Just in case you were worried that Congress was neglecting other pressing issues during the ongoing financial meltdown, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo is working diligently to prevent the imposition of Sharia law in the U.S.

The "Jihad Prevention Act," which he introduced last week would make it a deportable offense for immigrants to advocate Sharia and require that all immigrants pledge not to do so when they are admitted to the country. I'll give Tancredo the benefit of the doubt and assume that he actually sees this as a threat, though it's a bit dodgy that the statistics he cites are from the U.K.

On the merits though, this is a phenomenally dumb idea. It not only singles out Muslim immigrants for suspicion, needlessly inconveniences the vast majority of U.S. immigrants who aren't Muslim, and violates the very constitution that it's meant to protect. It also, as Cato's Jim Harper points out, displays a disturbing lack of faith in the strength of American institutions to stand up to the ranting of a few extremists.

It's also inaccurately named since, as far as I can tell, non-Sharia-related Jihad activities would still be allowed.

In Iran, health experts have issued warnings on TV and radio discouraging people from overeating during the holy month of Ramadan.

They are right to worry. Some Iranians actually gain weight during this time because they overindulge at iftar, the evening feast when Muslims break their daily fasts, National Geographic News reports:

Editor and Publisher reports that, over the weekend, millions of DVDs of a film, Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West, were delivered by newspapers mainly in key swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania. The New York Times, the Miami Herald, Denver Post, and the Columbus Dispatch were among 70 papers, by E&P's count, that were paid to distribute the film.

The unusual advertising supplement is being bankrolled by the Clarion Fund, a non-profit, "non-partisan" group whose "primary focus is on the most urgent threat of radical Islam." The movie itself, which originally aired on the Fox network, was funded by an undisclosed donor. 

"The threat of Radical Islam is the most important issue facing us today,'' the hour-long film's jacket reads. ''But it's a topic that neither the presidential candidates nor the media are discussing openly. It's our responsibility to ensure we can all make an informed vote in November.'' 

Here's a short clip:

If the tone of E&P's coverage is any indication, I guess I'm supposed to be upset by this. Sure, the film looks to be an unsophisticated, unnuanced look at the phenomenon of radical Islam and terrorism. It's propaganda, not journalism. The group's logo is distasteful, and the Web site explains "Islam itself" as "a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state." I'm aware that the DVD is obviously intended to help out John McCain. But so what? Advocacy groups on both sides do similar things all the time, and it's nothing the same crowd hasn't been saying for years. What's really new here?

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Steve Clemons gives the Barack Obama campaign a good thrashing from the left today for the candidate's willingness to accept the resignation of his Muslim outreach coordinator, Mazen Asbahi. The Wall Street Journal reports that Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, resigned because of questions about his ties to an Illinois-based Imam named Jamal Said who has been accused (though not indicted) of fundraising for Hamas. The two served together for a few weeks on the board of an Islamic investment fund back in 2000. Predictable smug outrage has followed on right-wing blogs.

According to the Journal, the tenuous connection between Asbahi and Said was first noted by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, a subscription-only Web site that tracks the international activity of that Islamic party and its supporters. The WSJ says the Report is published by a "Washington think tank," but there doesn't seem to be any author or organizational affiliation mentioned on the site, and a Whois lookup yields no clues.

The Report employs a fairly loose definition of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that includes fairly mainstream organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Amusingly, recent FP contributors Graham Fuller and Marc Lynch are also described as Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers. As Passport readers know, Lynch has indeed met with senior Brotherhood leaders in Cairo, but they hardly see eye to eye. Fuller's supposed ties are of the six-degrees-of-Mahdi Akef variety.

By the standards of this site, you are not only a fellow traveler of the Muslim Brotherhood if you have defended them or recommended dialogue with them, you need only have been loosely associated with people who held those views. By this standard, there probably isn't one prominent Muslim-American in the country that Obama could hire for the campaign. Anyone he could find who has never participated in an event that includes people with sympathies Obama might not agree with is probably not actually influential enough to win him any votes.

Even in a campaign full of trumped-up outrage and guilt by association, the Asbahi affair is pretty absurd. This is roughly the equivalent of Obama throwing Chris Rock under the bus because he once appeared in a movie with the anti-semitic Mel Gibson. If nothing else, it's an indication of how rattled the Obama campaign is by all the Muslim rumors.

Update: ABC's Jake Tapper has much more:

As long as we're playing the guilt by association game, we should note that Karen Hughes, back when she worked for the State Department, spoke before an ISNA conference and was honored with an ISNA dinner, and both former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have met with ISNA leadership.

Also check out the comments on this post for some more investigation into the mysterious Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report website.

Turkey's top court announced today that the ruling AK Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not, in fact, violating the fiercely secular constitution. Instead, Erdogan got off with a warning and the party's state funding was cut in half. Six of 11 justices ruled against the AKP, but luckily for Erdogan, seven votes were required to give him the boot. Close call.

Political analysts everywhere breathed a sigh of relief, as did investors in Turkey's stock market. Interestingly, investors began to bet on Erdogan surviving before the decision was announced. Bloomberg reports:

Markets extended gains after court officials started admitting journalists into the court building in Ankara pending an announcement by court chief Hasim Kilic later today.

Loose lips sink short-sellers? In this case, it doesn't seem like insider trading is to blame. Newspapers had apparently been speculating for days that the AKP would win its case. But it sure would be interesting to see when the upward trend began vs. when the first rumors started to leak out in the press.

UPDATE: The Century Foundation's Jonathan Kolieb writes in with a clarification:

10 judges found them guilty of being in some sense anti-secularist. But only 6 voted to ban them. That is an interesting split. This really does put the AKP on notice. Gives something to everyone, but everything to no one.

He also observes that, according to Today's Zaman, JPMorganChase told investors it was "80 percent sure" that the AKP would not be disbanded and that even if it were, it would stay in power. Interesting.

CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/Getty Images

Egyptians have a love-hate relationship with the hordes of wealthy tourists who flock to Cairo and Alexandria every summer, seeking to escape the stifling heat and cultural climate of the Gulf.

On the plus side, these khaleegis, as they are somewhat derogatorily called, are willing to pay top dollar for apartments and other goods and services (including, all too often, prostitutes). But they also bring a stricter form of Islam that sometimes clashes with Cairo's (relatively) libertine ways. As more businessmen from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries also sink their petrodollars into Egypt, they are trying to redefine the social order -- by, for instance, investing in films but demanding that directors excise any whiff of sexual activity.

The latest example of what many in Egypt see as khaleegi meddling? A Saudi sheikh named Abdel Aziz Ibrahim bought the five-star Grand Hyatt hotel (on an island just a few blocks from the U.S. Embassy) and promptly banned the sale of alcohol. Employees reportedly had to dump bottles of liquor into the river. One Egyptian commentator complained that the ban "deprived foreign guests from finding the alcoholic beverage which they wanted, and forced it upon the Muslim fish of the Nile."

The good news is that you can still quench your thirst at the Hard Rock Cafe on the Grand Hyatt grounds. Prominent shareholder Hassan bin Laden, the half brother of you-know-who, doesn't seem to mind serving booze. And with its Cairo franchise rapidly losing customers, the hotel chain's management is pressuring Ibrahim to change his mind. It may not be long before rich folks in Cairo can drink themselves silly in the revolving bar atop the hotel once again. Inshallah.

Khaldoon Zubeir/Getty Images

Amit R. Paley of the Washington Post has penned a not-very-flattering profile of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric who heads the Mahdi Army militia in Iraq.

We learn that Sadr was once nicknamed "Moqtada Atari" for his love of video games and that some of the locals see him as a little "thick." He was "known in his youth for stuffing himself with as many as a dozen falafel at a time." Sadr also has a terrible sense of humor, apparently:

Moqtada, his friends said, has always been a prankster, in ways both innocuous and macabre. Once, he made a big show of offering a 7-Up to a student, who was then surprised to learn that Sadr had filled the bottle with water. In a more recent incident, he anonymously sent Shaibani, the aide, text messages threatening to kill him, only to reveal later with laughter that it was all a practical joke.

Ha, ha?

Amr Khaled, an Egyptian televangelist and media celebrity across the Arab and Muslim worlds, jumped dramatically in the rankings today of the world's Top 100 Public Intellectuals.

Why is that?

His fans have begun a vote drive on AmrKhaled.net and on Facebook, which FP noted earlier this year was a surprising force for activism in the Arab world. Interestingly, the more controversial Yusuf al-Qaradawi saw a boost in his numbers as well, even though Khaled and Qaradawi haven't always seen eye to eye. Qaradawi and Khaled got into a huge spat over the Danish cartoons issue, with Khaled calling for dialogue and Qaradawi basically calling him a big pansy.

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For the first time ever, a female Muslim Arab soldier has joined an elite Israeli Air Force unit. Upon completing a medic training course with top honors, she became part of the Airborne Combat Search and Rescue Unit 669, a premier unit that extricates wounded soldiers from combat zones in sensitive and highly classified operations.

Unlike Jewish young adults, most Arab Israelis are not required to serve in the military, but this soldier, from an Arab village in northern Israel, volunteered to serve. But Muslims and Arabs are prevented from serving in the elite Unit 669, which requires an extremely high security clearance, due to fears about conflicting loyalties should they have to serve in Palestinian areas or fight Muslim countries. So how did she get in? An investigation revealed that an error was made, although news reports have not described the nature of the error or who made it. (My hunch is that those details are confidential.)

Nonetheless, the unit's commander has been so impressed with the woman's exceptional ability that he is allowing her to stay. Although some on the Internet say she may end up betraying her unit, it may be that in this case an error ended up yielding the correct outcome -- letting in a talented, loyal soldier.

I managed to slog through the entire 46-pages of al Qaeda deputy commander Ayman al-Zawahiri's responses to questions (pdf), and found it very revealing as to how jihadi sympathizers view the terrorist organization.

The general tenor of the questions is sharply critical, so let me boil down the questioners' main beefs here:

• Al Qaeda talks a big game, but never attacks Israel (but we have killed plenty of Jews, Zawahiri responds)
• Al Qaeda isn't doing anything to overthrow the Egyptian regime (it ain't easy, Zawahiri pleads, but it is inevitable)
• Al Qaeda slaughters innocent Muslims (only if they get in the way)
• Al Qaeda is too harsh on Hamas (just the leaders who have sold out sharia law, not the "mujahedin")
• Al Qaeda is rumored to be dealing with Iran (a charge Zawahiri has responded to before with a non-denial denial)
• Influential clerics and ideologues have denounced al Qaeda (Zawahiri takes great pains to paint two in particular, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, the subject of "Egypt's Contrite Commander" from FP's current issue, as Zionist-Crusader stooges)

Now, it's entirely possible that some of these complaints were planted by clever Western and Arab intelligence agencies, but the fact that Zawahiri felt obliged to respond to them repeatedly and at length shows that the critiques must have stung a bit. It also suggests that he's got a lot of time on his hands.

Before declaring independence, Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci announced that 100 countries would quickly recognize its sovereign status. It seems he may have been a bit too optimistic.

Currently, 25 countries have or are in the process of recognizing the Republic of Kosova (Kosova being the preferred Albanian spelling). According to the website kosovothanksyou.com, a site created by two Kosovar Albanians to thank recognizing countries, another 28 countries are expected to eventually recognize Kosovo's sovereignty. But that still leaves Thaci short of his hopeful 100. The site includes a handy map showing recognizing countries in blue and potential recognizing countries in yellow:

The list of recognizing countries includes big names like the United States, France, Britain, and 12 others from the EU. But the list falls short on regional players -- Romania and Bosnia have both said they will not recognize Kosovo -- and on emerging global powers like Russia, China, and India. Predominantly Muslim Senegal is the only recognizing country in Africa, and recognition for Europe's new majority-Muslim state has been slow in the rest of the Islamic world too. Turkey and Afghanistan are the only other Islamic countries to have recognized Kosovo so far.

Even if Kosovo does hit the 100 country mark, that's still barely half the countries in the world. Though, I suppose fewer recognizing countries does mean fewer thank you notes.

ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images

The scenes on CNN today of Serbian political and religious leaders holding candles at a vigil to protest Kosovo's independence, as well as the rogue protesters setting fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, bring to mind Graham Fuller's January/February FP cover story, "A World Without Islam." In the piece, Fuller cautions Islam's critics not to assume that a Middle East dominated by Orthodox Christianity would be any more accepting of Western influence than today's Middle East. With Serbian Christians now fighting to retain what they they view as their religious homeland, maybe he was on to something:

The culture of the Orthodox Church differs sharply from the Western post-Enlightenment ethos, which emphasizes secularism, capitalism, and the primacy of the individual. It still maintains residual fears about the West that parallel in many ways current Muslim insecurities: fears of Western missionary proselytism, a tendency to perceive religion as a key vehicle for the protection and preservation of their own communities and culture, and a suspicion of the “corrupted” and imperial character of the West. Indeed, in an Orthodox Christian Middle East, Moscow would enjoy special influence, even today, as the last major center of Eastern Orthodoxy. The Orthodox world would have remained a key geopolitical arena of East-West rivalry in the Cold War. Samuel Huntington, after all, included the Orthodox Christian world among several civilizations embroiled in a cultural clash with the West.

Whatever you think of Fuller's characterization, it certainly seems noteworthy that the United States and the EU are about to go the mat with Russia for a Muslim country at the expense of a Christian one. If the rift between an increasingly religious Russia and the West continues to grow, can it be long until the op-eds start appearing on "The Orthodox Threat" or "The Failure of Political Orthodoxy"? "Orthofascism" doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?

We've posted about Hamas's "Jihad Mickey" in the past. Well, here's Hamas TV's latest cuddly form of indoctrination for Palestinian children -- a pink bunny that hates Jews:

But I, Assud [pink bunny], will get rid of the Jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up."

The last 30 seconds of the video really say it all, though earlier the little girl has a nice little statement to make in her interview with the bunny:

Of course, Assud.  We will liberate al-Aqsa from the filth of those Zionists." 

I guess nobody's ever heard of the Waqf -- the Muslim religious council that administers the Temple Mount or Haram al-Sharif site that includes al-Aqsa.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci (shown at right) gave an interview for Friday's Haaretz in which he professes admiration for Israel and stresses that his majority-Muslim proto-country (which is expected to declare independence any minute now) will not be an Islamic state:

At a time when in Turkey, which also wants to join Europe, the battle over the religious character of the state is heating up, Thaci promises: "Kosovo is going to be a democratic and secular state of all its citizens, and the freedom to exercise religion without any hindrance is granted by the Kosovo Constitution."

This assertion is significant since many Israelis fear that an independent Kosovo, or a potentially unified "Greater Albania" could serve as an Islamist beachhead in southern Europe that relies on Iranian and Saudi support, an argument that Thaci said "does not even deserve comment." It was this concern that lead then Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon to break with most of the international community in 1999 and support Slobodan Milosevic during the NATO bombing of Serbia. Nevertheless, Thaci describes Sharon as a "great leader."

Many also see parallels between Kosovo's struggle for independence and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and worry that a precedent may be set. This is but one of the many domino-effect scenarios that have emerged in recent weeks. Thaci argues in response that Kosovo is "a unique case" and "should not represent any precedent." The rebel leader-turned-politician clearly hopes Israelis will think of Kosovars as kindred spirits. Haaretz, at least, is already calling him "the Ben Gurion of Kosovo."

Remember those controversial Danish cartoons from 2005 that depicted the Prophet Mohammed and aroused so much anger in the Muslim world? At least 50 people were killed in the ensuing worldwide riots. Well, the cartoons were republished in Europe today by Danish, Swedish, Spanish, and Dutch newspapers to emphasize freedom of speech and to protest an alleged plot to kill one of the cartoonists. This time, Danish Muslim groups seem to regard the reprinting as an internal, domestic issue and don't plan on internationalizing it. But I can't help thinking, here we go again.

The first time around, the publisher of the cartoons explained his motives in this New York Times op-ed:

By treating a Muslim figure the same way I would a Christian or Jewish icon, I was sending an important message: You are not strangers, you are here to stay, and we accept you as an integrated part of our life. And we will satirize you, too.

We'll see what the second round brings.

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Someone please explain to me how this is supposed to be justice. A 23-year-old journalism student named Sayad Parwez Kambaksh supposedly goes online, finds an interesting paper, and prints it out. He supposedly brings it to class at Balkh University, discusses it with a teacher and some fellow students. The paper gets copied and distributed. Some students find it objectionable; they say it is offensive and that it insults Islam. They complain to the government.

Kambaksh is arrested in October and put in jail. He says he had nothing to do with the paper. His case goes to trial, but he has no lawyer. In fact, his family is not even aware that he's put on trial. A panel of three judges decides that he should be put to death because the paper he supposedly distributed "humiliates Islam." The Afghan Independent Journalists' Association reports that any paper in question may have downloaded from an Iranian blog, which contained articles questioning the origins of the Koran, among other controversial things.

Now, his case goes to the first of two appeal courts. But Fazel Wahab, the chief judge in the province where the trial took place, says that only President Hamid Karzai can pardon the student, since Kambaksh supposedly confessed to having violated tenets of Islam. Incidentally, Wahab has never read the paper (to be fair, he was also not on the panel that convicted Kambaksh). 

Kambaksh isn't the only Afghan journalist who's gotten into trouble with the law. Ghows Zalmai was also arrested three months ago, charged with distributing a translation of the Koran that clerics did not accept. Religious scholars have also called for him to be put to death.

At any rate, all of this raises the question: Why did the U.S. go into Afghanistan and topple the Taliban, only to have it be replaced with a system like this? So far, no comment from Karzai, who is attending the World Economic Forum in Davos. But he'd better step up.

If you haven't yet read "A World Without Islam," the cover story for our January/February 2008 issue, you really should. Graham Fuller, the former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, has penned a sweeping, thought-provoking essay that has already turned a lot of heads in the United States and beyond. Fuller takes a hypothetical question—What if Islam had never existed?—and walks us through an alternate history of the world as if Mohammed had never founded the third major monotheistic religion in the seventh century.

It's an intriguing thought experiment. With no Muslim faith, would Christianity rule the globe? Would the Middle East today be democratic and free? And the big question, of course: Would the attacks of Sept. 11 never have happened? The answer, according to Fuller, is none of the above. Wipe Islam from the sands of time, he says, and we'd wind up largely in the same place we are today.

Fuller, now an adjunct professor of history at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, is chock full of knowledge and insights on Islam and the Middle East and is eager to hear reactions to his essay. Send us any questions you have for him by this Friday, Jan. 25, and we'll publish his answers here on Jan. 31.

Iran may be an international pariah, but the country is nonetheless eagerly suiting up for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, this year's biggest international event. In the Athens Games of 2004, the Islamic Republic allowed just one woman to compete and won only six medals. This year, nationalistic Iran is investing greater resources in its team and hoping for a stronger performance.

An unlikely boost for Iran's "Go for the Gold in '08" strategy has come from the conservative religious establishment: a "special religious dispensation" that allows more women to compete, as long as they wear the proper attire. Check out Haaretz's translation of an al-Jazeera report here:

Couple this with news that Hamas is recruiting women police officers to serve in Gaza, and you have to wonder what's going on in the region.

Nearly a year ago, Passport noted that Finnish PM Matti VanHanen, ever the classy guy, dumped his girlfriend via a text message. Ha, ha. But in the Muslim world, apparently there's a serious debate going on as to whether divorce by SMS is valid, and some countries have even had to explicitly ban the practice. In Egypt, however, the law remains unclear:

An Egyptian woman is seeking clarification from a court on whether her husband's declaration of divorce by text message is legally valid, a state-run newspaper reported on Thursday.

After missing a call from her husband on her mobile phone, Iqbal Abul Nasr received a text message from him saying "I divorce you because you didn't answer your husband," Al-Akhbar said.

In line with sharia (Islamic law) men do not need to go to court to file for divorce. A unilateral declaration of divorce by a man, repeated three times, formally ends a marriage.

Egypt actually has a hybrid legal system, meaning that contrary to what most people seem to think, sharia law is already in place in many areas of jurisprudence (though Christians have their own religious courts). A return of the caliphate is not nigh, but if you're a woman in a place like Egypt, the growing Islamicization of the country is bad news indeed. Let's hope the judge rejects this divorce-by-SMS nonsense, if he hasn't already.

Giuliani advisor Daniel Pipes: If Barack Obama isn't a Muslim now, then he must be an apostate.

You just can't make this stuff up.