It's hard to argue that the Pope’s first U.S. tour, which took place earlier this month, was not a huge success. Tens of thousands of Catholics and others came out to various appearances just to get a glimpse of the man. However, one of the Pope’s events included, as participants, members of organizations tied to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, putting a stain on the Pope’s trip. How did groups with such controversial backgrounds get past handlers, in order to make this unholy meeting occur?
Pope Benedict XVI touched down at Andrews Air Force Base, on April 16th, greeted by the president of the United States George W. Bush, followed by an arrival ceremony at the White House. It was the beginning of an unprecedented Papal visit.
One of the Pope's events was an interfaith dialogue session consisting of 220 religious leaders drawn from a wide range of backgrounds. Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, and others joined in the talk. However, some of those that attended were of a variety connected to radical Muslim organizations.
According to an e-mail sent out by the Muslim Students Association (MSA), "On April 17, 2008 a representative from MSA National met with the Pope Benedict XVI at an inter-faith reception during his visit to Washington, DC." Read more ...
Each year, the Johns Hopkins Muslim Association sponsors what it terms "Islam Awareness Days," whose purpose is "to promote diversity and dispel misconceptions about Islam."
In February 2005, the event featured a presentation by then-National MSA President Hadia Mubarak titled "Liberation and Incarceration? Women in Islam." Mubarak, a graduate student in Women's and Gender Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, claimed that Americans had developed many misconceptions about the treatment of women in the Islamic world. Islam, she said, historically had a reputation for respecting women's rights and granting them equal status in the eyes of the law.
Over 200 attendees at last year's inaugural event! Terrapinn's second annual Islamic Finance World North America 2008 provides you an opportunity to benefit from in depth panels and case studies revealing first hand experience of successful Islamic financial products and services from industry leaders and experts who have successfully reached this $500 billion market. Read more ... H/T: Sharia Finance Watch
Michael Bloomberg Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
Caribou Coffee became a public company after our initial public offering priced on September 28, 2005.
Our majority shareholder since 2000 is an affiliate of Arcapita Bank B.S.C.(c), a global investment group founded in 1997 with offices in Atlanta, London and Bahrain, a strong U.S. ally in the Middle East and the headquarters of the U.S. Navy's 5 th Fleet. Following our initial public offering, Arcapita continues to own approximately 61% of our outstanding common stock.
Arcapita Bank has provided Caribou with the necessary resources for continuing to expand our store base in the U.S. Arcapita has total assets of over $1.2 billion and has executed transactions valued at over $7 billion in three main lines of business – corporate investment (private equity), real estate investment and asset-based investment. Arcapita's corporate investment line of business has invested over $1 billion in equity across 17 transactions totaling over $2 billion in transaction value. Current and past corporate investments span a broad range of industries, including consumer products, healthcare, specialized manufacturing and technology. Portfolio companies include Cypress Communications (a telecommunications provider), Church's Chicken (a quick service restaurant chain), Cirrus Industries (a general aviation aircraft manufacturer), Loehmann's (a specialty retailer) and TLC Health Care Services (a national home nursing provider).
Arcapita, whose investors are located primarily in the Middle East, makes its investments in a manner consistent with the body of Islamic principles known as Shari'ah. Consequently, we operate our business in a manner consistent with Shari'ah principles and will continue to do so as long as Arcapita is a significant shareholder..
In particular, we must comply with Shari'ah principles regarding money that we borrow from other parties. For example, our lease financing arrangement, under which we have obtained financing to fund our operations and expand our business, is structured in a manner that complies with Shari'ah principles. The structure of this lease financing arrangement is described in the prospectus relating to our initial public offering. Also, a Shari'ah-compliant company is prohibited from dealing in the areas of alcohol, gambling, pornography, pork and pork-related products.
Imam Fawaz's network is now working on Islamisizing little kids. A new association, working with Fawaz's radical As-Soennah mosque, is organizing strict religious lessons in Zoetermeer for children 5-14 years old.
The lessons are given in a municipality sports hall by 'brothers' of the Al-Ichlaas association (Al-Ikhlas, Oneness of God). Several dozen students have signed up. The children must dress according to a strict Islamic clothing code.
Mohamed Talbi, chairman of Al-Ichlaas, confirms the cooperation with the As-Soennah mosque in The Hague, one of the strongholds of the radical Salafist movement. "We also want to invite preacher from As-Soennah for lectures." Read more ...
Controversial critics of Islam point out flaws in U.S. policy
Self-proclaimed former Muslim terrorist Kamal Saleem presents his argument on why terrorists "want to kill" Americans as fellow speaker Walid Shoebat listens at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on Tuesday at CU.
By Zak Brown
Two ex-terrorists who have caused controversy with their criticisms of Islam told a University of Colorado crowd to "Wake up and smell the hummus" Tuesday night.
Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem, whose talk was titled "Why We Want to Kill You," spent 90 minutes in the Glenn Miller Ballroom detailing their terrorist experiences and explaining flaws in American terrorist policy.
"I am standing on (America's) wall, crying out, saying, 'Wake up, wake up,'" Saleem said. "We have a saying that goes, 'Wake up and smell the hummus. If you don't, you'll be smelling it for a long time.'"
They say Americans don't understand the resolve of Islamic fundamentalists and that the public should do more to understand the dangerous aspects of the religion.
The speakers have drawn criticism at many of their tour stops in support of Shoebat's book of the same name. They drew a crowd of roughly 1,000 on Tuesday night. Read more ...
Ashraf Mohamedy: There are two twin sisters who are equally identical and equally good looking, and they are walking down the street. At the corner there is a hooligan waiting for a catch, waiting to tease someone. One of the sisters is putting on the Islamic hijab, that is, covering herself completely, except for the face and the hands up to the wrist, and the other sister is dressed in a miniskirt. Who is the hooligan going to tease - the sister in the hijab or the one in the miniskirt? Of course he will tease the sister in the miniskirt! More ...
Jakarta - In Padang, capital of the province of West Sumatra, the atmosphere is increasingly that of an Islamic state. Female students who do not wear the headscarf (hijab) are frequently suspended from school. The requirement to observe Islamic customs, sanctioned by the controversial regional law of 2005, is also imposed on non-Muslim girls, and has generated an atmosphere of strong pressure on religious minorities. The proliferation of local laws inspired by sharia (perda syariat) is a growing phenomenon in Indonesia, but the central government has chosen not to intervene for now, in spite of protests from religious minorities and human rights NGO's. Read more ...
"Myrick's latest attempt at fighting terrorism is nothing more than a fear campaign," said Jibril Hough, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Charlotte. "It is nothing more than a new McCarthyism, or Myrickism. As Muslims, we have become expendable as politicians like Myrick seek political gain." Read more ...
The Griffith University academic at the heart of a funding controversy has defended the decision to accept $100,000 from the repressive Saudi Arabian Government to help finance Islamic studies. Read more ... Source: The Australian
FP: Saifullah Khan Mahsud Steven Schippert and Neil Doyle, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.
Neil Doyle, let's begin with you.
I think the best way to begin this discussion is to touch on Bhutto’s assassination back in late December, 2007. What impact has it had on Pakistan?
Doyle: The assassination can be seen as a severe blow to hopes of curbing the growth of extremism in Pakistan. The former head of the ISI has claimed that the country is on the brink of an Islamist revolution.
At the moment, we're seeing an attempted land grab by Islamic militants in the North West Frontier Province. That largely revolves around control of villages in the Sawt valley where the Pakistan military appears to be relying on air power in an attempt to arrest the expansion. Increasingly, militants are talking about the "Islamic Emirate of Pakistan". It's a similar picture further south, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where the Taliban continues to push over the border into Afghanistan and claim to be knocking on the city gates of Kandahar, their former stronghold. Read more ...
WASHINGTON - Cigarette smuggling is generating millions of dollars every year that can be reaching terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda, according to law enforcement sources. In a single case, $100,000 was sent to Hezbollah.
A 15-page report congressional report, obtained by FOX News, includes intelligence from law enforcement as well as New York State’s Department of Taxation and Finance.
The report reads in part: Cigarette smuggling is generating millions of dollars every year that can be reaching terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda, according to law enforcement sources. In a single case, $100,000 was sent to Hezbollah.
"This is a very serious homeland security issue, one that has gone unnoticed for far too long," said Rep. Peter King, (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, who called for the investigation.
"Cigarette smugglers are able to generate millions of dollars in illegal profits with a great deal of this wealth being sent to terrorist groups overseas - groups that would like nothing more than to inflict devastating harm on our country and its citizens." Read more ...
LOS ANGELES - The editors of a new book compiling the testimonies of ex-Muslims say they weren't surprised when the Council on American-Islamic Relations attacked their work without reading it.
But, say Islamic experts Joel Richardson and Susan Crimp, they were shocked that the New York Daily News characterized the group as the voice of moderate Muslims.
"Why We Left Islam: Former Muslims Speak Out," published by WND Books, was skewered by CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper in the paper - weeks before today's official release date. The book is controversial for two reasons - the gripping firsthand personal accounts of men and women who risked their lives by abandoning the Koran and because it is the first American book release to feature a picture of the prophet Muhammad on the cover.
CAIR didn't wait to look inside the cover before attacking the publisher for spewing hate. But the editors of "Why We Left Islam" say those in the media seeking the opinions of CAIR apparently don't know who they are dealing with. Read more ...
Over the past week, I spent far less time writing for this website than planned. Instead, I spent hours on the phone with John McCain staffers and key supporters in Michigan to right a mistake.
And, unlike the Barack Obama who clings to anti-Semites and terrorism supporters, John McCain did the right thing: He dumped Ali Jawad--an open Hezbollah supporter and key agent of the terrorist group in the Detroit area. Jawad is also a federal insurance fraud convict. Read more ...
The NEFA Foundation recently published a new report: The Muslim Brotherhood in Belgium.
According to this report Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have a base in Verviers, through the Al Aqsa charity organization. This organization had been banned in both Germany and the Netherlands on suspicion of supporting Hamas. Read more ...
The prominent Jordanian-born reformist Dr. Shaker Al-Nabulsi is known as a forceful advocate for secular democracy and human and civil rights in the Middle East. Dr. Nabulsi, who now resides in the U.S., has published writings on the issues of civil society, contemporary politics and society, the media, and Islam, and has been a harsh critic of Islamist extremism. Read more ...
There has been much talk about Shari'a-compliant finance (SCF) in recent months, but many Americans are still in the dark about exactly what it is and what it portends for the American economy and the freedoms Americans enjoy.
This may be why the judge in the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas last fall declared a mistrial and five of six defendants face a retrial (one was found not guilty of most of the charges against him). Terror expert Douglas Farah surmised at the time that part of the reason might have been because "perhaps the prosecution tried to cram too much information in with a group of jurors largely unfamiliar with anything to do with the case." And Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism had a heated exchange with Alan Colmes of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes about whether the mainstream news media had even managed to get the story right. Family Security Matters
Established in 1955, the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) is a student organization whose mission is to "meet the social and religious needs of the Muslim community at Harvard University and to promote Islamic awareness on campus."
During his tenure as HIS president, Zayed Yasin (a 2002 Harvard graduate) held a charity dinner to raise funds for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). Also during his tenure, Yasin signed a divestment petition calling on Harvard to cut its financial ties to corporations that conducted business with Israel. Read more ...
Kuala Lumpur, April 27: An ethnic-Indian Opposition leader has claimed that he has received a death threat for resisting calls to declare multi-ethnic Malaysia an Islamic state.
Karpal Singh, Democratic Action Party (DAP) national chairman, said he has not insulted Islam and he should not be 'turned into a Salman Rushdie'. Read more ...
The Muslim cleric at the centre of Griffith University's Saudi embassy donation affair - Mohamad Abdalla - is regarded as the Brisbane leader of an Islamic group whose overseas members have been linked to al-Qa'ida and the 2005 London bombings.
The revelations over the past week that Griffith University aggressively pursued funds from the Saudi Arabian embassy to finance its Islamic studies unit illustrates a major problem facing all liberal democracies confronted with the vast reservoir of petro-dollars controlled by the Saudi Government. Read more ...
February 20, 2006 proved to be an eventful day for the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at The Ohio State University. Not only did that date mark the conclusion of their weekend-long "Leaders of Tomorrow" conference, but that was also the day that their conference sponsor, Kindhearts, was raided by federal law enforcement and closed by order of the Department of the Treasury for financing terrorism, freezing its assets.
According to the US government, Kindhearts, which was established following the closure of the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation, was not only engaged in providing millions for HAMAS in Lebanon and the West Bank, it had hired as a fundraising specialist the man identified by HAMAS head Khaled Mishal as the designated HAMAS bag man in the US, Mohammed El-Mezain. (For additional background on Kindhearts and its multiple connections to the international terrorism finance network, see Joe Kaufman's FrontPage article, "The Black Hearts of Kindhearts") Read more ...
Hundreds of protesters chanting "Kill, kill" set fire Monday to an Indonesian mosque belonging to a Muslim sect they claim is heretical, police said.
A policeman was wounded in the head when the crowd stoned the mosque in West Java province before setting it ablaze, said police spokesman Col. Dade Ahmad. Several suspects were taken in for questioning.
The attack was the latest targeting the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Most mainstream Muslims consider Ahmadiyah heretical because it does not consider Muhammad to be the final prophet. The sect was founded at the end of the 19th century in Pakistan.
Last week, a team of prosecutors, religious scholars and government officials said the sect "had deviated from Islamic principles" and recommended it be outlawed. There have been several acts of vandalism targeting Ahmadiyah since then.
About 300 people torched the mosque and destroyed an Islamic school building inside the Ahmadiyah compound in Sukabumi town just after midnight. Many sect members have since fled the area, seeking refuge with friends and relatives. Read more ...
OTTAWA (AFP) - A complaint by Canadian Muslims against a leading local news magazine has sparked a national debate on the limits of press freedoms in this country often cited as a beacon of multiculturalism.
"Protest while you still can," shouted this week's edition of Maclean's, a publication similar to US magazines Time or Newsweek, saying in an editorial that human rights boards are undermining free speech in Canada.
The controversy dates back to October 2006, when Maclean's ran an article excerpted from noted author and journalist Mark Steyn's book "America Alone," entitled "Why the Future Belongs to Islam."
A self-described agitator, Steyn argued that demographics and Muslims' global ambitions ensured Islam's eventual world domination and that Europe was "too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia."
For four Toronto law students, Maclean's had crossed the line by proposing that "Muslims are part of a global conspiracy to take over Western society and impose an oppressive form of Islamic law," Khurrum Awan, one of the students, told AFP.
"We did some research and realized that Maclean's had published 19 articles with such a tone," he said, adding that his group asked for but was denied the opportunity to publish a response when they met with the magazine's editors.
Maclean's, which is defending itself against accusations at a human rights tribunal that its articles incited hate, said the students' demands for a 5,000-word rebuttal and to direct the magazine cover art were unacceptable.
"This is a complete fabrication," said Awan, insisting the editor-in-chief told them he would rather see the magazine go out of business than publish a response, or, according to the magazine, hand over editorial reigns.
The students, backed by the Canadian Islamic Congress, lodged a complaint with the federal human rights commission and two of its provincial counterparts in Ontario and British Columbia.
The federal and British Columbia tribunals are still mulling over the case.
The Ontario panel declined to hear it, yet offered a stern rebuke of Maclean's on April 9 which prompted indignation from the magazine.
In a statement, the Ontario Human Rights Commission said the contents of press articles were beyond its purview, but added it "has serious concerns about the content of a number of articles concerning Muslims" published by Maclean's and other media outlets which were "identified as contributing to Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslims."
Supported by several media outlets, Maclean's said it was "deeply troubling" that a public official would castigate the press without offering it an opportunity to defend itself at a hearing.
The magazine also called for "an unambiguous reaffirmation of the right to freedom of expression, and assurance that reasonable limits on free speech are in fact reasonable."
The complainants said they were "delighted" by the Ontario commission's outcry.
"The tribunal said clearly that Maclean's articles were racist," explained Mohammed Boudjenane, head of the Canadian Arab Federation.
"I believe this will start a debate on the freedom of the press versus limiting speech that incites hate."
Alan Borovoy, a lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, however, said human rights commissions should limit their decisions to acts, and not "restrict the free expression of opinion."
For Julius Grey, an advocate for minority rights, "all restrictions on freedom of expression are appalling" and he said the students in this case "chose the wrong target."
"But they're right to complain about Islamophobia," he told AFP, noting that "since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Muslims are not treated the same as everybody else."
This is the Coalition's first public action as a part of a campaign to educate Boeing shareholders and the general public about reports that Boeing is profiting from torture and to demand accountability for Boeing's actions. Boeing is headquartered in Chicago.
WHAT: Protest at Boeing Shareholder Meeting WHEN: Monday, April 28, 2008, 9:30 a.m. WHERE: McFetridge Drive, on the south side of the Field Museum; 1400 S. Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60605-2496 COALITION MEMBERS: Council on American-Islamic Relations–Chicago; Chicago Committee to Defend the Bill of Rights (CCDBR); 8th Day Center for Justice; Kick Boeing to the Curb; American Friends and Service Committee – Chicago; Wellington Avenue Church; Voices for Creative Non-Violence; St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Worker House and other civic groups.
An ongoing ACLU lawsuit charges that Jeppesen, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing, sold direct flight services to the CIA that enabled the delivery of captives in U.S. custody to secret overseas locations where "friendly governments" as well as CIA operatives carried out and arranged their torture.
Cabbagetown' s Tarek Fatah begins his cri de coeur by setting out his citizen of the world credentials succinctly yet with power: "I am Indian born in Pakistan; a Punjabi born in Islam; an immigrant in Canada with a Muslim consciousness, grounded in Marxist youth. I am one of Salman Rushdie's many Midnight's Children: we were snatched from the cradle of a great civilization and made permanent refugees, sent in search of an oasis that turned out to be an mirage. I am in pain, a living witness to how dreams of hope and enlightenment can be turned into a nightmare of despair and failure...
"I write as a Muslim whose ancestors were Hindu. My religion, Islam is rooted in Judaism, while my Punjabi culture is tied to that of the Sikhs. Yet I am told by Islamists that without shedding this multifaceted heritage, if not outrightly rejecting it, I cannot be a true Muslim."
And so it goes in Fatah's Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Wiley, 410 pages, $31.95). The co-founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress and the host of Vision TV's weekly The Muslim Chronicle sums up his inclusive, holistic understanding of the Quran's teachings, in opposition to the Islamic fundamentalism, of political and religious, that he has spent most of his adult life campaigning against it.
Chasing a Mirage is dedicated to Benazir Bhutto and Daniel Pearl: "a Muslim and a Jew, victims of terrorism."
Petrodollars could be panacea to US financial quagmire
By Ravi Kumar
With the primaries and caucuses in full flow in the US there is one common assertion in all lofty promises made by the presidential hopefuls: to revitalise the economy which is on the verge of a recession.
Economic pundits, chief executives and money managers across the globe still seem to be clueless about how severe the damage is and how critical the subprime mortgage quagmire would be in the months to come.
America's economic woes just seem to multiply endlessly and corporate bigwigs are falling casualty to this subprime crisis.
Oil prices which continue to escalate rather steeply amid worries of recession also rubs salt into the wounds. US Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was quick to announce sops in the form of rate cuts and other fiscal stimulus. Read more ...
Manama: A planned concert by Lebanese singer Haifa Wehbe has waded into controversy after Islamists have called for its cancellation despite strong assurances from organisers that the often scantily clad singer would be wearing "decent" clothes.
Haifa is due to give her first concert in Bahrain, alongside Lebanese singer Fadel Shaker, on April 30 to mark Labour Day.
New York-based event management company Concerto International and its Middle East office in Beirut, the organizers of the concert, have repeatedly said that it would be only for families and would be performed within a family atmosphere that respects local and Gulf traditions.
However, on Friday mosque imams called upon the information ministry to cancel the show and to respect the feelings of the people.
"We do not want any performance by singers showing off their flesh in the name of art. We know that there is a section of our society that likes such shows, but most of the people resent them,"Fareed Abdul Hadi, the imam of Al Adliya mosque said. Read more ..
The following conference has not been officially announced yet, but according to the Uriasposten blog it is being planned by the Judicial Institute at Aarhus University for June 4th.
Sharia law and Danish law: Can Islamic law be implemented in Denmark? Read more ...
An example of Western self-censorship: Belgian officials prohibited Shark, by David Cerny, depicting Saddam Hussein as an aquatic predator.
By Bruce Bawer
Islam divides the world into two parts. The part governed by sharia, or Islamic law, is called the Dar al-Islam, or House of Submission. Everything else is the Dar al-Harb, or House of War, so called because it will take war - holy war, jihad - to bring it into the House of Submission. Over the centuries, this jihad has taken a variety of forms. Two centuries ago, for instance, Muslim pirates from North Africa captured ships and enslaved their crews, leading the U.S. to fight the Barbary Wars of 1801–05 and 1815. In recent decades, the jihadists' weapon of choice has usually been the terrorist's bomb; the use of planes as missiles on 9/11 was a variant of this method.
What has not been widely recognized is that the Ayatollah Khomeini's 1989 fatwa against Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie introduced a new kind of jihad. Instead of assaulting Western ships or buildings, Khomeini took aim at a fundamental Western freedom: freedom of speech. In recent years, other Islamists have joined this crusade, seeking to undermine Western societies' basic liberties and extend sharia within those societies. Read more ...
MUSLIM community leaders have urged Griffith University to return a $100,000 grant from the Saudi Arabian embassy as prominent academics attacked vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor for his confusion over the Islamic ideology embraced by Osama bin Laden. Read more ...
Whether it's deserved or not, Islam has one hell of a P.R. problem in the West.
Thanks to the example of a few, the many are being painted with an ugly brush, and they are not standing up and condemning what is wrong with radical Islam with enough conviction to satisfy most Westerners.
Here are a few opinions on Muslims that are becoming more common throughout North America and Europe and unfortunately, they are not entirely undeserved!
That was one opinion from England and several relevant points were made that should not be ignored by the general Muslim population.
Here is another from the States.
Subject: Professor Wichman
The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek Wichman who sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student's Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students' protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.
The group had complained the cartoons were 'hate speech.'
Enter Professor Wichman. In his e-mail, he said the following:
Dear Muslim Association,
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest.
I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheading of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt , the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called 'whores' in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.
This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues.
I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized Muslims to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile 'protests!'
If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave.
I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option
Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
As you can imagine, the Muslim group at the university didn't like this too well.
They're demanding that Wichman be reprimanded and the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty and mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen
Now the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn't believe that the good professor had the right to express his opinion.
For it's part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman, saying the e-mail was private, and they don't intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
There you have it bunky! Doesn't matter if the preceding statements were 100% true or just a bunch of horseshit, it's the "perception" that counts and this "perception" could lead to some nasty backlashes in the future unless the average Muslim does more to stand up and condemn the actions of the few!
Just as Communism (Marxism) has proven to be unworkable and been put on the ash-heap of history, so too must Multi-Culturalism be discarded as a very bad idea.-ED.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God(What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
There is a far-reaching scandal brewing for presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, thanks to a radio talk show host based in Oregon. Syndicated talk show host Laurie Roth's revelations make the news story about Obama's relationship with a racist, anti-American pastor look like child's play.
A top official at the Pentagon during former-President George H. W. Bush's Administration and a former CIA intelligence officer maintain that Barack Obama and former Weather Underground honcho William Ayers funneled money to Professor Rashid Khalidi, a known terrorist sympathizer. Read more ...
Al Maktoum is VP of the UAE, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai and involved in many of the Dubai/Saudi Shariah deals. Bin Talal controls close to 95% of Kingdom Holding Company, the largest company in Saudi Arabia…also the largest shareholder in Newscorp other than the Murdoch family. Only 5% of the company's shares are public, the rest is privately owned by the prince. We know that they both fund CAIR, an un indicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, and identified by the FBI as part of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee. Read more ...
Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.
It was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English at Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body - from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbours who soon gathered round, to 'cleanse his honour'. Read more ...
Don't snap a photo of the Masjid At-Taqwa in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn unless you want to be hauled away by a group of angry Muslims in Islamic attire to the basement of the facility where a group of twenty "security guards" in karate suits will interrogate you.
This might sound preposterous.
But it happened on Saturday, April 24, at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Ali Kareem, the head of security for Siraj Wahaj's mosque, conducted the grilling. A small, muscular man with a wispy black beard that has been dyed red with henna, Kareem demanded to know the reason why a trio of kafirs had dared to photograph the building on a public street without securing his permission.
He further insisted on securing our identities and obtaining our motives for such a violation of Islamic space. Read more ...
/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Amnesty International has received secretly filmed grisly footage of a man being beheaded inSaudi Arabia. The organization strongly condemns the execution and calls for the Saudi Arabian government to adhere to the U.N. moratorium on executions around the world.
The horrific footage shows the condemned man's public execution. He kneels on a mat while spectators and guards watch. With one strike of the executioner's sword, his head rolls off and his body collapses in a heap. Amnesty International has been closely monitoring the prisoner's case, a Jordanian citizen convicted on drug trafficking related charges; the footage filmed on a mobile phone is consistent with AI's records. Read more ...
Wherever the police are trying to counter Islamic terrorists and train officers in the US to recognize and prevent terrorist activities, you are sure to find CAIR doing their best to reveal police tactics (see NYPD here) to the public and therefore to the same terrorists who have the most to benefit from knowing those tactics. Read more ...
As we noted a few days ago, Hatem El-Hady, former chairman of the Toledo-based Islamic charity Kindhearts (closed by the US government in 2006 for terrorist fundraising), has now devoted himself to raising money for the Barack Obama campaign.
He has a web page at the official Obama campaign site. On Wednesday when we posted about El-Hady, there were three "friends" listed on his page, and one of them was none other than Barack Obama's wife, Michelle Obama. Here's the screenshot we took:
Life for so-called apostates in Iran has never been easy, but it could become literally impossible if Iran passes a new draft penal code. For the first time in its history, Iran is considering the death penalty for apostates. In the past, authorities have executed apostates. But punishment by death has never before been set down in law.
The text of the draft penal code uses the word Hadd, which explicitly sets death as a fixed punishment that cannot be changed, reduced or annulled. The rest of the code is little better. By using ill-defined terms, other provisions also open the door to abuse Iran’s already beleaguered religious and ethnic minorities.
Article 225-1 states "Any Muslim who clearly announces that he/she has left Islam and declares blasphemy is an Apostate." Article 225-2 adds that "Serious and earnest intention is the condition for certainty in apostasy." So an accused person could claim that he made his statement reluctantly, or ignorantly, or while drunk, or through the slip of a tongue, and he would not be considered an apostate. Read more ...
Mortally wounded and bleeding profusely, Pela Atroshi covered her head with her hands, pleading "please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me". As her sister and her mother screamed, her uncle Rezkar Atroshi raised his gun and killed her. The family's honour had been cleansed.
Rezkar had already shot Pela twice in the back in the upstairs room. Helped downstairs by her mother and her younger sister, the 19-year-old Kurdish Swede was confronted by four resolute men - her father and his three brothers. The men pulled the women apart. Her youngest uncle then finished the job, shooting Pela in the head. The bullet went through one of her fingers and into her brain.
The decision to kill her was made by a council of male relatives, led by Pela's grandfather, Abdulmajid Atroshi - a Kurd who lived in Australia.
One of his sons, Shivan Atroshi, helped pull the women away from Pela so his younger brother could get a clean shot. Shivan, too, lived in Australia.
It is the first time an officially confirmed honour killing with a connection to Australia has ever publicly come to light, but it is likely there have been other Australian-connected honour crimes that have been kept hidden within the tight-lipped Australian Kurdish community. Read more ...
Governor Paterson has a bill on his desk that he should sign right away. The sooner he does, the sooner he will protect the free speech rights of New York authors, journalists and media outlets -- and, by extension, the public's right to know.
The measure, which was passed unanimously by the Legislature on March 31, is called the Libel Terrorism Protection Act. The title is apt. It refers to the use of foreign libel laws, which are often far more friendly to plaintiffs than the free speech and free press protections afforded under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to intimidate -- some would say gag writers and publishers who criticize influential people in other countries. Read more ...
GRIFFITH University vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor has defended a $100,000 grant from the Saudi Arabian embassy, rejecting accusations the money was given to propagate a hardline Muslim ideology espoused by al-Qa'ida. Read more ...
GRIFFITH University vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor has admitted lifting information straight from online encyclopedia Wikipedia and confusing strands of Islam as he struggled to defend his institution's decision to ask the repressive Saudi Arabian Government for funding. Read more ...
Mr. Collins is emeritus professor of history at UC Santa Barbara and co-author (with J. Millard Burr) of Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The authors have previously co-authored three books: Requiem for The Sudan: War, Drought, and Disaster Relief on the Nile (1995), Africa's Thirty Years' War: Chad, Libya, and the Sudan, 1963-1993 (1999), and Revolutionary Sudan: Hasan al-Turabi and the Islamist State, 1989-2000 (2003).
On April 3, 2007 Kevin Taylor, Intellectual Property Manager for the Cambridge University Press (CUP), contacted Millard Burr and myself that the solicitors for Shaykh Khalid bin Mahfouz, Kendall Freeman, had informed CUP of eleven "allegations of defamation" in our book Alms for Jihad: Charities and Terrorism in the Islamic World and requested a response. On April 20 CUP received our seventeen page "robust defence," but it soon became apparent that CUP had decided not to defend Alms for Jihad given "knowledge of claims from previous litigation" and that "the top-line allegations of defamation made against us by bin Mahfouz are sustainable and cannot be successfully defended ...certainly not in the English courts, which is where the current action arises." Read more ...
NEWARK (AP) -- When he faces an immigration judge in two weeks, a popular Muslim cleric fighting deportation may have to counter claims that he confessed to being a member of a terrorist group.
According to Israeli military authorities, Imam Mohammad Qatanani admitted being a member of the militant Hamas organization during interrogation in 1993 in Israel.
"Imam Mohammed Katanani was convicted based on his own admission on charges of belonging to an unauthorized association and providing services to an unauthorized association, for being a member of Hamas and acting on its behalf," the Israeli army said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press.
April 25, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Employing the twisted logic of not wishing to further stoke whatever additional enmity might exist in those already sworn to destroying the United States and West, the federal government has issued directives to stop the use of some of the most appropriate phrases and terms now being used to identify and describe the forces seeking to Islamize the Western world through force. Read more ...
April 25, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - A grant made by the U.S. Dept. of State to the Islamic Society of North America [ISNA, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing Holy Land Foundation terror funding prosecution, whose mission statement is "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope"] and the left wing National Peace Foundation is being used to fund Islamic da'wa via a spurious "citizen exchange" program. Read more ...
Doug Farah, Steve Coughlin, and I have written about the efforts to replace jihad as a descriptive term for what we are fighting. In view of the reported decision by the State Department to reward these efforts, I do not want to belabor the point or my position (other than to note that there are plenty of human rights victims in countries that operate according to Shari'ah law who have much to say about whether the non-violent "striving" meaning of jihad results in innocuous statecraft). However, I do want to share the text of an e-mail I got today from one of my Muslim friends, which is a little sobering:
As a Muslim trying to help America defend itself against the Islamist jihad, I am outraged that our government is letting us down so badly by cozying up to the enemy. I have seen this happen in my home country and in so many other places, but I never thought it would happen here. I don't ever want to hear people asking me "where are the truly moderate Muslims" but the rest of us anti-Islamists are waiting (sadly and in a terribly frustrated way) for the next attack, which may (once again) force the "oh, let's not hurt our enemy's feelings" crowds to open their eyes and see the reality. I sincerely hope it won't be too late by then. What I really don't understand is what on earth happened to the Americans having the guts to stand up to evil? Why is America following in Europe's footsteps of appeasement? Is this what happened to all the good, decent and smart people who let Nazism take over, and then turned the blind eye to the Holocaust in their midst? So, never again is not really never again, huh? Is it too much relativism? Did Americans become too materialistic to recognize the power of destructive ideologies? It can't be ignorance anymore since a lot of material is out there making the argument. Maybe faced with too much information and all the side effects of globalization, people simply lost basic common sense? I know the Islamists. There is no stopping until you all accept their rule. Of course, I'll have to be taken care of a lot sooner than they come after you all!!
The views in this article do not reflect those of the Department if Justice. Source: Counterterrorism Blog
This is a memo to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement), Hizballah (the Party of God), the Islamic State of Iraq, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and others:
Please consider changing your names to something a tad less religious sounding. Where you infuse your theological thought into radical politics and violence, things might get a little awkward for us. You see, if we point out that you identify yourselves with a religion, we might offend someone. That's the new policy of the U.S. government. It advises agencies to avoid using some of the same words that make up your very names.
All we're asking is that you meet us half way. Read more ...
PARIS, April 24 (KUNA) - The French Senate, or upper house of parliament, announced here Thursday that it is organizing two round table discussions May 14 to examine the role France can play in attracting Islamic funds and the opportunities opening up to work with Islamic funds on international finance markets.
The sessions will be presided over by the Senates Finance Commission president Jean Arthuis and will include participants from a variety of financial and investment bodies.
The first round table will examine “the integration of Islamic finance in the global financial system” and seek to determine the challenges for France in this area, the Senate said in a statement.
According to the statement, Islamic funds are now valued at around 700 billion dollars and have a “recognized growth potential” but these funds remain centred in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where they continue to grow. Read more ...
The rapid development of the Islamic finance and Islamic banking industry, not only in the Middle East but across the globe, has produced new Shariah compliant products and structures, which have in turn resulted in a substantial growth in demand for Islamic financial services. The number of Islamic institutions and their assets grew approximately at an average annual rate of 20% in the world.
Western countries are now developing more competitive Islamic Finance products which are no longer considered as a specialised structure developed for religious purposes. Except for London, European financial centres do currently not have a suitable offer to those who wish to invest a part in conformity with Islam, comparing to Dubai, Bahrain and Singapore. Although having a net delay in Islamic banking financial centres like Geneva manage today up to 300 billion dollars asset Moslems.
This conference aims to examine some critical issues arising from the implementation of Islamic Finance from jurist, legal, and practical perspectives with a focus on how to create Shariah Compliance in Financial Products, and how to incorporate Islamic Finance into the financial mainstream. Read more ...
Now we officially know the answer - the U.S. Government states that America is definitely not fighting "jihadists", based on new guidelines directing federal agencies not to even use the term "jihadist". So who is America fighting? Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells us: "the enemy is extremism". Read more ...
Ahmed Marouch, mayor of the Slotervaart neighborhood of Amsterdam, thinks that Dutch law should make issuing fatwas illegal. Marcouch said this in the TV program Pauw en Witteman. Read more ...
Muhammad Al-Munajid: "Some of these heretics say: 'Islam is not the private property of anyone.' So what do they want? They say: 'No sect has a monopoly on Islam.' So what do they want? They say: 'We want to issue rulings.' Someone who is ignorant, who does not know any Arabic, or who has no knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence wants to issue rulings?! They say: 'We reinterpret the texts.' There is a very dangerous conspiracy against the religion of Islam in newspapers and in what these people say. A journalist, or one of those lowlifes, wants to... These people are a mixture of Western, local, and imported ideologies, but they want to express their views with regard to religious rulings. This is the prerogative of religious scholars, not of ignorant people - the prerogative of knowledgeable people, not of fools or heretics. More ...
Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.
(Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.)
The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.
One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.
He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.
Personally, I would prefer to be on "Howdy Doody Time!" But that's just me!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://allans-perspective.blogspot.com
Former President Jimmy Carter's Middle East trip has generated a fair amount of scorn because of his direct meetings and open embrace, both literal and figurative, of the terrorist group Hamas. Carter argues that peace between Israel and Palestinians cannot be reached without talking to the terrorists.
It is not a widely shared view. "The United States is not going to deal with Hamas and we had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help" peace efforts, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Even the Washington Post ridiculed Carter in an editorial April 17:
Mr. Carter justifies his meetings with familiar arguments about the value of dialogue with enemies. But he misses the point. Contacts between enemies can be useful: Israel is legendary for such negotiations, and even now it is engaged in back-channel bargaining with Hamas through Egypt. But it is one thing to communicate pragmatically, and quite another to publicly and unconditionally grant recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism, mass murder or the extinction of another state.
If one wants to get a more realistic picture of how the Muslim Brotherhood and its international legacy organizations view voting and the democratic process than the usual platitudes of their public discourse, it is well worth reading the Guide to Voting in Islam, posted by the Muslim Association of Britain.
This document and commentary on its content was first posted on the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, available for a free subscription.
Because in political Islam there is no difference between the state and religion, voting itself becomes, as one British Imam is quoted in the document as saying, a form of Jihad. Read more ...
Last year the New York Police Department (NYPD) issued a clear-sighted and path-breaking document titled Radicalization in the West: The Home-Grown Threat. Prepared by Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt of the NYPD Intelligence Division, the report was serious, well-researched, and articulate. It traced radical Sunni Muslim activities in non-Muslim countries to the "jihadi-Salafi" ideology, better known as Wahhabism, created in Saudi Arabia and supported by major extremist resources in Pakistan (the jihadist movement of Mawdudi) and Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood). It was posted on the internet by Republican congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan and may be read here.
Radicalization in the West met with enthusiastic approval from anti-extremist, moderate Muslims, but with predictable condemnation from the "Wahhabi lobby" represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its allies. On November 23, 2007, as disclosed in documents made available to me, a statement was composed, in the name of the "Muslim community," protesting against the NYPD's release of the report. Employing the typically arrogant, peremptory, and militant idiom of the Islamist movements, the statement called on New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. Read more ...
The movie USA vs. Al-Arian, about the trial of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, has been released to the public via the internet. Its producers refer to it as a "documentary." That is just as much of a fable as the way the terrorist's family has been portrayed in the film.
Sami Al-Arian was indicted in February of 2003, charged with leading an American cell for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). During the mid-eighties to mid-nineties, Al-Arian had succeeded in building an entire infrastructure for PIJ within Southwest Florida. As well, he had been involved in the 1981 founding of the future propaganda wing of Hamas, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the 2000 establishment of a Tampa subsidiary to Al-Qaeda financier, the Al-Baraka Group.
Regardless of any of this, Al-Arian has his supporters. One of them is a Norwegian filmmaker named Line Halvorsen, who, according to her bio, took an interest in the Al-Arian case in 2004.
USA vs. Al-Arian premiered to a sold-out crowd, in Tampa, Florida, on May 16, 2007. The theatre canopy read in lights, "C.A.I.R. PRESENTS USA VS. AL-ARIAN." Indeed, CAIR has been a major part of the Al-Arian support network -- the group's Tampa chapter head, Ahmed Bedier, playing the role of Al-Arian's unofficial spokesman from the start. Read more ...
The Kurdish regional government in Northern Iraq is providing a safe haven to several thousand Iraqi Christians who have fled persecution in other parts of the country, government officials and local pastors told Newsmax.
Unlike refugee camps set up for some 100,000 Shia Muslims fleeing attacks from Sunnis, which are closely monitored by Kurdish security forces, Christians have been encouraged to live anywhere.
"Christians in Iraq need special attention, because they've been suffering because they are Christians," Deputy Prime Minister Omar Fattah told Newsmax in an exclusive interview in Erbil. "Maybe we give some instructions to others where they can go, but to Christians, never, because we are not afraid they will be terrorists." Read more ...
On April 8, 2002, MSA-VCU was the principal sponsor of a presentation titled "Struggling for Truth and Justice: The Legacy of Malcolm X." (Co-sponsors included VCU's Department of Religious Studies, Student Government Association, Black Caucus, African Students Union, Students for Political Awareness, and the campus chapter of the NAACP.) Read more ...
After Yaser Said murdered older daughter Amina in cold blood and then pumped nine bullets into his tiny daughter, Sarah Said, he intended to flee the country (which would explain why he parked so near the airport). What he did not count on was Sarah's super human ability to make a 911 call pleading for her life, identifying where they were. Yasir was forced to move the bodies and his plan unraveled from there.
When he moved the girls bodies to a deserted part of the Omni hotel parking lot, Yasir was covered in blood and too far from anywhere to travel on foot. Someone had to have come and picked him up. Who? Who helped Yasir that night? Who did Yaser Said call on his cell phone? Who? Have police checked those cell phone records?
Yaser Said made the lives of his wonderful, athletic, top honors daughters a living hell. This sexual sociopath raped them in their youth and beat them fiercely as a regular diet.
"Honor killer" Yaser Said and his three younger brothers are very close. They take care of each other. This is as much a religious mandate as it is familial. Muslims brothers take care of each other. I suspect it is Yaser's brothers who have set Yasir up in the Muslim underground. They have extensive connections and own real estate together in Texas, New York and even Indiana. Read more ...
In Riyadh, the college day begins for female students behind a locked door that will remain that way until male guardians come to collect them. Later, in a female-run business, everyone must vacate the premises so a delivery man can drop off a package. In Jeddah, a 40-year-old divorced woman cannot board a plane without the written permission of her 23-year-old son. Elsewhere, a female doctor cannot leave the house at all as her male driver fails to turn up for work. These scenes make up the daily reality for half of the Saudi Kingdom, the only country where women legally belong to men. Read more ...
Doug Farah's post about the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (GMBDR) item in which the Muslim Brotherhood gives written advice on how to vote Islamic is quite disturbing. The most ominous thing is that they appear to be doing this within the U.S., even as we speak. Coincidentally, the GMBDR contains another article about how an American Muslim organization has asked one of the Presidential candidates to avoid referring to "Islamic terrorism," as if religion is irrelevant to the violent actions of those who fall into that category. If you were able to ask bin Laden or al-Zawahiri to list ten things about themselves, their first item would likely be "Muslim." Should Islam be stricken from the English language, in every sentence that mentions the word "terrorism"? How about the Muslim Brotherhood and Sheik Qawadari never using the word "Jew"? If this happened, they would essentially be deprived of any ability to communicate, so dependent are they on this term in all of their communiques. Of course "Islamic terrorism" does not denote that all Muslim are terrorists, the same way that "Christian Nationalism" does not characterize Christianity as a whole. "Islamic" is an adjective, which defines a smaller subset of the larger Muslim world. Should our next leader refuse to consider the religion of our enemies, when that religion is put forward as the reason why they are seeking to destroy the "Jewish state" and punish the "Christian crusaders," because it offends too many peaceful Muslims?
A number of ex-radicals launched on Tuesday, April 22, a think tank with the declared objective of combating extremism but while some Muslims are welcoming others are worry. Read more ...
In Pakistan's tribal district of Khyber Agency, there is ongoing fighting for the control of the region - with occasional phases of truce - between the militant Islamic tribal group Lashkar-e-Islam and rival fighters from the Kukikhel tribe. Read more ...
War On Terror: The State Department plans to double student visas issued to young Saudi men. This time, it says, they'll all be vetted for terror ties. Uh-huh.
There are 15,000 Saudi students already in the U.S., many of them here courtesy of a post-9/11 visa deal struck between President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah. The deal was controversial because nearly all the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, including two who entered the U.S. on student visas.
Now the administration wants to let in twice as many Saudi students, Ambassador Ford Fraker announced this month. Didn't he didn't get the memo from the Treasury Department warning that the kingdom is still the world's financial epicenter for terrorism? Read more ...
April 22, 2008 - Los Altos, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In a previous piece, Islamic Networks Group - Dialogue As Da'wa we wrote:
Islamic speakers bureaus are proliferating in the United States. They represent the vanguard of a new paradigm in jihad being waged by Islamists under the guise of "dialogue."
This emphasis on "legal" Islamism, the stealth jihad has been dictated in part by circumstances on the ground, where many of the most violent Islamists have been either killed, captured or forced to go into hiding, proving that aggression has been counter-productive.
Among the largest Islamic speaker's bureau - with international reach - is the Islamic Networks Group [ING] which claims to promote:
"...religious literacy and mutual respect through on-site presentations and interfaith dialogues to schools, community agencies, and other institutions. With our affiliates, ING's outreach spans the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom...Through the Islamic Speakers Bureau, certified Muslim speakers deliver a variety of presentations to K-12 schools, universities, corporations, health and law enforcement agencies, as well as other organizations..." [source, http://www.ing.org]
Bin Laden deputy slams Tehran for purporting Israel behind terror attacks on US, says Shiite rule Iran trying to discredit Sunni group's 'successes'
Osama Bin Laden's chief deputy in an audiotape Tuesday accused Shiite Iran of trying to discredit the Sunni al-Qaeda terror network by spreading the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
The comments reflected the increasing criticism by al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri against Iran, which al-Zawahri has accused in recent messages of seeking to extend its power in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and through its Hizbullah allies in Lebanon.
Al-Zawahri spoke in a two-hour audiotape posted on an Islamic militant Web site, in which he replied to hundreds of questions submitted on the Internet by al-Qaeda sympathizers. One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 suicide airplane hijacking against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Al-Zawahri accused Hizbullah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. ''The purpose of this lie is clear - (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it,'' he said. Read more ...
A few days ago Jeff Breinholt, my colleague on the Counterterrorism Blog, noted a valuable new web resource, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Report, open to responsible researchers who are willing to provide a name and institutional affiliation.
Today the site gives a rundown on an extremely interesting case in Egypt, where five leaders of the international Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced in absentia to 10 years in prison for terrorism and money laundering.
Those convicted include some of the oldest and most venerated of the MB global structure. They include Yousef Nada, Ali Ghaleb Hemmat, Ibrahim Farouk al-Zayyat, Fathi al-Khouli and Tawfeek al-Raey. Read more ...
1. Investigate all military chaplains endorsed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was imprisoned for funding a terrorist organization.
2. Investigate all prison chaplains endorsed by Alamoudi.
3. Investigate the selection process of Arabic translators working for the Pentagon and the FBI.
4. Examine the non-profit status of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
5. Make it an act of sedition or solicitation of treason to preach or publish materials that call for the deaths of Americans.
6. Audit sovereign wealth funds in the United States.
7. Cancel scholarship student visa program with Saudi Arabia until they reform their text books, which she claims preach hatred and violence against non-Muslims.
8. Restrict religious visas for imams who come from countries that don't allow reciprocal visits by non-Muslim clergy.
9. Cancel contracts to train Saudi police and security in U.S. counterterrorism tactics.
10. Block the sale of sensitive military munitions to Saudi Arabia.
Muslims Against Sharia urge every American to send a letter of support to Congresswoman Myrick. Sample letter is provided below.
The Honorable Sue Myrick 230 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone:(202) 225-1976 Fax:(202) 225-3389
Dear Congresswoman Myrick,
As an American who is concerned with the issue of terrorism, I applaud your efforts to prevent radical Islam from infiltrating American society. I wholeheartedly support your "Wake Up America" plan, as well as other initiatives of the Anti-Terrorism Caucus. You bring honor to the title of United States Representative.
Groups in America such as CAIR and MAS and groups overseas like Hamas and Al-Qaeda need to be shut down for their support and/or perpetration of terrorism. We hope that people recognize this threat to our society, and as well, recognize what you are doing to stop it.
Sincerely,
Signature Name Contact info (optional)
Please print out, sign, and mail or fax this letter to Congresswoman Myrick at the address / fax above. Feel free to modify the letter as you see fit.
As former President Jimmy Carter tours the Middle East, his plans to meet terrorist leaders have met with increasing criticism from authorities within the United States, including a senior U.S. Representative requesting Carter's passport be revoked by the State Department.
On Tuesday, Carter physically embraced senior Hamas official Nasser Shaer, a former Deputy Prime Minister in the Hamas government, at a meeting in Ramallah. Additionally, Carter has voiced his plans to meet with the Hamas' top leadership, including Mahmoud Zahar and Said Siam, in Cairo and Hamas Supreme Commander Khaled Meshaal in Damascus.
The Associated Press has reported that Hamas views Carter's latest outreach as legitimizing the terrorist group. Read more ...
AAH CALLS ON MAYOR OF PLANTATION, FL TO REMOVE CAIR REP FROM PRAYER BREAKFAST
CAIR IS PART OF HAMAS, CAIR-FLORIDA SUPPORTS HAMAS
(Coral Springs, FL) Americans Against Hate (AAH) is calling on the Mayor of Plantation, Florida, Rae Carole Armstrong, to disallow CAIR-Florida Executive Director Altaf Ali from participating in an upcoming prayer breakfast sponsored by the Mayor. The event, titled ‘Jerusalem: Symbol of Unity,’ is scheduled to take place on May 1, 2008, at Temple Kol Ami Emanu-El, in Plantation. Ali has been asked to give the invocation.
AAH is concerned with CAIR’s association with Hamas and CAIR-Florida’s recent statements in support of Hamas.
CAIR was named by the U.S. Justice Department as a co-conspirator for a Hamas financing trial that began in July of 2007. During the trial, CAIR was shown to have been part of Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook’s American Palestine Committee. Also part of the committee was CAIR’s parent organization, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), which was shut down in 2005 after the group was found liable for the Hamas murder of an American teen, David Boim.
On March 1, 2008, CAIR representative Jawhar “Joe” Badran was caught on video stating that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization.” Altaf Ali was standing next to Badran, when he said this. As well, Badran stated, “Hamas is a defender of the Palestinian people. That’s what Hamas is.” And “Hamas is better than Fatah, because there’s no corruption. Hamas takes care of the people.”
AAH Chairman Joe Kaufman stated, “Being that CAIR is a part of Hamas, it is wrong for a government representative, as Mayor Armstrong is, to allow anyone from CAIR to participate in anything. As well, it is offensive for a CAIR rep to be involved in this, given the title of the event, as Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jerusalem’s Jewish community.”
Washington - Radical Islamists not only want to destroy America with bombs and weapons of mass destruction, they also are infiltrating U.S. financial markets and influencing the flow of credit and capital, according to the Center for Security Policy (CSP), a conservative think-tank. Read more ...
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The conflict in Darfur is deteriorating, with full deployment of a new peacekeeping force delayed until 2009 and no prospect of a political settlement for a war that has killed perhaps 300,000 people in five years, U.N. officials said Tuesday. Read more ...
In June 2006, Mir Babar Basir, a recent graduate of UWMadison and a former President of MSA-UW, endorsed the ideas of Kevin Barrett, who co-founded the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, an organization which believes that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated not by Muslim extremists but by members of the Bush administration. "This is not just Kevin Barrett's idea," said Basir. "It's legitimate to think that the U.S. government was involved." Read more ...
RIYADH - Saudi Arabia's system of male "guardianship" or wide-ranging control over women lies at the heart of rights abuse in the conservative Islamic state, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday.
But a government spokesman said Saudi Arabia was disappointed the report had failed to highlight efforts to improve women's status and confused tradition with state policy. Read more ...
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that it has evacuated its staff from embassies in Algeria and Afghanistan because of threats after newspapers reprinted a cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Read more ...
A reliable source has informed me that Condoleeza Rice has approved a new lexicon for State Department usage, absolutely forbidding the use of the terms "jihad" and "jihadist" by any State Department official.
The argument, of course, is the old Streusand/Guirard claim that by using the word jihad, we're validating the jihadist claim to be waging jihad. Of course, it's ridiculous to think that the U.S. State Department carries any validating authority within the Islamic world to determine what is Islam and what isn't. This would be the first time that unbelievers have set the meaning of Islamic theology for Muslims.
Also, the claim is that by using the word "jihad," we are insulting the peaceful Muslims who are waging the daily jihad of the struggle against sin, the struggle against the dirty dishes, etc. And that's great, if that's what any Muslim actually believes is the sum and substance of jihad, but it is an understanding of jihad that is at odds with the Qur'an, the Sunnah, and all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. Will Muslims be insulted by a reference to other Muslims using the traditional primary meaning of jihad? Answer: probably. But that doesn't negate the traditional status of that meaning, or the influence of that traditional view in the Islamic world.
I will publish more information on this when possible.
A JUDGE has likened Griffith University to hardline Islamic "madrassas" in Pakistan - notorious for breeding radicals - and accused the Queensland institution of promoting a Muslim ideology espoused by Osama bin Laden. Read more ...
LR Editor's Note - This interview was conducted by our Senior Editor Andrew Murhpy with great care for security. Khalim Massoud does not appear in public nor permit interviews at public forums, for fear of death threats from Radical Muslim extremists. We are thankful that Mr. Massoud took such risk to talk with LR Blog. Read more ...
April 18: Yesterday, a press conference was held at Harvard Law School (HLS) to protest the Eighth Annual Harvard Islamic Finance Project (HIFP) program this weekend, April 19th and 20th in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The press conference was sponsored by Harvard Students for Israel. The 'Stop Sharia Now.org' associated with Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy issued a news release at the press conference and responded to questions. Hillel Stavis author of the recent FrontPageMagazine article "A Shilling for Sharia" was present. The irony was that Professor Noah Feldman, the subject of Stavis' article, was teaching a class in the same building as this press conference. Feldman has now become the 'go to guy' on Sharia law at HLS. Read more ...
Canada's biggest terrorism case faltered this week because laws against murder, bombing and butchery do not stop committed, suicidal terrorists.
The idea behind new anti-terror laws is to detect, apprehend and prosecute terrorists before they strike. But arresting people long before they actually commit a crime can be a risky legal strategy, as police and prosecutors in the "Toronto 18" case and in the United States have found out.
While the long arm of the law can now reach into the most embryonic of suspected terror plots, the available evidence is often sketchy and ambiguous. Read more ...
As Pennsylvania voters go to the polls in a primary widely regarded as do-or-die for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the New York Democrat apparently is positioning herself to the right of some Republicans, vowing that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, she would respond in kind against Tehran, with the ability to "totally obliterate them."
Clinton's remarks came during an interview airing tomorrow morning on the ABC News show, "Good Morning America."
ABC's Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, according to the network.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them." Read more ...
While US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton in the polls, Palestinians in Gaza are launching their own attempt to boost his campaign.
HAMAS spokesman Ahmed Yousef (left) and Columbus resident Anisa Abd El Fattah/Caroline Keeble (right) and one of the books they co-authored
One name that was in the national news this week was HAMAS spokesman Ahmed Yousef, the former director of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), which operated as the command for HAMAS in North America. Yousef fled the US to avoid prosecution and testifying in the Fawaz Damra trial in Cleveland, immediately reappearing in Gaza as the official HAMAS spokesman. Read more ...
Sweden: Parents who allow children under the age of 16 to get married in another country could face up to two years in jail.
The proposal comes as part of a report on human trafficking commissioned by the government and scheduled to be handed over to Justice Minister Beatrice Ask on Tuesday, according to news agency TT.
The inquiry that led to the reports was headed by appeals court judge Agneta Lindelöf, who was given the task in 2006 of looking at ways to tighten legislation surrounding human trafficking. Read more ...
A PROMINENT Australian university practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3 million, even telling the ambassador it could keep secret elements of the controversial deal. Read more ...
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:
"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."
* Exact number of death threats against the creators of "Fitna" is unknown. Counter is provided for dramatization purposes. * No death threats against the creators of "Schism" have been documented as of the last update of this post.
Islamic spokesmen in the West routinely claim that non-Muslims are only suspicious of Muslim intentions out of “ignorance” of the true, peaceful Islam. This, of course, goes hand-in-hand with the idea that it is not Muslims, but non-Muslims (like Geert Wilders in Fitna), who are responsible for linking Islam with violence. This approach deftly shifts the focus away from acts of violence committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, and onto the alleged “Islamophobes” who are supposedly victimizing Muslims by connecting Islam with violence. Read more ...
Sabri Bogday is a Turkish barber, who has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy against Islam. He had gone from Hatay province in southeast Turkey to the Saudi kingdom in 1997 and opened a barbershop. Officials at Jeddah General Court confirmed on April 16 this year that they were supervizing a trial of Mr Bogday for "swearing at Allah". Read more ...
Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone during a televised debate
By Aislinn Simpson
Ken Livingstone defended his decision to share a platform with a homophobic Islamic preacher as he and his challenger, Boris Johnson, were neck and neck in the race for the capital yesterday.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi has described homosexuality as an "unnatural and evil practice" and said the Koran permitted wife-beating in certain circumstances.
The Qatar-based Egyptian cleric has also advocated the use of Palestinian children as suicide bombers and once claimed that Asian tsunami victims were punished by Allah because their countries were centres of perversion.
But speaking on BBC1's Politics Show yesterday, the London Mayor insisted he was right to welcome the cleric to City Hall as an "honoured guest" in July 2004. He said that while he did not agree with some of his views, al-Qaradawi did not support terrorism against the West. "He is a man who is prepared to say al-Qa'eda is wrong and to be very strong in that condemnation," he said. Read more ...
Here is yet another indication that, contrary to both the dominant mainstream and the race/ethnicity-based parties of Europe, the jihad is not a matter of race, but ideology. The dominant mainstream sees resistance to the jihad and Islamic supremacism as "racism," while the neo-fascist parties regard resistance to the jihad as required for the preservation of white Europe. But if it is all about whites and non-whites, what of a white convert to Islam like Suleyman Simon Keeler? The focus needs to be on the destructive ideology people like Keeler have embraced -- and the fact that he embraced it shows that talk of race and racism in this context is just a red herring. I've said it before, but like so many things in this struggle, I'm going to keep saying them until someone listens and probably after that as well. A race-based approach to the anti-jihad resistance is harmful in a number of ways. Read more ...
WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick wants America to "wake up" and stop allowing terrorism to proliferate - and if that means revoking the passport of a former U.S. president or examining the preaching of prison chaplains, that's what she's prepared to do.
The Republican from Charlotte, N.C., on Friday released a list of 10 items she hopes will help peel back the layers on how radical elements of Islam might be infiltrating the military, school rooms and other elements of society. She also wants to stop the government from supporting terrorist organizations through financial investments, visa programs and military sales.
Earlier this week, she called for President Jimmy Carter's passport to be revoked because he met with Hamas, a Palestinian group that the U.S. government says supports terrorism.
"His actions reward terrorists, lend support and provide legitimacy to their belief that violence will eventually get them what they want," Myrick said. The co-founder of the House anti-terrorism caucus has spent an increasing amount of time trying to tackle what she views as threats posed at home by extremists, an issue that fuels her commitment to deporting illegal immigrants, which remains a priority.
Wake Up America
1. Investigate all military chaplains endorsed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was imprisoned for funding a terrorist organization.
2. Investigate all prison chaplains endorsed by Alamoudi.
3. Investigate the selection process of Arabic translators working for the Pentagon and the FBI.
4. Examine the non-profit status of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
5. Make it an act of sedition or solicitation of treason to preach or publish materials that call for the deaths of Americans.
6. Audit sovereign wealth funds in the United States.
7. Cancel scholarship student visa program with Saudi Arabia until they reform their text books, which she claims preach hatred and violence against non-Muslims.
8. Restrict religious visas for imams who come from countries that don't allow reciprocal visits by non-Muslim clergy.
9. Cancel contracts to train Saudi police and security in U.S. counterterrorism tactics.
10. Block the sale of sensitive military munitions to Saudi Arabia.
In reality, 2007 was one of the hardest years for Iranian homosexuals. According to Amnesty International, Iran had the highest number of execution of homosexuals in that year. Several cases of executions of homosexuals were cited in cities such as Shiraz, Esfahan, Tehran, Rasht, Ahwaz, Tabriz, Kermanshah and Mashhad. Read more ...
SANA'A, April-13 - Preventing female circumcision and pre-marriage medical tests evoked turmoil and disagreement among Parliament members (MPs) in last week's session. Read more ...
Muslims do not treat women right. According to the Global Gender Gap (GGG) report, the planet's ten-worst offenders are: Yemen, Chad, Pakistan, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Benin, Morocco, Turkey, Egypt and Oman. Of the ten, nine are Muslim-majority states. At the other end of the spectrum, the planet's best countries for women to live in are: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Spain. Not even one of the top-ten is a Muslim-majority state. Read more ...
AMSTERDAM, 20/04/08 - MP Geert Wilders has to pay compensation to rap singer Abid Tounssi. In his anti Islam film Fitna, Wilders mistakenly used a picture of the Moroccan.
On an album cover, Tounssi, who goes under the artist name Salah Edin, had himself pictured as Mohammed Bouyeri. It was his way of honouring the terrorist who in 2004 murdered Islam critic Theo van Gogh in a brutal manner in an Amsterdam street.
Due to the strong resemblance, Wilders mistakenly used the picture of Tounssi in his film Fitna when he intended to show Bouyeri. As soon as he had discovered the mistake, Wilders replaced the photograph of Tounssi for one of Bouyeri. Tounssi nevertheless instigated legal proceedings for compensation.
To some extent, Tounssi got his way. A court in Amsterdam has decided that Wilders must pay him 3,000 euros. The rapper had demanded 25,000 euros.
The initial version of Fitna with the photograph of the singer will continue to crop up on the internet. The judge therefore felt that Tounssi had a point. The compensation sum of 25,000 euros will not be granted however, because in posing as Bouyeri, Tounssi was himself responsible for the mistake. Furthermore, Wilders' mistake provided the relatively unknown singer with a great deal of publicity, which he could turn to his advantage commercially, as the court reasoned.
Photographer Ilja Meefout, who made Tounssi's Bouyeri portrait, received 5000 euros in compensation from Wilders. This was in settlement of an infringement of copyright.
So claims Ali Eteraz, who writes that "Wilders' obfuscations are pernicious. He conceals his xenophobic nativism by waving (incorrectly translated and randomly picked) verses of the Quran."
If this is true, of course, it substantially buttresses Eteraz's claim that the film is simply a manifestation of xenophobic nativism. But if the verses are quoted correctly, it says something about those moderate Muslims in the West who seem desperate to make sure that non-Muslims do not know what is in the Qur'an and how jihadists are using those verses to make recruits among peaceful Muslims.
You remember Ali Eteraz. He's the Muslim reformist with whom I have had several exchanges in the past -- during which he several times manifested a disheartening disingenuousness rather than the honesty we have a right to expect from reformist Muslims. Anyway, in support of his claim that Geert Wilders's notorious film Fitna mistranslates the Qur'an, he links to none other than Michael van der Galien, the European blogger who has demonstrated a touching readiness to accept his distortions. But van der Galien, in his review of Fitna to which Eteraz links, doesn't actually say that the Qur'an verses quoted in Fitna are incorrectly translated. Rather, he spends a great deal time explaining (incorrectly, but that's another story) the context of Qur'an 8:60, by referring to the surrounding verses. Read more ...
In "Do Radicals Dominate Islam?" at Commentary's Contentions blog, Max Boot says it doesn't, and discusses a debate held in New York recently. The debate thesis was "Islam is dominated by radicals." Read more ...
In his blog entry, Subhani attempts to come across as an impartial observer of the trial who was swayed by the outcome of the case. If his claim weren’t so biased, it’d be funny. But when it comes to CAIR and radical Islam…nobody is laughing.
Perhaps Subhani is not aware that CAIR is calling Al-Arian a “political prisoner”?
Consider, he is the communications director for a CAIR chapter; this means he is on Hooper’s speed-dial list. Is Hooper not keeping Subhani up to date on the party line? Subhani attends American universities; he cannot claim he doesn’t speak, read & write English.
So, what motivates Subhani?
Simple. It’s another case of CAIR trying to con the rubes. Only this time it didn’t work. Continue reading
Aunts of THE MURDERED GIRLS Amina and Sarah have set up an account with "Crime Stopper". They are trying to catch the murdering, torturing father that killed these sweet girls in an "honor" killing. Murdered Girls' Father Had Long History of Abuse.
The dhimmi, jihad loving press never gave this terrible crime the attention it deserved because they are terrified to say anything against Islam but this horrible "honor killing" in Texas should have been front and center in the media spotlight. Why didn't this gruesome murder get the same (if not more) than the sect in Texas that the media is currently obsessed with. Because it is Islamic in nature?
America is woefully ignorant of this crime and the growing trend of abhorrent Islamic practices into Western societies. Read more ...
The organization Muslims Against Sharia is creating a new Koran with the violent verses removed. How legitimate and wise is this action? There is an effort in Turkey, for instance, to also revise Islamic texts. What real hope can these acts offer to bring Islam into the modern and democratic world? To discuss this issue with us today, Frontpage Symposium has assembled a distinguished panel. Our guests are:
• Khalim Massoud, the president of Muslims Against Sharia, an Islamic reform movement. • Edip Yuksel, a Kurdish-Turkish-American author and progressive activist who spent four years in Turkish prisons in the 1980's for his political writings and activities promoting an Islamic revolution in Turkey. He experienced a paradigm change in 1986 transforming him from a Sunni Muslim leader to a reformed Muslim or rational monotheist. • Thomas Haidon, a Muslim commentator on human rights, counter-terrorism and Islamic affairs. He is active in the Qur'anist movement and works with a number of Islamic reform organisations as an advisor. He has provided guidance to several governments on counter-terrorism issues and his works have been published in legal periodicals, and other media. Mr. Haidon has also provided advice to and worked for United Nations agencies in Sudan and Indonesia. • Abul Kasem, an ex-Muslim who is the author of hundreds of articles and several books on Islam including, Women in Islam. He was a contributor to the book Leaving Islam - Apostates Speak Out as well as to Beyond Jihad: Critical Views From Inside Islam. • Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace? • Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) and spokesman for politicalislam.com. CSPI's goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced an eleven book series on political Islam. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors. The Center's latest book is The Submission of Women and Slaves, Islamic Duality. Read more ...
At the National Theatre, a new play by the former radical playwright Howard Brenton, Never So Good, paints a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of the Sixties Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who as a young man opposed Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.
Chamberlain's claim that he could talk Germany out of war and produce "peace for our time" is, of course, a byword for craven weakness and earns only contempt. But in the very week the play opened, a second Chamberlain was revealed in the form of our Defence Secretary, Des Browne.
In an interview on Saturday, Mr Browne said he thought Britain should be talking to "elements of the Taliban and Hezbollah". Read more ...
Islam teacher Suhayb Salam from Tilburg, taught his students to hate infidels, according ot journalist Patrick Pouw in his book "Salaam! Een jaar onder orthodoxe moslims" (Salam! A year among orthodox Muslims). Suhayb is the son of Tilburg imam Ahmed Salam, who had in the past refused to shake minister Verdonk's hand.
For a year Pouw learned by the ultra-orthodox Salafist Salam, manager of the Islamic Institute for Upbringing and Education. In this institute youth are taught to be preachers of the "only true faith, Islam".
Salam hammed in ever lesson on the duty to hate unbelievers. Pouw writes in his book: "We learned that all infidels were enemies of Allah, that everybody who didn't follow Islam is an enemy of Allah. We heard that sincere love for Allah means that we must hate his enemies, and must see them as our enemies. That was nothing less than an obligation."
Salam told his students that Muslims may not report each other to the police. "Since that would mean that a non-Muslim, an infidel, would judge a Muslim." Read more ...
The New York Times today became the latest tool in an aggressive lobbying campaign aimed at sabotaging a terror investigation in northern Virginia.
The campaign to free Sami Al-Arian started last year, led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and other American Islamist groups after the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) operative was held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with consecutive grand jury subpoenas. He now is defying his third subpoena to testify in a terror finance investigation involving a Virginia-based network that provided Al-Arian's organizations with tens of thousands of dollars in the 1990s.
In 2006, Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, with credit for time served, after pleading guilty to conspiracy to provide goods and services to the PIJ. Though his prison sentence is over, Al-Arian could be held in contempt again or even face criminal contempt of court charges. That's what the New York Times reports today. But, just like Al-Arian's supporters, today's Times story grossly mischaracterizes the case, distorts what Al-Arian has admitted and incorrectly states why he remains in jeopardy
When is it appropriate to critique the policies of private enterprise? Private institutions are clearly permitted to carry out their business in a manner appropriate to their market, so long as they operate within the boundaries of the law. However, these institutions - commercial, educational, or the media - also play a major societal role, and hence carry great responsibility. For this reason, the practice of criticizing these institutions is an established tradition, as illustrated by book reviews, theater criticism, Hollywood gossip columns, sports talk, consumer reports, and others. Acknowledging that the critique of private institutions is different from the sort directed at government, we engage private sector entities in consideration of the influence they peddle and (indirect) power they wield. Read more...
HEZBOLLAH, THE RADICAL Shiite terrorist organization in Lebanon, is best known for attacking Israelis. But the organization also attempts to gain the support of Lebanese citizens with a sophisticated network of social services, political outreach, and financial aid. And recently, the militia has turned to advertising campaigns to bolster its image.
Hezbollah owns or controls at least two known advertising companies: Ressalat and Media-Publi Management. The U.S. Department of the Treasury should designate both as Specially Designated Global Terrorist entities (SDGTs) immediately as part of its ongoing campaign to cut off Hezbollah from the global financial system.
According to a recent article in the Lebanese al-Nahar, Ressalat is a "Hizbullah-funded organization that handles advertising and cultural events for the group." The company does not appear to have a web presence, but al-Nahar identified Mohamed Noureddine as Ressalat's creative director. One French report also identified Noureddine as the director of a think tank tied to Hezbollah's secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. His name can also be found alongside pro-Hezbollah videos on YouTube. After the car bombing that killed Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh on February 13, Noureddine and his team launched a sophisticated advertising campaign to lionize the slain terrorist leader. Within hours of the bombing, colorful stencil drawings of Mughniyeh's bearded and bespectacled face appeared on huge billboards throughout Lebanon. The stenciled portrait was similar to the iconic drawing of Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. These Mughniyeh billboards--some of which read: "Prophecy of the Final Victory"--now line the road from the Beirut airport to the city's downtown district. According to Mohammed al-Amin, managing director of a billboard company that rented space to Ressalat, the entire network of billboards along the airport road and within the group's stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut cost at least $100,000. Read more ...
Refused entry: David Toube and his 10-year-old son were turned away from a 'Muslim-only' swimming session.
By Colin Fernandez and Nick McDermott
A father and his five-year-old son were turned away from their local swimming pool because they were the wrong religion.
David Toube, 39, and his son Harry were told that the Sunday morning session was reserved for Muslim men only.
Hackney Council, which runs the Clissold Leisure Centre in Stoke Newington, north London, claimed staff there had made a mistake.
However, the Muslim-only session was advertised on its website.
Mr Toube, a corporate lawyer, described his experiences on a blog.
"I arrived at the pool to discover that they were holding what staff described to me as "Muslim men only swimming"," he wrote.
"I asked whether my son and I could go as we were both male. I was told that the session was for Muslims only and that we could not be admitted. I asked what would happen if I turned up and insisted I was Muslim.
"The manager suggested that they might ask the Muslims swimming if they minded my son and I swimming with them. If they didn't object, we might be allowed in."
A few days later, Mr Toube, who lives with his wife, 38-year-old barrister Samantha, and their two sons in Stoke Newington, North London, spoke to another leisure centre employee.
"He gave me an identical story. His explanation was that it was a requirement of the Muslim religion that Muslims could not swim with non-Muslims." Read more ...
The contemporary pronouncements of the Islamic Center of Cleveland's clerical "Imamate"-Fawaz Damra and his erstwhile replacement Ahmed Alzaree-illustrate an ancient, but continuous tradition of anti-Jewish incitement by Islam's "popular preachers," very much alive today. And the historical treatment of Jews in Muslim societies-chronic oppression, punctuated by outbursts of mass anti-Jewish violence, forced conversion to Islam, or expulsionp-has been consistent with such sacralized religious bigotry. Promoters of modern jihad genocide from the former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, to contemporary Hamas clerics, have repeatedly invoked Islam's Jew-exterminating eschatology. Read more ...
Riyadh, 18 April (AKI) - A 23 year old girl, forced to marry at ten in Saudi Arabia was ordered to pay the equivalent of 16,750 euros to obtain a divorce from his husband, according to Saudi daily al-Watan.
The girl, deemed as a 'rebel' by a judge in the capital, Riyadh, was forced to marry a 67-year-old man due to her family's economic problems, in exchange for a dowry of 100,000 Saudi riyals (16,750 euros).
According to the judge, the girl does not have any grounds for divorce, but if she wants to divorce the husband, she must return the dowry given to the family 13 years ago. Read more ...
A defendant who absconded after he was convicted of terror offences alongside the preacher of hate Abu Izzadeen has handed himself in to police.
Shah Jalal Hussain, 25, disappeared while the jury trying him at Kingston Crown Court was still deliberating.
He failed to turn up at court last Tuesday and police have been searching his home address and those of his relatives for any sign of him.
Yesterday, he was found guilty of fundraising for terrorists alongside notorious Muslim activist Izzadeen.
Both men and four co-defendants were due to be sentenced today.
Izzadeen - the preacher who heckled former Home Secretary John Reid - is facing life in prison for inciting terrorism overseas and fundraising for terrorists. Read more ...
Pakistan: Supporters of Pakistani religious parties rally against the republishing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers in Karachi, Pakistan on Thursday, April 17, 2008. The Netherlands has shifted its embassy in the Pakistani capital to a luxury hotel because of security worries following the release of a film criticizing Islam.
Indonesian prosecutors have recommended a four-year jail sentence for the leader of a Muslim sect charged with blasphemy.
Ahmad Mushaddeq was charged with blasphemy and insulting an official religion after he said he was a Muslim prophet, a claim he has since retracted.
A key tenet of mainstream Islam is that Mohammad was the final prophet, and will not be followed by any other messengers from God.
The defendant's Al Qiyadah Al Islamiyah sect was proscribed as "deviant" last year by the Indonesian Council of Ulemas, the peak group of religious scholars with semi-legal authority.
Indonesia is drafting a decree that will ban a Muslim sect that has been branded heretical by most Muslims.
The Ahmadiyya sect views itself as Muslim but it has been branded a heretical group by the Indonesian Ulema Council, the secular country's highest Muslim authority, which has issued a fatwa against it.
A team with officials from two government ministries and the attorney general's office has recommended the government ban the sect because its teachings deviate from the central tenets of Islam. Read more ...
In the article, titled "Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?" 'Alwan called on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews' right to Palestine, because justice demanded it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He added that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society. Read more ...
Self-delusion reaches new heights when clueless Westerners defend Sharia, the "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood, and "mild" Islamism.
By Youssef M. Ibrahim
Somewhere during Lawrence of Arabia's blockbuster career, his bosses wondered if he was becoming "more Arab" in the desert to which they sent him to lead a revolt against the Ottoman Empire. In an endearing cue to imperial haughtiness, Field Marshal Lord Allenby asks if his man had "gone native."
Indeed the spymaster and legendary British officer became quickly enmeshed in the tangled web he weaved back at the turn of the last century.
Likewise, when communism dawned in the 1920s, Vladimir Lenin ordered a strategy of nurturing "useful idiots" - by which he meant a contingent of communist Lawrences in the West. It worked, spawning hundreds of thousands of enamored scholars, intellectuals, experts, and dreamy romantics waving the red flags of Bolsheviks over the 70 years of the Cold War.
Today’s Islamist Lawrences are being cultivated among a broad swath of political analysts, scholars, anthropologists, pundits, missionaries, and even spies dissecting militant Islam and Islamofascism. While most carry out illuminating and necessary work, the fish they bait ends up ensnaring many.
A few recent catches: the archbishop of Canterbury urging the introduction of Sharia law in Britain; Harvard University, a bastion of secular scholarship, shutting its gym to men to accommodate Muslim women; authorities at Minneapolis’s international airport negotiating for months with 700 Somali Muslim taxi drivers who refused to pick up passengers carrying liquor or depending on guide dogs.
Then there was President George Bush launching his Muslim initiative last June from the Islamic Center of Washington, a Saudi institution distributing educational material instructing Muslims to segregate themselves from other Americans.
Among other things, the Saudi-funded publications admonish Muslims in America "to dissociate from infidels, hate them for their religion, never to rely on them for support, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law." The question: how was it that among the estimated five million Muslim Americans with hugely varied institutions, the president's advisors picked a Saudi Islamofascist ghetto as a venue?
This cluelessness is spreading into the academy and the arts too.
Witness the Guggenheim Museum of New York and the Louvre of Paris, along with Carnegie Mellon, Texas A&M, and multiple U.S. institutions, rushing to open branches in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, where laws institutionalize bigotry against women, Sharia bans images, and the government condones grievous violations of human rights for millions of expatriates of other religions.
Imagine the contortions of folks at Yale, Stanford, or Oxford when they have to explain founding campuses in Riyadh where women are not allowed or can participate only via closed circuit TV.
Useful idiocy reaches a higher plane among Western pundits who propagate the Saudi view of reverse progress, namely that Islamic societies have "particular requirements" and are evolving as "different models," of which we should not be "judgmental."
Fundamentalist creep is engulfing bastions of respectability in Western media too. At the start of Turkey's slide away from secularism last May, the Wall Street Journal glossed over Prime Minister Erdogan's aggressive Islamization, criticizing his secular opponents instead. The Economist argued his policy is tolerable, "even if it means enduring a bad, ineffective, corrupt, or mildly Islamist government."
Last April a major New York Times Magazine article by James Traub argued fervently on behalf of "Islamic democrats" singing the praises of a reborn Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. This was followed by a major essay in Foreign Affairs, a weighty establishment publication, by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke titled "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood." The piece declared the fundamentalist group acceptable, among other things, as some of its leaders were interviewed in English, appeared reasonable, listened to classical music, and knew of Shakespeare. The article was so lacking in inquisitiveness it merited being posted on the Muslim Brotherhood website - ikhwanonline.com - as part of their propaganda.
The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century, a recent book authored by respected Mideast analyst of the New Yorker Steve Coll, presents the human side of Osama bin Laden, who adopted modern technology in his terror and whose wealthy contracting father employed Christians and other infidels in his business.
We should come back to reality.
Mild Islamism is an oxymoron. Sharia law, which sanctions beating of wives and stoning for adultery, is irreconcilable with human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood founded Hamas, calls suicide bombings a good thing, and is the 21st-century version of the organized fascism of Hitler and Mussolini in the last century.
Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal, is a freelance writer and Mideast political risk consultant based in New York.
The extremist Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has apparently found a home in Hilliard at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center. Just this past February, MPAC community development director Haris Tarin made an appearance at Noor. And just this past weekend, the chief MPAC extremist himself, Salam Al-Marayati, was the featured speaker at a youth(!) event at Noor. Read more ...
Omar Al-Sweilem: "Harith Ibn Al-Muhasibi told us what would happen when we meet the black-eyed virgin with her black hair and white face - praised be He who created night and day.
"What hair! What a chest! What a mouth! What cheeks! What a figure! What breasts! What thighs! What legs! What whiteness! What softness! Without any creams - no Nivea, no Vaseline. No nothing!" More ...
Palestinian Authority representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki gave an interview to NBN TV on April 9, 2008. Zaki, aka Sharif Mash'al, is a former Palestinian Legislative Council member for Hebron, former Fatah operations head, and current PLO Central Council member. He headed the PLO Lebanon Committee and the Palestine National Liberation Army's political commissariat, and was an opponent of the Oslo Accords. More ...
The following are excerpts from an interview with Rif'at Al-Sa'id, leader of the Egyptian opposition party Tagammu'. The interview aired on Al-Mihwar TV on March 16, 2008:
Rif'at Al-Sa'id: "Our party strives for a civil, progressive, democratic, and liberal future, in which the rights of the citizens will be respected, a future in which the livelihood and liberties will be guaranteed, as well as better education, better housing, and better healthcare, a future in which the rights of women and of Copts will be respected. How can I possibly accept a movement that rejects the future and looks back towards the past?" Read more ...
An article entitled" University Of Pennsylvania Hillel Conducts Interfaith Hoax With Radical Muslim Student Association warned that:
"Since the Muslim Student Association is an integral part of the Saudi-funded Wahhabist power structure, this interfaith trip can't be anything but a da'wa exercise by the group, a call to convert the Jewish students." Read more ...
April 17, 2008 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - In a joint press release Parvez Ahmad, the Council on American Islamic Relation's board chair and Agha Saeed national chair of the American Muslim Alliance have demanded the release of self-admitted Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist Sami Al Arian, who remains in custody pending deportation.
Ahmad and Saeed have called Al Arian a "political prisoner," stating that he was, "...targeted not for his actions, but for his political views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
However if indeed Al Arian is a political prisoner why did he plead guilty to, "conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," a direct admission that he was indeed the terrorist which the government had alleged all along?
Further, according to an April 17, 2006 DOJ press release:
"...Former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ], a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law, the Department of Justice announced today...Al-Arian pleaded guilty to Count Four of the indictment against him - a charge of conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...Al-Arian's agreement with the government calls for a recommended prison sentence of 46 to 57 months in prison, based on a five-year maximum statutory sentence. Al-Arian, 48, who has been in custody since his arrest on Feb. 20, 2003, has agreed to stipulate to deportation to another country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement once his prison sentence has ended..." Read more ...
The Islamist movement has two wings - one violent and one lawful, which can operate apart but often reinforce each other. While the violent arm attempts to silence speech by burning cars when cartoons of Mohammed are published in Denmark, the lawful arm is skillfully maneuvering within Western legal systems, both here and abroad.
Islamists with financial means have launched a "legal Jihad," filing frivolous and malicious lawsuits with the aim of abolishing public discourse critical of Islam and with the goal of establishing principles of Sharia law (strict Islamic law dating back to the 9th Century) as the governing political and legal authority in the West.
Islamist Lawfare is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, and undertaken as a means to intimidate, demoralize and bankrupt defendants. The lawsuits range in their claims from defamation to workplace harassment and they have resulted in books being pulped and meritorious articles going unpublished.
Forum shopping, whereby Plaintiffs bring actions in jurisdictions most likely to rule in their favor, has enabled a wave of "libel tourism." At the time of her death in 2006, noted Italian author Orianna Fallaci was being sued in France, Italy, Switzerland and other jurisdictions by groups dedicated to preventing the dissemination of her work. Read more ...
According to the U.S. State Department's Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) listing, Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is a federal crime to provide "material support or resources" to a designated FTO. But the Washington Post, the New York Times, at least one of the Holy Foundation Trial criminal trial jurors, and Mr. Jimmy Carter do not accept that Hamas is a terrorist organization. Mr. Carter is meeting with the Hamas terrorist group and seeks to influence American foreign policy in regards to that group. As Mr. Carter embraces members of the Hamas terrorist group, what are the consequences of American tolerance of those who defend, consort with, and provide a platform of legitimacy for terrorist groups?
Many are outraged by the actions of those who provide legitimacy, defense, and a platform for Foreign Terrorist Organizations such as Hamas. But until such individuals and groups face federal legal consequences for their actions, the emboldened supporters of terror groups will only continue to grow, undermining American law and American foreign policy. Read more ...
To most in government, revelations such as these were worrisome but dismissed as anomalies. There was little speculation in government that there might be a larger, organized, well-oiled conspiracy. Those who sought to probe further often found their efforts constrained, undermined or thwarted by a culture of "risk avoidance" and "political correctness" that in recent years has run amok. It is the nature of government bureaucracies to abhor controversy, particularly controversy involving matters of faith. Few in government are willing to open themselves to accusations of bigotry, knowing that even groundless accusations can be costly in terms of time, money, lost promotions and battered reputations. For those working in such a setting, controversy is anything but career enhancing. It is like being accused of being a pedophile. Although the individual may be cleared of all charges, the accusation alone can cause irreparable damage. It is McCarthyism in reverse. Read more ...
While we understandably worry about terrorist infiltration across our borders, the uncomfortable truth is they already live among us as quiet, affable, next door neighbors who keep an immaculate lawn, are members of the garden club, and babysit our kids. Border security is vital, but so is countering the internal threat which, too often, is treated in a dismissive and even contemptuous fashion. Often labeled by the foolish or malevolent as "Islamophobia" or "bigotry," the American-based Islamists do their best to erode our confidence in government's efforts to secure the homeland and, too often, such efforts are inadvertently aided by government incompetence and misdirected zeal.
And when the motivations of the Islamists are called into question and links between them and terrorist groups exposed, they turn to invective and law suit in an attempt to intimidate and silence their critics. Being blessed with deep pockets they were in the past, too often, successful. They had learned that the best defense is an aggressive "take-no-prisoners" offense. But their detractors also learned to meet their lawsuits head on using "discovery" and other tools of the American legal system to turn the tables. The War on Terrorism is being fought on a variety of fronts by some very unlikely people. Read more ...
"Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the service of Allah is our highest hope."
Credo of the Muslim Brotherhood
Introduction
Most of us who study terrorism focus primarily, if not exclusively, on the violence and the carnage. But there is another aspect to terrorism that that represents a long term, sub-threshold threat and highly effective form of attack to which we are subjected on a daily basis. It is a campaign of sophisticated Political Warfare that is largely unacknowledged by the government and, as a consequence, is unappreciated by the American public.
Radical Islam in a multitude of forms and guises, using a broad array of tactics and strategies represents the prime internal security threat to our country. The government focuses primarily on the external threat but for literally decades highly trained Islamist cadre have been operating successfully and with significant effect on American soil. The nature and scope of this growing and complex internal threat is rarely addressed in public forums. Some have described it as the "third rail" of American political discourse. Read more ...
Islamofascism: Suicide bombs aren't the only chilling weapon Islamists are using in their war to the death with Western civilization. Exploiting the free world's laws on libel and so-called hate speech, they intimidate truth-telling writers. Read more ...
New York: Pakistani editor of a weekly published here has allegedly received a death threat for promoting a beauty pageant, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has said.
Majeed Babar, Executive Editor of the Weekly Asia Tribune, said a man called him on March 29 and told him in Urdu, "we will cut you to pieces," a CPJ statement revealed. Read more ...
By now, most people have heard of Geert Wilders' 17-minute film, Fitna, which has predictably outraged the Muslim world by mixing scenes of Islamic terror and oppression with verses from the Koran appearing to support the mistreatment of those outside the religion. The well-publicized death threats against the producers and providers undoubtedly prompted many who would not otherwise have been interested into watching the video over the Internet.
The reaction to Fitna in the Islamic world has been somewhat muted compared to the cartoon protests of two years ago, in which more than 100 people, including a Catholic priest, were killed in the riots and targeted assassinations that followed the printing of Muhammad's image by a Danish newspaper. Later in 2006, another series of Muslim riots - ironically over the Pope's suggestion that Islam has a violence problem - left more people dead, including an elderly nun who was shot in the back by a Muslim devotee while working at a children's hospital.
In October 2002, MSA-UM co-sponsored a conference that called for the United States to end its government aid to Israel. That same year, MSA-UM co-hosted the Palestine Solidarity Movement's Second National Student Conference, which featured the guest speaker Sami al-Arian, who was then awaiting trial on terrorism-related charges for his affiliation with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. At the event audience members chanted "Death to Israel." Read more ...
Hezbollah chief Sheikh Nassan Nasrallah is the most admired leader in the Arab world, according to a poll released recently by the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland.
Nasrallah seems to be gaining in popularity, with some 26 percent of respondents voicing support for him. Syrian President Bashar Assad also won an increase in popularity, according to the poll.
The survey also found that the majority of Arab public - in contrast to their governments - does not view Iran as a major threat.
Respondents said they believe Iran should be free to pursue its nuclear program and are opposed to international pressure to
HAMAS spokesman Ahmed Yousef (left) and Columbus resident Anisa Abd El Fattah/Caroline Keeble (right) and one of the books they co-authored
