IRSHAD MANJI IS PROFILED in the London Times:

Irshad Manji has already been dubbed ‘Osama’s worst nightmare’ for her criticisms of Islam. Now she wants Britain’s Muslims to stand more firmly on the side of freedom

No wonder Irshad Manji has received death threats since appearing on British television: she is a lipstick lesbian, a Muslim and scourge of Islamic leaders, whom she accuses of making excuses about the terror attacks on London. Oh, and she tells ordinary Muslims to “crawl out of their narcissistic shell”. Ouch. . . .

The underlying problem with Islam, observes Manji, is that far from spiritualising Arabia, it has been infected with the reactionary prejudices of the Middle East: “Colonialism is not the preserve of people with pink skin. What about Islamic imperialism? Eighty per cent of Muslims live outside the Arab world yet all Muslims must bow to Mecca.” Fresh thinking, she contends, is suppressed by ignorant imams; you can see why she has been dubbed “Osama’s worst nightmare ”.

“The good news,” she insists, “is it doesn’t have to be like this.” She wants a reformation in Islam, returning it to its clever, fun-loving roots. “The world’s first ‘feminist’ was an 11th-century Muslim man. Baghdad had one of the first universities in the 9th century; the Spanish ‘Ole!’ comes from ‘Allah’; Islam even gave us the guitar.”

But now it gives us the suicide bomber: why? She does not rule out alienation and all those Muslims-as-victims explanations, but thinks the Muslim Council of Britain is negligent for “not even acknowledging religion might also have played a role”. Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, said terrorists could not be Muslims but Manji hits back: “The jury is out on what Islam is.” . . .

She recalls asking Mohamed al-Hindi, political leader of Islamic Jihad, where the Koran glorifies martyrdom; he insisted it was there, but even after looking up books and phoning colleagues, he couldn’t find one reference. “His translator suggested I better go if I wanted to leave alive,” she recalls. “I asked why he had even given an interview, and the translator said, ‘Oh, he assumed you would be just another dumb westerner’.”

Read the whole thing.

AL QAEDA WAS TRYING TO GET RID OF AZNAR with the Madrid bombings, according to captured computer files. No surprise there, and unfortunately it worked.

BIZZYBLOG thinks the New York Times’ future looks poor, both financially and editorially.

On the other hand, not everyone thinks much of Fox’s prospects, either.

HUGO CHAVEZ UPDATE: The dead are risen in Venezuela — to vote!

Henri Charrière, the convict who vividly recalled his multiple escape bids from the disease-ridden penal colony of French Guiana in the novel Papillon, has been found “alive” in Venezuela, 32 years after his reported death. Or so Venezuela’s electoral register would have you believe.

Politicians in Venezuela have complained that the official voter list contains thousands of deceased voters, an irregularity that, if abused by unscrupulous election officials, could distort the result of polls.

“Why is there such a big fear of undertaking an audit of the electoral register?” asks Alejandro Plaz, spokesman for Sumate, which lobbies for transparency and participation in elections.

Now, the discovery that Mr Charrière, who died in 1973, is eligible to cast a ballot in local elections in August looks certain to amplify such concerns about the inadequacy of Venezuela’s electoral system.

Go figure.

YES, BLOGGING HAS BEEN RATHER LIGHT this weekend. The Insta-Wife and I are at Hilton Head (kid free!) and we’ve had better things to do.

JOHN PODESTA says the Plame scandalmongering is all about the war in Iraq.

Of course it is. As Jerry Pournelle noted, “[M]ost of the Democrats who want to beat up the administration over the war voted to authorize it, so an honest analysis of the war decision factors won’t work. So, we have this imbecile investigation taking up time.” Indeed.

Read this, too.

And here are more thoughts from Mark Steyn: “But in the real world there’s only one scandal in this whole wretched business — that the CIA, as part of its institutional obstruction of the administration, set up a pathetic ‘fact-finding mission’ that would be considered a joke by any serious intelligence agency and compounded it by sending, at the behest of his wife, a shrill politically motivated poseur who, for the sake of 15 minutes’ celebrity on the cable gabfest circuit, misled the nation about what he found. . . . What we have here is, in effect, the old standby plot of lame Hollywood conspiracy thrillers: rogue elements within the CIA attempting to destabilize the elected government.”

Steyn’s comments, I think, point to the next stage of this affair: When all is said and done, I think the CIA will turn out to be the big loser here, because there’s just no way to parse these facts that makes the Agency look good — just varying shades of incompetent, or politically motivated and dishonest.

UPDATE: Andrew thinks it’s not over yet. Could be. The only thing certain (besides the CIA looking bad) is that quite a few mutually inconsistent theories presented as sure-thing explanations by their confident boosters have fallen by the wayside already.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tom Maguire rounds up the Monday Rove/Plame action.

FRENCH LEAKS and home-grown terror.

READER WARREN MEYER WRITES:

Where’s the wall-to-wall Harry Potter coverage?

You’re missing the major issue of the day, though I don’t know if anyone who is able to read today is actually reading a blog. It would have been more interesting to release Harry Potter on a weekday to see what hit GDP would take for a few days.

My eleven year old boy just finished, and reported it to be his second favorite. I will say, though, that he was very, very sad and depressed when he was finished. I would like to add my comments, but I am only on about page 25. I threatened my son with being tied up naked in his school cafeteria (a terrible threat for an 11 year old boy) if he gave me any spoilers.

Hmm. Harry Potter fostering child abuse — maybe the critics are right! (A better threat would involve dressing him in this! Eew. There’s a market?)

Darren Cahr, on the other hand, is finding eerie resonances with contemporary events. Meanwhile, if you’ve already finished the new book, Amit Varma is already blogging about the next one.

UPDATE: Reviews of the latest Potter book here and, er, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Shanti Mangala has a pretty favorable review posted. And Meyer has now posted a review of his own.

THE CARNIVAL OF NEW JERSEY BLOGGERS IS UP!

GREG DJEREJIAN WRITES THAT JOSH MARSHALL AND OTHERS aren’t shooting straight on the Niger / uranium story. “Josh has pretty much been forced to piss all over the SSCI and Butler reports because they simply don’t support the narrative he peddled assiduously for months last year. . . . Josh’s credibility would be bolstered significantly if he accepted that he never struck gold on this story. He tried, tooth and nail, to score a grand slam. He never did.”

YESTERDAY’S ROVE/PLAME POST has been considerably updated, so scroll down or click here.

JEFF JARVIS thinks that Europe is unlearning multiculturalism. He also observes that murder is murder.

A PRO-AMERICAN RALLY in Denmark.

AUSTIN BAY COMMENTS on the Palestinian civil war.

THE COUNTERTERRORISM BLOG has a truly appalling story of terrorists sending letters from jail to other terrorists because of a shortage of Arabic translators to review them.

ANIMAL SACRIFICE, in Wisconsin.

PERSONNEL ISSUES at The Guardian?

Maybe they’ve outsourced their hiring to Reuters.

GIVEN HOW INTERESTING THIS STORY IS, and the fact that there’s video available, it’s surprising that it didn’t get more attention:

During a routine patrol in Baghdad June 2, Army Pfc. Stephen Tschiderer, a medic, was shot in the chest by an enemy sniper, hiding in a van just 75 yards away. The incident was filmed by the insurgents.

Tschiderer, with E Troop, 101st “Saber” Cavalry Division, attached to 3rd Battalion, 156th Infantry Regiment, 256th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, was knocked to the ground from the impact, but he popped right back up, took cover and located the enemy’s position.

After tracking down the now-wounded sniper with a team from B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade, Tschiderer secured the terrorist with a pair of handcuffs and gave medical aid to the terrorist who’d tried to kill him just minutes before.

Go figure.

HEH. What he said.

STEPHEN ST. ONGE has put together a Plame scandal history and roundup.

Meanwhile, Tom Maguire looks at the role of the press as possible leaker, and related issues, in this post and this one. Also, here’s a transcript of Mickey Kaus discussing these issues on the Hugh Hewitt show.

UPDATE: Some errors and omissions in the NYT’s coverage are explored.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s John Tierney in the New York Times:

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

Is it too soon to say “I told you so?” Perhaps. At least, I think I’ll show a bit more care than those who have been swearing to one “sure thing” theory after another where this is concerned.

A LITTLE IMPROMPTU EDITORIALIZING at CNN.

HOORAY FOR CANADA.

HEARTS, MINDS, AND SUICIDE BOMBS.

CLAWING OPEN THE MEMORY HOLE:

Before Democrats had a partisan motive to claim, contrary to all the evidence, that there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and bin Laden’s al Qaeda, their close and dangerous relationship was common knowledge. That common knowledge is reflected in this ABC news report, as it was in the Clinton administration’s indictment of bin Laden in 1998 for, among other things, collaborating with Saddam on weapons of mass destruction.

Yeah, we heard a lot of that stuff before Bush was President, but now it’s all supposed to be something he just made up.

ADRIANA CRONIN rounds up U.N. efforts to take over the Internet.

Slogan: It’ll be like oil-for-food, only with electrons!