Darfur, Sudan, and the Islamists

Michelle Malkin notes that a leading journalist in Sudan was found decapitated. His crime? Offending hardline Islamists with his reporting.

Taha's decapitated body was found dumped on a dirt road on Wednesday. He had drawn protests from Islamic groups last year by reprinting a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed.

Amid cries of "There is no God but God" and "God is Greatest", thousands attended his funeral, including government ministers who sat alongside journalists and Taha's family.

"The authorities have to get these people -- it's their responsibility," said Taha's uncle, Nasrallah Ali Mustafa.

Hundreds of riot police lined the streets of central Khartoum and near the cemetery in a show of force by the interior minister whose resignation was demanded by hundreds of mourners at the morgue on Wednesday after Taha's body was found.

Taha was himself an Islamist, but it appears that his criticism of other extremists got him in trouble. Some journalists have spoken out in his defense, but they too have to worry about their own safety.

Far from this being an isolated case of the Islamists killing their opponents in Sudan as posited by the media reports, it is part of the Islamists larger campaign centered on Darfur.

The Islamists in charge of Sudan have had no problem with the mass slaughter and wholesale dislocation of millions in Darfur, and have refused to allow the African Union turn over peacekeeping duties in Darfur to the UN, which only recently passed a resolution on handling peacekeeping in Darfur. Khartoum refuses to allow the UN to operate in Darfur in any fashion, and has been gearing up for a military offensive against rebels.

ReliefWeb notes that Sudan has called the world's bluff on Darfur. Khartoum knows that the UN doesn't have the willpower to get a peacekeeping operation in Darfur, and therefore can do as it pleases.

The international geopolitical weather could hardly be more favourable for Khartoum than right now. With negotiations continuing over a UN peacekeeping force for Lebanon, and the Iranian nuclear crisis unresolved, the Sudanese government has room to maneuver in confronting any international intervention in Darfur.

Even if a UN force was agreed to by the Sudanese, it remains unclear where troops would come from for such a remote and difficult region. In recent months, statements attributed to Osama bin Laden have cited Darfur as a location for jihad should western troops be deployed as UN peacekeepers. With a renewed Taliban offensive in southern Afghanistan and the Pentagon releasing a report last week speculating on an Iraqi civil war, Darfur remains low on the international crisis pecking order.

Despite the statement from then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell in September 2004 that genocide had taken place in Darfur, a UN commission that reported in January 2005 concluded that while there had been crimes against humanity and war crimes, the government of Sudan "had not pursued a policy of genocide." A finding of genocide would have perhaps forced the UN to intervene more strongly.

The Sudanese are backed at the UN by permanent Security Council members Russia and China, prominent investors in the Sudanese oil sector, who abstained from the vote on Resolution 1706.

The so-called peace deal between the various factions in Sudan is a farce, and the regime in Khartoum is operating in conjunction with the Janjaweed in Darfur.

Not only has the Sudanese government refused to give consent to a UN mission in Darfur and threatened to expel African Union (AU) peacekeepers, it has also renewed its military offensive in northern Darfur, apparently in alliance with the Janjaweed militia and the rebel faction that signed the May Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) – a peace agreement that is now basically defunct.

The French are trying to get the Sudanese government to accept a peacekeeping force, but the chances are slim that any such action is forthcoming.

What we are seeing is the Islamists in Khartoum alligning themselves more openly with the very thugs who directly perpetrated the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Previously, Khartoum could claim that they were not behind the attacks and slaughter in Darfur, but many suspected that the Janjaweed were being backed by Khartoum. Those links are becoming increasingly clear.

And the Islamization of Sudan was made part of Osama bin Laden's call to arms, as he specifically commented on Darfur in his last video. When will people realize that the Islamists have no intention of peaceful coexistence, but seek to supplant their enemies by force?

UPDATE:
So what did Taha actually say that got him beheaded? This is what I've been able to find thus far:

Taha was no stranger to controversy, having been tried for "blasphemy" last year after offending a Muslim fundamentalist group, Ansar al-Sunnah, with an article about an Islamic manuscript from over 500 years ago entitled "the unknown in the life of the prophet." The document, apparently originally written by Al-Maqrizi, a Muslim historian, cast doubt on the ancestry of the prophet Mohammad, saying that his father was not called Abdallah but Abdel Lat, or "slave of Lat," a pre-Islamic idol.

So, Taha tried to question the historical accuracy of Mohammad's ancestry, using manuscripts from 500 years ago. That will teach you to question anything having to do with Mohammad and the Islamist point of view on Islam.