by Aaron Klein
Hamad explained prostitution doesn't mean selling sex; he said the Islamic definition applies the term to all extramarital sexual relations. But he boasted Islam's allowing men to marry many women was a perfect remedy for prostitution.
"In order to prevent prostitution and before reaching the sanctions of stoning or whipping, we will marry all our unmarried young. By the way, Islam allows the man to marry four women, so if he or she keeps practicing sex outside marriage and prostitution, in this case the sanctions mentioned in Quran will be used."
While men can marry many women, in Islam, women do not have the right to divorce their husbands. Only men can divorce. And they can do so very casually.
These stonings for "prostitution" are still carried out today in the Arab world.
In Iran, in 2004, a woman was buried to her chest and stoned to death after being convicted of committing adultery. Hajieh Esmailvand was found guilty by the Iranian authorities of having extramarital sex with her seventeen-year-old co-defendant.
The Iranian law regarding the matter is very specific. Article 102 of the Iranian Penal Code states that men accused of prostitution are to be buried to the waist and women to the breast in order to be executed by stoning.
Article 104 states that the stones should "not be large enough to kill the person by one or two strikes, nor should they be so small that they could not be defined as stones."
All terrorists interviewed for this book agreed homosexuality will not be tolerated, either, if Islam dominates the U.S. Nasser Abu Aziz, the northern West Bank deputy commander for the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, said, "These sick people [homosexuals] will be treated in a very tough way. According to the law and according to the tradition they will not be allowed to practice their sexual deviation. If they insist, besides jail and legal punishment I think that the population will not tolerate this and may hurt these sick people.
"I want to tell those who will read your book, you may say I am primitive; well I say we prefer to be considered by you as primitives while we prevent social and physical diseases like homosexuality."
The Committee's Abdel-El said homosexuality was causing the moral collapse of the U.S. He blamed the allowance of gays in the military for America's losses in the war on terror.
"Because of these homosexuals in the military, you are now losing the war in Iraq, in Afghanistan. Israel your ally is withdrawing and will keep doing so from our lands.. .It is only a question of time before your empire will collapse because of homosexuality."
Abu Oudai, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades's now-deceased rocket chief in the West Bank, told me Israel lost its war against the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in the summer of 2006 because "the Israeli army is full of gays." Oudai, who I interviewed frequently, many times live on national U.S. radio, was killed by Israel during an anti-terror operation prior to the publication of this book.
Abu Abdullah, a senior leader of Hamas's so-called military wing, told me homosexuality would be "dealt with in an uncompromising manner."
I hope liberals understand what Abu Abdullah is saying. Do those who lobby for dialogue with our enemy or the creation of a Palestinian state not know what they are urging on? Do they think an Islamist society will tolerate liberal ideals? Try attempting a gay pride parade down the streets of Khan Yunis or Sadr City and see what happens. In fact, I can tell you what will happen since I asked the terrorists: the parade participants will be stoned.
"Of course homosexual parades will not be allowed," said Sheikh Saqer. "Now if homosexuals will ask for forgiveness once we take over and will follow Allah's laws and the rules of the Islamic state, they can live in peace in the Islamic state. If they will keep going against human nature like Allah fixed and designed, if they try a parade, they will be sanctioned according to sharia laws. Yes, they may be sentenced to death."
All these Islamic rules would add stress to any ordinary Ameri- can's life. Makes you want to go out and down a few beers. But don't even think about drinking. American bars and clubs will be shut down under sharia, say the terrorists. Alcohol will be strictly prohibited.
"Of course bars and clubs will not be allowed and will be shut down. Everything that goes against Islam and morality as Islam sees it will not be allowed," said Hamas's Abu Abdullah.
"You don't like it? Too bad. Go somewhere else and go to hell," he said.
And forget about American television, popular music, and movies; only Islamic culture will be tolerated.
"American culture is very cheap and very corrupting. Your American culture is based on capitalism, on democracy, sex, and other principles that go against the nature of human beings as Allah created. We will fight all that this culture represents and promotes," said Faraj.
"Only moral and respectful music and movies are allowed, and anything that doesn't suit our vision and our religion will be banned, even by force," Islamic Liberation Party leader Faraj said.
Defending Islamic laws, Hamas chief in Gaza al-Zahar told me, "I hardly understand the point of view of the West concerning these issues. The West brought all this freedom to its people but it is that freedom that has brought about the death of morality in the West. It's what led to phenomena like homosexuality, homelessness and AIDS."
Saqer said American culture is "empty of values. This is a culture that encourages deviations like homosexuality. Your kids want to be compared with the personalities they see on the movies, and so the value of men in the American culture is worth nothing. In your movies killing of human beings is something ordinary and natural. You even encourage this and incite people to be criminals."
I guess Saqer thinks the Palestinian media, which encourages suicide bombings and shows images almost daily glorifying death and jihad, is a glowing beacon of morality in broadcasting.
What about freedom of the press in the new American Islamic state? None of that will be had. The terrorists said once Islam rules us, American media outlets that don't conform to disseminating Islamic messages will be closed. They said the NY Times, CNN, the Washington Post would all be banned.
"The media will be closed not because there will be no freedom but because what is the logic of allowing the activity of media that can endanger the political and social stability of our state?" said the Brigades's Nasser Abu Aziz.
The terrorists took particular offense at the FOX News Channel, which some called a "network of evil."
Abu Abdullah said, "The evil FOX encourages a lack of respect to Islam and resistance movements and will cause moral confusion and negative political influence."
There is also a possibility music may be altogether banned if Islam takes over. Saqer explained some Islamic experts and sages, including those of the school of Egyptian scholar Sheik Yusuf al- Qaradawi, allow music; whole others, like those belonging to the Islamic Salafite school, forbid music.
"Regarding music, once we take over we will let the sharia council take its decision and I think it will try to reach a compromise between the different schools and visions," Saqer said.
I tried asking the terrorists what they thought of specific American cultural icons and personalities like Tom Cruise, Bob Dylan, Marilyn Monroe, even Hugh Hefner, but most weren't familiar with any of them. I asked about different American classic movies, like the Wizard of Oz or Psycho, but they never heard of those, either. With the exception of some celebrities who involve themselves in Mideast causes, the terrorists were largely clueless about our cultural personalities. There were only two U.S. celebrities I asked about that all the terrorists were familiar with: Madonna and Britney Spears.
"Unfortunately, I heard the names of Madonna and Spears on [Arab] television when parents complain that their children neglect their studies and their values because they are influenced by your cheap American music that you call culture," said Saqer.
All the terrorists called Madonna and Spears "prostitutes." (One called Spears a "fat cheap prostitute.")
I asked them what they would do with these two "prostitutes" if Islam
took over America.
Al Aqsa's Nasser Abu Aziz said, "We will prevent your prostitutes from appearing on our TV. This is against all morals and not only against Islam. We will not allow our youth to be exposed to this pornography."
Saqer said Madonna and Spears would be asked to convert to Islam.
Hamas's Abu Abdullah told me, "At the beginning, we will try to convince Madonna and Britney Spears to follow Allah's way. But I honestly don't think they will follow. If they persist with their whoring music, we will prevent them by force. I don't think that I can be in the same place with these singers. They might be killed if they do not respect our laws."
The Committee's Abdel-El, whose group previously bombed Americans, said, "Their music video clips will be forbidden and these whores Madonna and Spears will be thrown in jail until they admit they made sins and return to the moral way. If they don't, they will be stoned to death or eighty times hit with a belt."
Abdel-El said even before Islam takes over America, he would personally kill Madonna and Spears if he ran into them. "If I meet these whores I will have the honor-I repeat, I will have the honor-to be the first one to cut the heads of Madonna and Britney Spears."
CHAPTER Two
BIBLE USED AS TOILET
PAPER?
WHEN TERRORISTS MEET HOLY SITES
"Islam has the highest respect for all monotheistic religions and peoples of faith."
Taysir Tamimi, Chief Palestinian Justice
"Our hands are outstretched and our religion calls for peace, not for war... for knowing each other and not for disavowing each other."
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Qatari Muslim Cleric and head of the Islamic Scholars Association
"In social terms, the pillars of Islam prescribe humility, teach tolerance, and respect diversity."
King Abdullah II of Saudi Arabia
"Islam is a religion that respects all the Messengers of God."
Dr. Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo
'OR AMJAD SABARRA, a Christian Arab pastor fortunate enough to serve in the world's oldest parish, October 2, 2002, started off just like any other normal Tuesday would on a fairly cloudless spring morning in Bethlehem. Sabarra attended his early duties, but said he was a bit surprised when ten armed Palestinian gunmen wandered into his sacred church, the Basilica of the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
"I approached the [gunmen] and explained that we do not allow arms in the Basilica and that they would have to leave. They did so quietly and politely. We then bolted the front door of the church," stated Sabarra in a recorded account.
Sabarra went about the rest of his daily routine, as did thirty other friars, four Catholic nuns, nine Greek Orthodox monks and five Armenian monks. What none of them could have known was that the gunmen who entered the Bethlehem structure that morning feared a pending Israeli anti-terror operation and were scouting the city for a safe haven; or that in about six hours, the clergy of the site believed to be the birthplace of Jesus would find themselves hostages in a real-life drama that would unfold on television screens worldwide and would see one of the holiest sites in Christianity thoroughly desecrated.
"About the conditions in which we left the church, it is true there was a lot of dirt," admitted terrorist Jihad Jaara five years later, speaking to me from exile in Ireland. Jaara, who was the Bethlehem-based chief of PLO dictator Yasser Arafat's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, was one of the main terror leaders of the fiasco that would become known as the siege of the Church of the Nativity.
They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. But for the Holy Land, March 2002 proved to be a lion-only month, marking one of the bloodiest thirty-one-day periods in recent Israeli history.
The month's first Palestinian terror bombing occurred on Shabbat afternoon March 2 in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Yisroel, where a terrorist sent by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Arafat's Fatah organization, detonated his explosive belt amongst a crowd of Orthodox Jewish women waiting with their baby strollers for their husbands to return from prayer. The blast killed ten civilians, including an infant and her six-year-old brother; a mother and her three-year-old son; a twelve-year-old boy and four other adults. Another fifty people were wounded, many seriously. One later died of her wounds.
The month continued with terror attacks virtually every day, including suicide bombings against buses, shopping centers, and restaurants and deadly shootings against random passenger cars.
One notorious attack that month was a Hamas suicide bombing of a cafe across the street from then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's official Jerusalem residence. The blast killed eleven civilians, ten of whom were in their mid-twenties and were getting a quick bite to eat after partying. Fifty others were injured, including many who to this day suffer severe effects from the bombing. I would later live on the same street as the cafe bombing when I moved to Israel as a reporter in February 2004. On my way to work each day I would pass a plaque outside the cafe bearing the names of the victims, reminding me daily of terror's consequences.
In another infamous attack from March 2002, a Hamas bomber exploded himself on March 27 in the dining hall of a hotel in the northern Israeli coastal city of Netanya during the height of the Passover holiday. Twenty-two Jews eating their festive Passover meals were killed and nearly two hundred more were moderately to seriously injured by the blast on one of Judaism's holiest days.
The month went out roaring when a suicide bomber on March 31 struck a diner in the northern Israeli coastal city of Haifa, killing fourteen and injuring over forty civilians. In all, ninety-three Israelis were killed in Palestinian terror attacks that March, and at least 509 were wounded.
March was the height of over two years of continuous Palestinian terror following the collapse of U.S.-mediated peace talks between Arafat, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and President Bill Clinton. Arafat walked away from negotiations in July 2000 at Camp David during which Barak offered the Palestinians a state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and eastern Jerusalem. Instead, the PLO leader returned to his fiefdom in Ramallah and started a ter ror campaign, termed the second intifada, aimed at pressuring Israel and "liberating" Palestine through violence.
Arafat's terror war galvanized the Israeli street and helped elect to office Ariel Sharon, who was perceived as hawkish and won by a landslide on a campaign against withdrawing from territory. (Of course, Sharon would later defy his own platform and unilaterally retreat under fire from Gaza.)
It was against this bloody backdrop that Israel decided to launch a major anti-terror campaign in April 2002, dubbed Operation Defensive Shield, which, Sharon explained, sought to "crush the Palestinian terror infrastructure in all its components."
Bethlehem, once a peaceful Christian town, had since the launch of Arafat's intifada become a hornet's nest of terror, housing an important infrastructure of the Palestinian militant apparatus. Many Christians earlier started emigrating from the city, eventually leaving behind a Muslim majority. Some of the Palestinian shooting attacks perpetuated during the bloody month of March 2002 were carried out by Bethlehem-area terrorists. The city's leadership of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Arafat's Al Aqsa Brigades was accused by Israel of planning multiple suicide bombings and other attacks.
As part of Defensive Shield, Israeli Defense Forces tanks, on April 1, 2002, surrounded Bethlehem and raided the ancient city the next day on a mission to arrest hundreds of terrorists.
Israeli troops entered in force on April 2. Heavy fighting immediately broke out on Manger Square, a major pedestrian district near the Church of Nativity. Overwhelmed by the large numbers of Israeli forces, roughly two hundred Palestinians, including a large contingent of terrorists-some very senior-fled the square and stormed the Church.
At about 3 p.m. the Church of Nativity's Father Sabarra reports he heard gunfire and shouting "in and near the Basilica." Upon entering the church, the good father said he and other clergy found "several hundred Pa
lestinians running into the nave of the Basilica with several dozen men carrying guns and semiautomatics. Apparently, they had broken the front door of the church." The door had been bolted shut earlier that morning, after gunmen scouted the site.
Due to the church's sacred status and Israel's general hesitance to fight near holy sites of any faith, the Palestinian terrorists and gunmen who stormed the church likely assumed Israel would not continue fighting. In fact Jihad Jaara, one of the main terror leaders of the siege told me as much.
"We sought refuge in the church thinking this is a place for peace and where Jesus was born. It's very important to the world. It's a place we knew would be protected," Jaara said.
Jaara was high up on Israel's most wanted list. The terror leader personally carried out scores of shooting attacks, including the shooting of a public bus near Bethlehem that killed one Israeli man and crippled a woman. He's accused of planning suicide bombings and admitted to me he dispatched a bomber to Jerusalem's largest shopping mall, which is located just a few miles from Bethlehem. That bomber detonated his explosives prematurely. According to Israeli security officials, Jaara was an important link between Palestinian terror groups and the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
I was a bit surprised that Jaara conceded he and his terror gang ran into the Nativity Church because they knew Israel respects holy sites and wouldn't attack them inside one of Christianity's most important churches. But he denied Palestinian gunmen scoped out the church earlier in the day as a possible refuge.
Incredibly, Ayman Abu Eita, who during the church siege was chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group in the Bethlehem satellite town of Beit Sahour, admitted to me that prior to Israel's raid, Arafat's Palestinian Authority directed Bethlehem-area terrorists to use the Nativity Church as a sanctuary and draw Israel into fighting there.
