you know. If sent to non-Muslims, unfortunately, I can't track who voted, so we will get NO answers.

Salaam and JAK.

MK

With this e-mail going out well beyond WSU's service area, a seemingly insignificant poll on the student government website rapidly spun up hundreds of affirmative responses.

I contacted Moody Kassem two days after he posted his online poll to inquire why he would use responses from those with no connection to WSU as proof of a demand for a separate Islamic prayer room on campus, but I received no reply. However, the poll was moved off the student government main webpage within an hour of my e-mail to Kassem, despite the fact that it is still running.

Why would Moody Kassem be so interested in using his position as Director of International Student Affairs of the Wright State student government to rig this poll? One reason might be that Kassem is also listed as the Vice President of the Wright State’s Muslim Student Association, a national organization which has repeatedly expressed sympathies for Islamic terrorism and religious extremism.

The Muslim Student Association (MSA) has been identified as one of the primary front groups in the United States for the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization (see the MSA dossier prepared by The Investigative Project on Terrorism). The MSA’s agenda of Islamic radicalization can be seen in the group’s publication, “MSA Starter’s Guide: A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA”. That guide lays out a program to promote an “in-your-face” brand of Islam:

It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the politics of their respective university…the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more ‘In-your-face’ association…For example, the student body must be convinced that there is such a thing as a Muslim-bloc….
Extremist “in-your-face” agendas are nothing new on college campuses, of course, but most student groups haven’t operating as fronts for international Islamic terrorist organizations, as has the MSA.

The “MSA Starter’s Guide” also encourages its members to utilize positions within student governments to enforce the MSA’s radical Islamization agenda:

Aim to rise within the ranks of the Union [student government] and to get on selected executive committees…I cannot stress this enough, the Union has vast powers that Muslims need to control.
The MSA has also prepared and published a guide on “How to Establish a Prayer Room on Campus” for its student leaders to press their schools with demands for separate, rather than a shared, religious space on campus as part of their Muslim Accommodations Task Force. A supplement to the guide (no longer available online) specifically instructs MSA leaders on setting up a “Prayer Room Demand Survey” (mentioned on page 4 of the guide), much as Moody Kassem had done at Wright State.
Sadly, administrators at Wright State who will be presented with the results of Kassem’s rigged online poll will probably be unaware of the fraud being perpetrated on them. They may even quickly bend to the extremist Islamofascist agenda of the MSA, as the MSA prayer room guide documents has already been done in other universities, including just an hour away at Ohio State.

As evidenced by the present Islamofascist fraud at Wright State, the upcoming Islamofascism Awareness Week II and efforts to inform students, faculty and administrators alike of the threat posed by extremist Islamic insurgent organizations on campus, such as the Muslim Student Association, couldn’t be more timely.

Some CAIR Officials Convicted of Crimes, More Tied to Extremist Groups

Some CAIR Officials Convicted of Crimes, More Tied to Extremist Groups

by Steven Emerson
IPT News
March 26, 2008
(note: The third installment of our CAIR dossier can be viewed in its entirety at http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/111.pdf)

The questionable associations and actions by many of its leaders cast serious doubt on CAIR's claims of moderation and restraint. Some have committed criminal acts themselves; others have ties to organizations with connections to Islamic extremism.

Those convicted of direct criminal activity include Ghassan Elashi, a founding board member of CAIR-Texas; Randall (Ismail) Royer, once a communications specialist for the national group, and Bassam Khafagi, the organization's one-time director of community relations.

In the more egregious cases, the organization has tried to distance itself from the individuals, contorting both logic and the English language. As the IPT's series on CAIR's history and activities continues, we look at the suspect nature of these examples and others close to the organization.

• Ghassan Elashi, who attended a 1993 Philadelphia meeting called by Hamas to discuss derailing U.S. peace initiatives, was convicted in 2004 on six criminal counts, including making false statements, conspiracy to violate the Export Administration Regulations and the Libyan Sanctions Regulations, and conspiracy to file false shipper's export declaration forms. He was a defendant again in the 2007 Hamas-support trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), where jurors were unable to reach unanimous verdicts on the charges against him.

Elashi served as HLF chairman and treasurer and vice president of Infocom, a computer export company. He was sentenced to 80 months in prison for making illegal computer shipments to Libya and Syria and conspiring to send money to Mousa Abu Marzook, an admitted Hamas leader.

Seeking to minimize Elashi's ties to CAIR, Executive Director Nihad Awad assured U.S. senators in 2003 testimony, "Mr. Elashi was never an employee or officer of our corporation. The fact that he was once associated with one of our almost twenty regional chapters has no legal significance…"

• Randall Royer, the former CAIR communications specialist, has a more colorful criminal history. Police who stopped his car for a traffic violation in 2001 found an AK-47-style rifle and 219 rounds of ammunition inside. Then, in 2003, he was indicted on charges stemming from participation in the ongoing jihad in Kashmir -- specifically, doing propaganda work for Lashkar-e Taiba, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group, and personally firing at Indian positions in Kashmir.

Pleading guilty to weapons and explosives charges in 2004, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Again, CAIR reacted defensively, seeking to downplay both his ties to the organization and, indeed, the nature of his crimes. "Notwithstanding the fact that any criminal action to which he pleaded guilty was done when Royer was no longer employed with CAIR and not at CAIR's direction," the group said, "it is important to note that the only crimes that he pleaded guilty to were weapons charges, not charges of terrorism."

CAIR's timing point contradicts media reports indicating that Royer still worked for the group in October 2001; while the charges to which Royer pleaded guilty do not directly contain the word "terrorism," they involved his activities in support of the designated terrorist Lashkar-e Taiba.

• Bassam Khafagi pleaded guilty to bank and visa fraud charges in September 2003, after his arrest and indictment earlier that year. "At the time of his arrest," the Associated Press reported, "he was community affairs director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations."

Khafagi also served as a founding member and president of the Islamic Assembly of North America. That group was investigated on charges of money laundering and recruiting terrorists over the Internet and the FBI raided its offices in February 2003.

Trying to put the best face on the situation once again, Awad claimed in Senate testimony, "Khafagi was never an 'employee' of CAIR," but rather an "independent contractor for CAIR."

Among other CAIR officials:

• Nabil Sadoun, currently on CAIR's board and chair of CAIR-Texas, helped found the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). While there has been no criminal prosecution of the UASR, Sadoun founded it along with Hamas leader Marzook. Internal records show the UASR was a founding member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee in America. Federal prosecutors say that committee's "designed purpose was to support Hamas."

Sadoun also co-founded the Muslim American Youth Association. MAYA's conferences, many of which it co-sponsored with IAP, have long supported Hamas.

• Mohammad El-Mezain, the former chairman and director of endowments for HLF, conducted fundraising at a 2004 CAIR-New York event, soliciting over $100,000 for CAIR. He was indicted soon afterward for providing material support to Hamas. Acquitted of most counts against him in the HLF trial, he faces retrial on a charge of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group.

• Rabih Haddad served as a fundraiser for CAIR's Ann Arbor chapter. He co-founded the Global Relief Foundation (GRF), one of the largest Islamic charities in the United States -- but one that the U.S. government has investigated of funding violent jihadism.

In December 2001 the FBI raided GRF's headquarters and arrested Haddad, then its chairman, on a visa violation. He was deported to Lebanon after an immigration judge found that he presented "a substantial risk to the national security of the United States." The Treasury Department said Haddad had been a member of Makhtab Al-Khidamat, the precursor organization to Al Qaeda.

Again, to view the full installment, click here:
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/111.pdf