Category Archives: War against reality

The wannabe British jihadist who said no to Al-Qaeda

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This is now what the Brits are calling a success story.

Short version. The murder of innocents during 9/11 and 7-7 inspire a British Muslim to travel to Pakistan and join in the killing. Young Muslim gets wounded and realizes this is no game and I don’t want to play anymore. British media reports it as proof that jihadists can be de-radicalized.

TIMESONLINE… It took months to get to the man I must call “Kasim”. I’d heard about a wannabe British jihadist who had been injured in a US drone attack in Waziristan, Pakistan, but he was not easy to find, and, once found, he was clearly uneasy. With good reason. There are probably many people far scarier than me who would like to meet him.

We met in Blackpool on a filthy day, in the pouring rain, when the sky was as dark as the sea. I guessed he was in his mid-twenties. He wore a baseball cap pulled well down over his eyes as we walked between the great iron gantries of the pier and talked.

Like many young Muslims who embrace extreme Islam, Kasim — who was born in Britain — didn’t come from a deprived area or a poor family. His parents were middle-class Pakistanis. Kasim rebelled, dated girls, went clubbing, drank alcohol and smoked cannabis — but never told his parents. Had they known, they would probably have placed him under curfew.

Nonetheless, he was essentially a typical British teenager — until 9/11 changed everything. “It was the catalyst. It gave me the hunger to learn more about Islam,” he says. His journey to jihad began with sampling different mosques in search of the “peacefulness” he believed would guarantee his path to paradise. “I realised that there were 73 different sects in Islam — only one was going to paradise and the rest were going to hellfire.” Continue Reading →

Iran uses ‘enemies of God’ charge on protesters

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(CNN) — Iran hanged two men at the end of January — the first political prisoners known to be executed in Iran since the demonstrations protesting the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Amnesty International.

It’s still not entirely clear what Arash Rahmanipour and Mohammad Reza Ali-Zamani’s crime was. Rahmanipour’s lawyer said he was already in jail on election day in June 2009, so he couldn’t have been involved in the post-election uprising, she said.

But whatever their earthly crimes were, the two men executed last month were also accused of another offense far more serious than simply protesting against a government.

They were convicted of being “mohareb,” enemies of God.

That is the worst possible crime in Shiite Muslim law, according to Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.

The legal implications are clear, he said.

“A mohareb, according to Shiite law, is executed,” he said.

That the regime is labeling its opponents enemies of God is a sign of how rattled it is by the protests, he said. Continue Reading →

Answering Jermaine Jackson

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A Vladtepesblog source tells us that Jermaine lives rather large in L.A. Drives around in a rather splendid Bentley with Dubai plates on it. How odd. I guess his brother the Jahovah’s Witness gave it to him for whoring out to Islam.

Of college girls and Keffiyehs

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Once again I noticed riding the buss, that so many young people wear a keffiyeh as a fashion statement or just as likely as a political one. OK that’s fine. I am all for freedom of speech and especially for political speech, the kind that really matters. However I do think it is a good idea for people to actually be clear on what their speech and symbols really mean. today, I saw an attractive young woman wearing as a scarf, the official headdress of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Does she have no clue that the Saudis in all probability would not let her wear it at all within the KSA? That she likely would not be able to travel un-escorted on the street or on a public bus with men on it? That in fact she is wearing the very symbol of one of the most oppressive regimes for women’s rights in the world now or ever? You would  have to be sacrificed to a volcano to get much worse treatment as a woman than you do in Saudi Arabia.

And the rest of the children who have been led to believe that supporting Hamas and wearing the keffiyeh is a cool counter-culture, anti-corporate, death to capitalism, anti racism sort of statement I profoundly hope you will read the Hamas charter as well as Hizbolah’s. They are online and quite clear. These organizations are literally genocidal. Hamas and Hizbolah are the most racist large scale governmental organizations since Hitler’s National Socialists.

So by all means, preach death to Jews and demand that Canada adopt sharia law and take away women’s rights to choice about pretty much anything, and demand a caliphate here in Canada and for the world if you feel that is what you want to see. But for the love of (insert gods here) do not advertise your semi-literate, under-informed, fashion-based crapioca on the rest of us when in fact you have no actual clue what the symbols you wear mean, and the groups you support actually fight for with your support and probably your money. If you are a genocidal anti-semite   and want a seventh century religious conservative rule with zero tolerance for all alternative lifestyles or points of view carry on. I will fight you in the streets and on the beeches as needs be. But if you don’t want these things, go home and change.

Eeyore for Vlad with a nod to Fred at GAR

Ezra Levant: B’nai Brith and the ‘no terrorism Fatwa’

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From Ezra Levant’s excellent website.

B’nai Brith exposes Syed Soharwardy as a bigot

By Ezra Levant on January 19, 2010 5:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (29)

I’ve criticized B’nai Brith before for their on-again, off-again support for Canada’s human rights commissions and their censorship laws. Here’s an example. Such support is odd, especially considering the fact that B’nai Brith itself was the target of a five-year censorship vendetta by Manitoba’s Human Rights Commission, spurred by a radical Muslim complainant.

Well last week, to my surprise, I was contacted by B’nai Brith to help them assess the propaganda “fatwa against terrorism” issued by a handful of Canadian Muslim clerics, including Calgary’s Syed Soharwardy.

I was happy to help reveal the true nature of Soharwrady. I documented for them not only Soharwardy’s public statements (his call for sharia law to be imposed in Canada; his slanderous allegation that Christian relief workers in the 2005 tsunami were kidnapping Muslim children) but also his virulently hateful websites. I pointed them to where Soharwardy repeated blood libels against the Jewish talmud, called for the annihilation of Israel, compared Israel to Nazis perpetrating a Holocaust and other statements. Besides having sifted through so much of Soharwardy’s crap on my own, I had also saved the vilest of Soharwardy’s website comments to my hard drive, knowing that my scrutiny would cause him to go back and scrub his sites of the most anti-Semitic material.

Anyways, to my delight, the B’nai Brith issued two press releases on the subject last Friday (here’s the first, here’s the second). Here is the text of them in full:

B’nai Brith Canada concerned about sincerity of Islamic fatwa against terrorism

TORONTO, January 15, 2010 – B’nai Brith Canada questions the wording and intent behind a fatwa against terrorism that was undersigned by a group of North American imams. The recently-issued fatwa, which states that “any attack on Canada and the United States is an attack on the freedom of Canadian and American Muslims. Any attack on Canada and the United States is an attack on thousands of mosques across North America,” was spearheaded by Syed Soharwardy, the president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada (ISCC).

Soharwardy and his organization have a track record of disseminating antisemitic and anti-Western sentiment. Although a lot of the disturbing material has been removed from the ISCC’s website, thanks to the probing efforts of Ezra Levant, B’nai Brith was able to acquire archived copies of the offending articles and statements.

“The fact that this fatwa limits itself to terrorism in North America and predicates its anti-terror positions on the damaging effects of terrorism only on the Islamic community is quite concerning,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s Executive Vice President. “Is the fatwa implicitly saying that terrorism directed against India, Spain, the U.K., Israel, and Canadian forces in Afghanistan is somehow permissible?

“Syed Soharwardy is the imam whose complaint dragged Ezra Levant through the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish Mohammad cartoons in the Western Standard. We were disgusted when we read some of the virulent antisemitic and anti-Western ravings that were posted to his organization’s website – some trivialized the Holocaust, others prophesized the extinction of the Christian faith, and still others went so far as to speak of a ‘slaughter’ and ‘annihilation’ of Jews.

“What Canadians would truly like to see is for reputable imams within the Islamic community to stand up and denounce all acts of terrorism irrespective of where they occur and who the targets are. And if Imam Soharwardy wants his fatwa to be taken seriously, he needs to publicly reconcile it with the anti-Christian and antisemitic ravings that have appeared on his organization’s website.”

-30-

For more information, please contact, Dan Rabkin, Communications Officer:
416-633-6224 X 140 / cell: 416-312-9173

B’nai Brith Canada has been active in Canada since 1875 as the Jewish community’s foremost human rights agency

and here’s the other:

Danish Mohammad Cartoon Syndrome infects Canadian media

For the rest of this important article, please visit Ezra’s site here:


However, I would like to add a thing or two of my own. When the original marines signed a treaty with the Barbary pirates after defeating them (insufficiently in my opinion) that treaty contained prescribed methods of deciept commonly practiced in Islam. The text was different in Arabic and English, and the terms used, have different meanings in Islam (I used Islam as oppose to Arabic on purpose) than they do in English. I mention this because I guarantee you the clerics who signed the fatwa against terror carefully defined it for themselves in a way that does not contradict Koranic verses such as:

8:12 Asad: `I shall cast terror into the hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks, [O believers,] and strike off every one of their finger-tips!” [15]

Or,

Bukhari (52:220) – Allah’s Apostle said… ‘I have been made victorious with terror’

In a pigskin, my point is that there was likely a little deception at least in the fatwa issued condeming terror ‘in North America’

Eeyore for Vlad.



South Korea returns fire from North: report

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SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea has returned fire after North Korea shot several artillery rounds into waters near a disputed sea border with the South on Wednesday, Yonhap news agency reported an unnamed military source as saying.

North Korea on Tuesday declared a no-sail zone in the waters off its west coast, according to media reports in the South.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)

Just in case anyone is uncertain about whether or not Kim’s North Korea is a state run by a complete psycho of an order the world probably hasn’t seen since Caligula, check out this video from July 2009


When the current North Korean leader’s father died, orders where given that people all had to go out in the streets and grieve publicly and intensely. Many people were arrested for insufficient displays of public grief. I hope the guy at a minute fourteen seconds got an extra 5 grams of gruel that day.

Makes one wonder. Take the E out of Korean and what do you get?

Venezuela creates enviornment for Soviet style corruption

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Here is a stratfor report on a promise by an agricultural federation not to raise prices without government approval:

Venezuela: Fegaven Will Not Raise Prices Without Government Approval
January 20, 2010
The Bolivarian Federation of Farmers and Cattle Ranchers of Venezuela (Fegaven) said Jan. 20 that product prices would rise only with government approval, Globovision reported, citing Fegaven President Balsamino Belandria. Belandria said agricultural producers are currently selling their products at prices established in official publication The National Gazette.

Communism always ends at agriculture because no amount of bureaucracy can make something grow or produce by ordering it too. You can send a thousand bureaucrats to the desert and insist that cows must give milk  but they typically die instead. Like the Russians who believed that wheat would grow in Siberia because communism required it to, Chavez thinks that people can somehow sell goods for less than the cost of production because he tells them to.

The result? corruption or failure. At some point, the ‘Bolivarian federation of cattle farmers’ will set up a system of bribes so that the final price that is paid resembles the actual cost and usually, ends up being several times more expensive than typical free market prices for goods. So this organization can make all the promises it wants and Chavez can send all the soldiers he wants and give all the orders he wants. At the end of the day, it boils down to what you can get out of the ground and how.

As usual, Muslims will probably not be scanned with new scanners

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Here is the typical pattern:

Muslims do some anti social act in non Muslim nation, whether it is terrorism, or wear clothing symbolizing an allegiance not connected to the appropriate institution such as a government office. The agency, whether it is an airport security service or government building, makes some kind of rule it deems fair, in order to deal with the problem without singling out Muslims. For example, they may pass a rule saying that all religious clothing or symbols will be banned, or that all people will have to be subject to bomb sniffing dogs.

Then, Muslim groups will produce one of the following arguments or one like it:

1. Muslims do not have a choice about wearing Muslim garments. Muslim women must wear the burkha Jibab hijab or whatever, and therefore, to ban all religious clothing means discriminating against Muslims. Or, Islam does not tolerate dogs, and any attempt to make a Muslim come into contact with a dog is anti-Islam and discriminatory.

Both arguments are patent lies of course. All religious behaviour is voluntary. Islam is not a race. One can always choose between one’s religious practices and devotions and the other aspects of ones life that may be selected against, by those choices. If you do not like dogs sniffing you, you can always walk to mosque or prey at home. However these arguments work. Typically, Muslims win exemptions from the very rules created to protect us, from them. You can bet that Muslims will win an exemption from being scanned at airports and only the 85 year old Jewish women will have to endure this indignity while some jihadiye in a Burka manages to slip on board with a pound of PETP

Here is just the most recent example. H/T to Islam in Europe with thanks. The bold in the article below is mine.

Eeyore for Vlad

Calls for Full-Body Scanners Re-Ignite Privacy Concerns

FOXNews.com

The calls for airports to expand the use of full-body scanners in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight have re-ignited privacy concerns from groups and lawmakers who have long said the scanners produce graphic images that could make their way onto the Internet.

Staff at the Transportation Security Administration Systems Integration Facility, one playing the role of a passenger, demonstrate a full-body scanning machines in Washington Dec. 30. (Reuters Photo)

The calls for airports to expand the use of full-body scanners in the wake of the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight have re-ignited privacy concerns from groups and lawmakers who have long said the scanners produce graphic images that could make their way onto the Internet.

The Transportation Security Administration currently has only 40 of the scanners in operation, but it has purchased another 150 and plans to deploy them next year. The agency plans to buy another 300 next year, and some officials are calling on the agency to move quickly in using the new technology, which allows TSA officials to peer under clothing for any contraband. It is believed that the machines would have detected the PETN explosive sewn into the underwear of the alleged would-be bomber last week.

But privacy groups have renewed their complaints about the machines. The American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday ticked off its many misgivings with the devices:

— They say the scanners produce “strikingly graphic images” of “virtually naked bodies”;

— They say they reveal sexual organs and “intimate medical details”;

— They say they represent an “assault on personal privacy.”

“While it’s important to react quickly, it’s also important to react wisely and to adopt procedures that will be both truly effective and the least invasive to Americans’ privacy,” Michael German, ACLU’s Washington legislative office counsel said in a statement.

The group wants the devices, if used at all, to be employed only when “absolutely necessary” for certain travelers.

Some officials, though, say the near-catastrophe last Friday should make privacy concerns moot.

“There have been privacy concerns expressed about the use of these whole body imaging devices, but I think those privacy concerns, which are, frankly, mild, have to fall in the face of the ability of these machines to detect material like this, explosive on this individual,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said on Fox News. “Just think about it. Three hundred people could have been killed and untold more on the ground in Michigan if this plane had crashed.”

Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in an interview with NPR, complained that the devices aren’t as widely used as they should be because of “aggressive” campaigns against them from the ACLU and other groups.

The TSA currently has a number of restrictions on the machines it has in use. Only six of the 19 airports that use them employ them as the primary method of screening. Even then, the machines are optional, and passengers who don’t wish to go through them can opt for a pat-down.

And the officer who helps the passenger through the machine does not view the image it produces. That image is sent to a remotely located officer in a secure room who does not actually see the passenger, according to the TSA. The technology blurs facial features, and the image is supposed to be automatically deleted. Cameras and cell phones are not allowed in the viewing room.

That might not matter to some religious groups.

Isaac Yeffet, former head of Israel’s El-Al airlines, said Muslims would not stand for any widespread use of the device since it would, to some, represent a dishonor to women and their families.

“Realize that a Muslim will know that his wife was seen naked in this machine,” Yeffet said. “You know what would be the reaction? … Terrible.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican who sponsored legislation that passed the House over summer prohibiting the machines from being used as a primary method of screening, told The Salt Lake Tribune that even after the attempted bombing he stands by the legislation, which is stuck in the Senate.

“I believe there’s technology out there that can identify bomb-type materials without necessarily, overly invading our privacy,” he said.

British Muslim woman ‘arrested in Dubai after being raped’

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Telegraph… A 23-year-old British woman on holiday in Dubai told police she had been raped, only to be arrested herself for having illegal sexual intercourse. 

The woman, a Muslim of Pakistani descent, was celebrating her engagement to her 44-year-old boyfriend, and was allegedly attacked when she passed out in a hotel lavatory.

Despite approaching police about the attack, she was arrested after admitting to “illegal drinking” outside licensed premises as well as having sexual intercourse outside marriage. Her fiancé was also charged with the same offences.

The couple from London are now reportedly on bail and understood to be awaiting trial after having their passports confiscated. Should they be found guilty, they could face up to six years in jail.

The woman, who is said to have accepted her boyfriend’s marriage proposal during a three-day break, admitted drinking too much alcohol as they celebrated at Dubai Marina’s Address Hotel. The waiter, believed to be Syrian, is then said to have followed her into the toilets and raped her while she was in a state of semi-consciousness.

After her fiancé found out about the attack, they contacted police, but they were questioned about breaking the country’s strict rules, which contain elements of Sharia law.

She was then made to give a blood test to prove she had been drinking, and only was given access to proper medical checks following an appeal from the British embassy, it is claimed.

A cellmate of the woman told The Sun: “She’s a British girl but a Muslim, so I think they were tougher on her because of that.

“She was trying to report the rape but soon realised the policemen were more interested in how often she has sex with her boyfriend.”

Her attacker is believed to have denied rape, claiming she consented, but he has also been charged with “illegal sex”.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office told The Daily Telegraph: “We can confirm two British nationals were arrested in Dubai on 1 January. Our embassy in Dubai is providing consular assistance and we cannot confirm or release further details about the case”

An Address Hotel spokesman told The Sun: “The matter is being investigated by the authorities”.

Dubai has strict rules about sexual intercourse and alcohol. In July 2008, British woman Michelle Palmer, was convicted after being caught having drunken sex outsider marriage with Vince Acors. They were given three-month suspended jail sentences.

A woman critiques koran and hadith on it’s absurdly sexual nature

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Heaven is a place where men have eternal erections? its going to rain sperm? What is wrong with these people? How can there be any doubt that Mohamed made all this stuff up based on his own psychopathic sexual needs?

Canterbury Tales: British Armed Forces Bishop urges sympathy for the Devil

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Just as Rowen Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury arches his back in subservience to radical Islam, Rt. Reverend Stephen Venner, Bishop of the British Armed Forces clearly knows nothing of the Taliban.

From The Telegraph U.K.

Taliban can be admired for their faith and loyalty, says bishop

The Taliban can be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to one another, the new Bishop for the Armed Forces has claimed.

By Jonathan Wynne-Jones and Duncan Gardham
Published: 5:52PM GMT 13 Dec 2009
Taliban militants - Taliban can be admired for their faith and loyalty, says bishop

Taliban militants in Afghanistan Photo: AP

The Rt Rev Stephen Venner called for a more sympathetic approach to the Islamic fundamentalists that recognises their humanity.

The Church of England’s Bishop to the Forces warned that it will be harder to reach a peaceful solution to the war if the Afghan insurgents are portrayed too negatively.

His comments came as the Prime Minister visited Afghanistan and warned that the Taliban was fighting a “guerilla war” aimed at causing “maximum damage”. Gordon Brown said soldiers were discovering improvised explosive devices every two hours.

Mr Brown stayed overnight in the Allied base in the southern city of Kandahar, the first British Prime Minister to spend the night in a war zone since Winston Churchill. His visit came days after the death of Lance Corporal Adam Drane, the 100th member of the British forces to die in Afghanistan this year. His death brought the total number of British service personnel who have died since the start of operations in 2001 to 237.

Bishop Venner stressed his admiration for the sacrifices made by the British forces fighting in Afghanistan but also urged the need for a reassessment of how the Taliban are viewed.

“We’ve been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban,” said Bishop Venner, who was recently commissioned in his new role by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“There’s a large number of things that the Taliban say and stand for which none of us in the west could approve, but simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation because it’s not honest really.

“The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other.”

Besides their attacks on the armed forces, the Taliban have also been responsible for public beatings, amputations and executions and have launched bomb attacks on the civilian population in Afghanistan.

They often refer to foreign forces as “Crusaders” in an echo of the religious wars of the Middle Ages.

The bishop said that some of their methods of combat are not honourable or acceptable, but argued that it was unhelpful to demonise them.

“We must remember that there are a lot of people who are under their influence for a whole range of reasons, and we simply can’t lump all of those together.

“To blanket them all as evil and paint them as black is not helpful in a very complex situation.”

Bishop Venner said that everyone in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, would have to be included in discussions to find a solution to the conflict.

“Afghanistan is going we hope in the end to find a way to live together with justice and prosperity for all. In order to do that we have to involve all the people of Afghanistan to find it.

“It is that lasting and just peace that will in the end justify the sacrifices our servicemen and women have made.”

In the meantime, he said, the Government has “a moral duty” to ensure that the army is properly equipped.

Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander in Afghanistan who has written about the insurgency, said the bishop was being naïve.

“We clearly need to understand our enemy but that is more of a military issue rather than a religious one,” he said.

“There are elements in the Taliban who do not act from a religious perspective and it is important to understand and turn them around.

“But there are many others who will not be persuaded. Their central creed and ethos is about violent oppression which comes from a politics of extreme religion that has very little to commend it in terms that we would recognise or appreciate.

“In many ways it is a mistake to compare their faith of extreme holy war with the kind of religion of peace and understanding that the bishop follows. They certainly wouldn’t show understanding of his faith.”

Earlier this year, Peter Davies, the mayor of Doncaster, claimed that British society could learn from Taliban family values. He said that under the Taliban, Afghanistan had an “ordered system of family life”.

Last month David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, offered parts of the Taliban “an alternative to fighting” and said men now fighting against British forces should be encouraged to sit in the Afghan parliament.

His comments came a day after a new military strategy was unveiled that talked of the need to negotiate with the Taliban, offering them money or immunity from prosecution in order to secure peace.


Al-Jazeera: t.v. worth watching

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From The National Post

Bring on Al Jazeera, Canada can take it

Channel will open our eyes to propaganda

Jonathan Kay, National Post Published: Friday, November 27, 2009

Since 9/11, it’s become part of the received wisdom that we in the West have got to pay more attention to the attitudes of Muslims in the Middle East and central Asia. Terrorist attacks may end with bombs and guns, but they begin with propaganda and conspiracy theories.

Yet when the opportunity comes to actually have Muslim voices piped into our homes, our media and political elites get cold feet. In 2003, when Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) petitioned to be carried in Canada, Jewish groups complained that it might become a medium to indoctrinate Canadian viewers with anti-Semitism. Eventually, the CRTC approved AJA. But in so doing, the CRTC declared that cable and satellite carriers would be directly responsible for blacking out AJA material that crossed the line into hate speech.

In other words, Canadian media officials sitting in Toronto would be in charge of hitting the bleep-out button, in real time, when Ahmed from Amman phoned into a 3 a.m. call-in show to complain about Benjamin Netanyahu, or some preacher went off on a rant about the simian qualities of Jews. Not surprisingly, no one in Canada was willing to take up the challenge. And so, to this day, the only place we can see AJA is on the Internet.

It was a ridiculous decision. By the standards of Arabiclanguage media, AJA represents the height of elite journalistic professionalism. Yes, it has its share of nutbars and hatemongers — but that’s the Middle East for you. If you’re looking for a politically correct Arabic version of PBS, you’re simply not going to find it.

In any case, Canadian Arabs thwarted from watching AJA aren’t going to suddenly start reading Commentary magazine and watching Fox News. They’re going to head elsewhere, like pirated feeds to the Hezbollah-run satellite service al-Manar. In fact, the real jihadi types — the ones we should be worried about — typically don’t even bother watching television. They’re too busy downloading terror snuff films, and surfing jihadi forums on the uncensored Internet.

This week came progress: The CRTC approved the Canadian transmission of Al-Jazeera English (A JE), an even-less inflammatory and more mainstream (by Western standards) satellite television service. Having watched A JE a few times, I can attest that its left-wing, mildly anti-American tone isn’t that much different from a lot of the fare that you’d hear on, say, CBC Radio’s The Current. (No surprise, in fact, that AJE has become a home for several ex-CBCers, including former TV host Avi Lewis and his one-time boss, Tony Burman.) Even the Canadian Jewish Congress and similarly minded groups were hard-pressed to find examples suggesting AJE had a human-rights-challenged editorial agenda.

The future addition of AJE to Canadians’ satellite and cable menu is a welcome development. But I’d prefer to see the CRTC truly open the information floodgates. AJA should be permitted in Canada, full stop — and relieved of the electronic leash collared on it five years ago. If some of the material shocks Canadian viewers, all the better: It’ll open our eyes by exposing us to a tiny thimbleful of the propaganda that many Muslim cultures are soaked in 24/7.

A little while back, I spoke at a conference in Washington, D.C., where foreign-affairs specialists talked about the problem of anti-Western misinformation being spread overseas. The most shocking presentation was made by an Urdu-language specialist, who told the crowd that many Pakistani TV stations don’t even run conventional tele vision programming: They just run the most bizarre, conspiratorial YouTube videos they can find, annotated with local-language close-captions.

Such media practices go a long way to explain why people in Pakistan, and the rest of the Muslim world besides, entertain so many phobic attitudes toward, say, Canadian troops fighting in Afghanistan. While those soldiers do the real fighting, the rest of us should at least have the courage to put up with a radical Imam or two fulminating on our television screens. In real life, there’s no such thing as changing the channel.