It’s been a banner week for the Islam Is A Religion Of Peace Sweepstakes; I think I may have jumped the gun when I declared a winner on Tuesday. Because the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London, last seen at LGF when he wrote a poem glorifying suicide bombers, is raving to the press again.

I have not changed my position regarding the Palestinian problem since I was 16… I wrote about the first suicide bomber, [a] Lebanese woman [named] Sanaa Al-Muhaeidly… My position is not new. What is new is the state of horror and tension that caused the Fidaai [martyrdom] attacks in Israel. In the past, the Israelis didn’t care if we said ‘martyr.’ Now they have begun to really fear what they call ‘the culture of death’ which I call the ‘culture of martyrdom.’ When the culture of martyrdom spreads among the Palestinians and the Arabs, the myth of Israel will come to an end…”

Unfortunately, the joys of martyrdom, sweet as they may be, are not for Al-Qusaibi but for the glorious heroic young Arab men and women who follow his advice and murder women and children in ice cream parlors. Al-Qusaibi is too old. And too fat.

The interviewer said, “Uri Avneri wrote that you are a dangerous man. He called you the ‘ambassador of death.’” Al-Qusaibi said, “That is incitement to murder… It is true that I have many faults, but fear of death is not one of them… I do not fear death - on the contrary, I long to die as a martyr, although I am at an age that does not allow me to carry out a martyrdom operation. My weight does not permit this. But I still hope to die as a martyr…”

You have to wonder if, back in Arabia, a prince in their Foreign Office cringes a little when this loose cannon loonball blows their whole cover like this:

Al-Qusaibi was asked whether Saudi Arabia gave aid to the families of suicide bombers. He replied: “All the Palestinians, all the martyrs, and all their families are needy… How will they be able to live without the help of their Arab brethren? Let’s assume that they are murderers; by what law are the families of murderers punished? [Timothy] McVeigh, who murdered 450 people, received money from social security until his last day!… I do not know what Saddam Hussein’s intentions are [when doing the same thing], but I approve of the aid going to the families of the martyrs, the families of the wounded, and every needy Palestinian. This is what Saudi Arabia is doing.”

Thanks for clearing that up, as if anyone doubted it.

Then he gives us a glimpse into Saudi political philosophy, with this foolproof recipe for a failed society:

“There is a cultural gap. We make fools out of ourselves when we say there are no differences between Islam and the West. The fundamental difference is that in Islam many of the rulings - those included in the right texts - don’t change, and people cannot change them. Yet the rulings in Western culture are the complete opposite. For Muslims, a ruling that has changed is not fit for human beings. Thus, this is not a question of public relations.”

But who cares if your society has a dismal literacy rate, as long as you get to lop off some appendages once in a while!

“[In Islam] punishments have been set, and no matter what we say, the West will see them as barbaric and primitive. According to the Western view, flogging is illogical. Execution is unacceptable, and the same goes for amputating hands and stoning. These are things that in Muslim eyes are at the core of the Islamic faith.”

Wow. The core of the Islamic faith: hacking off heads and hands with swords, and burying people (often women, whose crime was to be raped) up to their waists and killing them slowly by throwing fist-sized rocks at their heads.

The same European countries that are obstructing US investigations into 9/11 because they oppose our federal death penalty, are hosting 12th century barbarians like this.

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