Score One For The Muslim Brotherhood
By CLARE M. LOPEZ (Middle East Times)
Published: April 28, 2008
SPECIAL REPORT: The Bush administration has decided that calling the enemy by his name is too risky, too politically incorrect, or oddly, somehow too laudatory.
And so, henceforth federal agencies of the United States government are to refrain from identifying the Islamic jihad with words that in any way convey genuine understanding about the links between terrorism and religion in the war that has been launched against Western liberal democratic civilization.
The U.S. government seems to think that declaring such links don't exist will make it so. Score one for the Muslim Brotherhood.
As Walid Phares describes in his post-9/11 three-book series on the meaning, structure, and progress of the current jihad, words can be enormously influential in the war of ideas. So, when the White House announces that government employees both at home and abroad must employ euphemisms such as "violent extremists" or "South Asian youths" instead of "Muslim jihadis" because the latter somehow confers legitimacy on the enemy, the entire Islamic world understands that the U.S. leadership has been infiltrated and influenced to a state of almost unbelievable confusion about this war.
This serves to encourage the enemies of the United States and dismay its friends and would-be friends within the Muslim world. It also leads the American public to a dangerous misunderstanding of theological motivations that drive jihadis to hate and seek to destroy Western civilization.
That the U.S. administration could even suppose that its choice of vocabulary might influence the jihadi enemy betrays a woeful lack of understanding about what actually motivates him. Concern about offending non-jihadi Muslims must not deter the country from conducting a realistic assessment of the Islamic roots of jihadi terrorism. Non-jihadi Muslims are the target and victims of jihadis to a far greater extent than kufar (non-believers in Islam). They welcome the West's outreach and need the empowerment it could offer, but are weakened when political correctness replaces focus on defining and defeating the enemy that would dominate both societies.
What motivates the international Islamic jihad movement is a literal textual interpretation of doctrinal Islam as laid out in the Koran, hadith, and Sunna plus centuries of Islamic scholarship and consensus on the concept of just war. Within this construct, it is true that words such as jihad, mujahedin, and Caliphate carry intensely positive and honorable connotations – for the Muslim jihadis – but hardly for the rest of us, their intended targets for subjugation within the totalitarian system that Sharia would impose.
In any case, use or non-use by infidels of the very terms by which jihadis identify themselves, to the extent that it might even be noticed, cannot possibly confer any additional measure of legitimacy on what has been for the mujahedin a centuries-old campaign of duty to spread their faith.
What Americans need to understand is that Islamic jihadis, whether part of a formal terrorist organization such as al-Qaida or the Muslim Brotherhood, or merely ideologically driven by the actions and proclamations of such groups, are internally motivated by what they believe is a divine mandate to fight and kill until the entire world comes under the sway of Dar al-Islam (where Sharia law prevails). The only relevance for this enemy that the choice of descriptive words may have is in the area of psychological operations.
If the jihadi enemy can achieve such a state of muddled confusion among the top administrative, legislative, and military leadership of its primary enemy (the United States of America) that we no longer even permit ourselves to utter the name of those sworn to our destruction, then truly they are winning the "War of Ideas."
From a series of excellent recent media pieces, as well as extensive documentation entered into evidence in last year's Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, we now know the extent of Muslim Brotherhood activity throughout our society.
Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), all three listed by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators, have achieved unprecedented access to the Department of Defense and even the White House.
But aware now of the enemy's stealth and cunning in seeking to influence U.S. national security policy, the nation is obligated to reject his agenda — an agenda that prioritizes concealment until it is too late of the true nature of their campaign of conquest, whether by Dawa (persuasion, including by way of deception) or terrorist attack.
Many millions of Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom have no desire to associate with or support in any way the agenda of Islamic jihadis, are looking for American leadership. They need the commitment of the nation's enormous national resources to this long war because it is their war for existence, too. Millions of Muslims, both U.S. citizens and others, look to American courage of conviction and the will to defend our common belief in universal human dignity to encourage their own desire to speak out, stand up, and seize back the everyday practice of the Islamic faith from those who now control it — and them. Muslims who are humanists, who abhor the violence jihadis derive from Islamic doctrine, need an ally who will encourage them to set aside that doctrine but still remain faithful to a spirit of Islam that is tolerant, not bent on world conquest.
When the world sees American resolve quail in the face of a resurgent, aggressive Islamism, because it refuses to admit it is attacked by an enemy who defines his assault in religious terms and quotes the revealed scripture of his faith to justify his murderous rage, the world loses not just respect but hope.
Issuance of a misguided primer on U.S. government usage of those terms does nothing to confront or defeat that rage. Instead, it leaves federal employees and U.S. citizens alike only more confused about who and what they are fighting.
Distracting American attention from the enemy's real identity, persuading the people that it is only some inchoate "extremists" with no connection to the doctrine of Islam who attacked the United States on 9/11, in Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam, and Aden, and Dhahran must be recognized for what it is: a denial and deception tactic designed to deny the nation the ability to grasp clearly the reality of this menace.
The way to win this confrontation with jihadism has less to do with word-smithing than with a candid assessment of the enemy's capabilities, ideology, motivations, intentions, and scope of operations. To be effective at this, national leadership must first assess the extent of Muslim Brotherhood penetration of the government and society, root it out, and then move forward with a vocabulary that is appropriate to defeating the jihadi enemy.
--
Clare Lopez is vice president of the Intelligence Summit, a professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (CI Centre) in Alexandria, VA, USA, and a private consultant on issues related to the Middle East.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Al-Qaida on the Web
Europe facing radicalization over the Web
OLIVIER GUITTA
A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: "An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations." This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida's use of the Web.
Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.
For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.
The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or "webtifada", i.e. cyber criminality.
In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy "infidels'" Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: "If you can't slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites." And on May 15, 2006 the Metz, France police arrested a young man who, under the alias Yanis, had attacked 1,161 sites including 710 linked to the Muhammad cartoons controversy.
Fortunately in Europe, even though the number is growing only a minority is actually joining the virtual jihad. According to Louis Caprioli, ex-boss of the anti-terror unit of the DST, the number of French volunteers in Iraq is in the tens. Confirming this, expert Walter Akmouche states that statistically, to get one jihadi, you must contact an average 45,000 people.
Which vehicle do the jihadis use on the Web? According to the DST, the chat room Paltalk is regularly used to hide operations. They also use Instant Messaging services such as Messenger or Skype and "dead e-mail boxes" which allow them, with the username and password, to retrieve unsent messages. But they also exchange information and coded files on forums devoted to soccer, music or any topic totally unrelated to Islam.
It is important to note that to access true terrorist sites; one has to be an insider and needs to know the real number-coded URL address, which often changes.
Also after years of research, al-Qaida has developed software called "Secrets of Mujahedin," that allows secure exchange in Arabic on electronic networks. It has allegedly been in use for over a year on clandestine forums close to al-Qaida, especially for jihadist groups in Iraq and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. This has been a formidable weapon for al-Qaida and numerous intelligence services and private companies have been trying to break it.
How is Europe facing this threat? First by closely monitoring jihadist Web sites. For instance, last year, Holland devoted 10 million euros (about $15 million) to fighting extremism. Thus, more than 150 Internet sites broadcasting extremist ideology were the subject of complaints and were restricted.
In France, about 30 potentially dangerous sites are monitored by some units of the UCLAT (Unité de Coordination de la Lutte antiterroriste), the French counterterrorism coordination unit. Software allows them to trace back the origin of a server or the IP address of a user and if they act fast, they can trace the network and use it against the Islamists using it. For instance, the recent monitoring of a forum allowed the unit to trace a couple of Salafist groups in the suburbs of Paris that were recruiting jihadis and organizing their trip.
One of the main problems facing European authorities is that simply shutting down Web sites is not very efficient since these sites just end up operating under new names.
European countries are also using the legal tool to fight al-Qaida's use of the Web in Europe. In a first, a Swiss court last summer sentenced several individuals including the widow of the killer of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance's leader killed by al-Qaida on September 9, 2001, and her boyfriend, for having created and operated four Web sites and chat rooms for extremist propaganda and exchange of information by terrorist groups.
European authorities are taking this issue very seriously. On Feb. 1, France's interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie told the French daily Le Figaro that the use of the Web by terrorists was "one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material, forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting."
--
Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).
OLIVIER GUITTA
A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: "An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations." This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida's use of the Web.
Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.
For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.
The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or "webtifada", i.e. cyber criminality.
In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy "infidels'" Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: "If you can't slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites." And on May 15, 2006 the Metz, France police arrested a young man who, under the alias Yanis, had attacked 1,161 sites including 710 linked to the Muhammad cartoons controversy.
Fortunately in Europe, even though the number is growing only a minority is actually joining the virtual jihad. According to Louis Caprioli, ex-boss of the anti-terror unit of the DST, the number of French volunteers in Iraq is in the tens. Confirming this, expert Walter Akmouche states that statistically, to get one jihadi, you must contact an average 45,000 people.
Which vehicle do the jihadis use on the Web? According to the DST, the chat room Paltalk is regularly used to hide operations. They also use Instant Messaging services such as Messenger or Skype and "dead e-mail boxes" which allow them, with the username and password, to retrieve unsent messages. But they also exchange information and coded files on forums devoted to soccer, music or any topic totally unrelated to Islam.
It is important to note that to access true terrorist sites; one has to be an insider and needs to know the real number-coded URL address, which often changes.
Also after years of research, al-Qaida has developed software called "Secrets of Mujahedin," that allows secure exchange in Arabic on electronic networks. It has allegedly been in use for over a year on clandestine forums close to al-Qaida, especially for jihadist groups in Iraq and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. This has been a formidable weapon for al-Qaida and numerous intelligence services and private companies have been trying to break it.
How is Europe facing this threat? First by closely monitoring jihadist Web sites. For instance, last year, Holland devoted 10 million euros (about $15 million) to fighting extremism. Thus, more than 150 Internet sites broadcasting extremist ideology were the subject of complaints and were restricted.
In France, about 30 potentially dangerous sites are monitored by some units of the UCLAT (Unité de Coordination de la Lutte antiterroriste), the French counterterrorism coordination unit. Software allows them to trace back the origin of a server or the IP address of a user and if they act fast, they can trace the network and use it against the Islamists using it. For instance, the recent monitoring of a forum allowed the unit to trace a couple of Salafist groups in the suburbs of Paris that were recruiting jihadis and organizing their trip.
One of the main problems facing European authorities is that simply shutting down Web sites is not very efficient since these sites just end up operating under new names.
European countries are also using the legal tool to fight al-Qaida's use of the Web in Europe. In a first, a Swiss court last summer sentenced several individuals including the widow of the killer of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance's leader killed by al-Qaida on September 9, 2001, and her boyfriend, for having created and operated four Web sites and chat rooms for extremist propaganda and exchange of information by terrorist groups.
European authorities are taking this issue very seriously. On Feb. 1, France's interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie told the French daily Le Figaro that the use of the Web by terrorists was "one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material, forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting."
--
Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Muslim Groups Critical of McCain
Muslim groups whine about McCain referring to "Islamic terrorists"
When they start calling for Al-Zawahiri and other Islamic jihadists to stop using Islamic texts and teachings to call for violence, maybe they'll have a case against McCain.
"Muslims press McCain on 'Islamic' terror label," by Rowan Scarborough for the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):
The Islamic Society of North America was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation jihad terror funding case last summer.
Also, in a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum outlining its strategic goals for the United States, ISNA was named as one of the groups participating in "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
McCain in this, as inadequate and false as it is, comes closer to the truth than the present White House occupant or the other two aspirants to the throne.
Painting everyone with the same brush? Come on, Mr. Fareed. This is so specious it reeks. As I've said many times before, the phrase "Islamic terrorists" no more paints all Muslims as terrorists than the phrase "Italian fascists" paints all Italians as fascists or "Conservative Democrat" paints all conservatives as Democrats. Basic grammar, apparently, must go out the window for the cause of PC mau-mauing.
Posted by Robert at April 21, 2008 1:54 PM
When they start calling for Al-Zawahiri and other Islamic jihadists to stop using Islamic texts and teachings to call for violence, maybe they'll have a case against McCain.
"Muslims press McCain on 'Islamic' terror label," by Rowan Scarborough for the Washington Times (thanks to all who sent this in):
A coalition of American Muslim groups is demanding that Sen. John McCain stop using the adjective "Islamic" to describe terrorists and extremist enemies of the United States.
Muneer Fareed, who heads the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), told The Washington Times that his group is beginning a campaign to persuade Mr. McCain to rephrase his descriptions of the enemy.
The Islamic Society of North America was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation jihad terror funding case last summer.
Also, in a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum outlining its strategic goals for the United States, ISNA was named as one of the groups participating in "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."
"We've tried to contact his office, contact his spokesperson to have them rethink word usage that is more acceptable to the Muslim community," Mr. Fareed said. "If it's not our intent to paint everyone with the same brush, then certainly we should think seriously about just characterizing them as criminals, because that is what they are."
An aide to Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who is counting on his pro-Iraq war stance to attract conservative voters, said the senator from Arizona will not drop the word.
Steve Schmidt, a former Bush White House aide who is now a McCain media strategist, told The Times that the use of the word is appropriate and that the candidate will continue to define the enemy that way.
"Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda represent a perverted strain of Islam at odds with the great many peaceful Muslims who practice their great faith peacefully," Mr. Schmidt said. "But the reality is, the hateful ideology which underpins bin Ladenism is properly described as radical Islamic extremism. Senator McCain refers to it that way because that is what it is."
McCain in this, as inadequate and false as it is, comes closer to the truth than the present White House occupant or the other two aspirants to the throne.
Mr. McCain often uses the term "Islamic" to describe terrorist enemies. The two remaining Democrats in the presidential field, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, generally shun such word usage.
President Bush also avoids the term, prompting criticism from some conservative pundits, who say the White-House-coined phrase "war on terror" does not sufficiently identify the enemy. Mr. Bush used the term "Islamic fascists" several times in 2006 and was criticized by Muslims....
Mr. Fareed, who is ISNA's secretary-general, said such usages are wrong.
"My own take on this is that we tried and failed to stylize this particular onslaught against the United States as one that has religious connotations and regional connotations," said Mr. Fareed, a former associate professor of Islamic studies at Wayne State University.
"I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine," he said. "But adding the word 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' certainly doesn't help our cause as Americans. It's counterproductive. It paints an entire community of believers, 1.2 billion in total, in a very negative way. And certainly that's not something that we want to do."...
Painting everyone with the same brush? Come on, Mr. Fareed. This is so specious it reeks. As I've said many times before, the phrase "Islamic terrorists" no more paints all Muslims as terrorists than the phrase "Italian fascists" paints all Italians as fascists or "Conservative Democrat" paints all conservatives as Democrats. Basic grammar, apparently, must go out the window for the cause of PC mau-mauing.
Posted by Robert at April 21, 2008 1:54 PM
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Shilling for Sharia
Shilling for Sharia at Harvard
By Hillel Stavis
FrontPageMagazine.com
Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman touched off a fierce debate when he recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine that Islamic Sharia law represents the highest state of “the rule of law.” But what many of Feldman’s critics did not recognize is that his argument has been building over several years.
Just as an old photographic print slowly becomes visible when immersed in developing solution, Noah’s claims about the alleged virtues of Sharia first surfaced in his 2005 book, Divided by God written when he was still a professor at NYU. Three years later, Feldman, who helped draft the Iraqi constitution, has turned his argument into a new book, called The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. The book marks Feldman’s emergence as a leading academic advocate for Sharia law.
If this seems like a bizarre role for someone who attended the Orthodox Maimonides School near Boston, it is in line with the career trajectory of a very bright young man who wants to be preeminent among the severely compromised academics inhabiting the Middle East Studies Association. Thus, one week after his article, “Why Sharia?” was featured in the Times’ magazine, Feldman presented his position at Harvard’s “Interfaculty Initiative on Contemporary State and Society in the Islamic World.” The initiative previously had featured UCLA’s Khaled Abou el Fadl, who set the tone for the series with his opening statement that “Whether Sharia complies – or does not comply – with fundamental human rights is vacuous and irrelevant.” So much for a thousand years of western humanist thought and liberal jurisprudence.
What made Feldman’s lecture different from his magazine piece was what he left out of the latter. Obviously, any discussion of Sharia must include what informs the law at its heart – The Koran, Sunna and, to a lesser extent, Sira. Writing for the Times, he at least traced the roots of Sharia to the Koran. But that was as far as he would go. At Harvard, his analysis of Sharia was limited to “the rule of law” as interpreted by “scholars” producing an Islamic “constitution,” all of which is refined and perfected by a “balance of power” between rulers and scholars.
In Feldman’s revisionist account, the evolution of Islamic law echoes the Western experience and is compatible with it. To Feldman, Sharia evolves from “higher law” to “the rule of law” in a neat conflation of the secular with the holy that places the Islamic code alongside the West’s rigorously evolved concept of secular justice. Feldman suggests that the dreaded huddud laws of amputation and other draconian penalties for apostasy and blasphemy are mere “worldly commands,” notwithstanding the fact that they are drawn directly from the Koran. For example, Sura 5:33 prescribes amputation of limbs “on opposite sides,” a dreadful penalty that has found new life in some of the Sharia ruled lands today. Indeed, the fundamental nature of Sharia law is inextricably connected to divine revelation, a concept with which the West did away centuries ago. The fact that a Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, was recently spared the Hadithic-inspired penalty of being stoned to death for adultery, had more to do with international outrage and pressure than any “nuanced” application of traditional Sharia law.
All this was utterly missing from Feldman’s lecture. There was much else, too, that the professor obscured. For example, Feldman cited the 11th century Baghdad jurist, al-Mawardi, as a shining example of the purity of Sharia in the face of the abuse of secular rulers. A pity Professor Feldman failed to note that the medieval Basra scholar was a staunch proponent of jihad war and violent imposition of Sharia law as it applied to dhimmis, that is, Christians and Jews. Al-Mawardi writes in his epic Laws of Islamic Governance of the jizhya or compulsory poll tax levied on dhimmis, “Payment is made immediately and is treated like booty. It does, however, not prevent a jihad being carried out against them in the future.”[1]
Similarly passed over by Feldman were some telling observations on Sharia by one of Professor Feldman’s favorite historians of Islam, Sir Hamilton Gibb: “The evidence of two women is reckoned as equal only to that of one man; that of non-Moslems against Moslems is occasionally, but grudgingly admitted, and on serious charges not admitted at all.” (italics added) “…the Muslim murderer of a dhimmi does not suffer the death penalty; a dhimmi man may not marry a Moslem woman, whereas a Moslem man may marry a dhimmi woman. In the second place, dhimmis are obliged to wear distinctive clothes so that they may not be confused with true believers [ i.e., Muslims], and are forbidden to ride horses, or carry arms. Finally, though their churches may be, and in practice frequently have been, converted into mosques, they are not to build new ones. The most they may due is repair those that have fallen into decay.” [2]
We find no reference whatsoever, in either Professor Feldman’s New York Times article or in his recent lecture, to Sharia and its impact on non-Muslims, whether they be dhimmis or idolaters (those that “associate” other gods with Allah – mushrikun). The body count and the divinely inspired discriminatory laws resulting from the Muslim conquests of the 7th century up to the present belie Feldman’s grandiose apologetic that “…Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.” [3]
Indeed, even a critic sympathetic to Islam, Alan Wolfe of Boston College, recognizes Feldman’s intent. He writes, “The problem with Feldman's compromise lies elsewhere. Offered as a non-biased solution to church-state conflicts, Feldman's proposal, like separation of church and state itself, is biased against some religions and in favor of others.”[4] You guess which religion Feldman favors. And it can only be a matter of time before the professor, having asserted that Sharia law is desirable, will assure us that its introduction in the United States is inevitable.
By Hillel Stavis
FrontPageMagazine.com
Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman touched off a fierce debate when he recently wrote in The New York Times Magazine that Islamic Sharia law represents the highest state of “the rule of law.” But what many of Feldman’s critics did not recognize is that his argument has been building over several years.
Just as an old photographic print slowly becomes visible when immersed in developing solution, Noah’s claims about the alleged virtues of Sharia first surfaced in his 2005 book, Divided by God written when he was still a professor at NYU. Three years later, Feldman, who helped draft the Iraqi constitution, has turned his argument into a new book, called The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. The book marks Feldman’s emergence as a leading academic advocate for Sharia law.
If this seems like a bizarre role for someone who attended the Orthodox Maimonides School near Boston, it is in line with the career trajectory of a very bright young man who wants to be preeminent among the severely compromised academics inhabiting the Middle East Studies Association. Thus, one week after his article, “Why Sharia?” was featured in the Times’ magazine, Feldman presented his position at Harvard’s “Interfaculty Initiative on Contemporary State and Society in the Islamic World.” The initiative previously had featured UCLA’s Khaled Abou el Fadl, who set the tone for the series with his opening statement that “Whether Sharia complies – or does not comply – with fundamental human rights is vacuous and irrelevant.” So much for a thousand years of western humanist thought and liberal jurisprudence.
What made Feldman’s lecture different from his magazine piece was what he left out of the latter. Obviously, any discussion of Sharia must include what informs the law at its heart – The Koran, Sunna and, to a lesser extent, Sira. Writing for the Times, he at least traced the roots of Sharia to the Koran. But that was as far as he would go. At Harvard, his analysis of Sharia was limited to “the rule of law” as interpreted by “scholars” producing an Islamic “constitution,” all of which is refined and perfected by a “balance of power” between rulers and scholars.
In Feldman’s revisionist account, the evolution of Islamic law echoes the Western experience and is compatible with it. To Feldman, Sharia evolves from “higher law” to “the rule of law” in a neat conflation of the secular with the holy that places the Islamic code alongside the West’s rigorously evolved concept of secular justice. Feldman suggests that the dreaded huddud laws of amputation and other draconian penalties for apostasy and blasphemy are mere “worldly commands,” notwithstanding the fact that they are drawn directly from the Koran. For example, Sura 5:33 prescribes amputation of limbs “on opposite sides,” a dreadful penalty that has found new life in some of the Sharia ruled lands today. Indeed, the fundamental nature of Sharia law is inextricably connected to divine revelation, a concept with which the West did away centuries ago. The fact that a Nigerian woman, Amina Lawal, was recently spared the Hadithic-inspired penalty of being stoned to death for adultery, had more to do with international outrage and pressure than any “nuanced” application of traditional Sharia law.
All this was utterly missing from Feldman’s lecture. There was much else, too, that the professor obscured. For example, Feldman cited the 11th century Baghdad jurist, al-Mawardi, as a shining example of the purity of Sharia in the face of the abuse of secular rulers. A pity Professor Feldman failed to note that the medieval Basra scholar was a staunch proponent of jihad war and violent imposition of Sharia law as it applied to dhimmis, that is, Christians and Jews. Al-Mawardi writes in his epic Laws of Islamic Governance of the jizhya or compulsory poll tax levied on dhimmis, “Payment is made immediately and is treated like booty. It does, however, not prevent a jihad being carried out against them in the future.”[1]
Similarly passed over by Feldman were some telling observations on Sharia by one of Professor Feldman’s favorite historians of Islam, Sir Hamilton Gibb: “The evidence of two women is reckoned as equal only to that of one man; that of non-Moslems against Moslems is occasionally, but grudgingly admitted, and on serious charges not admitted at all.” (italics added) “…the Muslim murderer of a dhimmi does not suffer the death penalty; a dhimmi man may not marry a Moslem woman, whereas a Moslem man may marry a dhimmi woman. In the second place, dhimmis are obliged to wear distinctive clothes so that they may not be confused with true believers [ i.e., Muslims], and are forbidden to ride horses, or carry arms. Finally, though their churches may be, and in practice frequently have been, converted into mosques, they are not to build new ones. The most they may due is repair those that have fallen into decay.” [2]
We find no reference whatsoever, in either Professor Feldman’s New York Times article or in his recent lecture, to Sharia and its impact on non-Muslims, whether they be dhimmis or idolaters (those that “associate” other gods with Allah – mushrikun). The body count and the divinely inspired discriminatory laws resulting from the Muslim conquests of the 7th century up to the present belie Feldman’s grandiose apologetic that “…Islamic law offered the most liberal and humane legal principles available anywhere in the world.” [3]
Indeed, even a critic sympathetic to Islam, Alan Wolfe of Boston College, recognizes Feldman’s intent. He writes, “The problem with Feldman's compromise lies elsewhere. Offered as a non-biased solution to church-state conflicts, Feldman's proposal, like separation of church and state itself, is biased against some religions and in favor of others.”[4] You guess which religion Feldman favors. And it can only be a matter of time before the professor, having asserted that Sharia law is desirable, will assure us that its introduction in the United States is inevitable.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Minnesota's Muslim Public School
Wall of silence broken at state's Muslim public school
By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune
Last update: April 9, 2008 - 12:45 PM
Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion. Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is "establishing Islam in Minnesota." The building also houses a mosque. TIZA's executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law -- and "Islamic Studies" is offered at the end of the school day.
Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, "due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing." But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond -- even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.
Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.
Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day's schedule included a "school assembly" in the gym after lunch.
Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform "their ritual washing."
Afterward, Getz said, "teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day," was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man "was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered."
"The prayer I saw was not voluntary," Getz said. "The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred."
Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. "When I arrived, I was told 'after school we have Islamic Studies,' and I might have to stay for hall duty," Getz said. "The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one -- the board said the kids were studying the Qu'ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other."
After school, Getz's fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day -- buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their "main reason for choosing TIZA ... was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building," according to a TIZA report. TIZA may be the only school in Minnesota with this distinction.
Why does the Minnesota Department of Education allow this sort of religious activity at a public school? According to Zaman, the department inspects TIZA regularly -- and has done so "numerous times" -- to ensure that it is not a religious school.
But the department's records document only three site visits to TIZA in five years -- two in 2003-04 and one in 2007, according to Assistant Commissioner Morgan Brown. None of the visits focused specifically on religious practices.
The department is set up to operate on a "complaint basis," and "since 2004, we haven't gotten a single complaint about TIZA," Brown said. In 2004, he sent two letters to the school inquiring about religious activity reported by visiting department staffers and in a news article. Brown was satisfied with Zaman's assurance that prayer is "voluntary" and "student-led," he said. The department did not attempt to confirm this independently, and did not ask how 5- to 11-year-olds could be initiating prayer. (At the time, TIZA was a K-5 school.)
Zaman agreed to respond by e-mail to concerns raised about the school's practices. Student "prayer is not mandated by TIZA," he wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, "students are released ... to either join a parent-led service or for study hall." Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other "nonsectarian" after-school options are available, he added.
Yet prayer at TIZA does not appear to be spontaneously initiated by students, but rather scheduled, organized and promoted by school authorities.
Request for volunteers
Until recently, TIZA's website included a request for volunteers to help with "Friday prayers." In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that "no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers."
But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours. Zaman does not deny that "some" Muslim teachers "probably" attend. According to federal guidelines on prayer in schools, teachers at a public school cannot participate in prayer with students.
In addition, schools cannot favor one religion by offering services for only its adherents, or promote after-school religious instruction for only one group. The ACLU of Minnesota has launched an investigation of TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education has also begun a review.
TIZA's operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. The Department of Education has failed to provide the oversight necessary to catch these illegalities, and appears to lack the tools to do so. In addition, there's a double standard at work here -- if TIZA were a Christian school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat.
TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.
Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com
By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune
Last update: April 9, 2008 - 12:45 PM
Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion. Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is "establishing Islam in Minnesota." The building also houses a mosque. TIZA's executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food - permissible under Islamic law -- and "Islamic Studies" is offered at the end of the school day.
Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, "due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing." But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond -- even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.
Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.
Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day's schedule included a "school assembly" in the gym after lunch.
Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform "their ritual washing."
Afterward, Getz said, "teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day," was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man "was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered."
"The prayer I saw was not voluntary," Getz said. "The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred."
Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. "When I arrived, I was told 'after school we have Islamic Studies,' and I might have to stay for hall duty," Getz said. "The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one -- the board said the kids were studying the Qu'ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other."
After school, Getz's fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day -- buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their "main reason for choosing TIZA ... was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building," according to a TIZA report. TIZA may be the only school in Minnesota with this distinction.
Why does the Minnesota Department of Education allow this sort of religious activity at a public school? According to Zaman, the department inspects TIZA regularly -- and has done so "numerous times" -- to ensure that it is not a religious school.
But the department's records document only three site visits to TIZA in five years -- two in 2003-04 and one in 2007, according to Assistant Commissioner Morgan Brown. None of the visits focused specifically on religious practices.
The department is set up to operate on a "complaint basis," and "since 2004, we haven't gotten a single complaint about TIZA," Brown said. In 2004, he sent two letters to the school inquiring about religious activity reported by visiting department staffers and in a news article. Brown was satisfied with Zaman's assurance that prayer is "voluntary" and "student-led," he said. The department did not attempt to confirm this independently, and did not ask how 5- to 11-year-olds could be initiating prayer. (At the time, TIZA was a K-5 school.)
Zaman agreed to respond by e-mail to concerns raised about the school's practices. Student "prayer is not mandated by TIZA," he wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, "students are released ... to either join a parent-led service or for study hall." Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other "nonsectarian" after-school options are available, he added.
Yet prayer at TIZA does not appear to be spontaneously initiated by students, but rather scheduled, organized and promoted by school authorities.
Request for volunteers
Until recently, TIZA's website included a request for volunteers to help with "Friday prayers." In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that "no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers."
But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours. Zaman does not deny that "some" Muslim teachers "probably" attend. According to federal guidelines on prayer in schools, teachers at a public school cannot participate in prayer with students.
In addition, schools cannot favor one religion by offering services for only its adherents, or promote after-school religious instruction for only one group. The ACLU of Minnesota has launched an investigation of TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education has also begun a review.
TIZA's operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. The Department of Education has failed to provide the oversight necessary to catch these illegalities, and appears to lack the tools to do so. In addition, there's a double standard at work here -- if TIZA were a Christian school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat.
TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.
Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
What is the FBI Doing ?
For the Record: Seriously, What is the FBI Doing?
IPT News
April 7, 2008
In February, we exposed the latest FBI (and CIA) outrage, advertising for recruits in a pro-terrorist, anti-American magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) - (see: Looking Under a Rock: FBI and CIA Hit New Low in Recruitment Drive). Both of our top national security agencies had placed online advertisements on the webpage of a magazine that included a hagiography to a terrorist the FBI had worked almost a decade to investigate and prosecute, Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.
Just over a month later, it is clear that the FBI has learned nothing. The agency is advertising for recruits in the Arab American News, another publication with a long history of support for terrorism, terrorists and terrorist organizations. The current edition has an editorial titled, "Let our people go!," under an ad banner recruiting for the FBI (which also appears on the home page of the website), about accused Iraqi spy Muthanna al-Hanooti, which states:
Arab American political activist Muthanna al-Hanooti was arrested and jailed this week by federal officials upon arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport returning from a trip to the Middle East. The following day he was charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of lying to the FBI about working for agents with the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added)
The editorial goes on to state:
We see a man who worked tirelessly trying to prevent a catastrophe for his homeland and for his new country. We see a guy who, rather than pick up a gun and kill somebody to reach his political goals, chose to participate in the American political system because he believed in it. He believed justice would be served if only more people knew the real story of what was going on in Iraq.
So there you have it. The FBI is advertising for recruits in a publication which proclaims the innocence of an alleged Iraqi spy accused of lying …. to the FBI, and claims that being a paid intelligence asset of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is participating "in the American political system."
Understanding the FBI's need for Arabic translators and Arabic speaking agents and analysts is one thing. Seeing the agency advertise for recruits in pro-terrorist publications – including one that discounts making false statements to the FBI! - is quite another. As we stated in February when it became known that the FBI and CIA were advertising in WRMEA, Congress needs to immediately investigate these agencies' recruiting techniques.
Original item available at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/641
IPT News
April 7, 2008
In February, we exposed the latest FBI (and CIA) outrage, advertising for recruits in a pro-terrorist, anti-American magazine, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) - (see: Looking Under a Rock: FBI and CIA Hit New Low in Recruitment Drive). Both of our top national security agencies had placed online advertisements on the webpage of a magazine that included a hagiography to a terrorist the FBI had worked almost a decade to investigate and prosecute, Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian.
Just over a month later, it is clear that the FBI has learned nothing. The agency is advertising for recruits in the Arab American News, another publication with a long history of support for terrorism, terrorists and terrorist organizations. The current edition has an editorial titled, "Let our people go!," under an ad banner recruiting for the FBI (which also appears on the home page of the website), about accused Iraqi spy Muthanna al-Hanooti, which states:
Arab American political activist Muthanna al-Hanooti was arrested and jailed this week by federal officials upon arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Airport returning from a trip to the Middle East. The following day he was charged with two counts of conspiracy and three counts of lying to the FBI about working for agents with the Iraqi Intelligence Service under Saddam Hussein. (emphasis added)
The editorial goes on to state:
We see a man who worked tirelessly trying to prevent a catastrophe for his homeland and for his new country. We see a guy who, rather than pick up a gun and kill somebody to reach his political goals, chose to participate in the American political system because he believed in it. He believed justice would be served if only more people knew the real story of what was going on in Iraq.
So there you have it. The FBI is advertising for recruits in a publication which proclaims the innocence of an alleged Iraqi spy accused of lying …. to the FBI, and claims that being a paid intelligence asset of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is participating "in the American political system."
Understanding the FBI's need for Arabic translators and Arabic speaking agents and analysts is one thing. Seeing the agency advertise for recruits in pro-terrorist publications – including one that discounts making false statements to the FBI! - is quite another. As we stated in February when it became known that the FBI and CIA were advertising in WRMEA, Congress needs to immediately investigate these agencies' recruiting techniques.
Original item available at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/article/641
Blackwell's View on Obama
Ken Blackwell - Columnist for the New York Sun
It's an amazing time to be alive in America . We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.
We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender. Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.
The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him.
Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts. Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton . Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet, Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America . But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."
Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet, Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich." How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!", but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois , he refused to vote against a statewide ban on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood , and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But, Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.
But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is, and - yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton .
It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.
Subject: Kind of scary, wouldn't you think Remember--God is good, and is in time, on time--every time. According to The Book of Revelations, the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him, and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA?? I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet...do it! If you think I am crazy, Im sorry, but I refuse to take a chance on the "unknown" candidate.
It's an amazing time to be alive in America . We're in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.
We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender. Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.
The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him.
Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts. Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton . Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet, Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America . But let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial "beauty."
Start with national security, since the president's most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet, Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on "the rich." How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, "All praise and glory to God!", but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have "hijacked" - hijacked - Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois , he refused to vote against a statewide ban on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood , and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. Mrs. Clinton is a far tougher opponent. But, Mr. Obama could win if people don't start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of "bringing America together" means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.
But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is, and - yes - they're talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama's radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream, to the left of Mrs. Clinton .
It's time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let's first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilizational war.
Subject: Kind of scary, wouldn't you think Remember--God is good, and is in time, on time--every time. According to The Book of Revelations, the anti-christ is: The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him, and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA?? I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet...do it! If you think I am crazy, Im sorry, but I refuse to take a chance on the "unknown" candidate.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Muslim Student Union
The Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine
By FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/3/2008
The Muslim Student Union (MSU) at the University of California - Irvine (UCI) was founded in 1992 by a group of Muslim students who said they wanted “to establish a presence on campus.” Today MSU seeks to “build an environment that enhances good, discourages bad, and provides networks of resources, knowledge, people, and companionship to its members.” Toward these ends, MSU offers “daily congregational prayers, daily free iftars the evening meal for breaking the daily fast during Ramadan that serve over a hundred Muslims, over eight weekly classes, a quarterly magazine Alkalima, coalition building with other clubs on campus, and a gateway to the larger Muslim community …” MSU also provides career advice and a study/tutoring program to help Muslims at UCI.
Yet beneath this placid description of the group’s objectives is a seething hatred of Jews and Israel. At the organization’s on-campus events, its members commonly wear green armbands to signal their allegiance to the terrorist group Hamas. MSU also has displayed posters on the UCI campus that equate the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika.
In February 2001, MSU hosted the radical cleric Imam Muhammad al-Asi, who told his UCI audience: “The Zionist-Israeli lobby ... is taking the United States government and the United States people to the abyss. We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew.”
On February 26, 2004, MSU brought another radical cleric, the black imam Abdel Malik-Ali to the UCI campus to deliver a speech titled “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda.” According to UCI’s student newspaper, he “implied that Zionism is a mixture of ‘chosen people-ness and white supremacy’; that the Iraqi war is in the process of ‘Israelization’; that the Zionists had the ‘Congress, the media and the FBI in their back pocket’; that the downfall of former Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean was due to the Zionists; and that the Mossad Israel’s intelligence agency would have assassinated Al Gore if he was elected in 2000 just to bring Joe Lieberman (his Jewish vice-president) to power.”
Later that spring, MSU and the Society of Arab Students (SAS) co-sponsored their fourth annual “Zionism Awareness Week,” during which members of both groups again wore green armbands to show their support for Hamas.
In June 2004, MSU asked UCI’s graduating Muslim students to wear green sashes bearing the word “shahada,” the Arabic word for the “martyrdom” of a suicide bomber, to their graduation ceremony. Two dozen students appeared in this garb.
In March 2006, MSU led 1,000 Muslim students to protest the public display of the “offensive” Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had recently set off massive demonstrations and riots throughout the Muslim world. In front of several television camera crews, MSU members began the protest by rolling out green prayer mats and reciting a prayer in Arabic. Many of them wore their customary green, pro-Hamas armbands. When a crowd of counter-protesters stood behind an American and Israeli flag and sang “God Bless America,” the Muslim students responded by chanting: “Hey Republicans Stop the Hate! All You Do Is Instigate,” and “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! The Prophet’s Cartoons Have Got to Go!”
MSU organized a May 2006 “Holocaust in the Holy Land” event which consisted of four days of anti-Israel lectures and presentations portraying the Jewish State as the modern-day avatar of Nazi Germany. The keynote speaker for the event was the Holocaust-denier Norman Finkelstein, whose speech, titled “Obstacles to Peace: Israelis or Palestinians,” identified Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator. Adjacent to a mock Israeli “apartheid” wall which they had set up in the center of the UCI campus, MSU students wearing leather sandals and taqiyahs (skullcaps) distributed fliers bearing the title “Exploiting the Holocaust to Justify Genocide.”
Abdel Malik-Ali was again the featured speaker at an October 5, 2006 MSU event, where he told a crowd of roughly 200 cheering students: “They Jews think they are superman, but we, the Muslims, are kryptonite. They Jews know that their days are numbered.”
In May 2007, MSU held an “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” week that featured twice-daily speeches and rallies condemning the State of Israel. On May 17, Abdel Malik-Ali delivered a lecture titled “UC Intifada: How you can help Palestine,” in which he informed UCI’s Muslim students (who again wore green armbands as well as T-shirts reading “UC Intifada” and “Freedom Fighter”) that a martyr’s death is the most honorable form of death. “Victory or martyrdom,” Malik-Ali asserted, are the only two viable options available to the Palestinians in their battle against Israel. Malik-Ali referred to Israel not by its name, but only as the “Zionist Apartheid State.”
In 2007, a UC Irvine student identifying herself as “OC Apostate” (she had recently left the Muslim faith in which she was raised) was forced to shut down the blog in which she criticized Islam’s intolerance for fear that members of the campus MSU would harm her family in retribution for her apostasy. She explained:
“I started a blog as way to express myself. Word finally got around that it was me who was writing it and my family got threats that if I didn’t shut up something might happen. I didn’t want them to suffer for something I had done. So I deleted everything. … They other Muslim students saw me with my hair out of the hijab. They knew who I was. The reaction was a lot of gossip and speculation about my upbringing. Women who I didn’t know gave me dirty looks. … I don’t underestimate them. … The notion of a traitor in your own community is the worse thing that could possibly happen. There is no room for ex-Muslims in a Muslim society. The punishment for being an apostate is death.”
MSU invited Yvonne Ridley, a reporter and activist for Iranian PRESS-TV, to speak at UC Irvine on November 12, 2007. Ridley, who also writes a column for the New York-based publication Daily Muslims, is a member of the Respect Party led by British Member of Parliament and former Saddam Hussein supporter George Galloway. She was formerly employed as a senior editor by Al Jazeera and helped launch that website’s English-language version in 2003.
Ridley supports divestment from Israel, a nation she has described as “that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East.” She says that her Respect Party “is a Zionist-free party,” adding that “if there was any Zionists in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists.”
MSU’s ideology is expressed in journalism as well as radical actions on campus. The Muslim student newspaper, Alkalima, published a special report called “Zionism: The Forgotten Apartheid,” which glorified Hamas and Hezbollah as noble warriors fighting Israeli oppression.
In 2006 Alkalima published For Justice We Fight, a pamphlet justifying terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians. “The individual or community that participates in jihad finds itself between two blissful outcomes,” said the pamphlet, “either victory and the establishment of justice, or the reward of martyrdom and Paradise.”
By FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/3/2008
The Muslim Student Union (MSU) at the University of California - Irvine (UCI) was founded in 1992 by a group of Muslim students who said they wanted “to establish a presence on campus.” Today MSU seeks to “build an environment that enhances good, discourages bad, and provides networks of resources, knowledge, people, and companionship to its members.” Toward these ends, MSU offers “daily congregational prayers, daily free iftars the evening meal for breaking the daily fast during Ramadan that serve over a hundred Muslims, over eight weekly classes, a quarterly magazine Alkalima, coalition building with other clubs on campus, and a gateway to the larger Muslim community …” MSU also provides career advice and a study/tutoring program to help Muslims at UCI.
Yet beneath this placid description of the group’s objectives is a seething hatred of Jews and Israel. At the organization’s on-campus events, its members commonly wear green armbands to signal their allegiance to the terrorist group Hamas. MSU also has displayed posters on the UCI campus that equate the Star of David with the Nazi Swastika.
In February 2001, MSU hosted the radical cleric Imam Muhammad al-Asi, who told his UCI audience: “The Zionist-Israeli lobby ... is taking the United States government and the United States people to the abyss. We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you cannot take the ghetto out of the Jew.”
On February 26, 2004, MSU brought another radical cleric, the black imam Abdel Malik-Ali to the UCI campus to deliver a speech titled “America under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda.” According to UCI’s student newspaper, he “implied that Zionism is a mixture of ‘chosen people-ness and white supremacy’; that the Iraqi war is in the process of ‘Israelization’; that the Zionists had the ‘Congress, the media and the FBI in their back pocket’; that the downfall of former Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean was due to the Zionists; and that the Mossad Israel’s intelligence agency would have assassinated Al Gore if he was elected in 2000 just to bring Joe Lieberman (his Jewish vice-president) to power.”
Later that spring, MSU and the Society of Arab Students (SAS) co-sponsored their fourth annual “Zionism Awareness Week,” during which members of both groups again wore green armbands to show their support for Hamas.
In June 2004, MSU asked UCI’s graduating Muslim students to wear green sashes bearing the word “shahada,” the Arabic word for the “martyrdom” of a suicide bomber, to their graduation ceremony. Two dozen students appeared in this garb.
In March 2006, MSU led 1,000 Muslim students to protest the public display of the “offensive” Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that had recently set off massive demonstrations and riots throughout the Muslim world. In front of several television camera crews, MSU members began the protest by rolling out green prayer mats and reciting a prayer in Arabic. Many of them wore their customary green, pro-Hamas armbands. When a crowd of counter-protesters stood behind an American and Israeli flag and sang “God Bless America,” the Muslim students responded by chanting: “Hey Republicans Stop the Hate! All You Do Is Instigate,” and “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho! The Prophet’s Cartoons Have Got to Go!”
MSU organized a May 2006 “Holocaust in the Holy Land” event which consisted of four days of anti-Israel lectures and presentations portraying the Jewish State as the modern-day avatar of Nazi Germany. The keynote speaker for the event was the Holocaust-denier Norman Finkelstein, whose speech, titled “Obstacles to Peace: Israelis or Palestinians,” identified Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator. Adjacent to a mock Israeli “apartheid” wall which they had set up in the center of the UCI campus, MSU students wearing leather sandals and taqiyahs (skullcaps) distributed fliers bearing the title “Exploiting the Holocaust to Justify Genocide.”
Abdel Malik-Ali was again the featured speaker at an October 5, 2006 MSU event, where he told a crowd of roughly 200 cheering students: “They Jews think they are superman, but we, the Muslims, are kryptonite. They Jews know that their days are numbered.”
In May 2007, MSU held an “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” week that featured twice-daily speeches and rallies condemning the State of Israel. On May 17, Abdel Malik-Ali delivered a lecture titled “UC Intifada: How you can help Palestine,” in which he informed UCI’s Muslim students (who again wore green armbands as well as T-shirts reading “UC Intifada” and “Freedom Fighter”) that a martyr’s death is the most honorable form of death. “Victory or martyrdom,” Malik-Ali asserted, are the only two viable options available to the Palestinians in their battle against Israel. Malik-Ali referred to Israel not by its name, but only as the “Zionist Apartheid State.”
In 2007, a UC Irvine student identifying herself as “OC Apostate” (she had recently left the Muslim faith in which she was raised) was forced to shut down the blog in which she criticized Islam’s intolerance for fear that members of the campus MSU would harm her family in retribution for her apostasy. She explained:
“I started a blog as way to express myself. Word finally got around that it was me who was writing it and my family got threats that if I didn’t shut up something might happen. I didn’t want them to suffer for something I had done. So I deleted everything. … They other Muslim students saw me with my hair out of the hijab. They knew who I was. The reaction was a lot of gossip and speculation about my upbringing. Women who I didn’t know gave me dirty looks. … I don’t underestimate them. … The notion of a traitor in your own community is the worse thing that could possibly happen. There is no room for ex-Muslims in a Muslim society. The punishment for being an apostate is death.”
MSU invited Yvonne Ridley, a reporter and activist for Iranian PRESS-TV, to speak at UC Irvine on November 12, 2007. Ridley, who also writes a column for the New York-based publication Daily Muslims, is a member of the Respect Party led by British Member of Parliament and former Saddam Hussein supporter George Galloway. She was formerly employed as a senior editor by Al Jazeera and helped launch that website’s English-language version in 2003.
Ridley supports divestment from Israel, a nation she has described as “that disgusting little watchdog of America that is festering in the Middle East.” She says that her Respect Party “is a Zionist-free party,” adding that “if there was any Zionists in the Respect Party they would be hunted down and kicked out. We have no time for Zionists.”
MSU’s ideology is expressed in journalism as well as radical actions on campus. The Muslim student newspaper, Alkalima, published a special report called “Zionism: The Forgotten Apartheid,” which glorified Hamas and Hezbollah as noble warriors fighting Israeli oppression.
In 2006 Alkalima published For Justice We Fight, a pamphlet justifying terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians. “The individual or community that participates in jihad finds itself between two blissful outcomes,” said the pamphlet, “either victory and the establishment of justice, or the reward of martyrdom and Paradise.”
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Jihad Comes to Wall Street
Jihad Comes To Wall Street
"Sharia finance" does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of sharia — and terror.
By Alex Alexiev
If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders's movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.
For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: “Islamic Ethical Investment.” According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.
Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than “Jihad with money.” As al-Qaradawi explains, “God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money.” Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.
Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such “ethical” mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.
Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.
Predictably, none of this is even remotely disclosed by any of the dozens of Western banks promoting sharia finance today, which obviously exposes them to huge non-disclosure risks ranging from fraudulent misrepresentation, to material support for terrorism.
Consider the board chairman of the Dow Jones Islamic Index (IMANX), one Mufti Taqi Usmani. Mr. Usmani is widely reputed to be one of the world’s top experts on sharia finance. Whatever his stockpicking abilities may be, they are dwarfed by his jihadist credentials. A key executive of Pakistan’s prominent Deobandi jihadist factory, the madrassa Darul Karoom Karachi (currently headed by his brother, Rafi Usmani), Taqi Usmani has openly advocated jihad by Muslims in the West, and just last month again publicly endorsed suicide bombing and the Taliban.
Since sharia-finance funds like the IMANX may invest in companies that are not completely halal — that derive their profit from interest or other sharia-prohibited activities — returns on investment in those companies must be purified by donating a portion of that ROI to charity. More often than not, it is people like Usmani who are paid lucratively to sit on sharia-finance boards in order to determine what charities will receive the sharia-finance institutions’ donations — and it’s a fair bet that the March of Dimes is not among them.
IMANX itself is owned and operated by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), an organization listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator by the Department of Justice in a recent terrorism-finance trial, and the proprietor of hundreds of radical mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S., including some that have been closed down by the government as criminal enterprises.
The chairman of both NAIT and IMANX, Bassam Osman, has been the top executive of terrorist-funding organizations like the Quranic Literacy Institute (suspected financiers of Hamas whose assets were seized by the U.S. in 1998) and the Islamic Academy of Florida (founded by Sami al-Arian, a convicted financier of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist criminal enterprise), and is a board member of other un-indicted co-conspirators like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Is Dow Jones aware of all this? Is Rupert Murdoch? And if they are not, shouldn’t they be?
The IMANX marketing slogan is “Markets Fluctuate. Principles Don’t.” Judging by the ideological principles of those involved in its leadership, that is precisely what Wall Street — and the West — should fear.
The legitimization of sharia in the West and its gradual imposition in Muslim communities and beyond is a key objective of sharia finance, and there is no doubt it has already made huge strides. Indeed, the precedent of legal sharia-finance transactions was used by the hapless archbishop of Canterbury to buttress his argument that introducing sharia in the United Kingdom was unavoidable.
Given the reality of malignant Islamism now spreading into our own capital markets to the loud cheers of the same Wall Street masters of the universe who gave us sub-prime mortgage securitization, Americans have a right to ask: Where are the U.S. Treasury Department and the SEC, whose job it is to protect our markets? Given the outright fraudulent misrepresentation of the potential liabilities of sharia-finance funds under existing regulations, they should get involved soon.
— Alex Alexiev is vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy.
"Sharia finance" does exactly what it promises, financing the spread of sharia — and terror.
By Alex Alexiev
If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders's movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.
For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: “Islamic Ethical Investment.” According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.
Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than “Jihad with money.” As al-Qaradawi explains, “God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money.” Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.
Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such “ethical” mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.
Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.
Predictably, none of this is even remotely disclosed by any of the dozens of Western banks promoting sharia finance today, which obviously exposes them to huge non-disclosure risks ranging from fraudulent misrepresentation, to material support for terrorism.
Consider the board chairman of the Dow Jones Islamic Index (IMANX), one Mufti Taqi Usmani. Mr. Usmani is widely reputed to be one of the world’s top experts on sharia finance. Whatever his stockpicking abilities may be, they are dwarfed by his jihadist credentials. A key executive of Pakistan’s prominent Deobandi jihadist factory, the madrassa Darul Karoom Karachi (currently headed by his brother, Rafi Usmani), Taqi Usmani has openly advocated jihad by Muslims in the West, and just last month again publicly endorsed suicide bombing and the Taliban.
Since sharia-finance funds like the IMANX may invest in companies that are not completely halal — that derive their profit from interest or other sharia-prohibited activities — returns on investment in those companies must be purified by donating a portion of that ROI to charity. More often than not, it is people like Usmani who are paid lucratively to sit on sharia-finance boards in order to determine what charities will receive the sharia-finance institutions’ donations — and it’s a fair bet that the March of Dimes is not among them.
IMANX itself is owned and operated by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), an organization listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator by the Department of Justice in a recent terrorism-finance trial, and the proprietor of hundreds of radical mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S., including some that have been closed down by the government as criminal enterprises.
The chairman of both NAIT and IMANX, Bassam Osman, has been the top executive of terrorist-funding organizations like the Quranic Literacy Institute (suspected financiers of Hamas whose assets were seized by the U.S. in 1998) and the Islamic Academy of Florida (founded by Sami al-Arian, a convicted financier of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist criminal enterprise), and is a board member of other un-indicted co-conspirators like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Is Dow Jones aware of all this? Is Rupert Murdoch? And if they are not, shouldn’t they be?
The IMANX marketing slogan is “Markets Fluctuate. Principles Don’t.” Judging by the ideological principles of those involved in its leadership, that is precisely what Wall Street — and the West — should fear.
The legitimization of sharia in the West and its gradual imposition in Muslim communities and beyond is a key objective of sharia finance, and there is no doubt it has already made huge strides. Indeed, the precedent of legal sharia-finance transactions was used by the hapless archbishop of Canterbury to buttress his argument that introducing sharia in the United Kingdom was unavoidable.
Given the reality of malignant Islamism now spreading into our own capital markets to the loud cheers of the same Wall Street masters of the universe who gave us sub-prime mortgage securitization, Americans have a right to ask: Where are the U.S. Treasury Department and the SEC, whose job it is to protect our markets? Given the outright fraudulent misrepresentation of the potential liabilities of sharia-finance funds under existing regulations, they should get involved soon.
— Alex Alexiev is vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy.
Friday, April 04, 2008
Cleric Calls For Ban on Mosques
Church leader calls for building of mosques to be banned because of risk 'Britain will become an 'Islamic state'
By STEVE DOUGHTY - 2nd April 2008
Warning: Many mosques are funded by money from abroad
A senior Church of England member called yesterday for the building of mosques to be banned.
Alison Ruoff said more construction would lead to Islamic no go areas dominated by exclusively Muslim populations living under sharia law.
Mrs Ruoff, a member of the General Synod, the Church's parliament, added: "If we don't watch out we will become an Islamic state. It's that serious."
Leading clerics have been divided over how the Church should respond to Islam. The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams caused controversy by calling for sharia law to be given full legal status.
He later told the Synod he took the blame for "distress and misunderstanding" that swept through the Church in the wake of the speech.
But Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester, has warned against the spread of Islamic no-go areas and said amplified calls to prayer at mosques impose an Islamic character on nearby areas.
Mrs Ruoff, a former nurse and magistrate, is a conservative evangelical regarded as one of the more outspoken Synod members. She responded to Dr William's sharia lecture by calling for the Archbishop's resignation.
Speaking on Premier Christian Radio, she said: "We are constantly building new mosques, which are paid for by the oil states.
"There are enough mosques for Muslims in this country.
"You build a mosque and then what happens? You have Muslim people moving into that area, all the shops become Islamic, all the housing will become Islamic and that will be a no-go area for anyone else.
"They will bring in Islamic law. We cannot allow that to happen.
"We are still a Christian country, we need to hold on to that."
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "These are very narrow-minded and bigoted remarks.
"As a Christian, she surely ought to be working to build good ties between different communities."
By STEVE DOUGHTY - 2nd April 2008
Warning: Many mosques are funded by money from abroad
A senior Church of England member called yesterday for the building of mosques to be banned.
Alison Ruoff said more construction would lead to Islamic no go areas dominated by exclusively Muslim populations living under sharia law.
Mrs Ruoff, a member of the General Synod, the Church's parliament, added: "If we don't watch out we will become an Islamic state. It's that serious."
Leading clerics have been divided over how the Church should respond to Islam. The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams caused controversy by calling for sharia law to be given full legal status.
He later told the Synod he took the blame for "distress and misunderstanding" that swept through the Church in the wake of the speech.
But Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born Bishop of Rochester, has warned against the spread of Islamic no-go areas and said amplified calls to prayer at mosques impose an Islamic character on nearby areas.
Mrs Ruoff, a former nurse and magistrate, is a conservative evangelical regarded as one of the more outspoken Synod members. She responded to Dr William's sharia lecture by calling for the Archbishop's resignation.
Speaking on Premier Christian Radio, she said: "We are constantly building new mosques, which are paid for by the oil states.
"There are enough mosques for Muslims in this country.
"You build a mosque and then what happens? You have Muslim people moving into that area, all the shops become Islamic, all the housing will become Islamic and that will be a no-go area for anyone else.
"They will bring in Islamic law. We cannot allow that to happen.
"We are still a Christian country, we need to hold on to that."
Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "These are very narrow-minded and bigoted remarks.
"As a Christian, she surely ought to be working to build good ties between different communities."
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
John McCain ... Friend of Israel ?
JOHN McCAIN- A TRUE FRIEND OF ISRAEL?
Letter from Ruth Matar (Women in Green) Jerusalem
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Dear Friends,
US Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday, March 18, in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post: "The success of Hamas and Hizbullah in the region is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to United States national interests."
"If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn't the only enemy," Arizona Senator McCain said, in the only interview he gave to the Israeli media during his visit here.
"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel." Mr. McCain further said that while he would never tell Israel not to speak to Hamas, he was personally against it.
"Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction," McCain said in a lounge in Jerusalem's David Citadel Hotel, as senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina listened.
McCain, who has been here on numerous occasions since his first visit in 1979, was careful about dispensing advice or coming across as dictating policy to the Israeli government.
"I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States," he said. "If you are partners, then you don't dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be."
Asked whether Israel was using the right tactics in trying to quell the rocket fire on Sderot and the western Negev, McCain praised defense minister Ehud Barak, terming him "one of the great military people he has met"- and added, "I can't give you a good answer as to how you respond to these rocket attacks."
But, he then said dryly, "I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response. I think I know my constituency in the state of Arizona, and they would be pretty exercised if rockets came across our southern border."
(The foregoing are excerpts from an article in the Jerusalem Post, March 18, 2008.) Reading these statements of John McCain, I became a strong admirer of his.
At this point I want to introduce myself to those who are not familiar with me and my weekly email articles, which are sent to an extensive email list. I am now an elderly lady. I am a holocaust survivor, who at the age of nine was able to escape from Hitler's death machine, together with my older brother and sister, on a Kinder Transport to Sweden. My parents were subsequently able to cross the border to Italy illegally, on foot and in the dark. We were reunited in the United States after the war, where we became naturalized American citizens. (In 1954 I married an American Jewish lawyer, who had enlisted in the army at the beginning of World War II to fight the Nazis, but was instead sent to fight the Japanese.)
We were not able to escape Austria as a family, as the doors of every country in the world were closed to the Jewish people, even the doors of Palestine, which had been designated as the British Mandate of Palestine.
Britain's Double Standard
To Britain's great shame, it allowed Arabs to enter the British Mandate of Palestine with ease, but tried their very best to keep the Jews out.
In the words of Anthony Eden in 1943: "If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews." Anthony Eden was Britain's Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including WWII. He subsequently served as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957.
Because of Britain's double standard, many European Jews perished in the Holocaust.
There is a very special reason why I will do my utmost to convince my family and friends in the US to vote for John McCain in the upcoming election, as well as bringing out the Absentee Vote for him of Americans living in Israel. John McCain visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, on his recent trip to Israel. He is reported to have written in the Guest Book, "NEVER AGAIN." And I do think he is sincere.
With John McCain as president of the United States, I believe that we Jews can count on him to protect Israel's sovereignty and not to divide the Holy land. As it is written in the book of Genesis, in the Bible, G-d gave this Land to the Jewish People as an everlasting inheritance.
.
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
For your information, I include an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
British Mandate of Palestine
The British Mandate for Palestine, sometimes referred to as the Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate created after the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was split by the Treaty of S vres.
At the 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, at which the Mandates were granted, the precise boundaries of all
territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine, were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" and were not completely finalized until four years later. However, it was clear that the boundary of Britain's mandate for Palestine was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia. As drafted at the San Remo Conference, the British Mandate of Palestine comprised territory in modern-day Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1921, the
Transjordan (later Jordan) was split off to be administered separately, a move formalized by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine.
The objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the then defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone."
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia to the east, the French Mandate of Lebanon to the north, the French Mandate of Syria to the northeast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Egypt to the southeast and southwest respectively.
The British Mandate over Palestine came to an end on 15 May 1948, heralding the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
=============================================
Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
Letter from Ruth Matar (Women in Green) Jerusalem
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Dear Friends,
US Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Tuesday, March 18, in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post: "The success of Hamas and Hizbullah in the region is not only a danger for Israel, but also a threat to United States national interests."
"If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn't the only enemy," Arizona Senator McCain said, in the only interview he gave to the Israeli media during his visit here.
"They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel." Mr. McCain further said that while he would never tell Israel not to speak to Hamas, he was personally against it.
"Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction," McCain said in a lounge in Jerusalem's David Citadel Hotel, as senators Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina listened.
McCain, who has been here on numerous occasions since his first visit in 1979, was careful about dispensing advice or coming across as dictating policy to the Israeli government.
"I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States," he said. "If you are partners, then you don't dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be."
Asked whether Israel was using the right tactics in trying to quell the rocket fire on Sderot and the western Negev, McCain praised defense minister Ehud Barak, terming him "one of the great military people he has met"- and added, "I can't give you a good answer as to how you respond to these rocket attacks."
But, he then said dryly, "I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response. I think I know my constituency in the state of Arizona, and they would be pretty exercised if rockets came across our southern border."
(The foregoing are excerpts from an article in the Jerusalem Post, March 18, 2008.) Reading these statements of John McCain, I became a strong admirer of his.
At this point I want to introduce myself to those who are not familiar with me and my weekly email articles, which are sent to an extensive email list. I am now an elderly lady. I am a holocaust survivor, who at the age of nine was able to escape from Hitler's death machine, together with my older brother and sister, on a Kinder Transport to Sweden. My parents were subsequently able to cross the border to Italy illegally, on foot and in the dark. We were reunited in the United States after the war, where we became naturalized American citizens. (In 1954 I married an American Jewish lawyer, who had enlisted in the army at the beginning of World War II to fight the Nazis, but was instead sent to fight the Japanese.)
We were not able to escape Austria as a family, as the doors of every country in the world were closed to the Jewish people, even the doors of Palestine, which had been designated as the British Mandate of Palestine.
Britain's Double Standard
To Britain's great shame, it allowed Arabs to enter the British Mandate of Palestine with ease, but tried their very best to keep the Jews out.
In the words of Anthony Eden in 1943: "If we must have preferences, let me murmur in your ear that I prefer Arabs to Jews." Anthony Eden was Britain's Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including WWII. He subsequently served as Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957.
Because of Britain's double standard, many European Jews perished in the Holocaust.
There is a very special reason why I will do my utmost to convince my family and friends in the US to vote for John McCain in the upcoming election, as well as bringing out the Absentee Vote for him of Americans living in Israel. John McCain visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, on his recent trip to Israel. He is reported to have written in the Guest Book, "NEVER AGAIN." And I do think he is sincere.
With John McCain as president of the United States, I believe that we Jews can count on him to protect Israel's sovereignty and not to divide the Holy land. As it is written in the book of Genesis, in the Bible, G-d gave this Land to the Jewish People as an everlasting inheritance.
.
With Blessings and Love for Israel,
Ruth Matar
For your information, I include an article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
British Mandate of Palestine
The British Mandate for Palestine, sometimes referred to as the Mandate of Palestine, was a League of Nations Mandate created after the First World War when the Ottoman Empire was split by the Treaty of S vres.
At the 1920 San Remo conference of the Allied Supreme Council, at which the Mandates were granted, the precise boundaries of all
territories, including that of the British Mandate of Palestine, were left unspecified, to "be determined by the Principal Allied Powers" and were not completely finalized until four years later. However, it was clear that the boundary of Britain's mandate for Palestine was to extend eastward to the western boundary of its mandate for Mesopotamia. As drafted at the San Remo Conference, the British Mandate of Palestine comprised territory in modern-day Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1921, the
Transjordan (later Jordan) was split off to be administered separately, a move formalized by the addition of a September 1922 clause to the charter governing the Mandate for Palestine.
The objective of the League of Nations Mandate system was to administer parts of the then defunct Ottoman Empire, which had been in control of the Middle East since the 16th century, "until such time as they are able to stand alone."
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the west, the British Mandate of Mesopotamia to the east, the French Mandate of Lebanon to the north, the French Mandate of Syria to the northeast, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Kingdom of Egypt to the southeast and southwest respectively.
The British Mandate over Palestine came to an end on 15 May 1948, heralding the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the establishment of Israel in 1948.
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Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)
POB 7352, Jerusalem 91072, Israel
Tel: 972-2-624-9887 Fax: 972-2-624-5380
mailto:wfit2@womeningreen.org
http://www.womeningreen.org
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