Well, well, well. It appears that all the progressive pundits in the US who insist that wearing the hijab or niqab is an expression of religious devotion are ... how to put this? … wrong. Syria has banned the face-covering veils, because women who willingly wear these restrictive garments are practicing political Islam (that is to say, they're Islamofascists), and the secular Muslim country has no intention of accommodating them, reports The Christian Science Monitor: 

Syria has banned students and teachers at universities from wearing the niqab, the full-face veil that has grown in popularity there in recent years. …

Secularism is particularly important to Damascus because the president comes from the minority Alawite Muslim sect. Though many sects of Islam and Christianity coexist in Syria, it is majority Sunni. And the regime is particularly sensitive to Islamism: Nearly three decades ago, President Bashar al-Assad’s father brutally put down an Islamist uprising, killing thousands of civilians by leveling the town of Hama, where the rebellion was centered. …

Bassam al-Kadi, director of the Syrian Women Observatory, a women’s rights group in Damascus … considers the niqab an extremist message that reduces women to sexual objects that must be covered.

Mr. Kadi says the rise of the niqab in Syria has been partly fueled, as it was in Egypt, by ideas imported from the Gulf. But it also has to do with the political isolation of Syria in the last five years, he says, during which Syria strengthened its ties with its more conservative neighbor Iran and continued its support for Hezbollah and Hamas.

“Extremists have more and more power in the last five years, and they are changing Syrian society,” says Kadi.

Note that it took a brutal suppression of Islamism before all the religions could live in peace.

Editorial Note: To read "The Saudi Version Of 'Man Bites Dog,'” click here.

Civilian Trials At Gitmo: Pro And Con

Former U.S. attorney general Michael Mukasey (2007 to 2009), the judge who presided over the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman (AKA "The Blind Shiek") in 1995, adds his plea to those of other terror prosecutors and national security experts not to try Gitmo detainees in civilian criminal courts - in this case, arguing against establishing such a court at the detention facility, which was recently recommended in a Washington Post op-ed.
 

First, the argument made by Eugene Sullivan, former chief judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (1990 to 1995), and Louis Freeh, former U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York and FBI director (1993 to 2001) to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other September 11 terrorists in criminal court:  

[T]here is a safe, rational, cost-effective solution that upholds the rule of law: Try the suspects in an Article III federal court - in Guantanamo.

The territory of every federal district court is defined by statute. Thus Congress can, by statute, expand the "territorial jurisdiction" of any federal district court - for example, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the venue initially designated for the Sept. 11 trial - to include Guantanamo. Or Congress could create a Guantanamo Bay Cuba Division for any federal district. …

[T]he economic costs of ensuring adequate security within the United States are prohibitive. Without spending millions of taxpayer dollars, no persuasive argument can be made that trying these defendants anywhere within the states would be as safe and secure as using the multimillion-dollar facilities constructed at Guantanamo Bay for this purpose.

There is precedent for this approach. Other "island" military bases, indisputably treated as U.S. territories or possessions - the Midway Atoll, Wake Island, Johnston Island, Kingman Reef - are expressly defined within the jurisdiction of specific district courts, even if they are retained largely for military use.

Sullivan and Freeh contend that “[h]undreds of international terrorist suspects have been brought to trial in our courts” whereas “untested and widely questioned military commissions have prosecuted only four detainees since Sept. 11.” Given that, their plan sounds like a reasonable compromise between those who want KSM and his merry band of terrorists tried in criminal courts rather than military tribunals and those who don’t want them brought to the mainland – and certainly not to the very city against which they waged violent jihad. Not so fast, counters Mukasey in his Washington Post op-ed:  

[T]he Sixth Amendment guarantees defendants a trial "before an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." Given the locations of the Sept. 11 crashes, this would require a jury drawn from the Southern District of New York, the Eastern District of Virginia, the Western District of Pennsylvania or the districts where the flights originated. …

The prospect of long-term security presents a prohibitive personal cost to jurors and financial cost to the government, and long-term sequestration is a recipe for friction and eventual disaster. Recall the principal modern experience with it in a famous case: that of Orenthal James Simpson.

Nor is it certain that the verdict returned by a civilian jury held in military custody far from home for months would be received as fair and independent. …

Proponents of civilian trials overlook practical difficulties that arise because the accused are terrorists. The battlefield, where KSM and others were captured, does not provide the setting in which evidence can be gathered the way it is when a defendant is apprehended by civilian authorities. In civilian trials, federal rules restrict admissibility of evidence; in military commissions, the touchstone for admissibility is simply relevance and apparent reliability. …

[W]e have to work with the tool Congress fashioned: military commissions in Guantanamo, a remote, secure and humane location. Its courtroom facility is unparalleled anywhere on the mainland for handling highly secure data, and proceedings can be monitored from the elaborate press gallery.

The Stiletto gives this round to Mukasey – if only because the rules of evidence in civilian trials are not appropriate to the circumstances of KSM’s capture.

Ban Bang

Inga-Britt Ahlenius, undersecretary general of the Office of Internal Oversight Services, quit because she says that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon undermined her efforts to root out corruption at the United Nations, reports The Washington Post: 
 

Shortly after taking office in 2007, Ban committed himself to restoring the United Nations' reputation, which had been sullied by revelations of corruption in the agency's oil-for-food program in Iraq.

But Ahlenius says that, rather than being an advocate for accountability, Ban, along with his top advisers, has systematically sought to undercut the independence of her office, initially by trying to set up a competing investigations unit under his control and then by thwarting her efforts to hire her own staff.

"Your actions are not only deplorable, but seriously reprehensible. … Your action is without precedent and in my opinion seriously embarrassing for yourself," Ahlenius wrote in the 50-page memo to Ban, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. "I regret to say that the secretariat now is in a process of decay." …

The departure of Ahlenius, 72, coincides with a period of crisis in the United Nations' internal investigations division. During the past two years, the world body has shed some of its top investigators. It has also failed to fill dozens of vacancies, including that of the chief of the investigations division in the Office of Internal Oversight Services. That post has been vacant since 2006, leaving a void in the United Nations' ability to police itself, diplomats say.

Editorial Note: You'll recall that Ban was the quivering coward who ordered the dismantling of an exhibit to mark the 13^th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide at the U.N. three years ago after Turks complained about a single sentence referring to the Armenian Genocide. Corrupt and cowardly. Typical U.N. "leadership."