From those holymen at Islam Question and Answer:

A tourist walks behind Christmas decorations outside a mall in Sharm El-Sheikh December 26, 2007.

Ruling on celebrating non-Muslim holidays and congratulating them

Question:

Can a muslim celebrate a non muslim holiday like Thanksgiving?

Answer:

Praise be to Allaah.

Greeting the kuffaar on Christmas and other religious holidays of theirs is haraam, by consensus, as Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allaah have mercy on him, said in Ahkaam Ahl al-Dhimmah: “Congratulating the kuffaar on the rituals that belong only to them is haraam by consensus, as is congratulating them on their festivals and fasts by saying ‘A happy festival to you’ or ‘May you enjoy your festival,’ and so on. If the one who says this has been saved from kufr, it is still forbidden.

It is like congratulating someone for prostrating to the cross, or even worse than that. It is as great a sin as congratulating someone for drinking wine, or murdering someone, or having illicit sexual relations, and so on. Many of those who have no respect for their religion fall into this error; they do not realize the offensiveness of their actions. Whoever congratulates a person for his disobedience or bid’ah or kufr exposes himself to the wrath and anger of Allaah.”

Congratulating the kuffaar on their religious festivals is haraam to the extent described by Ibn al-Qayyim because it implies that one accepts or approves of their rituals of kufr, even if one would not accept those things for oneself. But the Muslim should not aceept [sic] the rituals of kufr or congratulate anyone else for them, because Allaah does not accept any of that at all, as He says (interpretation of the meaning):

“If you disbelieve, then verily, Allaah is not in need of you, He likes not disbelief for His slaves. And if you are grateful (by being believers), He is pleased therewith for you. . .” [al-Zumar 39:7]

“. . . This day, I have perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islaam as your religion . . .” [al-Maa’idah 5:3]

So congratulating them is forbidden, whether they are one’s colleagues at work or otherwise.

If they greet us on the occasion of their festivals, we should not respond, because these are not our festivals, and because they are not festivals which are acceptable to Allaah. These festivals are innovations in their religions, and even those which may have been prescribed formerly have been abrogated by the religion of Islaam, with which Allaah sent Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) to the whole of mankind. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning):

“Whoever seeks a religion other than Islaam, it will never be accepted of him, and in the Hereafter he will be one of the losers.” [Aal ‘Imraan 3:85]

It is haraam for a Muslim to accept invitations on such occasions, because this is worse than congratulating them as it implies taking part in their celebrations.

Similarly, Muslims are forbidden to imitate the kuffaar by having parties on such occasions, or exchanging gifts, or giving out sweets or food, or taking time off work, etc., because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Whoever imitates a people is one of them.” Shaykh al-Islaam Ibn Taymiyah said in his book Iqtidaa’ al-siraat al-mustaqeem mukhaalifat ashaab al-jaheem: “Imitating them in some of their festivals implies that one is pleased with their false beliefs and practices, and gives them the hope that they may have the opportunity to humiliate and mislead the weak.”

Whoever does anything of this sort is a sinner, whether he does it out of politeness or to be friendly, or because he is too shy to refuse, or for whatever other reason, because this is hypocrisy in Islaam, and because it makes the kuffaar feel proud of their religion.

Allaah is the One Whom we ask to make the Muslims feel proud of their religion, to help them adhere steadfastly to it, and to make them victorious over their enemies, for He is the Strong and Omnipotent

Their tolerance knows no bounds.

From Ralph Peters at the New York Post:

Sand artist Sudarsan Patnaik creates a sand sculpture of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, following her assassination, at a beach in Puri, close to the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneshwar, December 28, 2007.

THE BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: NOT WHAT SHE SEEMED TO BE

By RALPH PETERS

December 28, 2007 — FOR the next several days, you’re going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan’s former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country’s better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and “hardheaded” journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan’s feeble education system to rot – opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat – which she artfully played both ways – spread like cancer.

But she always knew how to work Westerners – unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable – but, unfortunately, it’s not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have it now – and damn the consequences.

In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only force holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the ’90s, the only people I met who cared a whit about the common man were military officers.

Americans don’t like to hear that. But it’s the truth…

Granted Mr. Peters got a little panicky a little while back about the prospects of the “surge.” But he is largely correct in his assessment here of Ms. Bhutto.

[S]he was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani.

Indeed, she sounds a lot like another woman politician we know.

But Mr. Peters is wrong to suggest her death will help Pakistan. For it will just be an excuse for more senseless violence from now through the rest of time. (As if these people need an excuse.)

More surprisingly, Mr. Peters neglected to mention Ms. Bhutto’s early and vital support for the Taliban.

Which makes her death at their allies hands even more ironic.

From an adoring Washington Post:

U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton with her daughter Chelsea, left, and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, holding hands with her son Bilawal and daughter Bakhtawar, take a stroll in this March 26, 1995 file photo, in the garden of the prime minister’s residence, in Islamabad.

Clinton, Obama Seize on Killing

Reactions Illustrate Their Key Differences

By Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray
Friday, December 28, 2007; A01

DES MOINES, Dec. 27 — News of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination came just hours before Sen. Barack Obama delivered what his campaign had billed as the “closing argument” in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday, forcing his campaign to scramble to incorporate the Pakistani opposition leader into his message of change.

For his chief rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Bhutto’s death helped underscore the line she has been driving home for months — about who is best suited to lead the nation at a time of international peril. In her comments Thursday, Clinton described Bhutto in terms Obama (D-Ill.) could not: as a fellow mother, a pioneering woman following in a man’s footsteps, and a longtime peer on the world stage.

The differing reactions of Clinton and Obama to the assassination crystallized the debate between the two just a week before Iowans will decide the first contest in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

While aides said Clinton was anxious not to appear to be politicizing Bhutto’s death, they nonetheless saw it as a potential turning point in the race with Obama and former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.).

“I have known Benazir Bhutto for more than 12 years; she’s someone whom I was honored to visit as first lady when she was prime minister,” Clinton said at a campaign event in a firehouse in western Iowa. “Certainly on a personal level, for those of us who knew her, who were impressed by her commitment, her dedication, her willingness to pick up the mantle of her father, who was also assassinated, it is a terrible, terrible tragedy,” she said…

At her first event of the day, in Lawton, Clinton delivered straightforward comments on the events in Pakistan. Several hours later, she grew more personal, recalling Bhutto as an acquaintance…

Not to beat a dead horse, but according to Hillary’s own (ghostwritten) autobiography she met Ms. Bhutto only once, at a formal luncheon in 1995, when she and Chelsea were touring the sub-continent. (The historic Yoevent was immortalized in the photo above.)

Mrs. Clinton’s only other brush with Ms. Bhutto was years earlier in 1989 when Hillary and Chelsea were touring London and happened to see her get out of a car. But back then the Clintons were still nobodies, and so they had no interaction with Ms. Bhutto at all.

But these minor details won’t stop Mrs. Clinton from lying about her late great dear friend.

Allah forbid that she would ever try to politicize her death or try to use it to her advantage.

From a campaign press release:

Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on the Death of Benazir Bhutto

“I am profoundly saddened and outraged by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a leader of tremendous political and personal courage. I came to know Mrs. Bhutto over many years, during her tenures as Prime Minister and during her years in exile. Mrs. Bhutto’s concern for her country, and her family, propelled her to risk her life on behalf of the Pakistani people. She returned to Pakistan to fight for democracy despite threats and previous attempts on her life and now she has made the ultimate sacrifice. Her death is a tragedy for her country and a terrible reminder of the work that remains to bring peace, stability, and hope to regions of the globe too often paralyzed by fear, hatred, and violence.

“Let us pray that her legacy will be a brighter, more hopeful future for the people she loved and the country she served. My family and I extend our condolences and deepest sympathies to the victims and their families and to the people of Pakistan.”

She just can’t help herself:

I came to know Mrs. Bhutto over many years, during her tenures as Prime Minister and during her years in exile.

Sure she did.

From Hillary’s (ghostwritten) autobiography, Living History, pp 322-4:

Silence Is Not Spoken Here

The contradictions within Pakistan became still more apparent at my next event, a luncheon hosted in my honor by Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and attended by several dozen accomplished women in Pakistan. It was like being rocketed forward several centuries in time. Among these women were academics and activists, as well as a pilot, a singer, a banker and a police deputy superintendent. They had their own ambitions and careers, and, of course, we were all guests of Pakistan’s elected female leader.

Benazir Bhutto, a brilliant and striking woman then in her midforties, was born into a prominent family and educated at Harvard and Oxford. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Populist Prime Minister during the 1970s, was deposed in a military coup and later hanged. After his death, Benazir spent years under house arrest. In the late 1980s, she emerged as head of his old political party. Bhutto was the only celebrity I had ever stood behind a rope line to see. Chelsea and I were strolling around London during a holiday trip in the summer of 1989. We noticed a large crowd gathered outside the Ritz Hotel, and I asked people what they were waiting for. They said Benazir Bhutto was staying at the hotel and was soon expected to arrive. Chelsea and I waited until the motorcade drove up. We watched Bhutto, swathed in yellow chiffon, emerge from her limousine and glide into the lobby. She seemed graceful, composed and intent.

In 1990, her government was dissolved over charges of corruption, but her party won again in new elections in 1993. Pakistan was increasingly troubled by rising violence and general lawlessness, particularly in Karachi. Law and order had deteriorated as the rate of ethnic and sectarian murders rose. There were also rampant rumors of corruption involving Asif Zardari, Bhutto’s husband, and supporters.

At the luncheon she hosted for me, Benazir led a discussion about the changing roles of women in her country and told a joke about her husband’s status as a political spouse. “According to newspapers in Pakistan,” she said, “Mr. Asif Zardari is de facto Prime Minister of the country. My husband tells me, ‘Only the First Lady can appreciate it’s not true.’”

Bhutto acknowledged the difficulties faced by women who were breaking with tradition and taking leading roles in public life. She deftly managed to refer both to the challenges I had encountered during my White House tenure and to her own situation. “Women who take on tough issues and stake out new territory are often on the receiving end of ignorance,” she concluded.

In a private meeting with the Prime Minister, we talked about her upcoming visit to Washington in April, and I spent time with her husband and their children. Because I had heard that their marriage was arranged, I found their interaction particularly interesting. They bantered easily together, and seemed genuinely smitten with each other. Only months after my trip, accusations of corruption against them grew more harsh, and in August 1996, Bhutto elevated her husband to a cabinet post. By November 5, 1996, she was ousted amid allegations that Zardari had used his position for personal enrichment. He was convicted of corruption and imprisoned; she left her country with her children, under threat of arrest and unable to return. 

I have no way of knowing whether the accusations against Bhutto and her husband are well-founded or baseless.

That’s it. An official luncheon and a little “private conversation” afterwards.

But it’s not quite the stuff of “I came to know Mrs. Bhutto over many years, during her tenures as Prime Minister and during her years in exile.”

Of course the Hillary camp has quickly rushed out a photograph of their (one and only) historic meeting:

U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton with her daughter Chelsea, left, and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, holding hands with her son Bilawal and daughter Bakhtawar, take a stroll in this March 26, 1995 file photo, in the garden of the prime minister’s residence, in Islamabad.

Still, now that Ms. Bhutto is dead Hillary will have no one to contradict her self-serving fantasies.

Speaking of which, this entire chapter in Hillary’s book is hilarious insofar as she tries to make her tour of five Middle Eastern countries with Chelsea (who was on spring break) sound like an important government initiative.

After a seventeen-hour flight, we landed in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the late evening in a pounding rainstorm. The State Department had asked me to visit the subcontinent to highlight the administration’s commitment to the region, because neither the President nor the Vice President could make a trip soon. My visit was meant to demonstrate that this strategic and volatile part of the world was important to the United States and to assure leaders throughout South Asia that Bill supported their efforts to strengthen democracy, expand free markets and promote tolerance and human rights, including the rights of women. My physical presence in the region was considered a sign of concern and commitment.

But Hillary and Chelsea didn’t go on their jaunt unprepared. Not by a long shot:

I had given a lot of thought to how Chelsea and I should dress on the trip. We wanted to be comfortable, and under the sun’s heat, I was glad for the hats and cotton clothes I had packed. I didn’t want to offend people in the communities I was visiting, but I was also wary of appearing to embrace customs reflecting a culture that restricted women’s lives and rights.

On Jackie Kennedy’s historic tour of India and Pakistan in 1962, she was photographed wearing sleeveless shifts and knee-length skirts―not to mention a midriff-baring sari that caused an international sensation. Public opinion seemed to have grown more conservative in South Asia since then. We consulted State Department experts, who offered tips on how to behave in foreign countries without embarrassing ourselves or offending our hosts. The South Asia briefing papers warned against crossing legs, pointing fingers, eating with the “unclean” left hand or initiating physical contact with the opposite sex, including a handshake.

I made sure to pack several long scarves that I could throw around my shoulders or put over my head if I entered a mosque. I had noticed the way Benazir Bhutto covered her hair with a light scarf. She wore a local form of dress called shalwar kameez, a long, flowing tunic over loose pants that was both practical and attractive. Chelsea and I decided to try out this style. For the extravaganza at the Lahore Fort that night, I wore a red silk shalwar kameez, and Chelsea donned one in a turquoise green that complemented her eyes.

Yes, Mrs. Clinton definitely has the experience it takes to be President.

From Italy’s AKI:

Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto’s death

Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) – (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) – A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.

It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.

Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.

Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.

She had come to Rawalpindi after finishing a rapid election campaign, ahead of the January polls, in Pakistan’s volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.

Reports say at least 15 other people were killed in the attack and several others injured.

As news of Bhutto’s death spread throughout the country, there are reports that people have taken to the streets to protest the death of the leader of the PPP, which has the largest support of any party in Pakistan.

In the southern port city of Karachi, Bhutto’s hometown, residents reportedly threw stones at cars and burnt tyres.

Of course this won’t stop the left and their minions in the media from trying to pin it on Mr. Musharraf and (ultimately of course) Mr. Bush.

From those lovers of terror at Reuters:

A supporter of Pakistan former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto mourns deaths of his colleagues after a suicide attack in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007. Bhutto died Thursday from her injuries sustained in the attack, a party aide said. At least 20 others were killed in the attack.

World outraged, fearful over Bhutto assassination

Thu Dec 27, 2007

By Matthew Tostevin

LONDON (Reuters) – World leaders voiced outrage at the assassination on Thursday of Pakistan’s opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and expressed fears for the fate of the nuclear-armed state.

President George W. Bush condemned the killing as a “cowardly act” and urged Pakistanis to press ahead with a planned national election. Russia’s top Asia diplomat said the assassination would “trigger a wave of terrorism”.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called it odious…

Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack as she left a rally ahead of an election due on January 8. The identity of the attacker was not immediately clear, but Islamist militants have been blamed for a previous assassination bid….

Bush urged Pakistanis to honor Bhutto’s memory by continuing with the democratic process and said those behind the attack must be brought to justice.

“The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy,” he told reporters at his Texas ranch.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Bhutto had risked everything to try and bring democracy to her country, of which Britain used to be the colonial ruler.

“The terrorists must not be allowed to kill democracy in Pakistan,” he said…

Police said a suicide bomber fired shots at Bhutto, 54, as she left the rally in a park in the city of Rawalpindi before blowing himself up. Police said 16 people died in the blast…

It’s sad of course. But not unexpected.

Indeed, it could even be considered a suicide.

There was really no need for Ms. Bhutto to re-involve herself in Pakistan’s politics at this crucial juncture.

And now all of Pakistan and our troops in the Middle East will pay the price for her weird vanity.

From those lovers of nuclear proliferation at Reuters:

An S-300 missile is test-fired in Ukraine.

Iran to get missile system from Russia: report

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Russia has agreed to sell an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Iran’s defense minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a report likely to irritate the United States.

S-300 missiles are longer-ranging than the TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles which Russia, in a deal criticized by the West, earlier this year said it had delivered to the Islamic Republic under a $1 billion contract…

“The S-300 system, under a contract signed in the past with Russia, will be delivered to Iran,” Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar told Fars News Agency, without giving details.

“The timing of the delivery … will be announced later,” he said. The ISNA news agency carried a similar report.

The United States and Israel — Tehran’s arch foes — have said Iran could use the TOR-M1 system to attack its neighbors. Russia says it is a short-range system and purely defensive.

Najjar said last month Iran would never launch an attack against another country but warned that anybody trying to invade Iran would “face a crushing response.” …

Gosh, how shocking.

Funny how none of the heavily touted sanctions against Iran stopped this from happening.

It’s almost as if they are meaningless.

From those seekers of racial justice at the Washington Post:

Not Relevant? Sharpton Scoffs at the Idea

Activist’s Busy Calendar and Ringing Phone Speak to His Role in Civil Rights

By Keith B. Richburg
Wednesday, December 26, 2007; A01

NEW YORK — Even by his own frenetic standards, the Rev. Al Sharpton has had a busy 12 months.

Late last year was the police shooting in Queens of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man leaving a bachelor party, and Sharpton organized the protests. There was the spring controversy over racially insensitive remarks by shock jock Don Imus, with Sharpton leading the calls for Imus’s firing.

Sharpton put together a march in Jena, La., in support of six black teenagers jailed in the beating of a white student, and he held a protest rally outside the Justice Department in Washington to demand more prosecution of hate crimes.

And now, he is being wooed by the leading Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom seek his endorsement. “I think this has been a banner year, to say the least,” said Sharpton, smiling contentedly over coffee. “This year proved the real revival of civil rights activism.”

For Sharpton, the hyperkinetic pace of his past year and the pleas for support from presidential aspirants provide the answer to the question some are posing: How does Al Sharpton remain relevant in a Barack Obama world? …

But Sharpton has thrived this year with his high-decibel microphone-to-megaphone activism, even in the face of a federal investigation of his 2004 campaign finances. In an interview punctuated by interruptions from his cellphone, he scoffed at the notion that he is being overshadowed or is any less relevant.

“It borders on insulting to say that because some blacks are doing well in politics, we don’t need organizations to protect civil rights,” he said…

Once shunned for his street antics, jogging suits and bling, he is now courted by local and state politicians who dutifully troop to the Harlem headquarters of his National Action Network every January for his celebration of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday…

As evidence of his continued relevance on the political scene, Sharpton pointed to the presidential candidates chasing his endorsement. He planned to fly to South Carolina earlier this month to meet former president Bill Clinton until his flight was canceled. Last month, he shared a meal of chicken wings, cornbread and coconut shrimp with Obama at Sylvia’s, a Harlem soul food restaurant.

“On the one level, they say we don’t matter. On the other level, they want to know who we’re endorsing,” Sharpton said, smiling at his own position.

Sharpton said he is going to decide among Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Obama and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina. And like much of the black community, he is torn about which way to go.

“I really haven’t decided,” he said. He said he is most concerned about finding the candidate who will pursue his racial justice agenda.

He said he is also “being strategic,” and will make his endorsement before the South Carolina primary, where he hopes to have the biggest impact because of the state’s large black vote in the Democratic primary. In 2004, when he was a candidate for president, in the South Carolina primary, Sharpton said, “I got 10 percent — and spent like $2.”

His endorsement will matter, he said, because of his reach. He has a weekly television show, “Sharp Talk,” on the cable-satellite TV One network, and his daily radio program, “Keepin’ It Real,” airs in 40 U.S. markets, including South Carolina.

“On a bad day, I’m talking to large portions of the black community,” he said. “If I’m a guy seeking office,” he said, “I would not want me against me.”

This is what passes for “relevancy” and a “hyperkinetic pace”? Gadding about race-baiting and rabble rousing?

And what an appalling indictment of the Democrat candidates, that they are all seeking this racist thug’s endorsement.

From her diehard defenders at the Washington Post:

Sooner or Later, Candidates Will Surely Look Lost

By Philip Kennicott
Wednesday, December 26, 2007; C01

They have become a useful, though very tricky, class of images in this roller-coaster ride of a presidential campaign. Call them the “hangdog” candidate photographs: They capture the politician with eyes downcast, looking tired, stressed. When the headline is about poll numbers dropping, fundraising tanking or verbal gaffes from soon-to-be-cashiered campaign advisers, the hangdog candidate image is sure to make its appearance.

No matter that the candidate is saying he or she isn’t concerned about the bad news. No matter that they’re still smiling, they still feel confident, they can still point to positive poll numbers in this state or that. The grim-faced photograph confirms the suggestion, in the story it illustrates, that the campaign is imploding.

Given how many ups and downs there have been in the race so far, most candidates have been subject, at one point or another, to seeing themselves look like losers. The popular Drudge Report Web site recently ran a particularly notorious picture of Hillary Clinton, showing her face riven with deep furrows and wrinkles. She looked so awful that even some conservative commentators noted the unfairness of using such a manifestly unflattering image.

But the hangdog photograph isn’t just unflattering. It is distinct from photographs that show the candidate looking out of the corner of his or her eyes, in a way that suggests shiftiness. It is distinct from the image of the candidate bored senseless, chin on hand, eyes unfocused. It is distinct from photographs that underscore some perceived character flaw — vanity, laziness, lack of discipline — through some iconic gesture or pose (hair combing, slouching, sloppiness). The hangdog image conveys a single, tight visual message: fatigue, sadness, impotence…

Watching this year’s extraordinarily competitive campaign reminds one again how much the process of choosing a president parallels the process whereby the ancient Romans received new emperors. One major qualification for the job is how well the candidate stands up to the long and public bloodbath that narrows the field. Weakness is fatal. You may end up with a perfect tyrant running the joint, but at least you can be certain he’s a survivor. Emperors and presidents should not be subject to fatigue, sadness or impotence.

The hangdog candidate photograph is a weapon in the war of attrition. They are easily gathered, because no politician can be completely upbeat every day of every week for two years of solid campaigning. All it takes is one tired moment, one puffy-eyed, early-morning, haven’t-had-the-coffee-yet photograph, and the image is in the arsenal. Even better is if the candidate lets down his or her guard momentarily in the presence of another candidate, so that, say, Barack Obama can be seen looking happy and confident as Hillary Clinton looks tired and depressed in the same frame.

In the partisan media (much of the blogosphere, the tabloids and several cable channels), these images are used freely and gleefully. In media that strive for objectivity, the hangdog shot raises difficult issues. In an earlier age of newspapering, sorting through the archives for an image that confirmed your headline was acceptable practice. Today, serious newspapers try to use images from the most recent campaign events rather than something a few months old, even if it fits the story line better. But it’s difficult to make a solid rule of relying on the most recent images, especially if the recent images are wildly dissonant with that story line. “Candidate’s Mother Dies” obviously can’t be illustrated with a beaming picture of the politician taken just before he or she got the bad news, not without sending an unintended message about his or her character.

The hangdog image — and its opposite, the smiling, confident, top-dog image — also suggests a seamlessness between the news of the campaign trail and the candidate’s emotional state. In many ways, it reduces politicians to cartoons who seem to be dancing mindlessly to the tune of the polls, now frowning and moping, now giddy and upbeat. It also suggests that the media play an intimate role in this dance, piping the tune. In fact, the one thing the media almost never gain access to is the real emotional life of politicians, and when newspapers or magazines or television suggest otherwise, they run the risk of seeming self-aggrandizing.

And yet, the hangdog image is almost irresistible. All the hard-edged questioning in the world, all the grilling at news conferences and televised debates may fail to knock the candidate off message. But a single image of a sad, powerless, depressed politician is enough to break through the kabuki makeup and get at the Shakespearean psychic meltdown that is supposedly just underneath the surface. Which, through the miracle of the short attention span, disappears just as soon as the poll numbers go up again.

It amazes me how long the media has milked this story. Or rather, how desperately they have tried to diffuse it.

But it’s hard to spin a photograph. (Though the “reporter” here does his best.)

Would it be too immodest to point out that I first posted this “notorious” photo from December 15th here at S&L on the 16th? Mr. Drudge, who frequents this site, only posted it a couple of days later. 

From her adoring fans at the New York Times:

US First Lady Hillary Clinton (L) kisses Suha Arafat, wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 11 November 1999.

The Résumé Factor: Those 8 Years as First Lady

By PATRICK HEALY

December 26, 2007

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.” …

Mrs. Clinton’s role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Mrs. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.

An interview with Mrs. Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable with the use of military power…

Associates from that time said that she was aware of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and what her husband has in recent years characterized as his intense focus on them, but that she made no aggressive independent effort to shape policy or gather information about the threat of terrorism.

She did not wrestle directly with many of the other challenges the next president will face, including managing a large-scale deployment — or withdrawal — of troops abroad, an overhaul of the intelligence agencies or the effort to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology. Most of her exposure to the military has come since she left the White House through her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee…

Her role mostly involved what diplomats call “soft power” — converting cold war foes into friends, supporting nonprofit work and good-will endeavors, and pressing her agenda on women’s rights, human trafficking and the expanded use of microcredits, tiny loans to help individuals in poor countries start small businesses.

Asked to name three major foreign policy decisions where she played a decisive role as first lady, Mrs. Clinton responded in generalities more than specifics, describing her strategic roles on trips to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, India, Africa and Latin America.

Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. “There are a lot of them,” she said. “The whole unfortunate experience we’ve had with the Bush administration, where they haven’t done what we’ve needed to do to reach out to the rest of the world, reinforces my experience in the 1990s that public diplomacy, showing respect and understanding of people’s different perspectives — it’s more likely to at least create the conditions where we can exercise our values and pursue our interests.” …

Susan Rice, a National Security Council senior aide and State Department official under Mr. Clinton who now advises Mr. Obama, said Mrs. Clinton was not involved in “the heavy lifting of foreign policy.” Ms. Rice also took issue with a recent comment by a Clinton campaign official that Mrs. Clinton was “the face of the administration in foreign affairs.”

“Making tough decisions, responding to crises, making the bureaucracy implement decisions that they may not want to implement — that’s the hard part of foreign policy,” Ms. Rice said. “That’s not what Mrs. Clinton was asked or expected to do as first lady.”

Mrs. Clinton said in the interview that she was careful not to overstep her bounds on national security, relying instead on informal access. During the preinaugural transition, for instance, she sat in on some meetings about presidential appointments at the invitation of Warren Christopher, who directed the transition and became secretary of state in the first Clinton term. Participants recalled that she would mostly speak when Mr. Christopher called on her, and tended to make points about placing more women, minority members and allies in key jobs.

She said she did not attend National Security Council meetings, nor did she have a security clearance — though she was briefed on classified intelligence before going on some important diplomatic trips.

“I don’t recall attending anything formal like the National Security Council,” she said, “because I had direct access to all of the principals. I spent a lot of time with the national security adviser, the secretary of state, other officials on the security team for the president. I thought that was both more appropriate, but also more efficient.”

Mrs. Clinton declined to say if she ever read the President’s Daily Brief, a rundown of the latest intelligence and threats to national security provided to the president each day. “I would put that in the category of I-never-talk-about-what-I-talk-to-my-husband-about,” she said. But she indicated, and other administration officials confirmed, that Mr. Clinton would sometimes talk to her about contents of the briefing.

“Let me say generally, I’m very aware of and familiar with what the P.D.B.’s actually are, how they work, what they include,” she said. “And it wasn’t always through the Clinton administration — when I went to Bosnia, for example, I had a full briefing from the military commanders there about what the situation was like.”

Mrs. Clinton said she was “only tangentially involved” in Mr. Clinton’s first major overseas test, whether to send American soldiers after the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his forces, a raid that ended in 18 American deaths. Asked if she had pressed for an invasion, she said she had acted “more as a sounding board” for Mr. Clinton.

The same was true during the military confrontation in Haiti in 1994, over restoring the exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which she favored and drew lessons from about joint command of American armed forces…

Nor was Mrs. Clinton a memorable player on Rwanda. Former White House officials say that no one — not the national security team, not the president, not the first lady — was seriously pushing for American military intervention to stop or slow the unfolding genocide there; the administration’s focus was on confronting the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans. Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on Rwanda.

The foreign policy achievement most often credited to Mrs. Clinton came in 1995, with her speech to the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” She also tangled with Chinese officials, she said, and refused to bow to pressure to soften her remarks…

Her personal interests also drew her to Northern Ireland, where she believed she could help foster peace as a female leader bringing together women split by the sectarian divide. She played host to a memorable meeting, one of the first of its kind, of Catholic and Protestant women in Belfast. “It gave everybody a safe place to come together and start talking about what they had in common,” Mrs. Clinton said.

As she prepared to run for the Senate, Mrs. Clinton took increasing interest in Israel and Middle East peace, touchstones for Jewish voters, among others, in New York. She was not at the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, but she did pepper the Middle East peace envoy, Dennis Ross, with questions, like whether the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was too much the revolutionary to ever make peace, Mr. Ross recalled.

The Middle East situation led to Mrs. Clinton’s first big foreign policy-related problem as a candidate. In 1999, she sat silently, but with apparent discomfort, through an event on the West Bank as Suha Arafat, the wife of Mr. Arafat, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who at that point seemed likely to be her Republican opponent in the 2000 Senate race, sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton for not confronting Mrs. Arafat over her remarks and for kissing her goodbye afterward; the incident also led some Jewish groups to be critical of the first lady.

Mrs. Clinton has often said that she learned from the experience and would not make the same mistake again.

Posted mostly for its amusement value. Though there are several alarming moments when the mask slips, such as this one:

“I don’t recall attending anything formal like the National Security Council,” she said, “because I had direct access to all of the principals. I spent a lot of time with the national security adviser, the secretary of state, other officials on the security team for the president. I thought that was both more appropriate, but also more efficient.”

“Appropriate”? For a first lady? “More efficient” for what? What did she think she was doing or what did she think she was going to do?

Who or what did she think she was?

The foreign policy achievement most often credited to Mrs. Clinton came in 1995, with her speech to the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” She also tangled with Chinese officials, she said, and refused to bow to pressure to soften her remarks…

And by “tangled with Chinese officials,” they mean she accepted hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars from them in bribes to her and her husband.

Mrs. Clinton declined to say if she ever read the President’s Daily Brief, a rundown of the latest intelligence and threats to national security provided to the president each day. “I would put that in the category of I-never-talk-about-what-I-talk-to-my-husband-about,” she said.

If she did, both she and her husband were breaking the law. Not that such niceties would have ever stopped them.

Her role mostly involved what diplomats call “soft power” — converting cold war foes into friends, supporting nonprofit work and good-will endeavors, and pressing her agenda on women’s rights, human trafficking and the expanded use of microcredits, tiny loans to help individuals in poor countries start small businesses.

Asked to name three major foreign policy decisions where she played a decisive role as first lady, Mrs. Clinton responded in generalities more than specifics, describing her strategic roles on trips to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, India, Africa and Latin America.

Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. “There are a lot of them,” she said.

Do we really want someone this delusional as President?

From the UK’s Telegraph:

As al-Qaeda’s grip eases, Christians flock home

Date: December 24 2007

Aqeel Hussein in Baghdad and Colin Freeman

IRAQI Christians who fled a district of Baghdad that declared itself an al-Qaeda caliphate have returned home to celebrate their first Christmas in two years.

Known as the “Vatican of Iraq”, the small but long-established Christian enclave in the mainly Sunni district of Doura suffered constant terror at the hands of al-Qaeda gunmen who tried to impose a Taliban-style rule.

Churches were car-bombed, women were threatened for not wearing Islamic headscarves, and families had to pay off local mosques to keep them safe from kidnap gangs.

But now al-Qaeda has been rooted out of Doura and the hundreds of Christian families who left the area are returning.

On Christmas Day they will congregate in the battle-scarred St Mary’s Church, where part of the crucifix on its tower is still missing after being shot at…

Overlooking the River Tigris on Baghdad’s southern outskirts, Doura was home to 4000 followers of the Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian Orthodox churches. The neighbourhood has churches, monasteries and convents, and the Christian residents’ homes stand out because of their neat gardens.

Relations with their Muslim neighbours began to fray in late 2004 when al-Qaeda zealots joined forces with local Sunnis fighting the US occupation. Soon Doura became one of Baghdad’s most notorious al-Qaeda strongholds, with the movement designating it part of a new self-declared Sunni Islamic state of Iraq. The Christians were an easy target for the insurgent gangs’ fund-raising activities. Al-Qaeda-backed cells would frequently kidnap them for money, claiming the victims were “crusaders” or US allies.

By the middle of this year, half of the local Christians had left, part of a wider exodus that saw hundreds of thousands of Baghdad Christians head for Syria. Those who stayed in Doura had to pay monthly tithes of 15,000 dinars ($15) as “protection money” to Sunni mosques.

Nine months into the US troop build-up, though, local Sunnis have been persuaded to reject al-Qaeda’s influence. Last week, Sheik Samir al-Jibouri, a local Sunni cleric, visited Father Shamoon to give him his guarantee that his flock would be safe.

“He has also told us that we don’t have to pay protection money any more,” Father Shamoon said.

Major Kirk Luedeke, a US Army spokesman, confirmed Christian families were returning. “What is more important is that the Muslim tribal leaders are openly showing support for their Christian neighbours,” he said…

More good news for the holidays.

Churches were car-bombed, women were threatened for not wearing Islamic headscarves, and families had to pay off local mosques to keep them safe from kidnap gangs

Why didn’t we ever hear anything about this?

Still, it is good news.

From those allies of terror at Reuters:

Afghans detain woman with bomb under burqa

Mon Dec 24

ASADABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – A woman carrying a waistcoat filled with explosives under her all-enveloping burqa was arrested on Monday in eastern Afghanistan, provincial officials said, in the first possible reported case of a female suicide bomber in the country.

She was arrested on a tip-off in Jalalabad after being followed by intelligence department officials near the border with Pakistan.

The elderly woman’s identity was not given, but she was now being questioned, officials said.

It was not immediately clear if the woman wanted to use the explosives herself or was carrying the bomb to deliver it.

If the former, she would be the first reported female suicide bomber in Afghanistan where hundreds of people, many of them civilians, have been killed this year alone in such attacks…

Security checkpoints in Afghanistan are usually manned only by men who are not supposed to check women for fear of offending their modesty…

Sadly, the only thing surprising about this story is the claim that this was the first time a woman bomber has been captured in Afghanistan.

That’s hard to believe.