A Suicide-Bomb-Endorsing 'Ally'

War On Terror: A top Pakistani Cabinet minister has given his blessing to suicide bombings in response to Britain's knighting of Salman Rushdie. His words amount to an act of war.

'This is an occasion for the (world's) 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," said Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan's religious affairs minister.

"If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the 'sir' title" from Rushdie, he said, insisting the author blasphemed the Muslim prophet Muhammed in his book, "The Satanic Verses."

It's Islamabad that should apologize for what can only be interpreted as calculated incitement of violence by Muslims against the West -- no different than the fatwas we hear from Osama bin Laden.

The U.S. must join London in formally protesting this outrage, including demanding the resignation of the minister.

After his remarks to the Pakistani parliament were aired worldwide, ul-Haq tried to clarify them by saying his aim had been to look into the root causes of terrorism.

Not so fast. Ul-Haq has endorsed suicide attacks in the past, and even runs a foundation for "shaheeds," or Muslim martyrs. And as we've noted in this space before, he deeply admires the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Just a few years ago, ul-Haq became so overcome with jihadist enthusiasm at a party celebrating a pro-Taliban cleric's book launch that he offered himself as a prospective suicide bomber, according to a recent New Yorker magazine article that interviewed the minister.

Worse, this top Cabinet member of a regime we are supporting and counting as a trusted front-line ally in the war on al-Qaida is actually a close personal friend of an al-Qaida "fixer" on the FBI's most wanted list.

Ul-Haq's family goes way back with the family of Aafia Siddiqui, a dangerous al-Qaida operative educated at MIT. Ul-Haq's late father -- Gen. Zia ul-Haq -- gave Siddiqui's mother a government post after he seized power in 1977 and set up a new court system to enforce sharia, or Islamic law.

Ijaz ul-Haq told The New Yorker that his whole family respected Siddiqui's mother because she "is a religious scholar." And when ul-Haq's own son attended college in Boston, Aafia Siddiqui made him home-cooked meals.

By the way, Siddiqui is married to a nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Her husband, al-Qaida operative Ammar al-Baluchi, is in U.S. custody, but she is still on the lam in Pakistan. The Pakistani government says it can't find her, just like it can't find bin Laden. What a surprise.

After his own military coup in 1999, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf put ul-Haq in charge of all the madrassas in his country.

These are the same Islamic schools he assures us are no longer incubating future Osama bin Ladens -- even as U.S. and British intelligence have collected evidence they're doubling as terror training camps and churning out Western terrorists, including the London bombers.

And this is the regime we are now propping up with billions in aid and military equipment.

Now we learn from a new al-Qaida video that it's holding training camp "graduation ceremonies" in plain sight in or near Pakistan.

According to ABC News, some 300 Muslims, including boys as young as 12, are being sent off on suicide missions in the U.S. and the U.K. -- just in time to answer ul-Haq's call to martyrdom over Sir Rushdie.

Is it any wonder we can't get Islamabad to shut these camps down?

Musharraf won't permit U.S. foot patrols on the Pakistan side of border. And we haven't launched any unilateral strikes against al-Qaida positions since our drone-fired rockets missed al-Qaida's No. 2 in the Pakistani badlands some 18 months ago.

Time for another surge, this time in Pakistan -- or better yet, regime change.