Nice sentiments. Now we wonder if the good king will abolish public flogging, as demanded by Amnesty International. Dec. 7:

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists who he said have hijacked their religion.

At a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) -- the world's biggest Muslim body -- in the holy city of Mecca, Abdullah said the world's 1 billion Muslims were weak and divided, a description echoed by other leaders.

We wrote in our last post on the Egyptian elections:

The first-round results cast a dubious light on the apparent assumption of the neocons that a wave of democratic revolutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds will bring pro-West "moderates" and technocrats to power. They may be dramatically underestimating the degree to which radical Islam has cornered the market on popular unrest in this part of the planet. Their model seems to be Czechoslovakia 1989. A more appropriate one might be Algeria 1992.

Alas, this analysis has been further vindicated by subsequent events. Dec. 7:

DAMIETTA, Egypt (Reuters) - Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and two men were killed in the last stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections on Wednesday in which Islamists said security forces blocked voters to limit their gains.

Perhaps some of our Eritrean readers could explain the logic of this decision:

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - Eritrea has ordered the expulsion of U.S., Canadian and European staff of the U.N. peacekeeping mission that monitors the tense border with neighboring Ethiopia, United Nations officials said Wednesday.

Concern has been growing that war could again erupt between the two countries. Both have been increasing troops along the border and two weeks ago the United Nations threatened to impose sanctions if Eritrea fails to ease restrictions imposed on peacekeepers.

Similar dynamics on both sides of the Caspian Sea. We recently noted unrest over contested elections in Azerbaijan, where the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline has just opened. Now Kazakhstan—slated to be connected to the new pipeline by a link across the Caspian—seems headed down the same path.

Here's the exact quote, as reported in the New York Times Dec. 7:

"I am Saddam Hussein!" the former ruler said repeatedly, shaking his fist. "Like the path of Mussolini, to resist occupation to the end, that is Saddam Hussein," he said.

All sides continue to exhibit the utmost cynicism in the increasingly confused Iraq war. The anti-terrorist SITE Institute notes that the self-declared al-Qaeda in Iraq has issued a communique on the Nov. 28 assassination of Sheikh Ayad al-Izzi, a prominent Sunni parliamentary candidate with the Iraqi Islamic Party. According to SITE:

Commenting on who killed al-Izzi, the message implicates the US, saying: “The Americans have an interest to kill Ayad al-Azzi and those like him so as to instigate civil wars between the followers of the Sunna and their protégés.

Palestinian mufti appeals for release of Iraq hostages

6 December 2005
05:05 AM
BBC Monitoring Newsfile

Text of report by Iraqi Al-Sharqiyah TV on 6 December

Mufti of the Palestinian Territories Ikrimah Sabri appealed on Monday [5 December] for the release of the four kidnapped foreign members of the Christian Peacemaking Team. In statements to the press in the West Bank, Sabri said that the abduction of those four came as a surprise to the Palestinian people, noting their support for the Palestinian causes, especially their protests against the racial segregation wall.

The four members of the Christian Peacemaking Team were kidnapped in Baghdad last week. They are a Briton, an American, and two Canadians, said to be working within the same team in the Palestinian territories.

Another turn of the screw. Shame on Judge Richard Berman. From the New York Daily News, Dec. 2:

Judge: Searches of bags in subway is constitutional
Random police searches of riders' bags to deter terrorism in the nation's largest subway system do not violate the Constitution and are a minimal intrusion of privacy, a federal judge ruled Friday.