Saturday link dump

[tangaroa]

• al-Masry al-Youm (The Day of Egypt) reports that Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars has called on the Arab League to "purify Palestine". The report also has Qaradawi saying he fought with future terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat in the Muslim Brotherhood's youth brigades during the Canal Zone war of 1951-1954.
  • Related: Al-Shorouk reports that Qaradawi recently described the existence of Israel as "the Nakba". This is the normal use of the term in regards to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The recent attempt by Western terrorist sympathizers to counterfactually frame "Nakba" as a human rights issue is meant to justify the genocidal rhetoric they hear from the right-wing extremists they support.
  • Qaradawi has written in support of jihad in Israel, Chechnya, and Kashmir with the declaration that "freeing them from the clutches of atheists and their twisted laws is the joint responsibility of all Muslims."
  • Qaradawi has been described as a "moderate" in the press by Sohaib Bhutta of the Muslim Association of Britain, writing in the Guardian, and Hadeel Al-Shalchi of the Associated Press. Also, when Qaradawi was banned from entering the U.K. in 2008, Vikram Dodd of the Guardian reported that the ban was opposed by "moderate Muslim groups" such as the Muslim Council of Britain, whose Muhammad Abdul Bari blamed the decision on a Jewish conspiracy.
  • Steven Emerson cited earlier examples of Qaradawi's extremism in 2009.
• Pakistan has blocked access to the websites Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and Wikipedia due to "un-Islamic content".
  • U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley endorsed the block.
• Recently retired Pakistani Army Major Adnan Ejaz has been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the failed Times Square bombing.
• Illinois has made it a felony to record the police. The law was made in 1994 and was probably influneced by the Rodney King beating of three years earlier. Police in Maryland are also arresting people for recording them.
• A U.S. college student who is studying the Middle East was jailed for carrying Arabic-English flash cards though Philadelphia's airport.
• The U.S. House of Representatives added an amendment to the annual military budget which will end the ban on homosexuals serving in the military. The budget still needs to pass with the amendment in it, but that should not be a problem.
• A Michigan towing company is suing a college student for $750,000 in lost business after the student publicly accused the company of removing his car's parking sticker to tow the car.
• Fox News muted ten seconds of applause from a speech Barack Obama gave to military cadets at West Point.
• Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker notes that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was placed where it was because the world's supply of more easily drillable oil is running out.
• Robin Shepard compares the Western media reactions to the banning of Geert Wilders from Britain and the banning of Noam Chomsky from Area A in Israel.
• Tom Gross describes how the media routinely lies about the situation in Gaza.
• Amir Makhoul, leader of the Ittijah network of Arab non-governmental organizations in Israel, was charged with spying for Hezbollah.
• The U.S. is attempting to deport Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of Hamas founder Hassan Yousef, whose recent book "Son of Hamas" revealed himself to be an Israeli spy in his father's organization.