Salon has an article about Arab European League leader Abou Jahjah, a raving Jew-hater and Islamic supremacist who unequivocally supports terrorist violence but lies about it when asked—and Salon, of course, is quite captivated by this evil thug: The Arabian Panther. (Hat tip: Jos.)

The determinedly clueless tone is summed up by the subheading:

Dyab Abou Jahjah’s Arab European League calls for sharia law, celebrates 9/11 and warned Belgian Jews to break with Israel or else. Is he defending Muslims’ civil rights — or inciting hatred?

Now there’s a tough call.

There’s a lot of interesting detail in this article, if you can ignore the slightly nauseating air of admiration. It’s worth getting the free “day pass” to read.

Jahjah stirred more controversy in an open letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.

“Mr. President,” the letter reads, “we are a peaceful people, we do not attack unless we are attacked, we do not kill unless we are killed, and we do not aggress, we defend. If you want peace, you and your people, there is only one way, and that is the way out of our land.” But if the U.S. continues its close backing of Israel and “the Zionists,” Jahjah warns, and persists with its “aggression and occupation troops in Faloudja, in Baghdad, in Nadjaf, in Gaza and Jerusalem and Ramallah … more and more of your soldiers will undoubtedly rest in peace.”

It is the sort of rhetoric that has come to define the self-described “Arabian panther.” Eloquent, charismatic and Hollywood handsome — think George Clooney meets Robert de Niro — the 32-year-old Jahjah founded the Arab European League in Belgium in 2000, before the 9/11 attacks. Born in Lebanon and now a citizen of Belgium, he is part Malcolm X and part rock star. He makes no attempt to conceal his goal: he wants to introduce sharia — the religious laws and codes of Islam — to form what he calls a “sharocracy” in Europe. The sale of alcohol in grocery stores would be banned, as would sexually suggestive advertising. Islamic holidays would become national holidays, like Christmas.

Jahjah has spoken of the Sept. 11 attacks as “sweet revenge,” though the Dutch newsweekly HP/de Tijd quoted him as saying he would prefer to have seen empty planes crash the Pentagon and the White House. “I’d have found that quite beautiful,” he said.

Jahjah and his followers vehemently insist that Middle Eastern immigrants and their children must preserve their own culture and religion; comparing assimilation to “fascism” and “rape,” Jahjah demands that the cultural and religious traditions of Middle Eastern immigrants and their children be not just preserved but integrated into the culture of the West. “I’d rather die than assimilate,” Jahjah has said.

When asked by a Belgian television reporter if terrorism or a revolution were possible in the Lowlands, he offered a curt reply: “With the AEL, it could very well happen.”