Meanwhile.. France and Britain to the rescue?!

A joint French-British UN initiative would call on Israel and the Palestinians to hold immediate, independent investigations into war crimes allegations stemming from the war in Gaza, as part of a bid to send the Goldstone report back to Geneva and out of the hands of the Security Council or the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

The proposal comes before the United Nations General Assembly is scheduled Wednesday to deliberate on the Goldstone report on the war in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

A source at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy informed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the details of the initiative during a telephone conversation.

Netanyahu asked the French President to take action among European Union partners in an effort to form collective opposition to any resolution at the UN on the Goldstone report.

The initiative is a list of “red lines” which was adopted by the 27 members of the European Union. Its main points:

1. A resolution brought for the approval of the General Assembly will not include operational steps, like taking the matter to the Security Council or the International Court of Justice.

2. The resolution would call on Israel and the Palestinians to embark on an independent investigation into the events of Operation Cast Lead, and the allegations of war crimes.

3. The handling of the Goldstone report will return to the Human Rights Council, the UN body in Geneva. The parties will have to report to the council on the findings of their investigations in a few months.

According to the Foreign Ministry source, the document was delivered yesterday by the British and French permanent representatives at the UN to the Palestinian Authority delegation at the international body, as well as the representatives of Arab states, and the members of the Security Council.

Arab representatives at the UN are expected to complete Tuesday the first draft of a resolution that will be brought to the General Assembly for a vote.

The French and British has emphasized in their exchanges with the Arab representatives that if the “red lines” are not part of the resolution being prepared, the European Union will abstain, and may even vote against it – and expects that much of the international community will too.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

6:12PM: Here is the latest example of a PA official denying the Jews’ history in the Land of Israel

For a comprehensive treatment of this issue, see here.

6:00PM: An interesting article on Israeli innovation.

Americans think of war or religion when they think of Israel. But Israel is also an unusual high- tech success story.

A survey last May of non-American companies on the Nasdaq counted three Korean companies, five Irish businesses, five from the U.K. and six from Japan. Israel had 64.

In 2008, Israel drew more than twice the venture capital per citizen than the United States. It drew 30 times as much VC cash as continental Europe, and 350 times more than India.

There are some pretty familiar ethnic explanations for the Israeli tech miracle. Jews are supposed to be smart. Jews from overseas will fund Israeli companies regardless of quality. And so on.

But those explanations don’t suffice, as Dan Senor and Saul Singer point out in “Start Up Nation.” (Senor is my colleague at the Council on Foreign Relations). The Israeli record of innovation has less to do with tribe and more with policy. The Israeli military has also played a surprising role in the process.

The story starts with the old Israel, its suspicion of capitalism and its counterproductive affection for trade unions and communal farming. A decade and a half ago the Israeli government established a tech fund that it dubbed Yozma. Yozma’s goal was to lure venture capital to join it in creating Israeli projects. The very signal that Yozma’s creation sent changed Israeli attitudes about business dramatically. One executive paraphrased John Lennon on Elvis to describe the shift. “Before Yozma, there was nothing.”

Education, Women

But other forces contributed. The high level of education for both men and women meant new companies had someone to hire. During his tenure as finance minister earlier this decade, Benjamin Netanyahu pulled his own Margaret Thatcher by cutting taxes and government jobs and privatizing El Al, the national airline, and the Bezeq, the state-owned telecom company. Netanyahu phased out high-return government bonds, thereby forcing domestic capital to find an alternate place to invest. Financial reforms made the marketplace relatively transparent.

The authors identify several less-intuitive factors. One is Israeli tolerance for failure — bankruptcy isn’t the end of a career. Another is immigration. Sure, the immigrants from the former Soviet Union had degrees, but what mattered as much was the immigrant personality, that of the self-selected risk-taker willing to start over, and therefore, also “start up.” It also helped that academic and business doors were open to the immigrants.

Soldiers of Commerce

Yet the secret weapon of Israeli innovation is the Israeli military. The Israeli draft doesn’t merely ask soldiers to serve for two years; they serve for much of their adulthood, returning each year. This sounds like a career disrupter. But the Israel Defense Forces’ elite units end up functioning as the sort of fruitful techno clusters that Michael Porter of Harvard University identified as so hospitable to innovation.

The advantage of being associated with an Israeli elite unit — two famous names are Talpiot and 8200 — is like the advantage of going to Harvard Business School, only greater, says Israeli Tal Keinan.

Keinan is an Israeli investor and a 2001 graduate of Harvard Business School, so he’s able to put in American terms what the Israeli network does. He points out than a Harvard Business School reunion happens only every few years, and it is among people who shared only spreadsheets, not tents or rifles. Says Keinan of the IDF bond: “Imagine a reunion every year, and that it lasts two to four weeks.” Israelis are that much closer and more likely to help each other on projects.

Democratic Authority

Beyond the advantage of networking are a flatter hierarchy and the democratic habits of the Israeli military. The challenges of war on the house-to-house level have forced the Israeli military to hand authority down the chain. The skills even junior officers garner get them civilian jobs from people who themselves have served, and therefore know how to read a military resume.

An example of the military-high tech dynamic came when the president of PayPal Inc., Scott Thompson, was on the hunt for software to detect fraud, something American innovators believe they produce better than anyone else.

As a favor to an investor, Thompson met with Shvat Shaked, a co-founder of the Israeli company Fraud Sciences. To Thompson’s astonishment, Fraud Sciences was able to predict the likelihood of fraud better than any mechanism PayPal or others had developed. While at 8200 tracking terrorists, Shaked and fellow 8200 veteran Saar Wilf had discovered a special characteristic of those doing something wrong — they try to hide their traces. The innocent, by contrast, don’t. They had used that knowledge to write the most competitive software.

Muslim Opportunity

Soon investors nurturing projects in Muslim-majority countries will have their own Yozma, the new Global Technology and Innovation Fund that President Obama is touting.

But the Israeli record suggests that such public-sector funds, while exciting, aren’t the most important reason for high-tech innovation. “Most of these countries,” Senor says of the Middle East, “are not behind because they lack money.”

Senor suggests that strengthening the talent pool by allowing women in the workforce, strengthening the right to question and vote out officials within the military or outside it, capitalizing on the value of immigration, and voting in a government that encourages experiments all matter more.

The second message here is for U.S. companies, which tend to value veteran officer candidates less than their Israeli counterparts. U.S. veterans’ time in combat may translate into an ability to make the difference at some of our own start-ups.

4:15PM: Picture of the day:

An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers into a house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem November 3, 2009, in this handout picture released by the International Solidarity Movement. Jews took over the Palestinian home in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday after an Israeli court ruled in their favour in a lengthy land-ownership dispute — a practice repeatedly condemned by the United Nations. REUTERS/International Solidarity Movement/Handout

Wow, Reuters are surely not even hiding their bias if they are publishing pictures from the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement.

Bonus bias points for the wording “An unidentified Palestinian man holds a pipe as he tries to push back Jewish settlers.” Yes, he certainly looks like he merely wants to push them back. As opposed to striking them with it, for example.

4:05PM: Sorry, had no time for updates so far today.

a) Proctologist

b) Standup comedian

c) Circus performer

d) Airport baggage handler

And the answer is…

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V

As if you didn’t guess.

A Muslim extremist who works as a baggage handler at Luton Airport had his security pass suspended today after it was revealed he took part in a protest hurling abuse at British troops.

Jalal Ahmed was among the 20-strong group of extremists protesting when the Royal Anglian Regiment returned home from Iraq earlier this week.

During their homecoming parade, he was spotted clutching a banner proclaiming: ‘Anglian soldiers: Butchers of Basra’.

After he was revealed to be part of the hate-filled demonstration, his pass allowing him to go airside and work at the airport was revoked.

Ahmed, who is in his twenties and lives in Luton, works on a casual basis for Menzies Aviation, which provides baggage handling at the airport for easyJet and other airlines.

He is believed to have worked there during peak periods over the past two years and would have had access to secure areas of the site.

The Muslim, who is in his early 20s, is said to have once joked he was the nephew of Osama bin Laden and was also allegedly questioned over pictures of passenger jets.

He told officers he was interested in planes and no further action was taken.

John Menzies plc said he had passed all criminal and security checks but that his job would now be reviewed in light of his involvement in the protest on Tuesday.

‘All employees are subject to a five year criminal record check and airport authority checks before they can be given an airside pass to work on the airport, ‘ a spokesman said.

‘Jalal Ahmed passed these checks. We are now working with the airport authority to review the current position.’

The company insisted Ahmed would have been supervised at all times as he worked at the airport, where he is not a full-time employee.

Luton Borough Council, which owns the airport, said: ‘The Council has been assured that all employees at the Airport receive criminal record and security checks. We are unable to comment on individuals.

‘The issue of security is taken very seriously by the Council and the Airport Company.’

Budget airline easyJet, which is the main operator at Luton, made it clear Ahmed was not employed directly by them.

A spokesman said: ‘We are obviously working with his employers. We are working with Special Branch and we are aware his airside pass has been temporarily suspended.’

Update:  Also from the Britain is a Lost Cause department:

Britain on Thursday approved the visit to the country of Hizbullah official Ibrahim Moussawi to address a seminar on political Islam at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

The March 25 trip will mark the first official visit of a Hizbullah representative to the UK since the European boycott of the guerrilla group was lifted in 2005.

Conservative think tank, The Center for Social Cohesion (CSC), wrote to Home Secretary Jaqui Smith to protest the decision, and said it would instruct lawyers to seek an arrest warrant for Moussawi if he is allowed into the country.

CSC director Douglas Murray said the Home Office should apply its policy of banning entry to those who “stir up tension and provoke others to violence,” which was recently used to bar the Dutch lawmaker and Islam critic Geert Wilders.

Murray expressed concern that the government “finds it acceptable that an individual who incites hatred against the Jewish people and of Israelis should be permitted to enter.”

CSC researcher Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens called Moussawi “a member of a terrorist group that is ideologically devoted to the destruction of Israel and the extermination of Jews worldwide; a group which murders political opponents as a matter of policy and terrorizes members of the Lebanese population who dare to defy them.”

The decision to approve Moussawi’s entry comes a week after Bill Rammell, the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, told the British Parliament that his government would hold discussions with Hizbullah’s political wing.

Rammell said that decision was made “in the light of more positive developments in Lebanon, and the formation of the national unity government in which Hizbullah is participating.”

The daughter of the radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed is a pole dancer, it emerged last night.

Yasmin Fostok, 27, has admitted rebelling against her father’s strict Muslim beliefs by performing semi-naked in London bars and nightclubs.

She lives as a single mother in South East London, bringing up her three-year-old son conceived during an arranged marriage to a Turkish man which has since collapsed.

Miss Fostok, who left the Bakri former home in North London four years ago, said: ‘I don’t get on with my dad. I don’t agree with his views  -  I just get on with my life and that is it.’

It has been reported that Miss Fostok regularly works in bars in the West End and has toured other countries as a podium dancer with a troupe called Ibiza Untouched.

She is also thought to work a fire-eating routine into her act and performs semi-naked inside cages.

She has dyed her hair blonde, has several tattoos of her name on her ankle and a dragon on her back and changed her Muslim name Youssra to Yasmin to try to conceal her identity.

She said: ‘I don’t normally do topless work but I’m willing to go topless if the venue is right.’

Last night her father said: ‘If this is true I am deeply shocked.’

Speaking from Lebanon, where he has lived since being exiled from the UK three years ago, he added: ‘She was brought up properly in the Muslim faith but she is free to make her own choices in life. But I am still shocked.

‘I haven’t spoken to her for a long time, because I believed she was living with her family in Turkey. But I knew nothing of this.

‘She should not seek forgiveness from me, she should seek forgiveness from God.

‘If she has done these things she will be judged on Judgment Day. But God will forgive her anything except becoming a non-Muslim.’

Miss Fostok grew up in North London with six other children of Bakri and her mum Hanah.

She remained a devout Muslim in her teens wearing a veil and covering herself from head to toe.

Her marriage came unstuck after she became disillusioned by the strict Muslim principles.

She now lives in Catford in a ground-floor flat.

Her father sparked outrage for his preaching of hate when he praised the 9/11 bombers and said he would ‘never condemn Osama bin Laden or any Muslims.’

Mohammed has recently been in the news for his threats to kill Paul McCartney if he played in Israel.

A man has been charged following a double knife attack on two Orthodox Jews in Golders Green.

Mohamed Jama Ahmed, 37, of North Circular Road, Cricklewood, was arrested after two stabbings which happened just meters apart in roads off Golders Green Road on Friday.

A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said the attacks, which happened at around 6pm, appear to have been random and unprovoked, but were not being treated as faith hate crimes.

Officers were alerted to a 47-year-old man in The Drive who was suffering from stab wounds to his arm and chest.

While at the scene, police were informed that a 43-year-old man had been stabbed in nearby Beverley Gardens.

Both victims were taken to hospital and are said to be in a stable condition.
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Ahmed was arrested on Sunday and charged with two counts of assault involving grievous bodily harm.

He is due to appear at Hendon Magistrates Court today.

In other random attack news, palestinian terrorists just happened to fire least 10 Qassam rockets and 3 mortar shells at the western Negev.

Brian of London adds: Let’s get this straight. A random man, with a random knife, randomly stabs a couple of random Jews in London’s best known Jewish neighbourhood.

I disagree with designating anything as a hate crime: a crime is a crime. But as we have these laws, how on earth can the Police jump to the conclusion that this particular random man just happened to stab not one, but two overtly Jewish men. Randomly.

If you follow Shire Network News you’ll know I’m in the process of moving from the UK to the US. Anyone else want to ask me why?

Literally.

A Muslim bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could pray.

The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca.

Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: “He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

“We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.”

The 21-year-old plumber added: “He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

“Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.”

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: “One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

“An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

“After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.”

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: “They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.”

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: “I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

“I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.”

Where does he get off doing this?

I guess he mistook himself for a taxi driver.

Update: In case you are wondering, this report is from March 29th, so it is not an April Fool’s joke as far as I can tell.

How else can you explain a number of unbelievable statements emanating from subjects of the Queen.

Take former British Prime Minister-cum-Quartet’s Mideast Envoy Tony Blair, who says the palestinians are starting to carry out their part in the “road map” peace plan.

The Quartet’s Middle East envoy Tony Blair said Thursday that Palestinian security forces had significantly improved and were starting to carry out their part in the long-stalled “road map” peace plan.

The former British prime minister, now the envoy for the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators which include the European Union, the United States, Russia and the United Nations, urged Israel to respond by easing travel and trade restrictions imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank.

The U.S. government will assess and judge whether Israel and the Palestinians are meeting their obligations under the 2003 road map as part of a push for a Palestinian statehood agreement before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office next January.

Statehood could hinge on those assessments because Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has vowed not to implement any future peace agreements until Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets his road map obligation to crack down on militants.

“I think it is important to recognize that what has happened here in Nablus over these past few months is, of course, precisely what phase one of the ‘road map’ asks for,” Blair said during a visit to the West Bank city.

Earlier Thursday, during a visit south of Ramallah, he said: “The Palestinian side has improved significantly their security capability.”

The only kind of road map the palestinians are following is the kind that helps them get to Israeli cities – like Dimona – for terrorist attacks.

I do agree with Blair on one point, though. The palestinian side has improved significantly their security capability.

Then we have the Archbishop of Canterbury, who says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK seems unavoidable.

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable.”

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty.”

Today, I post this tragic tale of a Muslim woman whose family did nothing while her husband battered her to death.

A family who stood by as a husband systematically battered to death his young bride through an arranged marriage have been found guilty of failing to help her in the weeks before she died.

Sabia Rani, 19, suffered horrendous injuries at the hands of new husband Shazad Khan, 25, but her plight was ignored by his other relatives who shared their home in Leeds.

Khan was convicted for the teenager’s murder a year ago after she was discovered with bruising to 90 per cent of her body and up to 15 broken ribs.

Khan’s mother Phullan Bibi, 52, his two sisters Uzma Khan, 23, and 28-year-old Nazia Naureen, and Naureen’s husband Majid Hussain, also 28, lived with the couple in Oakwood Grange, Roundhay.

Leeds Crown Court was told during their three-week trial for allowing the death of a vulnerable adult that they had tried to blame her injuries on evil spirits and curses.

It took the jury nine hours of deliberation to come back with four unanimous guilty verdicts.

As they were read out in court, the group screamed and thumped the dock. Khan’s sisters started wailing and hugging each other before screaming: “Not guilty, not guilty.”

His mother stood up and started crying and had to be restrained by officers after repeatedly banging both hands down on the dock.

Ms Rani only arrived in England five months before her death. She had been brought up in rural Pakistan and did not speak English.

The jury was told she had not been allowed out of the house she shared with her husband and his family without a chaperone.

They also heard that the teenager would have been in severe pain and very ill in the weeks up to her death in May 2006.

After her death, pathologist Christopher Milroy described her injuries as being similar to those suffered by someone in a serious road accident.

Prosecutor Simon Myerson QC said the defendants tried to blame them on evil spirits and curses.

Mr Myerson told the court that each defendant must have known Ms Rani was in pain and that Khan was the cause of it.

Professor Archibald Malcolm, a leading expert on bone fractures, who gave evidence during the trial, attributed the injuries her ribs to “hard kicks, stamps or very hard punches”.

The pathologist deduced there were three “episodes” of fracturing, one around three weeks before her dath, one about two weeks before and the other around 12 hours of less.

At the time of Khan’s murder conviction last year, West Yorkshire Police had already taken the first steps towards charging the family members.

After today’s verdicts, the Crown Prosecution Service revealed that the defendants were some of the first people in the country to be convicted of allowing the death of a vulnerable adult.

Malcolm Taylor, of CPS West Yorkshire’s Complex Casework Unit, said: “Sabia Rani was the victim of horrific violence at the hands of her husband whilst her family, as the jury found, chose to do nothing to help her.

“This is the first case in West Yorkshire and one of the very first cases in the whole of England and Wales where the provisions of the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act 2004 have been used after the death of a ‘vulnerable adult’.”

He added: “The message must be that if families or other people with a duty to look after those who need protection deliberately choose not to do so, their neglect will not be ignored by the law enforcement agencies, and prosecution will follow.”

By the way, notice how both of these stories took place in England.

I hope the English are paying attention, because this might just be a prelude to their future.

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns’ fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

Of course I didn’t need these poll results to know Britons are losing their grip on reality.

London dentist Sohail Qureshi told the police he was just off to celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid with his family in Pakistan…

But instead of dental floss and fluoride, Qureshi, 30, tried to board a plane at Heathrow Airport with $18,000 in cash, a night vision scope, two metal batons, terror handbooks, extremist material, military information on CDs and medical supplies.

Security services didn’t buy Qureshi’s vacation story and ended his trip before it could start.

Describing his “vacation” in an e-mail, Qureshi wrote, “Pray that I kill many, brother. Revenge, revenge, revenge.” On an extremist Web forum, he added, “I am not going for good as far as I know, it is only a 14- to 20-day operation, if it’s in Pak, Afg or Waz.”

The Islamic extremist was in fact on his way to fight for the Taliban against American and British troops.

In court, he boasted he had been sent to the U.K. by Al Qaeda for terrorist fundraising. He posted a farewell letter anonymously on an Islamist website bragging about raising thousands of pounds from sympathizers in the U.K. for the cause because “bullets cost money.”

“The Dentist” set off on his “vacation” with keepsake snapshots of himself holding an M-16 rifle and an AK-47, both thought to be have been taken in Pakistan when he attended a terrorist training camp. Scotland Yard released e-mails revealing that “The Dentist” had trained at an Al Qaeda camp in Pakistan in 1996 and was the “emir” of another camp in 1998.

In my Dec. 31, 2007 column, the concern was raised that Samina Malik, the so-called “Lyrical Terrorist,” was a perfectly placed terror insider at one of the world’s largest airports. She wrote poems about beheadings, poison bullets and martyrdom, posting them to “attract men.” As it turns out, Qureshi may have been one of her suitors.

Police had the dentist under surveillance when he contacted Malik to ask about security at the airport. Recent testimony revealed that the dangerous duo was in e-mail contact.

Just before his arrest, Qureshi asked Malik, “What is the system like at work? Is the checking still very harsh or have things calmed down a bit?”

Work for the “Lyrical Terrorist” was a magazine shop on the flight side of Heathrow airport. As Qureshi’s airport insider, Malik received a suspended jail sentence in November.

Evidently, “The Dentist” fancied himself an extremist scribe as well. During his arrest, cops found a chapter from an autobiographical book he had written called “My Father the Bombmaker,” as well as some “motivational Islamist material” stored on a CD.

Arrested in October 2006, he has become the first person to be convicted under tough new U.K. anti-terror laws and was given 4-and-a-half years.

He could, however, be out of jail within a year, free to concoct further family “vacations.”

What is it with British dentists?

The name Mohammed is expected to become the most popular name in England and Wales by 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.

The name, according to the report, was second only to Jack in 2007, which has been top for the last 13 years. 6,772 boys were called Jack and 6,387 were called Mohammed or a variant.

“High birth rate among Muslim families” is the reason cited by the report for how Mohammed will be the most popular boy’s name by next year.

Although Mohammed was ranked 17th, the name’s position would be numbered second if all 14 variant spellings of the name were taken into account.

The Telegraph found that of the 3,009 babies called Mohammed, the most popular spelling was Muhammad (1,595), followed by 903 Mohammads, 429 Muhammeds, 349 Mohameds, 39 Mohamads, 12 Muhameds, 11 Mohammods, nine Mohmmeds, eight Mohamuds, seven Mahammeds, six Muhammeets, five Mohmmads and five Muhammods.

Muhammad Anwar (heh – Aussie Dave), professor of ethnic relations at Warwick University, was quoted by the newspaper as saying: “Muslim parents like to have something that shows a link with their religion or with the Prophet.”

Except teddy bears, I guess.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against a growing Muslim population per se. It’s just that when you factor in the proportion of the growing Muslim population which is acting to reduce the non-Muslim population, there’s real cause for concern.

Update: The Jerusalem Post story includes this picture and caption:

In case you thought the Post had gone to the trouble of finding 4 babies named Mohammed/ Mohammad/ Muhammed/ Mohamed/ Mohamad/ Muhamed/ Mohammod/ Mohmmed/ Mohamud/ Mahammed/ Muhammeet/ Mohmmad/ Muhammod, and lined them up for a photograph.