Terrorism, the AEL and porn

The Dutch secret service AIVD presented its annual report for 2002, spending considerable time on the threat of Islamic terrorism and the recruiting of terrorists in the Netherlands:

Despite recent successes in the battle against terrorism, Islamic terror networks are still capable of carrying out attacks all over the world, according to the 2002 annual report of the Dutch secret service AIVD.

Caretaker Interior Minister Johan Remkes presented the report to Parliament on Tuesday. The AIVD said radical Islamic networks are also active in the Netherlands and the groups generally play a supporting, rather than a front-line terrorist, role by giving financial, material and logistical assistance to terror cells.

The Dutch groups also recruit young men for the holy war, or jihad, against the "enemies of Islam," the AIVD alleged. This is a repeat of its claim, made in December 2002, that dozens of young Muslim men were in training.

But Dutch security authorities have not brought any alleged terrorists to justice since the September 11 attacks in the US.

This is nothing particularly new, but it underscores the activities of Islamofascist organization in the Netherlands. The Saudis have been financing a lot of this, even to the point where Dutch politicians are now calling for the government to take action against Saudi Arabia. But at the same time, the AIVD's report also shows that while awareness of surveillance of various extremist Islamist groups has increased, there has been little tangible progress. The arrests that were made last year evaporated in the increasingly risible Dutch justice system.

One of the groups mentioned in the report is the Arab-European League, founded in Belgium and now establishing itself firmly in the Netherlands:

The AIVD emphasised that groups — such as the Arab European League (AEL) in the Netherlands and Belgium — which play on creating a Muslim identity and religious or ethnic sentiment, are a security risk.

The leader of the Dutch AEL has not formally been instated yet, but it's likely to be Mohammed Cheppih, who is known to be funded by the Saudis in role as chairman of the Muslim World League in the southern Dutch town of Tilburg:

Islamic centres in Amsterdam and Eindhoven have been singled out as particular hotbeds of Muslim extremists and a report in newspaper Het Parool said two hijackers involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, including Mohammed Atta, possibly received ideological training at the El Tawheed mosque in Amsterdam.

Wilders and VVD colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali have demanded the mosque's closure.

The Islamic conference was organised by a foundation which the intended chairman of the Arab European League in the Netherlands, Mohammed Cheppih, is involved with and Atta and another hijacker possibly attended at Eindhoven or Amsterdam.

The AEL is a profoundly dangerous organization because its founder Abu Jahjah knows how to play the democratic game. He's not just another ranting zealot, but he's proving adept at using the rhetoric and paraphernalia of a bona fide democratic movement as a cover for his radical Islamism. But he does conform to one of the more culturally invariant features of shady populist leaders in that he does not really practice what he preaches. Abu Jahjah was under investigation in Belgium last year for his role in rioting in Antwerp, and as part of that investigation several of his computers were seized. The latest information to trickle out of that investigation is that Belgian police are taking a closer look at the porn on Jahjah's computer to determine whether any of it is illegal. He claims he's being set up of course, because even the possession of legal porn would rather undermine his Islamically Pure image amongst the Arab immigrant masses. In a few weeks' time the Belgians go to the polls, where the AEL is participating in an alliance with an extreme left-wing party. The revelations certainly come at an awkward time for Jahjah.

Then again, it would not surprise me in the least to see Jahjah partaking of the carnal pleasures of the decadent West. Not that this would even be too out of step with my own insight into the Saudi mind. I am getting quite a few hits via search engines to my blog from Saudi Arabia, looking for various things like "Saudi girl sex," as well as search strings in Arabic. I touched upon this earlier, but that particular blog entry keeps getting the search engine hits. The string "Ù?Ù?اÙ?ع سÙ?س" alone netted me 182 hits this month (it's part of a comment in Arabic). I wish I could read Arabic though, but it does seem that my blog has become a Saudi porn magnet. I've had 842 hits from the .sa domain this month.

I'm not sure whether to be encouraged by this or not. On the one hand, it does show the universal appeal of sex and porn. The "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" meme coming from Iraq would support this. On the other hand, the strict puritanism of the Islam, and especially Wahhabi Islam is in stark contrast to this desire for sex and porn. In that sense, it's another manifestation of the fantasy world, the dream palace of the Arabs. They've been very good at lying to themselves, about their own importance and the sorry state of Arab society. The liberation of Iraq has made these lies, both official and self-inflicted, painfully obvious. Reality does come crashing through in the end. As they say, reality is that which is you stop believing in it, does not go away. And it's not going to go away for the backward Arab societies either.

Nor is the reality going away that Europe too is threatened by the Saudi-funded Islamofascism. That's the reality politicians here will have to confront.