July 2, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya July 1, 2009 Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts June 30, 2009 Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent? Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief June 29, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor' Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas June 26, 2009 Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law June 25, 2009 Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative June 24, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun June 23, 2009 Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect June 22, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews? June 19, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity June 18, 2009 Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative June 17, 2009 Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and … June 16, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity … June 15, 2009 Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine' Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed June 12, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner June 11, 2009 Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos June 10, 2009 Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste June 9, 2009 Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president? June 8, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper? Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic? June 5, 2009 Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth June 4, 2009 Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette June 3, 2009 The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed? Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action June 2, 2009 Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk Oct. 29, 2003 Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Oct. 28, 2003 /2 Mar-Cheshvan, 5764 Muslim paranoia: Enemies made us impotent! By Mark Steyn http://www.jewishworldreview.com | I haven't really followed Sudanese current events closely since, oh, Gen. Kitchener's victory over the Mahdi at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. But a recent story from that benighted land happened to catch my eye. Last month mass hysteria apparently swept the capital city, Khartoum, after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men and causing their penises to disappear. One victim, a fabric merchant, told his story to the London Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. A man from West Africa came into the shop and "shook the store owner's hand powerfully until the owner felt his penis melt into his body." I know the feeling. The same thing happened to me after shaking hands with Sen. Clinton. Anyway, as Al-Quds reported, "The store owner became hysterical, and was taken to the hospital." The country's "Chief Criminal Attorney General" Yasser Ahmad Muhammad told the Sudanese daily Al-Rai Al-A'am that "the rumor broke out when one merchant went to another merchant to buy some Karkady [a Sudanese beverage]. Suddenly, the seller felt his penis shriveling." The invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, in its exhaustive coverage, noted that the penises of Khartoum were vulnerable not merely to handshaking. "Another victim, who refused to give his name, said that while he was at the market, a man approached him, gave him a comb, and asked him to comb his hair. When he did so, within seconds, he said, he felt a strange sensation and discovered that he had lost his penis." Tales of the vanishing penises ran rampant round the city, spread by cell phones and text messages. Sudan's Attorney General Salah Abu Zayed declared that all complaints about the missing penises would be brought before a special investigative committee, though doctors had determined that the first plaintiff was "perfectly healthy." The health minister, Ahmad Bilal Othman, said that the epidemic was "scientifically groundless," and that it was "sorcery, magic, or an emotional problem." By now you're probably saying, "Oh, come on, Steyn, this Sudanese penis thing is all very well, but you're supposed to be a columnist. There's some big geopolitical argument behind all this tittering at shriveling manhoods, isn't there?" Absolutely. For one thing, a week after the Malaysian Prime Minister told an Islamic summit that their "enemies," the Jews, control the world and got a standing ovation from 56 fellow Muslim leaders, it's useful to be reminded that the International Jewish Conspiracy is comparatively one of the less loopy conspiracies in the Islamic world. That said, they'll probably figure out a way to pin the disappearing penises on some or other agent of Zionism. After all, according to reports in Middle East newspapers, Israel laces Arab chewing gum with secret hormones to make Muslim men hot for Jewish babes who turn out to be Mossad agents. Come to think of it, remember those stories in the National Enquirer after 9/11 about Osama bin Laden being, ah, somewhat underendowed in the trouser department? He spent much of the '90s in Sudan. Who's to say some Zionist didn't sneak up and shake his hand while he was on a shopping trip to Khartoum? It is, in that sense, the perfect emblematic tale of Islamic victimhood: The foreigners have made us impotent! It doesn't matter that the foreigners didn't do anything except shake hands. It doesn't matter whether you are, in fact, impotent. You feel impotent, just as — so we're told — millions of Muslims from Algerian Islamists to the Bali bombers feel "humiliated" by the Palestinian situation. Whether or not there is a rational basis for their sense of humiliation is irrelevant. One of the things I'd feel humiliated about if I lived in the Arab world is that almost all the forms of expression of my anti-Westernism are themselves Western in origin. Pan-Arabism was old-school 19th century nationalism of the type that eventually unified the various German and Italian statelets. Nasserism was transplanted European socialism, Baathism a local anachronistic variant on 'tween-wars Fascist movements. The Arabs even swiped Jew hatred from the Europeans. Though there was certainly friction between Jews and Muslims before the 20th century, it took the Europeans to package a disorganized, free-lance dislike of Jews into a big-time ideology with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf and all the rest. Even Islamic fundamentalism, though ostensibly a rare example of a homegrown toxin, has, as a practical matter, more in common with European revolutionary movements than with traditional expressions of Islam — an essentially political project piggybacking on an ancient religion to create the ideology of choice for the world's troublemakers. There's something pathetic about a culture so ignorant even its pathologies have to be imported. But what do you expect? The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away. Aside from its doubts in its collective manhood, Sudan is no laughing matter. Two million people have been slaughtered there in the last decade. The Christian minority is vanishing a lot faster than that fabric merchant's privates. Osama certainly found the country fertile ground for his ideology: Sudanese mujahideen have been captured as far afield as Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. An economic basket case with a 27 percent literacy rate has managed to find enough spare cash to export revolutionary Islam to many other countries. And they've got half-a-billion dollars' worth of state-of-the-art Chinese weaponry from Iran. A handshake-fearing guy with a cell phone is one thing; what happens when the handshake-fearers have cell phones and a suitcase nuke? It's at the intersection of apparently indestructible ancient ignorance and cheap, widely available western technology that the dark imponderables of the future lie. In 1898, after Kitchener slaughtered the dervishes at Omdurman, Hillaire Belloc wrote a characteristically pithy summation of the British technological advantage: "Whatever happens We have got The Maxim gun And they have not." But the dervishes have cell phones now. Those and some dimestore boxcutters and a couple of ATM cards were all they needed to pull off 9/11. And there are plenty of people out there willing to help them get the cheap knock-offs of the 21st century's Maxim gun. Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Mark Steyn is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. and the author, most recently, of "The Face of the Tiger," a new book on the world post-Sept. 11. (Sales help fund JWR). Comment by clicking here. Mark Steyn Archives © 2003, Mark Steyn