Muslims Against Sharia

Dutch Court Acquits Geert Wilders of Hate Charges

2011-06-24T05:23:00.003+02:00

June 23, 2011 - An enormous victory for free speech was won in the Netherlands (Holland) on June 22, 2011. Dutch politician Geert Wilders has been fighting charges of "inciting hatred" by speaking out against sharia law and other Islamic practices. Wilders' Freedom Party is the Netherlands' third largest political party in the nation's parliament. (Below is a video report by AlJazeera, followed by a video titled "Geert Wilders' Warning to America.")

"The acquittal yesterday of Dutch anti-Islamic politician Geert Wilders on charges of inciting hatred," reports The Independent (UK), "has split the Netherlands down the middle as effectively as the populist MP's right-wing rhetoric." The report about the acquittal of Geert Wilders noted that the judge "ruled that some of Mr Wilders' comments may have been "crude and denigrating" but they did not amount to inciting hatred against Muslims and remained within the boundaries of free speech."

“I am delighted with this ruling,” wrote Geert Wilders on his own website today. “It is a victory, not only for me but for all the Dutch people. Today is a victory for freedom of speech. The Dutch are still allowed to speak critically about islam, and resistance against islamisation is not a crime. I have spoken, I speak and I shall continue to speak.”

Wilders's final remarks in his Amsterdam trial were powerful. You can watch a video Wilders' closing remarks on YouTube (in Dutch with English subtitles).

The Independent report quoted a sociologist in Amsterdam as saying that Wilders "has been told that he has been rude and offensive but it is on the border of what the criminal law allows. It is good. The Netherlands is, after all, a tolerant country and we should keep it that way."

Wilders went on trial in October 2010 because he compared the Koran with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." In Geert Wilders' closing statement, reports Der Spiegel, he "said that his controversial statements against Islam were protected by the right to free speech. Wilders said he believed the process of Islamization presents a threat to Europe and that it is his right and duty to warn the public about it. If he had been convicted, Wilders could have faced up to one year in jail or a fine of up to €7,600 ($10,865). At the peak of the controversy over his statements, Wilders was once even banned from entering the United Kingdom."

Source: Chicago News Bench

"67 BORDERS NOT DEFENSIBLE" - SAYS ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU

2011-05-24T17:51:00.001+02:00

"67 BORDERS NOT DEFENSIBLE" - SAYS ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER NETANYAHU

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was greeted with great enthusiasm and thunderous applause at the concluding banquet of the 2011 AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington last night. "America! We're with you, this day and every day", he said, mentioning the tragic death tolls in the aftermath of the tornados in Joplin, Missouri.

Thanking his "good friends", Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker of the House John Boehner, (R-OH) he said that "Israel thanks you for your deep commitment to its security". Embellishing on the unbreakable United States/Israel relationship, Netanyahu said, "Israel is America's indispensable ally" and thus, the two nations should stand "shoulder to shoulder" and protect their common interests. On a lighter note, the Prime Minister mentioned that he and his wife toured Washington, visiting the monuments to America's founding leaders and said that, "I read the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, 'we hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal', and these exalted principles were "first championed by the Jewish people; that we are all created in G-d's image", adding that "Israel is the cradle of our civilization".

"Today, one million Muslims enjoy full democratic rights in Israel; Christians are free to practice their faith; all because of the shared principles of democracy that bind us," he said. Receiving a great round of applause, the Prime Minister said, "these rights go forth from the one, united city of Jerusalem".

Saying that "Israel and America share deep well springs of our common values as we have forged an enduring friendship, not just between our governments, but between our peoples."

At one point in his speech, he stopped and heaped accolades upon Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I) of Connecticut; one of Israel's greatest friends and allies in the US Senate and said there is hope for uniting, 'even independents like you, Joe"

"The American people's support for Israel is reflected in my invitation to address a joint meeting of Congress tomorrow" he said. "I will talk about the great convulsion taking place in the Middle East; I will talk about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran. I will also outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace. I will speak the unvarnished truth. Now, more than ever, what we need is clarity', he added

"Since the days of Harry Truman', said the Prime Minister, "there has been broad support for Israel in the US and they have stood by us as we meet the challenges of the future" He also thanked President Obama and Congress "for vital assistance so Israel can defend herself, by herself".

Making special mention of the "Irondome" missile defense system, the Prime Minister related a recent incident in which Hamas rockets were intercepted in mid-air.

Speaking of the cooperation and state of the art advancements in science, trade, technology and investments, Netanyahu said, "not only do American companies invest in Israeli companies, but Israeli companies have invested $50 billion in American companies, helping to stimulate the US economy."

In the field of medical research and development, he spoke of the rapid advancements in research of Alzheimer's disease and cancer and spoke of the Israeli invention of a "tiny diagnostic camera that can fit inside a pill" and of the "miraculous bandage that helped to save the life of Arizona congresswoman Gabriella Giffords" who was the victim of an attempted assassination in January.

On the political front, the Prime Minister spoke of the "great convulsion in the Middle East" and "the dangers of a nuclear powered Iran". The simple truth, he said is, "the problems of the region are not rooted in Israel". Illustrating the yearnings for "freedom, progress and a better life" by peoples throughout North Africa and the Middle East, he said that their aspirations are not related to Israel but to their own brutal governments and despotic leadership.

In an indirect manner, he took issue with US President Obama by intoning,"peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not a panacea for problems in the Middle East. Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East but what is right about the Middle East." Expressing his desire for a just and lasting peace, the Prime Minister said, "We want peace; we know the agony of war; the pain of terror". Stating that the impasse of peace negotiations rests squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinians, he declared, "peace has not been achieved because they (the Palestinians) refuse to recognize the Jewish state".

Firing yet another salvo at President Obama for his recent shift in foreign policy towards Israel that was outlined in his now infamous speech delivered on May 19th, the Prime Minister declared, "Israel must be left with defensible borders and this cannot be achieved with the 1967 lines".

Thanking the US for condemning Hamas in the most vociferous of terms, he also spoke of the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been held by Hamas for five years with not a single visit from the Red Cross. “The whole world should join together with a simple message for Hamas: release Gilad Shalit!” called Netanyahu.
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AIPAC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ADDRESSES UPRISINGS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

2011-05-24T17:48:00.001+02:00

AIPAC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ADDRESSES UPRISINGS IN THE MIDDLE EAST

BY: FERN SIDMAN

During the morning session of day two of the AIPAC 2011 Policy Conference, the organization's Howard Kohr addressed the recent insurrections in North Africa and the Arab countries of the Middle East. "Think back just one year ago: Which one of us, when people thronged the streets and squares across the Arab world, demanding regime change – which one of us would have predicted they would not be shouting slogans against the United States, or carrying signs slandering Israel? Which one of us would have predicted we would hear those voices crying out against the injustices of their own rulers – crying out for the right to determine their own fates?" he queried.

Despite the initial hopes that the advancement of democracy and freedom would eventually become endemic to these countries Mr. Kohr pointed to the fact that the precise opposite results have unfolded with "America and Israel once more the enemy." Using oblique references to the rise in popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic elements, Mr. Kohr said, "There are forces – internal and external – in every one of the Arab nations who seek a different ending to the story. Who seek to strengthen the forces of oppression and stifle democracy. Who seek to defeat America and to destroy Israel. Who seek to use this moment of hope to advance their own power and substitute a new era of repression and aggression."

Reminding his audience of the recent January 25th revolution that took place in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, Mr. Kohr spoke of fallen president Hosni Mubarak and the ultimate outcomes of the uprising. "Even now, when the dictators have been deposed, that remains their legacy heard today on the Arab Street. Is it any surprise that the fall of a dictator leaves a vacuum – setting off a scramble for power in which the forces of democracy are just one contender among many?"

In stark contrast to the true nature of democratic institutions, Mr. Kohr addressed the underlying anti-Semitism that accompanies the protracted events. "We should all celebrate the genuine green shoots of democracy in the Arab world, but we must never shrink from calling out and condemning anti-Semitic policy under the guise of popular will. True democracy is more than the right to vote. True democracy includes building civil institutions and a sense of civic responsibility. And true democracy can never be rooted in racist hatred." He added, "We have an obligation to urge our policy-makers to do all they can to ensure that Egypt holds to its peace treaty with Israel" and said that this should be an imperative of American foreign policy.

"For 30 years, the prospect of an all-Arab war against Israel has been inconceivable – impossible, without the participation of Egypt. For 30 years, not only Israel, but the United States and the world have benefited in a shared strategic interest that there be no regional war in the Middle East. Should the new Egyptian Government renounce the peace treaty with Israel – the inconceivable becomes possible", he intoned.

Declaring that a post-Mubarak Egypt must maintain its commitment to peace with Israel, Mr. Kohr added that that would include "a continuation of the blockade of Gaza, no rapprochement with Iran and maintaining the integrity of the Suez Canal."

Pertaining the draconian measures employed against pro-democracy protestors by the Syrian government, Mr. Kohr was livid by the abject silence of the world."In Syria – we are witnessing political turmoil not seen in 30 years. What we see there is the raw power of repression. Indiscriminate killing. Mass graves. Tanks rolling through the streets. Secret police going door to door, rounding up thousands of people – torn from their homes, many never to be seen again. Where is the international outrage? Where are the demands that this must stop? And where is the U.N. Security Council Resolution? We applaud last week’s decision by the White House to sanction Assad, and we hope this is the beginning of ratcheted pressure on this regime."

Also addressing the international nemesis that is embodied by Iran, Mr. Kohr declared, "There is one regime whose leaders regularly celebrate the rising masses in every Arab nation – and yet, will not tolerate the smallest street gathering at home. When it comes to Iran – the international community has fallen silent. Yet, Iran is fomenting unrest in Bahrain. They are aiding the crackdown in Syria. Iran is funding Hezbollah, and they are arming Hamas. Iran is projecting its strength by sending naval ships into the Eastern Mediterranean. Iran is running new weapons into the region, and they are encouraging their proxies to probe and provoke Israel. And if that were not enough, Iran just went to the International Atomic Energy Agency and said – “We are ready to implement the next phase of our nuclear program.”

Concerning the ill advised partnership of Fatah and Hamas, Mr. Kohr proffered an astute analysis of the reluctance of the PA leader to takes the steps necessary to create a long-term peace agreement with Israel. "Abbas is ready to go to the ends of the earth but he will not travel the few short steps to sit down with Israel to pursue real peace." Citing Abbas willingness to orchestrate a propaganda campaign against Israel, he said, "So for the past 18 months, he has traveled a long and winding path, taking him farther and farther away from the neighbor he needs to sit down and negotiate with. Instead, Abbas has traveled as far as European and South American capitals, where he has encouraged the de-legitimization of the Jewish state, aimed at sapping Israel’s very ability to defend her own citizens. He has even begun to carve a path to the United Nations to seek a unilateral recognition for statehood. And now, in the last month, he has decided to come back – closer to home and pursue an effort to make peace with Hamas."

Mr. Kohr urged "faith, trust, and confidence between the leaders of Israel and the United States", adding that, "if Israel's foes come to believe that there is diplomatic daylight between the United States and Israel, they will have every incentive to try to exploit those differences and shun peace with the Jewish state."

PRESIDENT OBAMA ATTEMPTS TO SHORE UP SUPPORT AT AIPAC CONFERENCE

2011-05-24T17:21:00.001+02:00

PRESIDENT OBAMA ATTEMPTS TO SHORE UP SUPPORT AT AIPAC CONFERENCE

BY: FERN SIDMAN

In an address aimed at placating his disgruntled Jewish supporters, President Barack Obama told his audience of over 10,000 at the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington, D.C. on Sunday that "a strong and secure Israel is in the interest of the United States and the bond between our two vibrant democracies must be nurtured."

He maintained that he did not say anything fundamentally new in his Thursday speech,, when he mentioned the "1967 borders" as a basis for future peaceTaking intense criticism from pro-Israel supporters since then, when he called for Israel to negotiate a future Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, he sought to heal wounds by enumerating actions taken by the US to foster Israel's security."We have made the most advanced technologies available to Israel including the 'iron dome' anti-rocket system. We have imposed the toughest sanctions on the Iranian regime as we remain committed to stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. We have told the United Nations that it will meet resistance from the US as we stand in steadfast opposition to their efforts to isolate and delegitimize Israel. We responded to the Goldstone report by reasserting our belief that Israel has a right to defend herself", declared President Obama.

Obama said "demographic realities are making it harder to maintain Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state and a just and lasting peace can only be achieved through the establishment of two states for two peoples. Warning that procrastination on a peace deal with the Palestinians will only serve to "undermine" Israel's security, President Obama said that any borders for a proposed Palestinian state would be predicated upon "mutual swaps" and recognition that geo-political realities have changed since 1967. "We must acknowledge that a failure to try and make peace is not acceptable," he said.

He insisted that his statement last week, in which he mentioned the 1949-1967 borders as the basis for a peace agreement, was a continuation of the policy of previous administrations. Regarding the phrase “1967 lines,” Obama repeated part of his Thursday speech verbatim.

“Let me reaffirm what ‘1967 lines with swaps’ means,” he then added. “The parties themselves will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed in 1967. That is what ‘mutually agreed swaps’ means. It allows for the parties to take account of the changes that have taken place over the past 44 years, including demographic facts on the ground and the needs of both sides.”

Disclosing the essence of his meeting on Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama said, "As friends often do, we may disagree. We have an open and honest relationship.".

“Core issues can only be negotiated in direct talks between the parties,” he said, and reaffirmed that no country can be expected to negotiate with a terror organization bent on its destruction. Hamas, he said, must recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence and adhere to all existing agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

He called on Hamas to release captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit – and received a rousing ovation.

“What I did Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately,” he explained. “I did so because the world is moving too fast for us to wait another decade. Delay will undermine Israel’s security.”

He concluded with a quote from the Talmud, which says that as long as a person breathes, he should not abandon faith.

There was speculation that Obama would use the opportunity to announce a visit to Israel in late June, but he did not do so.

In his speech, which began shortly before 11:00 EDT, Obama told the audience that in his meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu, "We reaffirmed the fundamental truth that the bonds between the U.S. and Israel are unbreakable and the commitment of the US to Israel’s security is ironclad."

The US and Israel do not just share strategic interests or common dangers – like terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons, he said. Rather, America’s commitment to Israel’s security flows from common values.

Obama reminded his audience of his visit to Israel before the 2008 election, and of his meeting with a Sderot boy who lost his leg in a Kassam attack.

He promised to continue to stand up to Hizbullah, and to block any attempt to delegitimize Israel. He cited the Durban conference, from which the US withdrew. “In both word and deed we have been unwavering in our support of Israel’s security,” he told the audience.

The conference is the largest in AIPAC history and includes more than 10,000 delegates, from all 50 states. According to AIPAC, the Policy Conference is the largest annual bipartisan gathering of U.S. senators, representatives, administration officials, diplomats and foreign ambassadors except for the State of the Union address.

GLENN BECK ANNOUNCES "RALLY IN JERUSALEM" IN AUGUST

2011-05-18T17:08:00.001+02:00

GLENN BECK ANNOUNCES "RALLY IN JERUSALEM" IN AUGUST

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Monday, May 16th, FOX news personality and conservative talk show host Glenn Beck announced his intention of organizing a major rally in Jerusalem that is scheduled for August. During his morning radio program, he reminded his listeners of his previous rally, held in Washington, DC on August 28, 2010 called "Restoring Honor" which drew hundreds of thousands of people. Mr. Beck exhorted "all decent people and people of faith" to join him in Jerusalem in a rally called "Restoring Courage". Having recently returned from a trip to Israel, where he visited the Temple Mount, he said upon his departure, "The Temple Mount almost pulsated. I could feel it.”

As a vocal advocate and fervent supporter of Israel, Mr. Beck has made Israel and the Jewish people a focal point of his broadcasts. On Feb. 4, 2011, Mr. Beck offered his prognostications on the revolution in Egypt by telling his television audience that, "If President Hosni Mubarak does step down, however, the Muslim Brotherhood would be the most likely group to seize power. They've openly stated they want to declare war on Israel and they would end the peace agreement with Israel and they would work towards instituting something we told you about, a caliphate."

Often declaring his deeply held conviction that Israel and the Jewish people are being "set up", Mr. Beck has consistently addressed the exponential rise in anti-Semitism. "Old hatreds are coming over the horizon; it's a well-laid plan. Right now, when you're paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, it's tough. Pretty soon, you're going to want somebody to blame. And politicians always are there to give you someone to blame. And mark my words, we will be paying 10 dollars a gallon for gasoline. When that happens and someone comes to you and says, "It's the Jews. It's Israel. If they would just give up Jerusalem. If they would just divide Jerusalem." It is coming. This will be the mantra come September. "If they just divide Jerusalem, they just give it up! Go back to the '67 lines." It's coming", he ruefully observed.

Issuing an impassioned appeal to his listeners earlier today, Mr. Beck warned that Israel is in imminent danger, "Things in Israel are going to get bad. They are going to spread across the Middle East. The things that I've told you are coming, will come. It's only a matter of time." Making an oblique reference to the upcoming meeting between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Beck said, "There are people that will promise you "peace" in the coming months. They are going to attack the center of our faith; our common faith, and that is Jerusalem but it won't be with bullets or bombs. It will be with a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem; the Old City, to the rest of the world."

Alluding to the dramatic escalation in global anti-Western and anti-Israel animus, Mr. Beck said, "There are forces in this land, and forces all over the globe that are trying to destroy us, but remember, 'we are the great Satan and Israel is the little Satan'". Offering a historical retrospective, he said, "Many in the history of man have had the opportunity to stand with the Jewish people; Poland, Russia, Germany, and time and time and time again, they have failed."

As a devout Mormon, Mr. Beck spoke of his religious beliefs in the unfolding of geo-political realities. "The only seat of government that can and will solve this problem, with or without us is G-d. It is time to return inside the walls that surround Jerusalem and stand with peoples of all faiths, all around the world." Beseeching his listeners to join the rally in Jerusalem, Mr. Beck exclaimed, "As a citizen of America and a brother in the family of man, I come to you today and ask you to stand; stand with me in Jerusalem."

Candidly admitting that he didn't know how many people would show up, or how much the event would cost, he declared that the rally would be "a life altering event" and warned that the "very gates of hell" would fight his attempts to hold the rally.

FOLLOWING ISRAEL'S LEAD

2011-05-18T17:04:00.001+02:00

FOLLOWING THE LEAD OF ISRAEL

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Now that the hoopla over the successful United States "hit" on arch terrorist Osama bin Laden has begun to fade into the annals of history, the stark realization that the US and the free world are still bereft of a concrete plan of action to stem the tide of al-Qaeda terrorism is beginning to set in. Having spent close to 10 years assiduously tracking down the elusive 9/11 mastermind, we hasten to remind the CIA, along with the various and sundry intelligence networks, that the task of eradicating Islamic radicals bent on global domination demands replication of the kind of "muscle" that bagged bin Laden.

Taking a cursory glance at the modern state of Israel's 63-year history and the bold modalities employed to confront the existential perils presented by a veritable panoply of terrorist organizations, it would appear that the Jewish state can teach the world a lesson or two in the area of "focused foiling". Having enshrined targeted assassinations as the pillar of their counter-terrorism doctrine, Israel has succeeded in creating a profound cumulative effect on the vast array of terror organizations in its midst. Leaving Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in a state of obfuscation and disarray through the routine elimination of their leaders; such actions clearly serve as a viable deterrent for those next in line for succession into their predecessors' shoes.

For a brief historical retrospective, let us recall that the long arm of the Mossad often launched surprise attacks terrorists in the most remote locations. In April 1973, Ehud Barak (who was dressed as a woman), led Israeli commandos as they landed in Beirut and "took out" senior members of the Fatah movement including Yusuf Najjar who was Yassir Arafat's deputy and Fatah spokesman Kamal Nasir. Israel also had a direct hand in the 1979 explosion in Beirut that killed Hassan Ali Salamah, founder of Fatah's elite Force 17. In April of 1988, yet another brash operation was undertaken when an Israeli commando force under the leadership of former IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon landed in Tunis and killed Khalil al-Wazir, known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad. This reprehensible miscreant was the head of the PLO's military branch and the second in seniority in the organization.

Subsequent to a bloody barrage of suicide attacks which claimed the lives of dozens of Israelis, agents from the Mossad shot and killed Fathi Shiqaqi, the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in October of 1995 in Malta. Yahya Abdel-Tif Ayyash, the notorious Hamas operative, better known to many by his sobriquet "The Engineer" was the next in line for Israeli retribution when in 1996 he made his last call in Beit Lahya, Gaza using a booby trapped cellular phone that exploded in his hands. For those who don't remember, he was responsible for masterminding suicide attacks in which 50 Israelis died and 340 were wounded.

Other Hamas leaders targeted for their role in the Al-Aqsa intifada of 2000 included Mahmoud Adani, killed in February of 2001, Jamil Jadallah, killed in November 2001, Salah Shahade, killed in July 2002, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, killed in March 2004, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, killed in April 2004 and Adnan al-Ghoul, killed in October 2004. And the list goes on.

In terms of vanquishing terrorism, targeted assassinations can be classified as a measured response in that they exclusively focus on actual perpetrators of militant attacks, while dramatically reducing collateral damage in terms of civilian and non-combatant casualties. In a 2010 article entitled "Targeted Killings Work" that appeared in Infinity Journal, the argument was made that targeted assassinations are a strategy that entails "limited force in support of policy" and that it has proven most successful.

The context of the article specifically related to proclamations from Hamas that called for cease fires and "periods of calm" in 2004 after the hub of their leadership had been targeted by Israeli forces. The article states that Israeli targeted killings throughout "the 2000-2005 armed rebellion represented a successful strategy" because "the tactics never undermined Israeli policy enough to alter Israel’s overall political objectives" and because Hamas' will to perpetuate armed violence was broken, albeit temporarily.

And for those who are of the opinion that targeted killings are extrajudicial; thus standing in direct contravention to the values and norms of a democratic society, let it be known that on December 14, 2006, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that targeted assassination is indeed a legitimate form of self-defense against terrorists.

Perhaps the United States should follow Israel's lead in terms of beefing up their intelligence, getting down to the nitty-gritty and taking the gloves off. Al-Qaeda leaders and others in their coterie have promised to exact revenge against America, its president and its people. One would have to be exceptionally naive at best and abysmally ignorant at worst to take such saber rattling lightly. Let's not forget Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon who joined a jihadi cell when he was just 15. His militant group Al Jihad is believed to have played a pivotal role in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and according to reports, Zawahiri is viewed as al-Qaeda's most significant ideological mouthpiece. Some terrorism experts believe that he was more instrumental in the 9/11 attacks than even bin Laden.

The wanted list, however, doesn't stop here. As a top ranking member of Al Qaeda, Saif Al-Adel was indicted by the United States for his role in the same 1998 bombings in Tanzania and there is speculation that he may now be the military commander of the terrorist group. Also an Egyptian, al-Qaeda member Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah has orchestrated the establishment of terrorist training facilities in Somalia and assisted Saif al-Adel in providing military intelligence and training to al-Qaeda members in the Sudan.

Terrorists come in variant forms, shapes and sizes and are not necessarily limited to minimalist cave dwellers. They can be also be found as heads of state in that bastion of instability known as the Middle East and their names can also be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad. The time is long overdue to reconsider all options in the ongoing war on terror; to learn lessons from the intrepid Israelis and to prepare to gird our loins for the battles that lie ahead.

JUSTICE HAS ITS DAY

2011-05-18T17:00:00.002+02:00

JUSTICE HAS ITS DAY

BY: FERN SIDMAN

There is no doubt that the infamous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 constituted the most definitive moment in modern history. On that frenetic day the world stood still; frozen in time as gruesome memories were etched in our collective psyches for eternity. It was on that day that an elusive, shadowy figure named Osama bin Laden, (who hitherto was considered a parenthetical nemesis) was suddenly and unceremoniously plucked from historical obscurity and catapulted head first into the global amphitheater.

In the days and weeks to follow, we learned of such organizations as al-Qaeda and the Taliban; predicated on a doctrine of religious fanaticism and unadulterated hatred for all things Western; namely the United States. The names and motives seemed more enigmatic to us than the countries in which they originated in, but there was one thing we knew: The man at the helm of this agglomeration of barbaric zealots was responsible for the murder of close to 3000 Americans and it was he that represented an existential peril to the freedoms and liberties that we hold so dear.

So now, it is close to 10 years later, and the wretched life of Osama bin Laden has finally been snuffed out through the legendary doughtiness of US Navy SEALS in a far away compound in Pakistan. Six days after the 9/11 attacks, a reporter queried then President George W. Bush if he wanted bin Laden dead. “I want him — I want justice,” the president answered. “And there’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’” We can take some comfort in knowing that the last face that bin Laden saw before his long awaited demise was that of an American serviceman. Over the last 10 years, we have witnessed bin Laden displaying an unabashed insouciance towards the righteous indignation of the US and the free world in a series of grotesque videos that he's released. While endlessly taunting his American adversary; he has also launched acrimonious salvos that are replete with clear indications of future attacks of this magnitude.

While President Obama can use this as a feather in his cap for his re-election bid and bolster his flagging ratings in the foreign policy department, we know that timing is a strange thing and only through a fortuitous confluence of events did US intelligence ultimately pinpoint bin Laden's location and exact long awaited justice. On that note, Pakistan has a lot of explaining to do as it has been revealed that they knew of bin Laden's whereabouts for years while remaining criminally mum on the subject and playing a sinister double game with the United States.

Despite the jubilant news that this foreboding paradigm of evil incarnate has been eradicated, it would be foolhardy to believe that bin Laden's brainchild, namely al-Qaeda, was buried along next to him the North Arabian sea. Al-Qaeda is alive and well, as we've so painfully learned during our military involvement in Iraq. We need only turn our heads to the deadly civil strife plaguing Libya to comprehend that al-Qaeda cells have created an unholy partnership with the NATO backed rebel forces. Only the politically myopic would promulgate the erroneous and dangerous notion that the killing of bin Laden is tantamount to the final chapter of al-Qaeda history and those that emulate their pernicious ethos.

We must remain cognizant of the fact that al-Qaeda will maintain its status as a multinational purveyor of terrorism unless the US remains vigilant in their quest to do real battle with this seemingly intractable foe. At this juncture, we're riding a superlative wave of national pride and inspiration. Let's capitalize on this euphoria, lest we backslide into complacency by listening to the inexhaustably loquacious liberal rantings of certain political pundits and other opinionistas with a skewed perspective on justice.

Al-Qaeda, under bin Laden's leadership, has declared the entire world as fair territory in their holy war against those "recalcitrant" infidels. Let us remember the tourist spots that were bombed in Bali and the passenger trains that were likewise bombed in Spain. Let us never forget the 17 sailors murdered on the USS Cole warship in 2000 and the scores of other US military personnel who were murdered in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let us remember that prior to 9/11, al-Qaeda was implicated in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, an aborted plot to hijack a dozen jets, the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters and murder President Bill Clinton. Let us also take heed of the fact that al-Qaeda operatives have successfully insinuated themselves into the fabric of the very Western culture that they ostensibly abhor, utilizing technological advancements to further their objectives of global domination.

Case in point: Reports reveal that bin Laden issued "fatwas" (religious decrees) by fax as he lived a purportedly Muslim ascetic existence while declaring his war on Americans through an e-mail that he had beamed by satellite around the world. His al-Qaeda members routinely communicate through encrypted messages on their computers and use CDs to store their bomb-making manuals. Let's face the cold, hard facts. We're not exactly dealing with a rag tag cadre of rogues who are running the revolution from an undisclosed boiler room.

Osama bin Laden is finally dead but the task of extricating his legacy and ridding the world of the evil that he wrought will be a protracted and sometimes grueling battle. Persistence is the key; as we just saw before our very eyes. It took the United States 10 years to "get" bin Laden and it may take many more years to enitrely vanquish his terrorist acolytes, but it is incumbent all of us in the free world to try. Our lives and the lives of our children depend on it.

Wild Islamism on rise in Bangladesh

2011-04-13T08:50:00.001+02:00

By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury Finally state minister for law, Advocate Qamrul Islam in Bangladesh made open statement expressing his government’s realization that some Islamists and radical clergies are trying to turn Bangladesh into another ‘Afghanistan’. He said, “Few 'fanatics' and 'religion-mongered' want to make the country 'an Afghanistan' by snatching away women rights”. The minister further said, a group of fanatic clergies are conspiring to destabilize the country. This statement came following an Islamist group's protest against the policy, which, they claimed, incorporates anti-Quranic provisions. Islamic Law Enforcement Committee chief Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini, also chairman Islami Oikya Jote, has threatened to enforce a countrywide shutdown on April 4, 2011 unless the 'anti-Quranic provisions' are not revoked. Since past couple of weeks, Islamists are on continuous protests in Bangladesh, which is led by pro-Taliban clergies like Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini and Moulana Rezaul Karim. Both the clergies are infamous for giving instigations to Jihad and anti-West as well as anti-Semitic activities. Islamists are gaining strength in Bangladesh for past few years, as none of the government ever showed sincere attitude in combating such elements fearing reaction from the large number of followers and supporters of radical clergies like Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini or Moulana Rezaul Karim. The rise of such forces that advocate theocratic religious universalism and the creation of an Islamic state did not happen overnight, of course. The interplay between religion and politics in Bangladesh has a long history, and religion has always been susceptible to politicization. The trend is not just pushed along by organized radical groups such as the Hizbut Tahrir, Hizbut Towhid and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh [HuJI-B], which aim to replace the parliamentary democracy with an Islamic Sharia state. The leading political parties, many foreign-linked charities and non-governmental organizations, and the external environment are all playing a significant role in promoting religious radicalism. The two dominant political parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP] and the Bangladesh Awami League [AL], have both emphasized a religious identity at various points. Though the opposition AL has repeatedly accused BNP government, led by Begum Khalida Zia, of forging an unholy alliance with radical Islamic groups, even the AL, which once took pride in its secular identity, has accepted the importance of religion in Bangladesh. AL even formed alliance with Islamists during the general election in 1996, and even in the current government, it has formed alliance with Jatiyo Party, which is headed by former military dictator General Hussain Muhammed Ershad, whose political vision is very similar to those Islamist parties and fronts. The current ruling party, Bangladesh Awami League has readily adopted religious trappings and symbols for its political purposes. Its leaders, despite her strong secular legacy, have begun to carry prayer beads and wear a headscarf of Islamic cap. Public meetings have included Islamic religious proclamations to woo an electorate that is becoming increasingly comfortable with its Islamic identity. On the other hand, the BNP has always been drawn toward right-wing forces. During 2001-2006, the BNP government have witnessed increasing militant activities, including alleged targeted killings of opposition leaders, violence against religious minorities, and terrorist attacks against the personalities and institutions that oppose the creation of an Islamic state. Bangladesh also serves as a logistical hub for transnational extremist groups such as the Arakan Rohingya National Organization [ARNO] and the Rohingya Solidarity Organization [RSO]. These are Myanmar Muslims who claim to be fighting for an autonomous Muslim region in Myanmar's Arakan state. Terrorist groups based in Pakistan and parts of Kashmir, such as the HuJI and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, also managed to set up operational bases in Bangladesh, and a number of Jihadist terrorists entered India via Bangladesh. Attacks in Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi have all revealed Bangladesh as an important link in the Islamic terrorist network of South Asia. The political parties and terrorist groups are aided by funds received from charities in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait in their bid to spread the message of radical Islam to the masses. Despite an embargo on releasing its funds because of alleged terror links, the Kuwait-based Revival of Islamic Heritage Society [RIHS] was said to be using bank accounts to run official work without the Bangladeshi government's knowledge. The RIHS provided funds to several terrorist outfits. On the other hand, a huge segment of terror fund to Islamists is channelized through madrassas [Koranic schools]. Since madrassas are educational institutions within the country, they are under the purview of the country’s educational ministry. While almost all funding for these institutions comes from private donors in Saudi Arabia, there is no statute against their regulation by proper national authorities. Bangladesh has been a secular Muslim state since its independence from Pakistan and founding by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1971. While its short history has been full of military coup d’états, it has always returned to its roots as a secular democratic state. There are, however, troubling new signs of a shift towards a growing Islamism that could jeopardize the sanctity of secularism in the country.

PUBLIC MEGILLAH READING HELD AT IRANIAN MISSION TO THE UN

2011-03-21T06:21:00.000+01:00

PUBLIC MEGILLAH READING HELD AT IRANIAN MISSION TO THE UN

BY: FERN SIDMAN

"Ahmadinejad: Remember What Happened to Haman" was one of the many signs held aloft on Sunday afternoon, March 20th, as close to 500 Jews gathered on Purim day for a public reading of Megillat Esther (the Book of Esther) that was held outside the Iranian mission to the United Nations on Manhattan's east side. Organized by Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), Amcha - the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, Z Street and the Jewish Political Education Council, the reading was held as a symbolic representation of the indefatigable nature of the Jewish people and G-d's intervention in their survival throughout the millenium.

"Purim is a day that we celebrate the survival of the Jewish people against evil rulers who sought our complete annihilation in the city of Shushan in Persia. In every generation the names of our oppressors and their countries of origin may change, but they are driven by one common denominator and that is visceral hatred of the Jew", intoned Larry Domnitch, a freelance writer and designated reader of the megillah.

"Today we will read about the plans for mass extermination of the Jewish people designed by the prototypes of evil, namely Achashveirosh and Haman. We are gathered here today to remind the modern day Haman who resides in Iran named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that we will not be silent while he creates his plans to "wipe Israel off the map". As in the days of Queen Esther, we will raise our voices to G-d, seeking His divine intervention and we will boldly speak out against a regime that is not only a nemesis to Israel but to the entire free world," he added.

Glenn Richter, long time Jewish activist and former leader of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, introduced the leaders of the sponsoring organizations as the crowd held specially made Purim groggers with the face of Ahmadinejad and a red line cancelling it out, along with other signs and Israeli flags. "The Obama administration is willfully deluding itself by touting the line that the source of all the problems in the Middle East is due to Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria", he declared. "It is clear that the source of anti-Western and anti-Israel terrorism today emanates from Iran; the very same government that sought to destroy us centuries ago", he added.

During the megillah reading the sounds of acrimony could be heard from a small contingent of Neturei Karta counter-protestors who chanted, "Down, Down, the State of Israel" and held signslambasting Zionism as antithetical to against Judaism. One each occasion that the name of Haman was read aloud, the noise generated by the plethora of groggers and loud boos by those gathered to hear the megillah drowned out the hateful rhetoric of the protestors.

Subsequent to the megillah reading, Helen Freedman of the Americans For A Safe Israel said, "We are putting the government of Iran on notice and we are here today to tell Ahmadinejad and other sponsors of terrorism against Israel and the Western world, that your fate is sealed. Learn from history. When you lift your hand against the Jewish nation, you will succumb to defeat, just as Haman did in Persia and all the others after him."

Sending a strong message to President Obama, Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale declared, "When you weaken Israel, you weaken the United States. When the United States ambassador to the United Nations states that Jewish settlements are illegal you create an atmosphere in which the gruesome murders of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar can take place", he intoned.

Udi Fogel, 37, his wife Ruth, 36 and three of their children, Yoav age 11, Elad 4, and a three month old daughter named Hadas were murdered in cold blood in the Israeli settlement of Itamar on Friday evening, March 11th by Palestinian terrorists connected to Fatah.

Tears filled the eyes of those gathered as Rabbi Weiss delivered an impassioned and emotionally charged address when he listed the names of each member of the Fogel family and asked, "What kind of beasts could have carried out this heinous act of murder?"

Speaking of the innocence and love of 11-year-old Yoav Fogel, ZTK"L, Rabbi Weiss read the words that hung over Yoav's bed: "May it be Your will, Lord God and God of our forefathers, that I love every one of Israel as myself, and to graciously perform the positive commandment of loving your neighbor as yourself. May it also be Your will, Lord God and God of my forefathers, that you cause the hearts of my friends and neighbors to love me fervently, and that I be accepted and desirable to everyone, and that I be loving and pleasant, and that I be gracious and merciful in the eyes of all who see me."

"Our message to the remaining members of the Fogel family and to all our brothers and sisters living in Israel is the same message declared by Queen Esther who said, "gather all of the Jews', all decent people and cry out, "We stand with you!" He reiterated the words of devotion uttered by 12-year-old Tamar Fogel who said after the funerals of her parents and siblings; "Now, I will be the mother" and called upon all of the entire Jewish nation to become active participants in raising this family and all others who are suffering.

"Just as we read in Megillat Esther, we have the power to turn this tragedy in Itamar around", said Rabbi Weiss. He spoke of a millionaire who told the Fogel family, "get used to having me around" as he made a committment to stock their pantry every Sabbath until the youngest child turns 18; and of those who organized the delivery of 108 shalach manos (food packages) to the families of Itamar and of his daughter's wishes to hold his granddaugher's Bat Mitzvah in Itamar as a sign of love and solidarity.

"The message of the "brit", the covenant between the Jewish people and G-d is a simple one and that is, don't give up", said Rabbi Weiss as he led those gathered in rousing chants of "Am Yisroel Chai" (the people of Israel lives).

DAVID HOROWITZ TAKES ON MUSLIM STUDENTS AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE

2011-03-13T01:55:00.000+01:00

DAVID HOROWITZ TAKES ON MUSLIM STUDENTS AT BROOKLYN COLLEGE

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Exceptionally heavy security prevailed at Brooklyn College on Thursday evening, March 10th, as conservative commentator, prolific author and founder of the FrontPage Mag web site, David Horowitz, delivered a lecture in response to the propaganda being promulgated by the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week on campus.

Over 150 people gathered at the college library auditorium to listen to Mr. Horowitz's speech entitled the "Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Myths and Facts" and was sponsored and organized by Brooklyn College student Yosef Sobel and Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor in the department of business and economics. "Because the Hillel organization on campus was too afraid to sponsor me, I must thank those who had the courage to do so." said Mr. Horowitz. Despite numerous warnings prohibiting verbal disruptions, bellicose Muslim student hecklers abounded and Mr. Horowitz's remarks were often punctuated by the sounds of acrimonious, ad hominem attacks.

A native New Yorker and a graduate of Columbia University, David Horowitz has led a polemical existence as a one-time self proclaimed Marxist and a former left-wing academic whose political beliefs have now shifted to the right. As one of the founders of the New Left in the 1960s, he was also the editor of its most influential magazine, Ramparts. Along with Peter Collier, he is the author of a number of best-selling dynastic biographies on the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Fords, and the Roosevelts. With Collier he also wrote "Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the 60s" (1989), a chronicle of their break with the 1960s Left, that has been compared to Whittaker Chambers' "Witness" and other classic works documenting a break from totalitarianism.

Through the work of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, he champions an array of causes including the defense of the principles of individual freedom as well as the preservation of free societies in the war against the values inherent to Western civilization and the reestablishment of academic freedom in American schools. His recent books include, "Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left" (2004), "Indoctrination U: The Left's War Against Academic Freedom" (2007) and "Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party" (2007).

Making oblique references to the security of Israel, Mr. Horowitz began by ruefully observing, "When I went to college you didn't need all of this security on campus, but things have changed and that's the reason we now need checkpoints on campuses. Checkpoints are essential to defend against terrorists and Jew haters."

Adding that he has been verbally and physically assaulted on campuses around the country for his forthright views, he said, "Our campuses are controlled by liberal fascists and it is a movement to suppress the free speech rights of conservatives. He said that the International Socialist Organization, a Marxist organization, is culpable for creating an academic climate of intimidation and hate. "It is they who spread lies about me and work with their Muslim allies towards the mobilization of radical jihad against the West. The Muslim community needs to stand up and defend democracy in this country and that's what we're all waiting for."

Providing a historical backdrop to the Middle East conflict, Mr. Horowitz said, "There was no Palestine since the days of the Roman conquest of the land of Israel and there certainly was no Palestine in 1946. The war against the Jews started in the form of Pan Arab nationalism and the PLO was created by the KBG. They advised Arafat that the best way to succeed is to play the victim role and say that all they want is their own state and that Israel is occupying Palestine." Saying that the entire region around the Jordan River was created by imperialist powers such as the Ottoman Empire, he intoned that, "Israel was not built on Arab land."

Declaring that he is a "political Zionist", Mr. Horowitz said he believes that the Jewish people have a right to exist and have a right to their own state. Equating such terrorist organizations as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Islamic Republic of Iran as "Nazis in the Middle East", he said that their objective is "not to create a Palestinian state but rather, to push the Jews into the sea" because they can't live alongside a people of another faith. "In 1922, 80 percent of the land of Israel was ceded to become the state of Transjordan that is now ruled by the Hashemite kingdom and there are more Palestinians in Jordan than in Israel", he said, adding that their calls for a Palestinian homeland are eclipsed by their desire to eradicate Israel.

"Democracy is a threat to political Islam and they believe that everyone who is not a Muslim is an infidel and is deserving of death. The Christian population of Bethlehem once stood at 80 percent and is now 12 percent because of Islamic influence," he said.

Addressing the subject of Israeli Apartheid Week on over 55 campuses across North America, Mr. Horowitz said, "Muslims have more rights in Israel than they have in any Arab country in the world" and called the notion of Israel as a state that practices apartheid as "disgusting". Pointing to the sheer hypocrisy of such egregious and fraudulent accusations, Mr. Horowitz said, "If you want to know what real religious and gender apartheid is just look at the entire Muslim Middle East, and not Israel."

Speaking of the political realities in the aftermath of World War II, he said, "12 million ethnic Germans were purged from Poland, but after the state of Israel was established, no one expelled the Arabs, hoping that one day rationality would take hold, but it never did." He said that such organizations as the Muslim Students Association and the Islamic Society of North America who are the chief sponsors of Israeli Apartheid Week are "fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood" and are "hate organizations" that make campuses unwelcome for Jewish students. On campuses around the country, he said, the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week erect an "apartheid wall" and proffered the idea that "a wall of lies" be built to counter their pervasive myths and distortions of the truth. Speaking of the well known Saudi Arabian funding of Middle East Studies departments at Western universities, Mr. Horowitz suggested that this is the impetus for the inextricable links between Muslim organizations and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Calling the expulsion of close to 10,000 Jews from Gaza in the summer of 2005 as part of the disengagement a "mistake", Mr. Horowitz said, "a normal people in a normal state would never have done so, but would have driven out the 1.2 million Arabs because they are possessed by hate as manifested in their violent destruction of the thriving horticultural industry that the Jewish population had created there and their incessant rocket assaults on such towns as Sderot."

Taking aim at the ubiquitous political zeitgeist that views the Palestinians as a nation of oppressed refugees, Mr. Horowitz intoned, "No people have shown themselves as so morally sick as the Palestinians", adding that, "In the history of all mankind, there was never a people who strapped bombs on their bodies and killed innocent people. No other people have sunk so low as the Palestinians and everyone is afraid to say it." Describing Islam as a religion possessed by "hate, violence and racism", he said that a resolution to the protracted Israeli-Palestinian imbroglio could is not beyond reach. "If you disarm the Palestinians in the Middle East there will be peace, but if you disarm the Jews there will be further death and destruction."

"How is it that Jews do not get the narrative?" he queried. "The Palestinians are suffering, but it is not by the hand of the Jew, but rather their true oppressors are Hamas and Hezbollah" he said. Calling the Palestinian Authority a "terrorist government", Mr. Horowitz said, "when we see hate we must call it so, we must label the enemy as who they are". "The Palestinians don't want peace. How can you negotiate with those who won't recognize Israel's right to exist? Look what happened to those Arab leaders that have tried to establish peace with Israel. They were assassinated by radical Islamist elements."

Extolling the idea that "jihadist murderers" are tantamount to "Nazis and blatant Jew haters", he said although they may appear to be perfectly decent, nice people, a great many of them support Osama Bin Ladin and like minded genocidal murderers. "Hitler did not publicly announce his 'final solution' in the fear that the German people were too civilized to accept it, but Ahmadinejad proudly and publicly announces his version of the 'final solution' and no Islamists condemn him. To the contrary, they cheer him on and embrace his vision."

Challenging the belief that America is an Islamophobic country, Mr. Horowitz said, "Muslims are treated with kid gloves in America and are a protected species." He said that 8 to 10 times more hate crimes are committed against Jews than there are against Muslim in America. Pointing to the case of the Holyland Foundation, a purported Islamic charity that was found guilty of funding terrorism on the West Bank by their direct contributions to Hamas, Mr. Horowitz said that the unindicted co-conspirators in this case were the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and that there has been "no significant condemnation of this group or others of this ilk". He unabashedly condemned Hamas as a "fanatically religious, Jew hating, America hating, Nazi organization."

During the question and answer period, a male Muslim student implied that a witch-hunt cabal was taking place and drew a parallel between Mr. Horowitz and the late Senator Joseph McCarthy, adding that Horowitz was a racist. When asked by Mr. Horowitz if the student would condemn Hamas, the student refused to do so, but proceeded to engage in further equivocation. Referring to Mr. Horowitz as an "ignorant racist" a female Muslim student who identified herself only as Magdalene said, "he has no proof of anything that he's said here tonight", adding that women in Muslim countries are "not persecuted by the rules of Sharia law but by draconian dictators who serve American political puppets."

According to Lauren Kunis, a pro-Israel supporter who sought entry into the auditorium but was denied, "I had wanted to bring my Israeli flag in with me and was told by the Brooklyn College security that I couldn't. I told them that I'd wear the flag around my neck as the Arab members of the audience were wearing keffiyahs around their necks. I was then strong armed out by an African American security guard, who I've learned is the Brooklyn College deputy director of security. She accused me of making a ruckus and then called other police officers to escort me to the gate and out of the college. Seems like anyone who takes a proud pro-Israel position is considered a troublemaker and an enemy on campuses today."

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF WOMEN IN IRAN SPOTLIGHTED NEAR THE U.N.

2011-03-04T16:05:00.002+01:00

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES OF WOMEN IN IRAN SPOTLIGHTED NEAR THE U.N.

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Graphic depictions of the most egregious forms of human rights abuses against women in Iran took center stage at a special seminar in New York City on March 3rd. Sponsored by "Iran180", an organization dedicated to spotlighting the litany of human rights abuses that take place on a daily basis in Iran, the seminar was entitled, "Securing Gender Equality: Iran and the CSW". Held at 777 UN Plaza, a building directly across the street from the United Nations, the objectives of the gathering included raising awareness of Iran's violations of women's rights and the staging of symbolic protests against the welcoming of the Islamic Republic of Iran as the newest member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women at its 56th session.

Among the speakers were the Honorable David Kilgour, J.D., co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran - Shabnam Assadollaki, host and producer of Hamseda Persian Radio in Canada - Fakhteh Luna Zamani, CEO and co-founder of the Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran - Renee Redman of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center - Reza Khalil, former Iranian Revolutionary Guard member and author of "A Time To Betray", winner of the 2010 National Best Books Award - Fariba Davoodi, a formerly imprisoned Iranian women's rights activist, and Mertash Rastegar, an Iranian blogger and international law expert.

Quoting the findings of exiled Iranian lawyer, Zohreh Arshadi, Mr. David Kilgour, co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran intoned, "the Iranian penal system is a principal means of sustaining inequality of genders. Its ludicrous premise is that women are deficient in abilities." He added that Arshadi stresses that Iranian women, "have managed to achieve equality in one field only: equal right to imprisonment, exile, torture, being killed and now being slaughtered..."

Speaking of the many Iranian women who are unjustly imprisoned, tortured and often sentenced to death for crimes they did not commit, Mr. Kilgour relayed the narrative of Sakineh Ashtiani, a mother of Turkic descent (a minority known to be targeted for human rights abuses, especially in Teheran) who did not speak Farsi or understand her charge of alleged adultery. "She was incarcerated and beaten, then humiliated in front of her family by a public lashing. Her plight and narrow escape from death by stoning became a successful test case for the global community's response to the regime's misogyny," he said.

Mr. Kilgour also spoke of Irwin Cotler, a Canadian member of parliament and chair of the Inernational Responsibility to Protect Coalition who recently warned that Iran is on an "execution binge", while engaging in a "wholesale assault on the rights of its own people." He added that, "in 2011 alone, the Iranian regime has already executed at least 120 people. It now leads the world in per capita executions, many of which are in secret, taking place after arrests, detentions, beatings, torture, kidnappings, disappearances, and brief trials in which no evidence is presented."

Calling for the disqualification of Iran's membership in the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Mr. Kilgour suggested that the CSW convene a special session to discuss women's rights in Iran and act in its capacity to stop the repression of women. "It is our responsibility to act in robust solidarity with the struggle for women's rights everywhere across Iran," he concluded.

Addressing the issues facing ethnic minority women in Iran, Fakhteh Zamani of the Association for the Defense of Azerbaijani Political Prisoners in Iran (ADAPP) said, "In Iran, as throughout the world, women are victims of violence on a daily basis but Iran's justice system provides little or no remedy to the obstacles and violence facing women and girls." She noted that women are not encouraged to bring complaints against their attackers for fear of bringing, "dishonor" on the family as well as reprisals from the attacker and relatives.

Quoting the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Ms. Zamani said, "discriminatory law in both the civil and penal codes in Iran play a major role in enpowering men and aggravating women's vulnerability to violence. In particular, discriminatory provisions in the civil code relating to the areas of marriage, child custody, freedom of movement and inheritance may lead to, perpetuate or legitimize violence against women perpetrated by private actors."

Highlighting the ubiquitous phenomenon of trafficking in or girls and women, Ms. Zamani said that the UN Special Rapporteur reported that, "most of the trafficking is said to occur in the eastern provinces, which are mainly Baluchi areas, where women are kidnapped, bought or entered into temporary marriage in order to be sold into sexual slavery in other countries." Concluding with an oft quoted phrase used amongst Iran's women human rights defenders, she said, "We are both women and minorities; so, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, we are doubly accused."

"I am absolutely opposed to the imposition of Sharia law," declared Shabnam Assadollahi, the producer and host of the Canadian based Hamseda Persian radio program. "Sharia law tells us that female hair has evil energy and those women's rights activists in Iran who refused to wear head coverings were beaten and tortured while their children watched," she said. She detailed gruesome accounts of torture of women in Iran saying, "young girls and virgins were raped prior to being executed and after execution their bodies were burned and electrocuted."

Fulminating at the decision to include the Islamic Republic of Iran on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Ms. Assadollahi said, "There is no place for Iran on this commission. Just think about the arrogance of this regime to judge others concerning gender equality and human rights."

Speaking in her native Farsi with an interpreter, Fariba Davoodi, an Iranian women's rights activist told of her incarceration in Iran and the barbaric tortures that were inflicted upon her by her captors. "It is the common aspiration of all Iranian women to be free", she said. "When the regime came to arrest me for my activism on behalf of women's rights, they beat me up in front of my children and brought me to their notorious prison where I was kept in solitary confinement in a tiny cell where I was interrogated for long periods of time; where tey kept the lights on all the time and forced me to shower in front of them."

"The fear that women's rights advocates in Iran have is not only from the repressive government but from male family members including husbands, fathers and brothers," she said. Trying to remain optimistic about the future of Iran as it pertains to women's rights is a daunting challenge for women such as Ms. Davoodi. "We hope that very soon we will live in a free and democratic Iran, but so long as the regime stays in power, our hopes will not be realized," she said.

"ANTI-ZIONISM IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM" - SAYS DR. PHYLLIS CHESLER

2011-02-21T21:01:00.001+01:00

"ANTI-ZIONISM IS THE NEW ANTI-SEMITISM" - SAYS DR. PHYLLIS CHESLER

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Israel National News caught up with frequent op-ed contributor, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, as she delivered remarks at a first-of-its-kind conference in Toronto entitled, "When Middle East Politics Invade Campus" on February 16th. No stranger to the lecture circuit or to controversy, Dr. Chesler's appearance at this seminal intellectual forum served as the epicenter of the conversation on the continued and increasingly hostile demonization of Israel, both on the college campus and in the media.

FS: Today, you addressed the escalating hatred of Israel in the realm of the Western academy. Can you tell us your observations of this phenomenon since your book, "The New Anti-Semitism" came about some years ago?

PC: As I first wrote in 2001-2002, the new anti-Semitisim also consists of a rather frightening, genocidal anti-Zionism. The global demonization of Israel has gathered such speed and force that it could, potentially – it is certainly meant to – delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state. In 2005, Iran’s Ahmadinejad said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” In 2006, he said that the Middle East would be better off “without the existence of the Zionist regime” and that Israel would “soon be wiped out.”

In 2011, Many signs and placards in Cairo, including the many effigies of Hosni Mubarak, all bore Stars of David; Mubarak was accused of being a Zionist—the worst epithet imaginable. Predictably, on February 11, 2011, the anniversary of the so-called 1979 Iranian revolution, President Ahmadinejad congratulated the triumphant Egyptians. He said: “Despite all the West’s complicated and Satanic designs…a new Middle East is emerging without the Zionist regime and U.S. interference, a place where the arrogant powers will have no place.” Israel is under the most profound, even existential siege.

On February 13, 2011, the Israeli government urged Israelis to return home from the Sinai for fear “that the peninsula will become a launching pad for terror attacks as Egyptian police abandon their posts.” Thus, Israel is now surrounded by Hamas in Gaza, Iran’s Hezbollah in Lebanon, potentially the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the various Islamist and jihadist groups on the West Bank. In addition, let’s not forget that in the early years of the Intifada, Israeli civilians were murdered and maimed in huge numbers. Had the equivalent happened in the United States it would have instantly launched World War IV.

FS: Do you think the Egpytian people will eventually embrace a civilian government that is predicated on secular, democratic principles?

PC: Please remember that the women in Tahrir Square were mainly wearing serious hijab and even niqab. They are already pro-Islamist. According to a June 2010 Pew Research opinion survey of Egyptians, it stated that, “Fifty nine percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics….Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion."

What will it mean that such a population can vote? Will the vote be any different than the vote which elected Hamas in Gaza? Without the necessary precursors: the rule of law, a constitutional system of checks and balances, the separation of mosque and state, freedom of religion, a free press, education, women’s rights, human rights, a modern economic base, etc. the vote does not mean that true democracy exists.

FS: Many speakers here today have spoken of the inherent danger of defending Israel against such accusations of the kind of racism that apartheid represents. You have, on many occasions, addressed audiences on various campuses about this very issue. Can you tell us your experience in doing so?

PC: The campuses have become increasingly and aggressively anti-Israel and pro-Islam. Today, anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism. “Brownshirt” behavior rules the day. Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents are met with menace, if they are invited to speak at all and pro-Israel truth tellers are not even invited to speak. Israel is not an apartheid nation. Muslim countries persecute non-Muslim minorities. The Arab Middle East is “judenrein,” Arab Christians are under siege. Say this on most campuses, as I have, and you will be jeered, booed, possibly physically menaced, certain demonized afterwards as a “racist” and “Islamophobe.” You will lose your publishing contacts and your former feminist political world. You will not be invited to speak by Women’s Studies programs. My work on Islamic gender apartheid has been attacked in these quarters.

FS: You mentioned today that your former feminist associates have shunned you for documenting the horrors of Islamic gender apartheid. You also mentioned their reluctance to speak out on this issue. Why do you think that is the case?

PC: Islamic gender apartheid is a human rights violation and cannot be justified in the name of cultural relativism, tolerance, anti-racism, diversity, or political correctness. The battle for women's rights is central to the battle for Europe and for Western values.

FS: Do you have any statistics on the number of Israelis who have lost their lives due to the forces of radical Islam?

PC: Based on an American population of approximately 310 million, the Israeli civilian death count is the equivalent of 48,700 Americans killed by terrorists on our own soil, in pizza parlors, on buses, at Passover sedorim, in our beds. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, between 2001 and 2007, 8,342 Israelis were wounded by terrorist attacks, including 5,676 civilians. This is the equivalent of 340,000 wounded Americans.

FS: Do you believe that there are any Muslims who would publicly oppose the forces radical Islam if given the opportunity?

PC: Yes, moderate, radical, and extremely brave anti-Islamist Muslims do exist. They are endangered in their birthplaces and mainly live in exile where Western governments do not call upon them for their views. Governments instead prefer the views of Islamists and terrorists whom they refer to as “moderates.”

FS: In your opinion, who is in the forefront of disseminating the ubiquitous myths about Israel?

PC: The politically correct line is that Israel, tiny Israel, is the “Nazi, Apartheid state.” Only Orwell would understand this misuse of language, this reversal of logic, which is meant to confuse and brainwash people. Such brainwashing has worked. Sixty years of Soviet and Arab League activism and Saudi monies have accomplished the unbelievable. Israel is not only the “bad guy,” it is the “very worst bad guy” in the entire universe.

FS: What is your message for those who are indifferent to the growing scourge of Islamic propaganda and terrorism?

PC: We, the world’s civilians, are now all Israelis. The same world which refused to stop the airplane hijackings and suicide killers which blew up countless Israeli civilians has now inherited this whirlwind. As they say: It may start with the Jews but it never ends there.

ADVOCATES FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES HOLDS HISTORIC CONFERENCE IN TORONTO

2011-02-21T20:57:00.001+01:00

ADVOCATES FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES HOLDS HISTORIC CONFERENCE IN TORONTO

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Wednesday February 16th, a most unique and historic colloquium was convened in Toronto by the Advocates For Civil Liberties (ACL), a new and dynamic organization of attorneys, professionals and concerned citizens dedicated to spotlighting the egregious manifestations of anti-Israel propaganda on university campuses across North America. The day long symposium that drew over 400 people was entitled, "When Middle East Politics Invade Campus" and was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Toronto. The forum featured a panoply of distinguished speakers including such vibrant and erudite intellectual personalities as Israel National News op-ed contributor, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at CUNY, journalist, noted lecturer and author of 13 books including, "The New Anti-Semitism" and "The Death of Feminism".

The other speakers included Dr. Catherine Chatterley, a research fellow at the University of Manitoba and founding director of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Judge Hadassa Ben Ito, an international jurist and past president of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Dr. Gil Troy, professor of history at McGill University, renowned author and presidential historian, Elliot Chodoff, a Major in the Israel Defense Forces and a political and military analyst specializing in the Middle East conflict and the global war on terrorism, Dr. Richard Cravatts of Boston University and author of a forthcoming book entitled, "Genocidal Liberalism: The University's Jihad Against Israel", Andrew Roberts, founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative and a noted British historian, author and lecturer, and Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario.

Spearheaded and organized by conference coordinator Meryle Kates, the ACL has been established to advocate for civil liberties protection in Canada, particularly in university settings. Their efforts have been devoted to countering unbalanced anti-Israel messages from organizations whose objectives are to promote propaganda against the State of Israel, with the result of inciting anti-Israel sentiment and hostilities. The directors of the ACL include Lorne Saltman, an attorney with the firm Cassels Brock & Blackwell, LLP, Stephen Posen of Minden Gross, LLP, and Robert Grant of FusionPro UK.

According to their mission statement, "the ACL seeks to collaborate with academic officials to devise appropriate, enforceable ground rules for campus political activities. Increasingly, demonstrations such as, but not limited to the upcoming "Israeli Apartheid Week" on campus, create a hostile atmosphere, and one that stifles the genuine exchange of views on sensitive Middle East issues. Groups promoting Israeli Apartheid Week attack the very concept of dialogue and freedom of speech. Rather than engage in civil discourse, these groups become involved in hateful protests to delegitimize Israel's standing internationally, and create a climate of intimidation for many members of the university community."

Serving as moderator for the proceedings was Jonathan Kay, a managing editor at Canada's National Post newspaper and a columnist on the newspaper's op-ed page. "The only way to disprove a lie is to establish the facts," declared Judge Hadassa Ben Itto as she delivered the opening remarks of the conference via video feed from Jerusalem. Judge Itto is best known for her scholarly monograph entitled, "The Lie That Wouldn't Die, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" (2005), a text that has been used for a century to demonize Jews and delegitimize Israel. "In 1964, the Protocols were finally declared 'the hoax of the century, yet both the Jewish people and Israel are now targets of haters who still insist that there is a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world", she ruefully observed.

Referencing the tendentious climate on campuses as it pertains to Israel and the spurious "scholarship" that is being substituted for facts, Judge Itto said, "The organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week prove that they know nothing about Israel. Professors at some universities are guilty of presenting distorted information about Israel along with one-sided bias and slanderous rhetoric. Boycotts of academics and the assault on the free marketplace of ideas are replicas of the public square where public opinion is dictating policy today." Adding that she personally witnessed "real apartheid" in South Africa years ago, she condemned the concept of an Israeli Apartheid Week as "outrageous" and called for responsible educators to set the record straight.

Students at such respected academic institutions as York University in Toronto are no stranger to the acrimony that is engendered during Israeli Apartheid Week as their campus has previously morphed into a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred during past events of this kind. In a very special panel dedicated to the voices of those who have experienced this phenomenon, Mr. Kay introduced five York students who articulated their views and expressed concerns about the future.

Sara Akrami, an Iranian human rights activist and second year political science student at York said, "Clubs are established at York with the sole purpose of creating discord and promoting anti-Israel violence and the administration takes no action against them." Ms. Akrami noted that the November 2010 appearance of British parliamentarian George Galloway was opposed by a majority of the students at York. Galloway is a highly polemical figure who achieved notoriety as a rabid hater of the Jewish state, asserting that Israel created "conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people ... into the Zionist state."

She decried the "inhumane and terrorist activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and added that those on campus who support the draconian regime of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have "treated her organization with hostility and disrespect". She angrily admonished Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and called upon him to "stop dealing with the Iranian government."

Others such as Josee Chiasson, a fourth year student at York completing an honors BA in psychology has undertaken the task of uniting Christian and Jewish leaders on campus and has assumed the role of president of Christians United for Israel (CUFI). "I knew nothing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during my first year at college. It was only when I visited Israel and witnessed the truth firsthand, did I begin to understand that the insidious rhetoric of the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week simply did not hold true."

Declaring that the pernicious canards against Jews extolled by Hitler were tantamount to those spewed forth by George Galloway, Ms. Chiasson said, "Hitler promised world peace if only the Jews were eradicated and so did Galloway. He said that if Israel makes peace with the Palestinians then there would be world peace and we know that that is a complete falsehood." She exhorted students and faculty alike to, "challenge the radical beliefs that are rampant on our campuses" as she spoke of "students who have been targeted for abuse and threats" by vehemently anti-Israel organizations on campus.

Other students such as Michael Payton, a cognitive science major at York, sociology major Afroza Mohammed and Noah Kochman also addressed the issue of students being subjected to verbal invective and physical assaults by members of the Muslim Student Association and other anti-Israel groups. Mr. Kochman, a member of the Canadian Association of Jewish Students spoke of the violent outbursts of Palestinian student groups that led to the cancellation of an address scheduled to be delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ay Concordia University in Montreal in 2002. "Pro-Israel student demonstrators were trapped in their own space, unable to move, because of the overt aggression of the demonstrators who resorted to violence."

Subsequent to the student panel forum, Andrew Roberts, noted British author, historian, lecturer and founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative took center stage and spoke of the aims of the relatively new organization. Established in August of 2010 to concretely challenge the British boycott of Israeli academia, Mr. Roberts said that among the goals of the Friends of Israel Initiative were to, "counter the growing efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders. The Initiative arises out of a sense of deep concern about the unprecedented campaign of delegitimization against Israel waged by enemies of the Jewish state, and perversely, supported by numerous international institutions." Among the founding members of the Friends of Israeli Initiative is John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations.

Professor Richard Cravatts of Boston University and author of a forthcoming book entitled, "Genocidal Liberalism: The University's Jihad Against Israel", which documents the extensive web of Islamist influence that pervades the university campus, spoke of "brand hijacking" in terms of Israel's global image. "Those who would re-write the history of Israel and the narrative of the Palestinians in the Middle East have hijacked Israel's branding", he intoned adding that we live in a "world turned upside down in its relationship to the interpretation of the reality in the Middle East." Dr. Cravatts illustrated his assertions by pointing out the sheer hypocrisy of the worldview shared by the international community as it pertains to standards of equity and justice in Israel. "We ignore the fact that Arabs in the territories would receive the death penalty for selling an apartment to a Jew, but we never raise our voices when Israel is roundly condemned for building 1300 apartments in East Jerusalem; a right that any other nation takes for granted."

Warning of the existential threat that Israel faces from the burgeoning Muslim Brotherhood, Eliot Chodoff, a political and military analyst and lecturer on the history and challenges of the Middle East said, "There is an all out assault on Israel taking place" and reminded his audience of the parallel between the recent revolution in Egypt and the Iranian revolution that took place in 1979. "It was students, intellectuals and shopkeepers that led the revolution against the Shah of Iran," he intoned, adding that the teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood were predicated upon a Nazi-like ideology and it is precisely these beliefs that provide their basis for launching a global jihad.

"The campuses have become increasingly and aggressively anti-Israel and pro-Islam", declared Dr. Phyllis Chesler, prolific author, emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at CUNY and a foremost expert on gender and religious apartheid in the Muslim world. "Pro-Israel students are verbally humiliated and physically attacked. Professors in Middle East Studies teach students only one point of view -- the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel point of view", she said, adding that, "this has been the case at York University, Concordia University and the University of California at San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Berkeley and Irvine."

Speaking at length on the history of the progenitors of genuine apartheid in the Middle East, Dr. Chesler said, "Israel is not an apartheid nation. Islam is the world's largest practitioner of both religious and gender apartheid. Muslims have persecuted, murdered, and forcibly converted the entire Middle East, India, parts of Africa, Asia and now Europe."

Dr. Chesler outlined her important work on the phenomenon of "honor killings" of Muslim women throughout the world that was published in 2009 and 2010 in the Middle East Quarterly. "Islamic gender apartheid is a human rights violation and cannot be justified in the name of cultural relativism, tolerance, anti-racism, diversity or political correctness", she said.

"We are facing two jihads", said Dr. Gil Troy, professor of history at McGill University in Montreal and author of the book, "Why I am A Zionist." "As we've discussed today, there is the jihad on campus and a jihad in the classroom, in our textbooks and emanating from our professors", he said. Exhorting students and parents to become more involved in the sphere of academia, Professor Troy said, "we are living in a golden age for Jews on campus, but we must raise the standards of teaching and rescue academia from corrupt academics and fight educational malpractice."

Attacking the pervasive trend of multiculturalism, Salim Mansur, professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario said, "The right of Israel to remain a safe and secure state must be defended against the ideology of multiculturalists", adding that "multiculturalism is a big, odious, disgusting lie. China, Japan and the Arab nations are not practicing multiculturalism so why are we?"

Dr. Catherine Chatterley of the Canadian Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism spoke of the historical basis of Israeli Apartheid Week saying, "The ideology behind Israeli Apartheid Week is not a new one. The former Soviet Union was a leading proponent of this anti-Zionist philosophy. This was the ideology that declared that Zionism is tantamount to imperialism, racism, discrimination and organically linked to the repression of the human being."

She also addressed the broader global machinations of those orchestrating Israeli Apartheid Week. "The concept of Israeli Apartheid Week is part of a global, political strategy to dismantle the Jewish state. It began as a Canadian invention and now takes place in over 55 cities worldwide." She added that the organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week are making concerted efforts to build alliances with the disenfranchised in general, thus furthering their anti-Zionist distortions.

DEMOCRATIC REFORM IN EGYPT - AT WHAT PRICE?

2011-02-06T22:05:00.001+01:00

DEMOCRATIC REFORM IN EGYPT - AT WHAT PRICE?

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Seems like no one saw the genesis of a global Islamist insurrection on the political horizon. Not the talking heads on cable TV and certainly not those in the know at the State Department or the White House. If they did, they assumed a reticent posture concerning precisely what was percolating behind the scenes in Egypt.

Gaining inspiration from the most recent and highly successful grass roots revolution against the draconian regime in Tunisia, tens of thousands of Egyptians have taken to demonstrating in the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor over the last week to do the same. Fulminating over the abject poverty, rampant unemployment and thinly veiled government corruption that both permeates and cripples their lives, these young and tech savvy Egyptian activists have created an international stage in which to further their agenda of achieving democratic and political reforms in a country that has little familiarity of such lofty concepts.

Subsequent to the assassination of former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Hosni Mubarak was catapulted to power, and his imprimatur has been actualized by his autocratic and heavy handed governance of Egyptian society. Having ruled for 30 years without allowing for a change in national leadership through legitimate elections, it is little wonder that he is characterized as a despot and a cynical dictator. Further emboldening this megalomanical image are his feckless attempts at quelling the uprisings by terminating the use of the internet, cell phones and other modalities of transmitting news and data.

Having said that, let us also remember that Egypt is a key strategic player in US-Middle East relations and is being bankrolled to the tune of $1.5 billion annually in US military and economic aid. As such, Egypt, under the leadership of Mubarak has promulgated a pro-Western and pro-American stance and has maintained the long standing peace agreement with Israel, albeit a "cold" peace, made by his predecessor.

As complete anarchy and bedlam breaks loose in Egypt, as manifested in pervasive rioting, bellicose looting and indiscriminate acts of violence, we have learned that the burgeoning opposition has turned a deaf ear to any gestures by Mubarak to address the grievances of his people through radical changes in the composition of his government. Terrified of losing power, Mubarak is acting swiftly on US orders, but time is on the side of those who demand his complete ouster.

Let's make no mistake about it. What is happening here is a gargantuan development in the Middle East narrative and the perpetual imbroglio that has come to define this region of the world. Arguably, it can even be considered bigger than what occurred in 1979 when backers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with a push from Jimmy Carter, overthrew Iran's Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi in one of the most tragic and unfortunate international developments of the late 20th century. We, in the West, have been paying the price for it ever since. What is particularly outstanding in the midst of a revolution of this kind is the inevitable political vacuum that it creates, leaving a terrifying scenario in which radicalized Islamic elements are poised to seize power.

Leading the charge both in Iran in 1979 and in the Egypt of 2011 is the notorious Muslim Brotherhood which has been outlawed in Egypt. Yes, the very same organization that was responsible for assassinating Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, charging him with the "ultimate sin" of making peace with Israel
It is they who have been subtlely orchestrating and fomenting unrest and managing the day-to-day particulars required for another radical Islamic victory. Working with the aid and encouragement of Teheran, the tentacles of this nihilistic theocratic movement stretch far and wide. As the leader of Jordan's powerful Muslim Brotherhood, Hammam Saeed, warned over the weekend, the unrest in Egypt will spread across the Mideast and Arabs will topple leaders allied with the United States.

The front man for the opposition in Egypt is none other than Mohammed ElBaradei; Nobel Laureate and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Fragments of the opposition group including the Muslim Brotherhood have grouped behind ElBaradei, who has often been thought of as a potential Egyptian leader should Mubarak lose power.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-president of the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations said in a recent interview with Yeshiva World News that, "A myth is being created that ElBaradei is a human rights activist – he is a stooge of Iran". He added that, "When he was the head of the nuclear watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, for which he got a Nobel Prize, he distorted reports…and covered for Iran. After he left, his successors said earlier reports were not accurate.” That speak volumes about ElBaradei's true allegiances.

Egypt is the most populous and important Arab country in the Middle East. For decades now it has been at relative peace with its neighbor, Israel. How long will that last if Mubarak is replaced with a Muslim Brotherhood leader? It is time for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to wake up and smell the putrid stench of Islamic radicalism and the existential dangers that it represents to the free world and Western civilization as we know it. The United States can ill afford an explosion of violence, revolution and instability through the Middle East and the Islamic world, but that appears to be just what is coming.

"STAND WITH US" COUNTERS ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTORS

2011-01-14T18:59:00.001+01:00

"STAND WITH US" COUNTERS ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTORS

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Sunday afternoon, January 9th, "Stand With Us", the pro-Israel student advocacy organization, staged two counter-protests in New York City, as they faced off against hundreds of seething Hamas supporters and anti-Israel apologists assembled for vitriolic demonstrations in New York's Herald Square and outside of the Israeli Consulate in midtown Manhattan.

Spearheaded by Al-Awda NY - The Palestine Right to Return Coalition along with a litany of similar far left radical offshoots such as the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, American Muslims for Palestine, Siege Busters Working Group, Existence is Resistance, ANSWER - NY and the International Socialist Organization, the demonstrators marked the two year anniversary of Operation Cast Lead which saw an Israeli incursion into Gaza; with the focus being the deterrence of Hamas sponsored rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. Calling for an "end to the occupation of Palestine" and railing against purported "IDF atrocities" against civilians in Gaza, the demonstrators held aloft signs declaring, "No US Aid to Zionist Racism and Murder!", "Bring Zionist War Criminals to Justice!" and "Free Palestine".

"In the last two years since the bloody massacre on Gaza, the Zionist aggression has grown exponentially, with the backing of US imperialist forces", Ali Hussein, a spokesman for Al-Awda told the crowd. "The US continues to block international bodies from pursuing the findings of war crimes during the attacks laid out in the Goldstone Report and we are here today to tell the world that our battle against the Israeli occupation forces will never end until the illegal and morally repugnant Zionist entity is defeated", he continued.

Chanting, "Free, Free Palestine" and "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free", the demonstrators marched through midtown Manhattan to the Israeli Consulate where they continued their rally.

Countering the anti-Israel forces were close to 100 activists representing "Stand With Us". On display at the counter demonstration were two rockets that were fired from Gaza into Israel's southern towns since it's withdrawal in 2005. Pointing to the rockets, Avi Posnick, the Stand With Us regional coordinator for the New York chapter said, "These rockets are among the 8000 fired into Israel by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and it is because of these rockets that Israel targeted the terrorist and weapons smuggling operations during Operation Cast Lead in December of 2008."

Citing the fact that in 2010 another 235 Hamas sponsored rockets have fallen on innocent civilians in Sderot, Ashkelon and other Israeli towns, Posnick said that "Despite all this, Israel permits tons of food and supplies into Gaza through its crossings every day - calling into question the incessant and baseless accusations that there is a humanitarian or hunger crisis in Gaza. If we want to talk about peace in the Middle East, we must confront the agitprop emanating from the Hamas propaganda machine that is taking place across the street from here and declare to the world that it is Hamas terrorism and incitement that represents an impediment to peace, not Israel."

The pro-Israel demonstrators held signs saying, "Israel: We Stand With You", "Stop Palestinian Terrorism; Teach Peace", and "Israel Wants Peace, Hamas Supports Terror". These signs are also part of the "Say Yes to Peace" campaign that Stand With Us launched to counter anti-Israel ads in Seattle and San Francisco. New York State Assemblyman David Weprin addressed the pro-Israel contingent by asking some simple questions. "What is rockets were fired at New York? What would the reaction of the United States be? Israel has the right to defend herself just as the United States does and we are here today to support the freedom loving State of Israel in her continual battle for survival against those bent on wanton terror", he said.

Chanting "Stop Hamas Now" and "Israel Wants Peace, Hamas Wants War", the Stand With Us activists continued their vigil until early evening and vowed to return to square off against others planning similar anti-Israel protests. Said David Ruchlamer of Brooklyn, New York who attended the counter protest, "The facts on the ground are quite clear for anyone who has eyes to see. The Palestinian Authority refuses to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, so real and enduring peace is just not attainable. Israel cannot be compelled to make any further territorial concessions with an enemy who is devoted to its complete destruction."

PRESSURE MOUNTS TO RELEASE JONATHAN POLLARD

2011-01-05T16:02:00.001+01:00

PRESSURE MOUNTS TO RELEASE JONATHAN POLLARD

BY: FERN SIDMAN

The Voice of Israel government radio has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Knesset on Tuesday evening, January 4th at which time he publicly read the much anticipated missive that he has personally penned to President Barack Obama requesting the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard. A former United States Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard has been incarcerated in the U.S. for 25 years on charges stemming from the passage of classified information to Israel. Pollard is presently in deterioriating health in a North Carolina federal prison and an orchestrated campaign amongst his supporters is underway to seek his freedom.

In an unprecedented public appeal to the United States requesting clemency for Pollard, Prime Minister Netanyahu became the first prime minister to formally and publicly request his release. "Since Jonathan Pollard has now spent 25 years in prison, I believe that a new request for clemency is highly appropriate," Netanyahu wrote Obama in the letter. "I know that the United States is a country based on fairness, justice and mercy. For all these reasons, I respectfully ask that you favorably consider this request for clemency. The people of Israel will be eternally grateful." In the letter, Netanyahu apologized for using an agent to spy on the United States and pledged that it would never happen again. "Israel's actions were wrong and totally unacceptable," he wrote.

Netanyahu has made previous attempts to trade Pollard for pliancy in Middle East peace negotiations, in the hope that his release would appease conservatives in the Israeli government. He also made Pollard's case a bargaining point with the Palestinians at the Wye Plantation talks in 1998. Most recently, in September of 2010, Israeli officials tried to float a deal in which they would extend a temporary moratorium on settlement construction in Judea and Samaria, a Palestinian condition for negotiations, in exchange for the release of Pollard.
"Israel will continue to abide by its commitment that such wrongful actions will never be repeated", said Netanyahu. In a personal message to Pollard, Netanyahu then added in his speech that he should "continue to be strong," and told him that the entire nation was behind him and vowed that "you will be here soon." Opposition leader Tzipi Livni called the Pollard case "perhaps only the issue that everyone here in the Knesset could agree on."

Previously, Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin had sent a letter from the Knesset to U.S. President Barack Obama, Congress, and the U.S. Attorney General, pleading for the release of Jonathan Pollard.The letter was signed by a leader in every party except for those known as Arab parties, representing a total of 109 out of the 120 Knesset Members. In dispatching the letter, Rivlin stated that it represents the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the Israeli public in supporting Pollard’s urgent release. “As Speaker of the Knesset,” he wrote in an introductory note, “I see it as my obligation to bring this letter to your attention.”

Pollard recently made a personal request for a public appeal for his release. The request was relayed in writing by Mr. Pollard’s wife, Esther, who personally met with Mr. Netanyahu on Monday. The prime minister’s office said he made the decision after a series of talks and contacts with senior administration officials in recent months. Accompanying Mrs. Pollard to the meeting held on Monday with Netanyahu was Lawrence J. Korb, assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration, and who supports clemency for Pollard.

Mr. Korb told reporters that he had told the prime minister that to “get the ball rolling" he advised Netanyahu to ask for Mr. Pollard’s release publicly and “not as a quid pro quo, but as a matter of justice.” In addition, Mr. Korb said, Israel should acknowledge that it was wrong to have recruited a spy against its closest ally and should say that it is willing to cooperate fully with the Americans to bring the chapter to a close.

Meanwhile, in the US, officials continued to come out on Tuesday with statements calling for Pollard's release. Donald Levy, a former US Navy cryptologist who participated in the damage assessment of Pollard's purported espionage, added his name to the long list of senators, congressmen and senior American officials urging Obama to commute Pollard's sentence.

"There was nothing to indicate that Pollard gave information to any country but Israel," Levy said. "Further, the information consisted primarily of daily operational intelligence summaries, information that is extremely perishable. It did not appear that the information he gave Israel should have resulted in a life sentence."

According to a December 22nd article by Lee Rennert that appeared on the American Thinker web site, he asserts that Pollard has been "the victim of a CIA cover-up of a massive intelligence failure, with the agency blaming Pollard for the damage caused by a real "mole" inside the CIA who passed to Moscow the names of more than a dozen U.S. informants in the Soviet Union -- namely Aldrich Ames, the head of CIA's Soviet-Eastern Europe division, who fingered Pollard to keep the CIA from discovering his own treachery. The CIA did not discover Ames' role until well after Pollard was behind bars and it still isn't willing to acknowledge its mistake in blaming Pollard for Ames's crimes."

The genesis of the Pollard imbroglio began in 1983, when Pollard who based in Washington, DC at the time, discovered that information vital to Israel’s security was being deliberately withheld by certain elements within the US national security establishment. Israel was legally entitled to this security information according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries. The information being withheld from Israel included Syrian, Iraqi, Libyan and Iranian nuclear, chemical and biological warfare capabilities - being developed for use against Israel. It also included information on ballistic missile development by these countries and information on planned terrorist attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

When Pollard questioned his superiors as to why this information was not being disclosed to Israel as had been promised he was told to mind his business. Subsequently, he learned that the objective of suppressing this information to Israel was to severely curtail Israel’s ability to act independently in defense of her own enemies. Pollard did everything in his power to have the legal flow of information to Israel restored. When his efforts met no success, he began to give the information to Israel directly. Pollard was an ideologue, not a mercenary. The FBI concluded after nine months of polygraphing that Pollard acted for ideological reasons only, not for profit. This fact was recognized by the sentencing judge who declined to fine Pollard.In 1985, Jonathan Pollard was arrested by the FBI but was never afforded a trial. At the request of both the US and Israeli governments, he entered into a plea agreement, which spared both governments a long, difficult, expensive and potentially embarrassing trial. Pollard fulfilled his end of the plea agreement, cooperating fully with the prosecution. Nevertheless, Pollard received a life sentence and a recommendation that he never be paroled - in complete violation of the plea agreement he had reached with the government. Pollard was never indicted for harming the United States, nor was he indicted for compromising codes, agents or war plans and he was never charged with treason. He was indicted on only one charge of passing classified information to an ally without intent to harm the United States.

A broad-based interfaith coalition comprised of more than 500 members of the clergy and community leaders also sent a letter to Obama on Tuesday, January 4th in which they called for Pollard's release.The signatories on the letter include prominent religious and communal leaders from a wide array of Christian and Jewish communities, including representatives of Alliance for Jewish Renewal, American Values, Amit, Association of Reform Zionists of America, B'nai B'rith International, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Christians United for Israel, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, EMUNAH of America, Florida Council of Churches, Hebrew Union College, Hillel, JCC's of North America, Jewish Women International, National Council of Young Israel, New York Board of Rabbis, ORT America, Inc., Orthodox Union, Rabbinical Council of America, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Union for Reform Judaism, Yeshiva University, and the Zionist Organization of America.

THE ISLAMIC TSUNAMI: ISRAEL AND AMERICA IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

2011-01-05T15:59:00.002+01:00

THE ISLAMIC TSUNAMI: ISRAEL AND AMERICA IN THE AGE OF OBAMA

BY: DAVID RUBIN

REVIEWED BY: FERN SIDMAN

Issuing an impassioned clarion call to the Western world on the litany of existential dangers that radical Islam represents to America's cherished democratic principles, author David Rubin's meticulously researched monograph reveals that Islam is in actuality a political ideology predicated on a pernicious dogma, rather than the "religion of peace" that its proponents purport it to be.

"The Islamic Tsunami: Israel and America in the Age of Obama" (Shiloh Israel Press) is an exceptionally well documented treatise on the gamut of commonalities that are endemic to both Israel and America in terms of religion, politics and culture. Rubin calls on all free peoples, especially Americans, to take serious heed of the escalating dangers that Islam represents in terms of the perpetuation of bellicose actions bent on mass murder or the more insidious and subtle kind of aggression that is manifested by the potential silent incursion of Sharia law into American jurisprudence. He exhorts both Jews and Christians alike to carefully examine the Judeo-Christian value system that has bound them together for centuries and strongly suggests that they create concrete alliances in order to thwart the nefarious agenda of radical Islam; thus preserving "Western civilization" as we know it.

Rubin speaks with authority as he explains the Islamic concepts of dhimmitude (slave status for all "non-believers"), how the Koran metes out punitive measures against infidels, the genesis of "jihad" and its attendant ramifications as well as outlining the ultimate goal of Islamic global dominance in the form of a Caliphate. Rubin is neither an alarmist nor he is suffering from paranoia and to his credit he does not posit himself as an abstract theoretician or a think-tank denizen. Having studied the Koran, the Bible, as well as plumbing the depths of resources on American history as it pertains to the views of the founding fathers and more recent events, Rubin's book is replete with a plethora of highly enlightening quotes from these sources that help to state his case.

As a Brooklyn born American Orthodox Jew who now lives in Israel, he has first hand experience of the travails of Islamic terrorism as he ruefully recalls his victimization and that of his three-year old son, Ruby. In December of 2001 while driving home to Shiloh from Jerusalem, Rubin and his son were both injured in a terrorist attack carried out by Islamic militants. When Rubin arrived at the hospital he was told that he was "the hospital's 1000th victim of terrorism" and recalls that he was later told by a surgeon that, "the bullet which entered the head and traveled through the neck of my three-year old boy missed his brain stem by one millimeter." Determined to assist others facing similar crises, Rubin founded the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund, an organization dedicated to relieving the trauma suffered by child victims of terrorism.

Indeed, politics make for strange bedfellows. Under a sharpened lens, Rubin examines the nexus of ideas promoting multi-cultural and moral relativism as extolled by the ideologues on the far left of the political spectrum and those who would seek to vanquish any vestige of moral clarity, namely radical Islamists. Chiding President Obama for his own associations with left-wing radicals such as convicted terrorist Bill Ayres and his futile attempts to reach out "in peace" to the Muslim world, Rubin details the predominant Muslim influences in Obama's background and his adamant denial of the very real threats that Islamists present to America, Europe and the free world.

While there is a virtual laundry list of hard hitting points that leap forth from the pages of this book, what really stands out is Rubin's assertion that Obama's Harvard law school education was financed by Saudi petro dollars. Says Rubin: "The tentacles of Islamic aggression reached their highest levels of American influence when it was revealed that Barack Obama's higher education was likely financed and guided by the anti-American, anti-Israel alliance of secular leftists and Islamic ideologues." He qualifies this by saying that the radical American Muslim ideologue Khalid al-Mansour, (a.k.a. Donald Warden), a former mentor to Black Panthers founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale was "raising money for Obama, apparently for his education, although the reason why al-Mansour would be raising money for a virtually unknown young student was not divulged."

Rubin tackles the burgeoning phenomenon of Islamic dominance by encouraging the United States to tap into a treasure trove of timeless lessons for life. Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, he says that, "the Torah will go forth from Zion, thereby spreading its wisdom to the entire world." He asks the sublimely simple question: "What can the U.S. learn from the ongoing struggles between Israel and Islam?" Among other things, Rubin calls for the halt of immigration (both legal and illegal) from Islamic countries to the U.S. and suggests that the U.S. require the emigration of actively hostile Muslims and those Islamists who are engaged in anti-American subversion. He also decries the passage of hate crime legislation which he says "will be used as a big brother technique to curtail the free speech of those who dare to speak out against Islamic ideology."

Reminding us of the immortal words of Thomas Jefferson who said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" and Ronald Reagan who said, "At least let our children and our children's children say of us that we justified our brief moment here; we did all that could be done", Rubin leaves us with a sense of optimism and hope as we prepare to gird our loins and defend our liberties and freedoms and our very lives from those who would obliterate us and them.

STOP PRESS : Will you help this anti-Jihadist movie?

2010-11-17T10:34:00.002+01:00

Script of the anti-Jihadist full length feature film BLACK is now ready! We are planning to start filming of BLACK during end December. In this regard, we are already finalizing the signing process of artistes, who would play various roles in this movie. At least 75 people will work in this film.

Main objective of BLACK is to very prominently and boldly project how Muslim fanatics and Jihadists are gradually becoming active and influential in Muslim societies. It also gives a clear picture of Hindu repression in Muslim Bangladesh.

BLACK challenges various Koranic verses, which goes against humanity, especially those verses, which are in favor of waging Jihad against non-Muslims. It also shows sodomy inside Madrassas; how students in Madrassas are brainwashed with Jihadist indoctrinations; adverse affect of polygamy as well repression of Muslim women; abduction and forceful conversion of Bangladeshi Hindu females etc.

It is expected that, at least 3 million people will watch this movie in various cinema halls in Bangladesh, while through satellite television channels, BLACK will reach minimum 120 million Bangla speaking viewers in Bangladesh and West Bengal [in India]. We also shall make DVDs of this film at a very subsidized price, so that this film will enter a larger segment of our societies in Bangladesh and India.

BLACK is the first time revolt against militant Islam and Jihad. For the first time in the history of Bangladesh, a full length feature film is being made fully with anti-Jihadist contents and dialogues.

To complete making of this film in celluloid, we shall require at least an amount equivalent to US$ 120,000 while if we make this film in digital format [later to be transferred on celluloid], the total cost will be around US$ 75,000. Total length of this film is 150 minutes.

We already have spent approximately US$ 5,000 in recording required songs for this movie.

Philanthropists, anti-Jihadist groups and institutions, various organizations and individuals are requested to consider financially helping this project. Donors and funders of this film project will be appropriately acknowledged and their names will be shown at the beginning of the film.

For details, please contact: vibfil@gmail.com

This is why Muslim's shouldn't drink!

2010-11-16T16:36:00.002+01:00

Anti Islamist movie series by Shoaib Choudhury

2010-10-15T07:42:00.004+02:00

Internationally acclaimed award winning Bangladeshi journalist, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury and his film production company recently announced a project [named Learning Through Entertainment], under which seven movies will be made on Sharia law, Jihad, Burqa, Stoning, Beheading, Polygamy and Child Marriage in Muslim nations.

Filming of BLACK, a movie under this project will begin in December 2010. Meanwhile, script and screenplay for this has already been completed.

Commenting on the first movie of the Learning Through Entertainment project, public relations department of Vibgyor Films said, the short synopsis of this film is:

“Shantigram is a remote village in Bangladesh. Thirty-five years back, there was religious harmony in the area, where people from various religious beliefs were living in peace.

But, for past decades, Islamism and activities of Islamists became gradually prominent in the entire village. Clergies in the mosques and madrassas became increasingly influential in the locality, thus imposing Sharia law, which ultimately turned into nightmare for the villagers.

Muslim men are encouraged by the clergies in having more than one wife, as Islam allows polygamy. Under such situation, wives of the Muslim men ultimately turned into mere slaves, thus taking part domestic works as well helping the husband in agro production. When a wife became physically ill, the husband showed unwillingness in sending her to nearby hospital for treatment, as the man considers hospitals as evil, as male and female doctors work their without burqa.

Whipping and other form of severe physical torture of men and women on various charges gradually become regular in the village, which is applied by local ‘Sharia Committee’ formed by clergies and Islamic fanatics.

In Bangladeshi rural areas, male and female Bauls, [who are a group of mystic minstrels from Bengal. Bauls constitute both a syncretic religious sect and a musical tradition. Bauls are a very heterogeneous group, with many different subsects, but their membership mainly consists of Vaishnava Hindus and Sufi Muslims. They can often be identified by their distinctive clothes and musical instruments], enjoyed a loving status for centuries, while they are known to be people promoting religious harmony and tolerance. But, with the rise of Islamist groups, Sharia appliers and Muslim fanatics, Bauls are declared infidels in the locality, thus pushing their lives into misery. Bauls, who live on entertaining people through Sufi songs thus receiving donations and charities, are denied any help by the local influential Muslim leaders and clergies. They are given ultimatum either to become Muslim to leave the area. This though generates anger and severe reaction in the minds of Bauls, they are unable to speak out fearing harsh actions by the Islamists and Mullahs.

In the meantime, several Islamist NGOs become extremely active in the village, while mostly they target Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and non-Muslim families. In the name of offering loans of financial help, young boys and girls in those non-Muslim families are regularly abducted for forceful conversion into Islam. Gradually the village sees systematic eliminations of religious minorities.
BLACK is a film, which shows the current situation in rural Bangladesh [which actually is very similar with villages in other Muslim nations], where Sharia law is forcefully imposed on people while systematic elimination of religious minorities continue.

Hidden tears of Muslim women under the imposed Islamic veils are clearly shown in this film.

This film is against Sharia, Islamism, religious intolerance, hate speech and repression of women under Sharia law. This film is aimed at creating massive awareness in the people in Muslim nations in standing against Islamism and Sharia, thus voicing for reform in Islam, Koran and Islamic codes.

BLACK is the first film of the planned series of seven movies. Each of the movies is aimed at ultimately projecting problems inside Islam and Sharia law in a very bold manner.

Initial language of BLACK is Bangla, while it will be dubbed in various languages in future. There are around 300 million Bangla speaking population in Bangladesh and India only. Our initial target group is this 300 million people. Later, with dubbing in other languages as well as using sub-titles in English, French, Hindi, Urdu etc, we shall reach a few hundred millions of people in the entire Muslim country and the world.”

Shoaib Choudhury has earlier directed a Bangla film named Shongshoy and is currently working on another feature film named Leelakhela.

Shongshoy is based on the story of high-profile dowry in Muslim societies as well repression of women after marriage. This film has already drawn attention of Bangladeshi cine critics.

Vibgyor Films has requested broadcast companies in India, Middle East, United Kingdom, European Union, United States, Australia and Canada to contact for broadcasting this film on various TV channels as well as copyright for selling DVDs. Total length of Shongshoy is 90 minutes.

Leelakhela is based on the theme of confronting militant Islam, Jihad and social evils in the societies. This film will be ready for release in 2011. Vibgyor Films will sign a Bollywood female actor in Leelakhela.

Choudhury’s films are not made for mere entertainment. But, each of his films contain very specific and bold message for the society.

"STAND WITH US" STAGES SILENT PROTEST AGAINST AHMADINEJAD

2010-09-21T02:49:00.002+02:00

"STAND WITH US" STAGES SILENT PROTEST AGAINST AHMADINEJAD

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Spotlighting the egregious human rights abuses that take place on a daily basis in Iran, the pro-Israel student advocacy organization "Stand With Us" staged a silent demonstration in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon, September 19th at the entrance to Central Park on 59th Street and Columbus Circle. This graphic display of the terror that Iranian citizens face comes in response to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to New York, where he'll be addressing the United Nations general assembly on September 23rd.

Approximately 60 people attended the silent protest which featured "street theater" including participants with blue duct tape over the mouths, signifying the lack of free speech or dissension in Iran, while others held signs that depicted the horrific human rights abuses that take place in that country. While there were no speakers or organized crowd chanting, the powerful message of those suffering under the draconian rule of the Iranian regime came across loud and clear.

Among those in attendance were long time Jewish activist Helen Freedman, the New York City coordinator of Americans For a Safe Israel along with a contingent of AFSI members. "We came here today to stand in solidarity with those Iranian citizens who are being beheaded, stoned and buried alive for speaking out against the tyrannical rule of the Iranian ayatollahs. It is the pinnacle of hypocrisy for Iranian President Ahmadinejad to come to New York and speak at the United Nations while his own citizens are not granted the basic rights of free speech that we take for granted in this country. We also hold the UN responsible for extending an invitation to Ahmadinejad", she declared.

Holding aloft photos of those who have been tortured and murdered by the Iranian government for speaking out against the totalitarian rule of the government, the demonstrators also held signs saying, "Down With Dictators", "In Iran, You are KILLED for Opposing the Government", "Iran is the World Sponsor of Terrorism - Imagine Them With Nukes!" and "Impediment to Peace - Iran". Most of the signs carried a photo of the face of Ahmadinejad. Many of those who participated in the demonstration were Iranian dissidents, now living in the United States and the United Kingdom, and those who personally felt the lash of Ahmadinejad's government.

One such woman is Shahla Ebrahimi who came along with her husband, Alireza Yaghoubi and their teenage children Amir and Kosar. Mrs. Ebrahimi and her family now live in the UK where they regularly attend demonstrations on behalf of human rights in Iran. "Twenty years ago, I was arrested, blindfolded, and taken to a purported court where I was not allowed to speak. I was imprisoned for three years for protesting against the Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Khomeni regimes of oppression, intimidation, arrest, and death", she said. She added that her husband, Alireza was arrested 14 years ago and imprisoned for 5 years in the Evin torture prison in Teheran. While being transferred from one place to another his back was broken by his Iranian tormentors and as a result of the tortures inflicted on him he lost most of his hearing.

During this tumultuous period, Mrs. Ebrahimi said that their so-called "friends" in Iran exploited their grievous situation and stole all of their money. Subsequent to their release they traveled to Germany for a brief time and then back to Iran where her husband's parents were dying. Alireza was immediately detained by Iranian police, she said. "My husband, Alireza, had to run away to the border with Turkey, where a smuggler found him after 20 days and for $10,000 was able to get him into England" she emotionally recalled. Mrs. Ebrahimi counts herself and her children as among the lucky few who were able to get out of Iran and into England where they now reside along with her husband. Her children attend school in the UK while Mrs. Ebrahimi is studying to be a dental hygenist.

"Thankfully, we were able to get visas and use our British passports to come to the US to attend this week's series of demonstrations against Ahmadinejad" said Mrs. Ebrahimi. "Our story and others just like it, need to be told. The world must wake up to the madness of this Iranian miscreant (Ahmadinejad) and take him seriously. Under his leadership and that of the powerful imams, Iran represents an existential danger to the free world. An nuclear armed Iran spells death and destruction to all peoples. We must raise our voices in outrage and indignation before it is too late".

Shana Tova and something for the peace

2010-09-11T07:07:00.001+02:00

By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Jewish festivals are mostly unknown in the Muslim world, especially the non-Arab Muslim nations, though Christmas, Easter and Halloween are greatly known and even celebrated by the Muslims. In Bangladesh, each year, more than 3 million Christmas cards are sold and it is a public holiday. But, unfortunately, Bangladeshis never heard of Jewish festivals even before 2003, when we launched our only anti-Jihadist and pro-Israel newspaper, Weekly Blitz.

Weekly Blitz has been publishing articles and features on Jewish religious festivals including Rosh Hashanah as well as Yom Kippur. At our personal initiatives, we made English and Bangla version of Holy Torah available in Bangladesh, which also was very much unavailable in this country before 2003. Now copies of Torah are purchased by Muslim readers even in Bangladesh and only in 2009, more than 5,000 copies of Bangla version of Torah was sold. We certainly are not making any profit from such projects.

Weekly Blitz is the only newspaper in the Muslim world, which organizes annual Rosh Hashanah party in the Capital city, which is participated by people from various religious groups, including Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Bahais, Ahmadiyas etc. When we initiated the celebration in 2005, it was attended only by 20 people. But, this year, our celebration will be attended by over 200 people. There is indication of interest by various important people in the society in participating in the Rosh Hashanah celebration. This year, we also are organizing a mini-seminar titled ‘Understanding Jewish Festival’, where university teachers, scholars, editors and religious leaders are invited as speakers. We really should have made a larger function, as we are unable to invite hundreds of people, who are still willing to participate. We are forced in doing that, because of our limited fund.

Many, who participated in our past events of Rosh Hashanah in Bangladesh, are saying that, gradually this event is turning into an example of religious tolerance. Every year, during Rosh Hashanah, we make strong statements against Jihad and Islamist extremism. Moreover, we oppose Holocaust denial. Due to our continuous efforts, significant portion of local intellectuals and editors are gradually raising voice in favor of establishment of relations between Bangladesh [third largest Muslim nation] and Israel and also are pronouncing Israel to be the homeland for the Jewish people.

Anti Semitic and anti-Israel activities of Iranian embassy in Bangladesh, which is spending huge amount of money each year in such heinous venture, are greatly opposed by many locals as well recruitment of Bangladeshis by the so-called Palestinian embassy in Dhaka and sending them to fight against Israel is almost stopped.

Ultra Islamist militancy group such as Hizbut Tahrir is already banned by Bangladesh government in 2009 due to continues editorials and investigative reports published in Weekly Blitz. We now are actively working in getting a book and DVD named ‘Dajjal’ banned, which contains serious offensive comments against Jews and Christians. Bangladesh government is reportedly considering putting ban on this group too, very soon.

In 2006, a minor girl was raped by the Muslim clergy in Chittagong district in Bangladesh. When local press published the report, the clergy and some of the very influential religious leaders in the locality tried to justify this crime by saying, the girl was from a Jewish family. Immediately on seeing this statement, Weekly Blitz not only started publishing reports and editorials, I personally met the minister in the government with the demand of justice for the child. As a result, the culprit was arrested and now serves life term in prison for raping the minor Jewish girl.

In 2008, in another incident, a Jewish family [Jews in Bangladesh mostly suppress their religious identity and pronounce them to be ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ to avoid social and state repressions], was attacked by Muslim youths and their 15-years old daughter as well the wife of the Jewish man was gang raped. We once again brought this matter to the attention of the government, and the culprits are already in prison, facing trial.

These are just some of the examples of accomplishments of Weekly Blitz since 2003. But, just because of our editorial policy, Weekly Blitz office was bombed in July 2006 and attacked in October the same year. I was physically assaulted in 2006 [October] as well as abducted at gun point in February 2008. My office was again attacked and ransacked in February 2009. I knew with certainty that, some elements, encouraged by the Islamist militancy groups and anti-Israel groups were behind such attacks. We got no protection from the government.

In 2009, armed men intruded into my house with assassination plan.

Though US Congress passed resolution in 2007 [HR 64], demanding immediate end of all forms of harassment tactics on me as well as protecting me from attacks and taking actions against the attackers, there is in reality, no action from the government. I am facing sedition, treason and blasphemy charges in Bangladeshi court since 2003, for my stand in favor of Israel. According to Bangladeshi law, sedition bears capital punishment.

Shall I leave Bangladesh with my family and take political refuge in the West? This is what thousands of my friends keep on asking. But, I was offered political asylum in USA, UK, Australia, Canada and many other countries. I humbly told all of them that, I am unwilling to leave Bangladesh. Rather, I am determined to combat militant Islam and will not rest, until it is completely defeated.

Some of my friends ask why I am taking risk of my life. I told them, because I want to see a peaceful world and defeat of militant Islam.

But, the sad thing is, my newspaper, Weekly Blitz, is already at the verge of closure, because, we never received even a single advertisement for our editorial policy favorable to Israel. We have been surviving with generous help from some individuals and organizations. While pro-Islamist media is continuing visible conquest and expansion, this only pro-Israel and anti-Jihadist newspaper is facing imminent closure, due to financial constraint. Can anyone, keep us on their prayers, during Rosh Hashanah please? Can anyone extend their hands?

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

AN INTERVIEW WITH AARON KLEIN - BY: FERN SIDMAN

2010-07-01T20:50:00.002+02:00

AN INTERVIEW WITH AARON KLEIN

Author of "THE MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT" - Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and other anti-American Extremists"

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Released in May of this year by WND Books, this seminal piece of investigative journalism entitled, "The Manchurian President" has been both embraced by political conservatives and repudiated by Obama apologists in progressive enclaves. Listed as number 23 on The New York Times non-fiction bestseller list as of June 27th, this eye-opening account of President Obama's ties to radical left-wing extremists represents the latest work of intrepid investigative journalist and WABC radio talk show host, Aaron Klein. The Jewish Voice sat down with Mr. Klein to discuss his new book.

FS: Concerning your latest book, "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and other Anti-American Extremists", what served as the inspiration for you and Brenda J Elliott to collaborate on such a monumental investigative task?

AK: I was inspired to undertake this task because so few reporters were conducting any real investigation into Barack Obama's background. I reported in February of 2008 that Obama was tied to Weather Underground criminal/terrorist Bill Ayers. When I did a Google search to see if any other reporters or media outlets had uncovered this information, I was stunned to find that they had not. After all, it is the responsibility of the media to engage in a vetting process of sorts when it pertains to presidential candidates. Based on my research, it was clear to me that Obama had a long relationship with Ayers and Ayers even gave Obama his first job at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. They also served together, in the 1990s on the board of the Woods Fund; a non-profit organization that funneled money to leftist causes including the Midwest Academy that practiced Alinsky-like tactics of working within the capitalist system in order to overthrow it. What really served as the impetus for me to write this book was the lack of any real independent investigative journalism on the part of the mainstream media, as it pertained to Obama's past.

FS: As you previously mentioned to Sean Hannity on FOX News, President Obama was not forthright in his book concerning his first boss who he claimed was Marty Kaufman. Since no such person exists, and the person to whom he referred was Gerald "Jerry" Kellman, what connections does Kellman currently have with this administration?

AK: While Jerry Kellman may not have ties to the administration, it is clear that Obama apparently deliberately disguised the fact in his autobiography that he was given a job at the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools or ABC's by someone he claimed was Marty Kaufman, who in fact does not exist. Rather, he was referring to Jerry Kellman, who is an avowed Marxist and a stalwart acolyte of Saul Alinksy, the radical community organizer. Obama also disguises other names in his so-called autobiography, "Dreams From My Father", and neglects to mention that his childhood mentor was another Communist agitator named Frank Marshall Davis. Very little information was known about Obama other than what he had penned in his book. All of this information should be considered a major political scandal and the fact that he changed the names in his book should be challenged.

FS: Why do you think the mainstream media did not scrutinize Obama's background and ties to extremists and why do you think he was not carefully vetted by the Democratic party?

AK: I think the mainstream media promotes the same kinds of policies that Obama is espousing. He is the kind of candidate that they've been wishing for and hoping for. He is their dream come true. The Democratic Party did not carefully vet him because even those in his own presidential campaign such as David Plauth, who made a lot of Obama's videos, admitted that he didn't check out his background and was unaware of his affiliation for over 22 years with Rev Jeremiah Wright's church and black liberation theology. The party betrays it's past and it's roots by remaining indifferent to the polemical aspects of Obama's career. Obama has been pushing for the very same policies that the mainstream media itself that has been advocating for years and now they have this candidate named Obama so of course they're not going to investigate him in any serious way. To them these issues are not scandals. The media has been promoting Bill Ayers and other radical leftists and the causes that Obama has been representing for years, so this comes as no surprise.

FS: Your book sheds light on the sketchy details surrounding Obama's college days. What were his political leanings during his years at Occidental College and Columbia University and was he under the tutelage of Marxist mentors and professors?

AK: As to Obama's college days, no official or unofficial records were ever made available to the media. No college transcripts, published records, or even contemporary newspaper announcements about his education have been released. Obama remarkably relates in his autobiography "Dreams from My Father" that, beginning at Occidental, he surrounded himself with an assortment of radicals, socialists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists and communists. Obama, however, provides neither names nor clues.

It was at Occidental that Obama first engaged in community activism, delivering what has been described as the first political speech of his career. On Feb. 18, 1981, Obama addressed students gathered outside Coons Hall administration building, exhorting Occidental's trustees to divest from South Africa. Obama writes in "Dreams" about the rally in which he took part, reportedly led by the Black Student Alliance and Students for Economic Democracy. Students for Economic Democracy, or SED, was a national student advocacy group established by soon-to-be California State Representative Tom Hayden, now a professor at Occidental, and his former wife, actress Jane Fonda.

FS: As to Israel, the Middle East and relations with the Muslim world, many people feel Obama has coddled our Islamic terrorist enemies such as Iran, and their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. In a recent article (June 15) by Jerusalem Post reporter, Caroline Glick, she writes:

"It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama's friends, former Weatherman Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is former US senator from South Dakota James Abourezk."

What are your comments on this?

AK: As I reported back in January of this year, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers along with Code Pink's Jodie Evans were in the forefront of fomenting chaos on the streets of Egypt in an attempt to enter Gaza with the Free Gaza Movement to join in solidarity with the territory's population and leadership. The three helped to stir riots after the Egyptian government refused to allow a large number of protesters to enter neighboring Gaza. Eventually, the protesters accepted an Egyptian offer of allowing about 100 marchers into Gaza. Once in the territory, those marchers were reportedly met on the Gaza side by Hamas' former Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. Clearly, President Obama's associates have helped shape his adversarial stance towards Israel, but he has a history of political leanings towards Hamas. In the 1990s, Obama spoke at pro-Palestinian events alongside Ali Abunimah, who was with Evans' group in Egypt, and who runs the web site called "Electronic Intifada" which spreads anti-Israel propaganda. In one such event, a 1999 fundraiser for Palestinian "refugees," Abunimah recalled introducing Obama on stage.

Obama, like most leftists, believe that all conflicts can be resolved through dialogue and negotiations, which is why I believe he is coddling Iran in part. He is advancing and agitating for policies that help Hamas and we might see in the future even the White House eventually opening channels with Hamas because they believe that Hamas can be talked out of their extremism that is patently ridiculous. I know many Hamas leaders and have interviewed them and they are looking to spread their brand of Islam around the world and it's not like we can talk them out of it or talk them into peace negotiations. Obama has an "Israel problem". He has a real issue with the Jewish state. This is evidenced by his radical affiliations with such people as Rashid Khalidi, the pro-PLO Columbia University professor and others like him.

FS: Can you shed some light on whom, in the Obama administration, were significant figures in pushing a socialist domestic agenda including the national health care reform bill?

AK: As I reveal in my book, a convicted felon named Robert Creamer who is the husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who was one of Capitol Hill's most visible cheerleaders for Obama's health-care bill is the one who helped provide a blueprint for the president's health-care legislation. Creamer said his declared strategies on health-care reform are not about "policies" but "are about the distribution of wealth and power." Creamer also recommended the president "create" a national consensus that the country's health-care system is in a state of crisis in order to push a radical new health-care plan. Creamer was sentenced to federal prison in 2006 after pleading guilty to bank fraud and withholding taxes while heading Citizen Action of Illinois. While in prison, he wrote a book titled "How Progressives Can Win." Obama's chief adviser, David Axelrod, touted Creamer's book as providing "a blueprint for future victories," including on health care. His book was endorsed by other leading Democrats and by Andy Stern, a close ally of the president who as head of the Service Employees International Union had visited the White House more than any other individual.

FS: You write quite extensively on the role of the SEIU, AFSCME, the AFL-CIO, and of course ACORN in their support for President Obama. Can you tell us if the leadership and rank and file of these unions call for a Socialist and/or Communist agenda and what role, if any, they play in helping to craft legislation?

AK: For example, one of Obama's close advisors is Eliseo Medina, the international executive vice-president of Service Employees International Union, or SEIU. Medina is in the forefront of spearheading legislation that would grant citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants, with the stated objective being the expansion of the "progressive" electorate that would help to ensure a "progressive" governing coalition for the long term. The SEIU is closely linked to the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN and they are top supporters of Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez's Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Bill, which seeks to document up to 12 million illegal immigrants inside the U.S.
During the most recent presidential campaign, Medina and Gutierrez served on Obama's National Latino Advisory Council. Also on the council was Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-N.Y., the co-sponsor of Gutierrez's immigration reform bill. Medina was a chief lobbyist credited with a change in the longstanding policy of the AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the U.S. The union reversed its stance against illegal immigration in February 2000, instead calling for new amnesty for millions of illegals. The New Zeal blog documents how Medina was honored in 2004 by Chicago's Democratic Socialists of America for his "vital role in the AFL-CIO's reassessment of its immigration policy." That same year, Medina became a DSA honorary chairman. The DSA also supported Gutierrez's 1998 bid for Congress. In the mid-1990s, Gutierrez served on the board of Illinois Public Action alongside a number of DSA members, including Obama health-care advisor Quentin Young.
FS: Can you elaborate on David Axelrod's Communist background that you extensively explore in your book?

AK: David Axelrod was mentored by Don Rose, a founder of the pro-Communist publication called "Hyde Park Voices" and who, in the 1960s, was a member of a purported Communist Party front called the Alliance to End Repression. Axelrod began his professional career as a journalist with this paper. Rose also worked with the late David S. Canter, who was the co-founder of the Voices newspaper and was named as a communist in the late 1960s by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In my book, I document the fact that Rose had written to Marc Canter, the son of the late David Canter and said, "Your dad and I 'mentored' and helped educate Axelrod politically, which is perhaps why you may recall seeing him hanging around the house." In 1987, Axelrod was hired to help in the re-election campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, where he once again worked with Rose and Canter. It should be noted that Washington's campaign was supported by a coalition of communist and socialist groups.

FS: Will you be speaking about this book on college campuses throughout North America?

AK: I will not be focusing on a speaking tour right now but will be putting my efforts into a media tour to help promote the book.

An ally on the brink : Choudhury's pro-Israel Bangladeshi newspaper is in danger of erasure

2010-06-27T14:17:00.005+02:00

Seth Mandel

THE JEWISH STATE

June 25, 2010

Reading the reports on the state of newspapers today, and following the New Media revolution, you couldn't be blamed for thinking advertising and the riddle of the online paywall are the media's most pressing challenges.

Such is life, and worry, in a free country.

In reality, while newspapers are struggling in the West (from 2007-2009, the industry's revenue dropped by 30 percent in the U.S., according to the OECD), journalists elsewhere in the world -- especially in repressive states -- put their lives on the line. It is this combination -- falling revenue and the constant threat of death -- that has pushed Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury's newspaper to the brink.

Choudhury's paper, The Weekly Blitz , is published out of Bangladesh. When it was founded in 2003, advertising revenue wasn't an issue. But as soon as the Blitz started publishing pro-Israel editorials, local businesses in this Muslim country immediately started shunning the paper. Later that year, Choudhury was arrested at the airport heading to a writer's conference in Tel Aviv, tortured for 10 days, and kept in solitary confinement for 17 months at a Dhaka prison.
He is still on trial for sedition, blasphemy, and treason, for which he would be executed if found guilty.

Choudhury speaks eloquently about the fight against radical Islam and the moral imperative of supporting Israel. He is an unabashed Zionist, which many of our readers -- who filled a room in November 2009 to hear him speak -- know well.

In that speech, Choudhury mentioned that the police protection he was finally granted after the intervention of the U.S. Congress -- most notably Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) -- has been removed. As if on cue, six weeks after Choudhury gave that speech in New Brunswick, armed robbers broke into his home. The commotion woke the neighbors, and the men fled.

Such incidents have become routine, unfortunately, though Choudhury refuses to flee Bangladesh or convert out of Islam. "I remain important to the Muslims because I am a Muslim," Choudhury said back in November. "The moment I become an ex-Muslim, it makes no difference. If you want to reform a class, you need to be a member of the club. I am a member of Islam and I demand a reform in Islam... preaching hate is not the Islam that I follow; the Islam I follow is where I can embrace a Jew as a brother."

He has always been frank about his Zionism. "Today, Israel is suffering, tomorrow the world will suffer," he told me when we first met. Israel, he said, "is a land blessed by God. And God will protect his land."

And it goes without saying that bravery has never been a weakness for him. But now he is in the position of needing our help. It can't be easy for him to ask for it, but it should be easy for us to answer the call. A wealthy businessman in Bangladesh recently offered to buy Choudhury's paper for a generous sum, but Choudhury knows the man's intention: to silence one of the few pro-Israel, pro-Western voices in the East. Choudhury declined, choosing principles over money.
"But, now, our very sustainability has become almost impossible," Choudhury wrote in a message to readers. "Each month, we are losing [a] huge amount of money in continuing the print and online edition of this newspaper. For any newspaper, it is absolutely impossible to sustain without any advertisement revenue." He included the email address: ediblitz [at]yahoo.com at which he could be contacted by those willing to help.

Choudhury will get no help whatsoever from his fellow countrymen, who at best ignore him and at worst wish the government would end his troublemaking once and for all. So he needs the West to step up to the plate. Jewish organizations should do what Choudhury's close friend Richard Benkin did when he first heard Choudhury was in danger. Benkin references the one-word response Moses gave God when he was called from the burning bush: Hineni -- here I am.
Advertising revenue would be great, though a grant would be even better. We are blessed with philanthropists aplenty, and Israel has no more courageous defender than Choudhury. This is the first time he has ever made such an appeal. It has been two weeks since Choudhury published that request, and, he told me, "the situation is still unchanged. Weekly Blitz is in the very worst economic constraint."

"Today, I stand before you, the people of Bangladesh and in fact the entire Muslim world as a witness; a witness that Israelis want above all else peace and justice," Choudhury was to say in that speech prepared, but never delivered, to the writer's conference in Tel Aviv. "And those who spread false rumors to the contrary around the world, and especially in Muslim countries, are, frankly, either deluded or dishonest. I also stand before you perhaps as a living contradiction: a Zionist, a defender of Israel, and a devout, practicing Muslim, living in a Muslim country."

Israel needs such fire more than anything; yet this flame is in danger of being snuffed out. "Please pray for us," Choudhury told me this week. We should, and we will. But if all we can do is pray, we haven't done enough.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.

"STAND WITH US" CONFRONTS GAZA FLOTILLA SPEAKERS

2010-06-21T18:07:00.001+02:00

"STAND WITH US" CONFRONTS GAZA FLOTILLA SPEAKERS

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Thursday evening, June 17th, members of Stand With Us, the pro-Israel student advocacy organization staged a raucous demonstration outside The House of the Lord Church on Atlantic Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, as they confronted the allegations leveled against Israel in its role in the May 31st commando raid on the "Free Gaza Flotilla" ship, the Marvi Marmara. The former Turkish MP and IHH activist Ahmet Faruk Unsal who had been scheduled to speak was denied access to the USA, however Viva Palestina organizer Kevin Ovenden and filmmaker Lara Lee, who claim they were passengers on the ship, took the podium to spew forth invective against Israel for the attack that left nine Turkish terrorist nationals dead.

Sponsored by a litany of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas organizations such as Al-Awda-New York: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Muslim American Society, American Muslims For Palestine, NYC Labor Against the War, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the Arab Muslim American Federation, Labor For Palestine, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine, Action for a Progressive Pakistan, and the ANSWER Coalition among others, the speakers called for "an international war crimes" tribunal to be established in order to bring Israel to "justice" for what they perceive as an act of "piracy and murder".

Approximately 40 member of Stand With Us and other concerned citizens stood directly across the street from the church holding aloft signs saying, "Humanitarian Aid Workers Don't Carry Knives, Axes and Metal Bars", "Israel: We Stand With You” and "Shame on Turkey" while chanting "Terrorists - Yes; Humanitarians - No". Clearly, the implications of the demonstrators was that the Turkish sponsored flotilla, under the aegis of the IHH, which stands for the Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, is not an Islamic charity but rather a group with direct links to terrorist organizations.

According to news reports, Turkish security forces, in 1998, raided the IHH’s headquarters in Istanbul and found weapons, explosives, instructions for making IEDs and a flag with a jihad message. As former French counter-terrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, who was involved in the raid, has explained: “It was clearly proven that some of the NGO’s work was not charity. It was to provide a facade for moving funds, weapons and mujahedeen to and from Bosnia and Afghanistan.”
The IHH is also a member of the Saudi-based umbrella organization, the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir), led by Sheikh Yusuf Quaradawi, who is considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Every year the Union of Good, whose top officials include Hamas members, channels millions of dollars to Hamas-controlled organizations in the West Bank and Gaza.

Avi Posnick, the local chapter leader of Stand With Us said, "We are here today to counter the bald faced lies and egregious propaganda that are being hurled against Israel inside this church. Based on video and personal testimonies, Israel has been exonerated from any wrongdoing but these speakers, who allege to be humanitarians, but are just the opposite; choose not to look at the truth. Israel did not randomly kill "innocent” people aboard the Marvi Marmara but rather defended herself against terrorists with the intent to kill Israeli commandos and with the intent of smuggling weapons to Hamas forces in Gaza."

Referencing a June 15th article by Jerusalem Post reporter Caroline Glick in which she wrote: "Led by US President Barack Obama, the West has cast its lot with Hamas against Israel. It is not surprising that Obama is siding with Hamas. His close associates are leading members of the pro-Hamas Free Gaza outfit. Obama's friends, former Weatherman Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayres participated in a Free Gaza trip to Egypt in January. Their aim was to force the Egyptians to allow them into Gaza with 1,300 fellow Hamas supporters. Their mission was led by Code Pink leader and Obama fundraiser Jodie Evans. Another leading member of Free Gaza is former US senator from South Dakota James Abourezk. All of these people have open lines of communication not only to the Obama White House, but to Obama himself", New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind who represents the 48th assembly district in Boro Park and was present at the demonstration said, "I am not at all surprised. Obama has created a political atmosphere that not only endangers Israel but the entire Western world."

"My question is: Where are all the Zionist organizations? Where are all the pulpit rabbis? Why aren't they here today and why don't we hear their collective voices of outrage and indignation against the Obama administration's pressure on Israel to empanel an investigative committee to find out what really happened on the Marvi Marmara, when we all know that the State of Israel was being attacked by terrorists? Why isn't the Zionist leadership, especially here in New York organizing rallies and demonstrations against the nefarious policies of this administration as it pertains to Israel?" Assemblyman Hikind declared.

Citing the abject silence on the part of his colleagues in the Democratic party, Hikind intoned, "We can expect little or nothing in terms of strong opposition to Obama's Middle East agenda from our elected officials in the Democratic party. Their reluctance to voice their concern about Israel's predicament speaks volumes about their allegiance to partisan politics and their repudiation of the concerns of their constituencies."

Islamist conspiracy to kill Weekly Blitz

2010-06-21T06:20:00.004+02:00

By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

When we started our journey, back in 2003, as one of the periodicals in Bangladesh, no one really had any problems with us. We even were receiving advertisements from the local advertisers. But, during mid 2003, when we started publishing positive articles and editorials on Israel and some other issues, which were almost considered to be taboo in Bangladesh, local advertisers swiftly turned away their faces from us.

Then I was arrested on November 29 2003, at Dhaka International Airport, on my way to Tel Aviv for attending a peace conference. The then Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP]-led Islamist government used the state machinery in placing me on remand for 10 days, thus mentally and physically torturing with the 'hope' of extracted a confessional statement. They considered me to be a Zionist Spy.

Later the government sent to an isolated cell at Dhaka Central Jail, where I was detained for 17 months in extreme hit and humidity.

In 2004 [January], the government brought sedition, treason and blasphemy charges against me. According to Bangladeshi law, sedition bears capital punishment.

I was not allowed to attend my mother's funeral when she passed away on August 9, 2004.

At the intervention of Congressman Mark Steven Kirk and relentless effort by Dr. Richard L Benkin [my Jewish brother] as well as Congressional aide Jeff Phillip, I was released on bail on April 30, 2005 from Dhaka Central Jail.

The sedition, treason and blasphemy charge is still hanging on me and every month I have to appear in the court to face trial. Though Bangladesh's present government is renewing its commitment in fighting Islamist militancy, it is reluctant in dropping the charge, fearing reaction from the Islamists.

On my release, Weekly Blitz resumed its publication in 2005 and since then, we never received even a single advertisement in our print edition. Only two or three advertisements were offered by some philanthropists and my supporters with a small amount of money, which is again not enough for Weekly Blitz to sustain for a week. But, still, my profound gratitude and admiration for those kind hearted people, who stood for us, during our difficult days.

From the mid of 2008, Weekly Blitz is again seeing extreme adversities in continuing its publication. In the same year, our office was attacked and we were evicted from our own office, illegally by some politically blessed thugs.

Thanks to Dr. Daniel Pipes and Middle East Forum, for helping us in taking a new office just in May this year. The entire amount received from MEF has already been spent for the new office and furniture.

Sensing our inability and economic adversities in running Weekly Blitz, a business tycoon with heavy affiliation with an Islamist party offered to buy the entire newspaper with an amount equivalent to US$ 300K. They even continued to offer us much higher amount, if we were ready to sell the newspaper. We knew they were planning to buy Weekly Blitz for turning it into a newspaper like all others in the Muslim nation, mostly spreading message of hatred against Israel and Jews. Their intention was to morally kill our newspaper. We did not bow to such dirty desire of the Islamists.

But, now, our very sustainability has become almost impossible. Each month, we are losing huge amount of money in continuing the print and online edition of this newspaper. For any newspaper, it is absolutely impossible to sustain without any advertisement revenue.

Can we expect, some of the philanthropists or organizations, who want this only anti-Jihadist newspaper in the Muslim world to sustain, would kindly help us with advertisements or grants? Such help is so much urgent for us. And, this is for the first time; we are making this appeal.

Please help us! And also refer our appeal to everyone you know. This is such critical time for us. Your actions and help can help us stay alive. If you are willing to help Weekly Blitz, kindly write to: ediblitz@yahoo.com

You can kindly send cheques or wire transfer the amount of Advertisement Cost, Grant or Donation. Also you can donate through Paypal by visiting the website of the online edition of Weekly Blitz at www.weeklyblitz.net

Tower of terrorism at Ground Zero

2010-06-21T06:17:00.001+02:00

By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

America is defined by the last phrase of its national anthem: The land of the free and the home of the brave. Freedom, in all its forms, is its greatest legacy, which the nation has bravely fought many wars on many fronts to preserve against the unceasing assaults of totalitarianism of all stripes. Time and again, the heroes of the nation bravely sacrificed their lives to protect freedom and liberty.

Currently, America is faced with the insidious, multifaceted, and most deadly threat of Islamism. Since Islam has been around for centuries, there is a tendency to ignore or even deny the threat it poses to humanity. Various concessions are made, some of them as good faith offerings and some in the hope of placating the Islamists. Yet, concessions to threats are appeasements. And appeasements have never solved any problems. They only whet the appetite of the aggressor, give it more power, and make it even more dangerous.

Very unfortunately, in today’s world, Islamists [including political Islam] are set as Islam’s locomotive that takes the Islamic train on its demolition course. Instead of promoting peace, many of the so-called leaders of the ‘Muslim Ummah’ are engaged in fuelling Jihad and killing innocent people in the name of religion. And sadly, such elements are gradually growing influence everywhere in the world as well brainwashing some of the naïve global leaders like Barack Hussain Obama, who continues to appease Islamists without sensing the degree of threat it poses to his very own country.

Islam and democracy are incompatible. As democracies practice their magnificent accommodating belief, they knowingly or unknowingly lay the track for the advancing train wrecking that is Islam. Radical Islamism threatens to set a new record for brutality, contrary to the contention that there is no reason to worry about it. Jihadist Wahabism’s tentacles are reaching out from its cradle in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf Arab Emirates. The Petrodollar flush Sunni-Shia zealots are liberally financing mosques, Madrassas [Islamic indoctrination schools], Islamic centers at universities, front organizations and lobbyists to promote the Wahhabi or Shiite virulent Islamism in every part of America. That makes America the Vulnerable.

Activities of Tablighi Jamaat is gradually increasing in United States, and according to recent statistics disclosed during last year’s largest Tablighi congregations in Bangladesh, more than four hundred Tablighi groups are actively working in various so-called community mosques or in disguise mostly targeting young Americans with the goal of converting them initially to Islam and later giving them Jihadist provocations.

What is Tablighi jamaat?

Tablighi Jamaat [Conveying Group] is a Muslim missionary and revival movement. Their activities are not limited to the Deobandi community.
Leaders of Tablighi Jamaat claim that the movement is strictly non-political in nature, with the main aim of the participants being to work at the grass roots level and reaching out to all Muslims of the world for spiritual development.
Tablighi Jamat seeks to revitalize Muslims around the world. It is claimed that their ideology and practices are in strict accordance with Qur'an and Sunnah.
Despite their affiliation and influence of the prominent scholars of Deoband, they do not focus any particular sect or community. It gathers its members and aids in community activities such as mosque building and education.
Tabligh maintains an international headquarters, the Markaz, in Nizamuddin, Delhi and has several national headquarters to coordinate its activities in over 80 countries. Throughout its history it has sent its members to travel the world, preaching a message of peace and tolerance. It organizes preachers in groups [called Jamaats, meaning Assembly]. Each group, on average, consists of 10 to 12 Muslims who fund themselves in this preaching mission.
The second largest gathering of Muslims after the Hajj [the pilgrimage to Mecca] is known as Bishwa Ijtema, a non political gathering of Muslims from all over the world hosted by the leaders of "International Tabligh Jama'at". It takes place in Tongi which is on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The Tablighi Jamaat was founded in the late 1920s by the well known scholar Maulana Ilyas [Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhelvi] in the Mewat province of India. The inspiration for devoting his life to Islam came to Ilyas during his second pilgrimage to the Hejaz in 1926. Maulana Ilyas put forward the slogan, 'Come O Muslims! Be Muslims'. This expressed the central focus of Tablighi Jamat, which has been renewing Muslim society by renewing Muslim practice in those it feels have lost their desire to devote themselves to Allah and the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.
Maulana Ilyas was a prominent member of the movement and throughout Tabligh's history there has been a degree of association between scholars of Deoband and Tablighi Jamat. Tabligh was formed at a time in India when some Muslim leaders feared that Indian Muslims were losing their Muslim identity to the majority Hindu culture.
In 1978, construction of the Tablighi mosque in Dewsbury, England commenced. Subsequently, the mosque became the European headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat.
Ameer [Emir] or Zimmadar are titles of leadership in the movement. The first Ameer, also the founder, was Maulana Ilyas [1885-1944], second was his son Maulana Muhammad Yusuf Kandhalawi and the third was Maulana Inaam ul Hasan. Now there is a shura which includes two leaders: Maulana Zubair ul Hasan and Maulana Saad Kandhalawi. In Pakistan the duties of the Ameer are being served by Haji Abdulwahhab. Maulana Muhammad Zakariya al-Kandahlawi is also among the prestigious personalities of the Jamaat, as he compiled the famous book Fazail-e-Amal.
With the ascent of Maulana Yusuf, Ilyas´ son, as its second emir (leader), the group began to expand activities in 1946, and within two decades the group reached Southwest and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Initially it expanded its reach to South Asian diaspora communities, first in Arab countries then in Southeast Asia. Once established, the Tablighi Jamaat began engaging local populations as well.
Although the movement first established itself in the United States, it established a large presence in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. It was especially prominent in France during the 1980s. The members of Tablighi Jamat are also represented in the French Council of the Muslim Faith. Tabligh's influence has grown, though, in the increasing Pakistani community in France, which has doubled in the decade before 2008 to 50,000-60,000.
However, Britain is the current focus of the movement in the West, primarily due to the large South Asian population that began to arrive there in the 1960s and 1970s. By 2007, Tabligh members were situated at 600 of Britain's 1350 mosques.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the movement made inroads into Central Asia. As of 2007, it was estimated 10,000 Tablighi members could be found in Kyrgyzstan alone.
By 2008 it had a presence in nearly 80 countries and had become a leading revitalist movement. However, it maintains a presence in India, where at least 100 of its Jamaats go out from Markaz, the international headquarters, to different parts of India and overseas.
There are many celebrated personalities associated with this movement:
These include the former Presidents of Pakistan, Muhammad Rafiq Tarar and Farooq Leghari [Sardar Farooq Ahmed Khan Leghari], and former President of India, Dr. Zakir Hussain who was also associated with this movement. Major General Ziaur Rahman, former President and Chief of Army Staff of the Bangladesh Army, was a strong supporter and member of Tablighi Jamaat, and popularized it in Bangladesh.
Lieutenant General [R] Javed Nasir of the Pakistan Army and former head of Inter-Services Intelligence along with former Prime Minister of Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq have also been linked with the movement.
Other well-known politicians such as Dr. Arbab Ghulam Rahim the former chief mininster of Sindh, and Muhammad Ijaz-ul-Haq, former Pakistani Federal Minister for Religious Affairs have strong ties with the Tablighi activities.
Many well-recognized writers and scholars, such as Dr. Nadir Ali Khan [famous Indian writer] and others are deeply related with it.
Among Pakistani cricket professionals, Shahid Afridi, Saqlain Mushtaq, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mushtaq Ahmed; and the former Pakistani cricketers Saeed Anwar, Saleem Malik are active members. It is also widely believed that Pakistani middle order batsman Mohammad Yousuf embraced Islam with the help of the Tablighi Jamaat. Others include South African batsman Hashim Amla.
This movement also includes eminent directors and producers including Naeem Butt.
Former renowned singer and pop star Junaid Jamshed has close links with Jamaat, and his departure from professional singing career is attributed as the result of his inclination towards this movement.
Many famed actors and models including Moin Akhter, Hammad Khan Jadoon and many others are strongly affiliated with the movement.
Several business men, industrialists, millionaires are actively serving in the movement.
Tablighi Jamaat terror connection:
Policy analysts and Islamist scholars are fiercely divided in their assessments of Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic revivalist organization that has spread from its origins in India in the 1920s to the broader Muslim world.
Policy communities, for their part, have depicted the Tablighi Jamaat as a "gateway to terrorism" and contend that the organization poses numerous, underestimated security risks. The group appeared peripherally in such high-profile cases as those of Jose Padilla, Richard Reid and John Walker Lindh, all of whom allegedly used the group as their stepping stone to radicalism. However, the Islamic studies community tends to depict Tablighi Jamaat, which roughly translates to "group to deliver the message of Islam," as a revivalist organization that eschews politics in its quest to reform society. What accounts for these starkly different accounts, and how can one resolve some of the deeply perplexing questions surrounding this important and secretive organization?
In an attempt to better understand this movement and its social, political, and potential security implications, the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the U.S. Institute of Peace hosted Eva Borreguero, visiting Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University´s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, to present some of the key findings of her ongoing research on the Tablighi Jamaat. This talk drew on Borreguero´s recent fieldwork in India and Pakistan, two important centers for the Tablighi Jamaat. This USIPeaceBrieing highlights Borreguero´s arguments, as well as some of the important issues that arose during the discussion that followed her presentation.
Tablighi Jamaat: Gateway to Terrorism?
In Britain, France, and the United States, the Tablighi Jamaat has appeared on the fringes of several terrorism investigations, leading some to speculate that its apolitical stance simply masks "fertile ground for breeding terrorism." While acknowledging the involvement of the movement´s individuals, Borreguero discounted the claims made against the organization itself.
Borreguero began her assessment by providing an historical overview of this complex movement. Maulana Muhammad Ilyas founded the Tablighi Jamaat in 1925, against the backdrop of the British Empire and a waning Muslim identity in South Asia. Believing that social, political, and economic hardships beset Muslims in India, Ilyas sought a return to a pristine form of Islam from the heterodox variants flourishing in South Asia. For nearly two decades, the Tablighi Jamaat operated mainly within South Asia. With the ascent of Maulana Yusuf, Ilyas´ son, as its second emir [leader], the group began to expand activities in 1946, and within two decades the group reached Southwest and Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. Initially it expanded its reach to South Asian diaspora communities, first in Arab countries then in Southeast Asia. Once established, the Tablighi Jamaat began engaging local populations as well. Although the group first established itself in the United States, Britain is the current locus of the group in the West, primarily due to the large South Asian population that began to arrive there in the 1960s and 1970s.

Structure, Composition, and Work:
Despite its secretive nature, Borreguero offered some insights into the organizational structure of the Tablighi Jamaat. The general conception of the group is of a nebulous collection of loosely affiliated, itinerate jamaats. While this is one major component of the group, there is a fixed, hierarchical network of elders and mosques, and the two components do overlap. According to Borreguero, the core of the organization is comprised of "full-time" Tablighis who comprise the shura [council] and who are usually the elders of the mosques affiliated with the group.
In addition to this core, there are the traveling Tablighis who undertake proselytizing missions over varying durations. Formed into jamaats of approximately ten people, these Tablighis’ missions last three days, forty days, four months, or one year. The jamaat’s destination and desired area of focus generally determines the length of these missions. Those who go for three days concentrate on a local city, while a jamaat traveling for a month will do so throughout their country. The longer tours of four months to one year generally take the Tablighis abroad.
During these tours, the jamaat—under the leadership of its emir—stays at a local mosque, which serves as its base for the duration. Four or five members of the group conduct daily ghast, during which they visit neighborhoods [or neighborhoods with large Muslim populations if in a non-Muslim country] and homes, asking the men of the household to attend mosque for Maghrib [sunset] prayers. Those who attend are offered the dawa [invitation] as the Tablighis outline their six principles and encourage attendees to form their own jamaat. Members voluntarily work for the organization and there is no registration process in the group. Participants are free to leave the movement at any time. Consequently, Tablighi Jamaat has a loose, informal recruitment process and attracts members of varying commitment. For example, some members only engage in group activities episodically, while others will do so annually. All of these factors contribute to the uncertainty regarding Tablighi Jamaat´s membership numbers.
Tablighis in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have competing claims as to which comprises the movement’s international headquarters. Those in India contend that Nizamuddin [India] is the base, since the movement grew out of the Deoband school of Islam and it is in Delhi that the group was founded. However, elders in Raiwind [Pakistan] and Tongi [Bangladesh] dispute Nizamuddin’s final authority, citing their countries´ majority Muslim populations and claiming that the organization can operate more openly.
South Asia is by far the most significant region for the group, with Mecca and Medina also serving as important geographical symbols. The organization is diverse and includes persons from nearly every sector of society across the countries of South Asia and beyond. Within South Asia, members of the lower-middle class and the business community have joined the group and some members even hold government posts. In the West, second and third generation Muslim diaspora make up the main pool of Tablighis. This demographic usually has little knowledge of Islam but are also not fully assimilated to culture in the West. According to Borreguero, the Tablighi Jamaat "is a source of re-Islamization that provides an alternative to religious institutions." These individuals tend to be well-educated, multilingual, and have lived in both the West and a Muslim country. She noted that the Tablighi Jamaat also has some appeal to marginal members of society [petty criminals, drug abusers, and so on] who are looking for a renewed identity that submerges them in a community of piety.
Keys to the Success of the Tablighi Jamaat:
Borreguero sees several salient features which explain the Tablighi Jamaat´s successful transformation from a local South Asian movement into a robust transnational phenomenon, including its simple message, its non-political character, the authority of its leadership, and its policy of secrecy.
Outstanding Concerns:
Borreguero addressed the persistent question of how a group so devoted to proselytizing a pristine form of Islam and inner spiritual transformation can coexist with modern society, and specifically whether such a group warrants scrutiny because of its revivalist beliefs.
While recognizing the numerous reports that link Tablighi Jamaat to militancy in various forms, her fieldwork yielded little evidence to support the most sweeping of these claims. During her interviews with Tablighis, they tended not to opine on politics. However, she conceded that for some Tablighis—as individuals—this might not be enough. She claimed that there is no evidence thus far that the group as a whole is involved with militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, while acknowledging the potential role that individual Tablighis may have played in them. She claimed that the Tablighi Jamaat remains neutral on these groups, neither condemning nor supporting their actions.
To some analysts, this neutrality is enough to make them culpable. Borreguero admits that militant groups may try to infiltrate the Tablighi Jamaat in order to gain a cover for obtaining visas and traveling abroad. Also, individual members may come to find that the movement’s principles are too apolitical and neutral for their liking. Members of militant groups often attend the Tablighi Jamaat´s Ijtima [congregation] in Raiwind, where they hand out recruitment pamphlets. It is thus possible that a flame sparked and fueled by Tabligh could begin to burn out of control.
Borreguero, however, stressed that once this extreme position is taken, the individual relinquishes his or her membership to the Tablighi Jamaat. She also believes that any overt connection with these groups is not in the best interest of the Tablighi Jamaat. As stated above, the movement’s neutrality allows cordial relations with authorities, or at least keeps them from incurring official harassment. Any collusion with militant outfits would likely invite official proscription, especially in Western societies.
While much light was shed on the Tablighi Jamaat, many questions still remain. To some, its official secrecy and peripheral links to some nefarious individuals have nullified its choice to remain outside politics. But, as scholar Barbara Metcalf writes, "Islamic movements [like the Tablighi Jamaat] may have many goals and offer a range of social, moral, and spiritual satisfactions that are positive and not merely a reactionary rejection of modernity or ´the West.´ Quite simply, these movements may, in the end, have much less to do with ´us´ than is often thought." Borreguero´s insights provided a gateway to better assess the group´s motives and machinations. It may well be that the study of the Tablighi Jamaat as an apolitical traditionalist movement gives an alternate lens through which security concerns over Islamist groups´ hostility toward the West can be viewed.
Every fall, over a million almost identically dressed, bearded Muslim men from around the world descend on the small Pakistani town of Raiwind for a three-day celebration of faith. Similar gatherings take place annually outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Bhopal, India. These pilgrims are no ordinary Muslims, though; they belong to a movement called Tablighi Jamaat ["Proselytizing Group"]. They are trained missionaries who have dedicated much of their lives to spreading Islam across the globe. The largest group of religious proselytizers of any faith, they are part of the reason for the explosive growth of Islamic religious fervor and conversion.
Despite its size, worldwide presence, and tremendous importance, Tablighi Jamaat remains largely unknown outside the Muslim community, even to many scholars of Islam. This is no coincidence. Tablighi Jamaat officials work to remain outside of both media and governmental notice. Tablighi Jamaat neither has formal organizational structure nor does it publish details about the scope of its activities, its membership, or its finances. By eschewing open discussion of politics and portraying itself only as a pietistic movement, Tablighi Jamaat works to project a non-threatening image. Because of the movement's secrecy, scholars often have no choice but to rely on explanations from Tablighi Jamaat acolytes.
As a result, academics tend to describe the group as an apolitical devotional movement stressing individual faith, introspection, and spiritual development. The austere and egalitarian lifestyle of Tablighi missionaries and their principled stands against social ills leads many outside observers to assume that the group has a positive influence on society. Graham Fuller, a former CIA official and expert on Islam, for example, characterized Tablighi Jamaat as a "peaceful and apolitical preaching-to-the-people movement." Barbara Metcalf, a University of California scholar of South Asian Islam, called Tablighi Jamaat "an apolitical, quietist movement of internal grassroots missionary renewal" and compares its activities to the efforts to reshape individual lives by Alcoholics Anonymous. Olivier Roy, a prominent authority on Islam at Paris's prestigious Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, described Tablighi Jamaat as "completely apolitical and law abiding." Governments normally intolerant of independent movements often make an exception for Tablighi Jamaat. The Bangladeshi prime minister and top political leadership, many of whom are Islamists, regularly attend their rallies, and Pakistani military officers, many of whom are sympathetic to militant Islam, even allow Tablighi missionaries to preach in the barracks.
Yet, the Pakistani experience strips the patina from Tablighi Jamaat's façade. Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif [1990-93; 1997-99], whose father was a prominent Tablighi member and financier, helped Tablighi members take prominent positions. For example, in 1998, Muhammad Rafique Tarar took the ceremonial presidency while, in 1990, Javed Nasir assumed the powerful director-generalship of the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's chief intelligence agency. When Benazir Bhutto, less sympathetic to Islamist causes, returned to the premiership in 1993, Tablighis conspired to overthrow her government. In 1995, the Pakistani army thwarted a coup attempt by several dozen high-ranking military officers and civilians, all of whom were members of the Tablighi Jamaat and some of whom also held membership in Harakat ul-Mujahideen, a U.S. State Department-defined terrorist organization. Some of the confusion over Tablighi Jamaat's apolitical characterization derives from the fact that the movement does not consider individual states to be legitimate. They may not become actively involved in internal politics or disputes over local issues, but, from a philosophical and transnational perspective, the Tablighi Jamaat's millenarian philosophy is very political indeed. According to the French Tablighi expert Marc Gaborieau, its ultimate objective is nothing short of a "planned conquest of the world" in the spirit of jihad.
Origins and Ideology:
The prominent Deobandi cleric and scholar Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi [1885-1944] launched Tablighi Jamaat in 1927 in Mewat, India, not far from Delhi. From its inception, the extremist attitudes that characterize Deobandism permeated Tablighi philosophy. Ilyas's followers were intolerant of other Muslims and especially Shi´ites, let alone adherents of other faiths. Indeed, part of Ilyas's impetus for founding Tablighi Jamaat was to counter the inroads being made by Hindu missionaries. They rejected modernity as antithetical to Islam, excluded women, and preached that Islam must subsume all other religions. The creed grew in importance after Pakistani military dictator Zia ul-Haq encouraged Deobandis to Islamize Pakistan.
The Tablighi Jamaat canon is bare-boned. Apart from the Qu'ran, the only literature Tablighis are required to read are the Tablighi Nisab, seven essays penned by a companion of Ilyas in the 1920s. Tablighi Jamaat is not a monolith: one subsection believes they should pursue jihad through conscience [jihad bin nafs] while a more radical wing advocates jihad through the sword [jihad bin saif]. But, in practice, all Tablighis preach a creed that is hardly distinguishable from the radical Wahhabi-Salafi jihadist ideology that so many terrorists share.
Part of the reason why the Tablighi Jamaat leadership can maintain such strict secrecy is its dynastic flavor. All Tablighi Jamaat leaders since Ilyas have been related to him by either blood or marriage. Upon Ilyas' 1944 death, his son, Maulana Muhammad Yusuf [1917-65], assumed leadership of the movement, dramatically expanding its reach and influence.
Following the partition of India, Tablighi Jamaat spread rapidly in the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. Yusuf and his successor, Inamul Hassan [1965-95], transformed Tablighi Jamaat into a truly transnational movement with a renewed emphasis targeting conversion of non-Muslims, a mission the movement continues to the present day.
While few details are known about the group's structure, at the top sits the emir who, according to some observers, presides over a shura [Council], which plays an advisory role. Further down are individual country organizations. By the late 1960s, Tablighi Jamaat had not only established itself in Western Europe and North America but even claimed adherents in countries like Japan, which has no significant Muslim population.
The movement's rapid penetration into non-Muslim regions began in the 1970s and coincides with the establishment of a synergistic relationship between Saudi Wahhabis and South Asian Deobandis. While Wahhabis are dismissive of other Islamic schools, they single out Tablighi Jamaat for praise, even if they disagree with some of its practices, such as willingness to pray in mosques housing graves. The late Sheikh ´Abd al ´Aziz ibn Baz, perhaps the most influential Wahhabi cleric in the late twentieth century, recognized the Tablighis good work and encouraged his Wahhabi brethren to go on missions with them so that they can "guide and advise them." A practical result of this cooperation has been large-scale Saudi financing of Tablighi Jamaat. While Tablighi Jamaat in theory requires its missionaries to cover their own expenses during their trips, in practice, Saudi money subsidizes transportation costs for thousands of poor missionaries. While Tablighi Jamaat's financial activities are shrouded in secrecy, there is no doubt that some of the vast sums spent by Saudi organizations such as the World Muslim League on proselytism benefit Tablighi Jamaat. As early as 1978, the World Muslim League subsidized the building of the Tablighi mosque in Dewsbury, England, which has since become the headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat in all of Europe. Wahhabi sources have paid Tablighi missionaries in Africa salaries higher than the European Union pays teachers in Zanzibar. In both Western Europe and the United States, Tablighis operate interchangeably out of Deobandi and Wahhabi controlled mosques and Islamic centers.

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing:
The West's misreading of Tablighi Jamaat actions and motives has serious implications for the war on terrorism. Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism." U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude. "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States," the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section said in 2003, "and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."
Recruitment methods for young jihadists are almost identical. After joining Tablighi Jamaat groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a few local dawa [proselytism] missions, Tablighi officials invite star recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite them to undertake military training. Most agree to do so.

Tablighi Jamaat has long been directly involved in the sponsorship of terrorist groups. Pakistani and Indian observers believe, for instance, that Tablighi Jamaat was instrumental in founding Harakat ul-Mujahideen. Founded at Raiwind in 1980, almost all of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen's original members were Tablighis. Famous for the December 1998 hijacking of an Air India passenger jet and the May 8, 2002 murder of a busload of French engineers in Karachi, Harakat members make no secret of their ties. "The two organizations together make up a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims," one senior Harakat ul-Mujahideen official said. More than 6,000 Tablighis have trained in Harakat ul-Mujahideen camps. Many fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and readily joined Al-Qaeda after the Taliban defeated Afghanistan's anti-Soviet mujahideen [Jihadists].
Another violent Tablighi Jamaat spin-off is the Harakat ul-Jihad-i Islami. Founded in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, this group has been active not only in the disputed Indian provinces of Jammu and Kashmir but also in the state of Gujarat, where Tablighi Jamaat extremists have taken over perhaps 80 percent of the mosques previously run by the moderate Barelvi Muslims. The Tablighi movement is also very active in northern Africa where it became one of the four groups that founded the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. Moroccan authorities are currently prosecuting sixty members of the Moroccan Tablighi offshoot Dawa wa Tabligh in connection with the May 16, 2003 terrorist attack on a Casablanca synagogue. Dutch police are investigating links between the Moroccan cells and the November 2, 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh.
There are many other cases of individual Tablighis committing acts of terrorism. French Tablighi members, for example, have helped organize and execute attacks not only in Paris but also at the Hotel Asni in Marrakech in 1994. Kazakh authorities expelled a number of Tablighi missionaries because they had been organizing networks advancing "extremist propaganda and recruitment." Indian investigators suspect influential Tablighi leader, Maulana Umarji, and a group of his followers in the February 27, 2002 fire bombing of a train carrying Hindu nationalists in Gujarat, India. The incident sparked a wave of pogroms victimizing both Muslims and Hindus. More recently, Moroccan authorities sentenced Yusef Fikri, a Tablighi member and leader of the Moroccan terrorist organization At-Takfir wal-Hijrah, to death for his role in masterminding the May 2003 Casablanca terrorist bombings that claimed more than forty lives.
Tablighi Jamaat has also facilitated other terrorists' missions. The group has provided logistical support and helped procure travel documents. Many take advantage of Tablighi Jamaat's benign reputation. Moroccan authorities say that leaflets circulated by the terrorist group Al-Salafiyah al-Jihadiyah urged their members to join Islamic organizations that operate openly, such as Tablighi Jamaat, in order "to hide their identity on the one hand and influence these groups and their policies on the other." In a similar vein, a Pakistani jihadi website commented that Tablighi Jamaat organizational structures can be easily adopted to jihad activities. The Philippine government has accused Tablighi Jamaat, which has an 11,000-member presence in the country, of serving both as a conduit of Saudi money to the Islamic terrorists in the south and as a cover for Pakistani jihad volunteers.
There is also evidence that Tablighi Jamaat directly recruits for terrorist organizations. As early as the 1980s, the movement sponsored military training for 900 recruits annually in Pakistan and Algeria while, in 1999, Uzbek authorities accused Tablighi Jamaat of sending 400 Uzbeks to terrorist training camps. The West is not immune. British counterterrorism authorities estimate that at least 2,000 British nationals had gone to Pakistan for jihad training by 1998, and the French secret services report that between 80 and 100 French nationals fought for Al-Qaeda.
A Trojan Horse for Terror in America?
Within the United States, the cases of American Taliban John Lindh, the "Lackawanna Six," and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue and sought to link up with Al-Qaeda, all involve Tablighi missionaries. Other indicted terrorists, such as "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla, and Lyman Harris, who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge, were all members of Tablighi Jamaat at one time or another. According to Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI's first Islamic counterterrorism unit, between 1,000 and 2,000 Americans left to join the jihad in the 1990s alone. Pakistani intelligence sources report that 400 American Tablighi recruits received training in Pakistani or Afghan terrorist camps since 1989.
The Tablighi Jamaat has made inroads among two very different segments of the American Muslim population. Because many American Muslims are immigrants, and a large subsection of these are from South Asia, Deobandi influences have been able to penetrate deeply. Many Tablighi Jamaat missionaries speak Urdu as a first language and so can communicate easily with American Muslims of South Asian origin. The Tablighi headquarters in the United States for the past decade appears to be in the Al-Falah mosque in Queens, New York. Its missionaries—predominantly from South Asia—regularly visit Sunni mosques and Islamic centers across the country. The willingness of Saudi-controlled front organizations and charities, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth [WAMY], the Haramain Foundation, the International Islamic Relief Organization [IIRO] and others, to spend large amounts of money to co-opt the religious establishment has helped catalyze recruitment. As a result Wahhabi and Deobandi influence dominate American Islam.
This trend is apparent in the activities of Tanzeem-e Islami. Founded by long-term Tablighi member and passionate Taliban supporter, Israr Ahmed, Tanzeem-e Islami flooded American Muslim organizations with communications accusing Israel of complicity in the 9/11 terror attacks. A frequent featured speaker at Islamic conferences and events in the United States, Ahmed engages in incendiary rhetoric urging his audiences to prepare for "the final showdown between the Muslim world and the non-Muslim world, which has been captured by the Jews." Unfortunately, his conspiracy theories have begun to take hold among growing segments of the American Muslim community. For example, Siraj Wahhaj, among the best known African-American Muslim converts and the first Muslim cleric to lead prayers in the U.S. Congress, is also on record accusing the FBI and the CIA of being the "real terrorists." He has expressed his support for the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, and advocating the demise of American democracy.
Tablighi Jamaat has appealed to African American Muslims for other reasons. Founded by Elijah Mohammed in the early 1930s, the Nation of Islam was essentially a charismatic African American separatist organization which had little to do with normative Islam. Many Nation of Islam members found attractive both the Tablighi Jamaat's anti-state separatist message and its description of American society as racist, decadent, and oppressive. Seeing such fertile ground, Tablighi and Wahhabi missionaries targeted the African American community with great success. One Tablighi sympathizer explained, The Umma [Muslim community] must remember that winning over the black Muslims is not only a religious obligation but also a selfish necessity. The votes of the black Muslims can give the immigrant Muslims the political clout they need at every stage to protect their vital interests. Likewise, outside Muslim states like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Pakistan need to mobilize their effort, money, and missionary skills to expand and consolidate the black Muslim community in the USA, not only for religious reasons, but also as a farsighted investment in the black Muslims' immense potential as a credible lobby for Muslim causes, such as Palestine, Bosnia, or Kashmir—offsetting, at least partially, the venal influence of the powerful India-Israel lobby.
Not only foreign Tablighis but also the movement's sympathizers within the United States enunciate this goal. The president of the Islamic Research Foundation in Louisville, Kentucky, a strong advocate of Tablighi missionary work, for instance, insists that "if all the Afro-American brothers and sisters become Muslims, we can change the political landscape of America" and "make U.S. foreign policy pro-Islamic and Muslim friendly." As a result of Tablighi and Wahhabi proselytizing, African Americans comprise between 30 and 40 percent of the American Muslim community, and perhaps 85 percent of all American Muslim converts. Much of this success is due to a successful proselytizing drive in the penitentiary system. Prison officials say that by the mid-1990s, between 10 and 20 percent of the nation's 1.5 million inmates identified themselves as Muslims. Some 30,000 African Americans convert to Islam in prison every year.
The American political system tolerates all views so long as they adhere to the rule of law. Unfortunately, Tablighi Jamaat missionaries may be encouraging African American recruits to break the law. Harkat ul-Mujahideen has boasted of training dozens of African American Jihadists in its military camps. There is evidence that African American Jihadists have died in both Afghanistan and Kashmir.
Tablighi Jamaat: The Future of American Islam?
Tablighi Jamaat has made unprecedented strides in recent decades. It increasingly relies on local missionaries rather than South Asian Tablighis to recruit in Western countries and often sets up groups which apparently model themselves after Tablighi Jamaat but do not acknowledge links to it.
In the United States, such a role is apparently played by the Islamic Circle of North America [ICNA]. Founded in 1968 as an offshoot of the fiercely Islamist Muslim Student Association, ICNA is the only major American Muslim organization that has paid open homage to Tablighi founder Ilyas. The monthly ICNA publication, The Message, has praised Ilyas as one of the four greatest Islamic leaders of the last 100 years. While the relationship between ICNA and Tablighi Jamaat is not clear, the two organizations share a number of similarities. They both embrace the extreme Deobandi and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam. ICNA demonstrates disdain for Western democratic values and opposes virtually all counterterrorism legislation, such as the Patriot Act, while providing moral and financial support to all Muslims implicated in terrorist activities. An editorial in the ICNA organ, The Message International, in September 1989 bemoaned the "uncounted number of Muslims lost to Western values" which was a "major cause for concern." In 2003 and 2004, ICNA has collected money to assist detainees suspected of terrorist activities, participated in pro-terrorist rallies, and mounted campaigns on behalf of indicted Hamas functionary Sami al-Arian. Like Tablighi Jamaat, ICNA initially drew its membership disproportionately from South Asians. As with Tablighi Jamaat, ICNA demands total dedication to missionary work from its members. Because many ICNA members spend at least thirty hours per week on their mission, their ability to independently support themselves is unclear. Many cannot hold full-time jobs. ICNA's recruitment efforts have borne fruit, though. All ICNA members are organized in small study groups of no more than eight people, called NeighborNets. As in a cult, these cells provide support and reinforcement for new recruits, who may have sought to fill a void in their lives. Its yearly convocations, patterned on the annual Tablighi Jamaat meetings in South Asia, now attract some 15,000 people.
The estimated 15,000 Tablighi missionaries reportedly active in the United States present a serious national security problem. At best, they and their proxy groups form a powerful proselytizing movement that preaches extremism and disdain for religious tolerance, democracy, and separation of church and state. At worst, they represent an Islamist fifth column that aids and abets terrorism. Contrary to their benign treatment by scholars and academics, Tablighi Jamaat has more to do with political sedition than with religion.
U.S. officials should focus on reality rather than rhetoric. Pakistani and Saudi support for Tablighi Jamaat is incompatible with their claims to be key allies in the war on terror. While law enforcement focuses attention on Osama bin Laden, the war on terrorism cannot be won unless al-Qaeda terrorists are understood to be the products of Islamist ideology preached by groups like Tablighi Jamaat. If the West chooses to turn a blind eye to the problem, Tablighi involvement in future terrorist activities at home and abroad is not a matter of conjecture; it is a certainty.
The Tablighi Role in the Global Jihadism:
However, there are indeed some links between Tablighis and the world of jihadism. First, there is evidence of indirect connections between the group and the wider radical/extremist Deobandi nexus composed of anti-Shiite sectarian groups, Kashmiri militants and the Taliban. This link provides a medium through which Tablighis who are disgruntled with the group’s apolitical program could break orbit and join militant organizations.
One apparent manifestation of this nexus was a purported militant offshoot of TJ, Jihad bi al-Saif [Jihad through the Sword], which was established in Taxila, Pakistan. Members of this group were accused of plotting a coup against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 1995. Yet, because of the organization’s extreme secrecy, little is known about it other than that it is believed to have developed in reaction to the TJ’s apolitical, peaceful stance.
The TJ organization also serves as a de facto conduit for Islamist extremists and for groups such as al Qaeda to recruit new members. Significantly, the Tablighi recruits do intersect with the world of radical Islamism when they travel to Pakistan to receive their initial training. We have received reports that once the recruits are in Pakistan, representatives of various radical Islamist groups, such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Taliban and al Qaeda, are said to woo them actively — to the point of offering them military training. And some of them accept the offer. For example, John Walker Lindh — an American who is serving a prison sentence for aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan — traveled with Tablighi preachers to Pakistan in 1998 to further his Islamic studies before joining the Taliban.
Because of the piety and strict belief system of the Tablighis and their focus on calling wayward Muslims back to an austere and orthodox Muslim faith, the movement has offered a place where jihadist spotters can look for potential recruits. These facilitators often offer enthusiastic new or rededicated Muslims a more active way to live and develop their faith. Although the TJ promotes a benign message, the same conservative Islamic values espoused by the Tablighis also are part of jihadist ideology, and so some Muslims attracted to the Tablighi movement are enticed into becoming involved with jihadists.
Additionally, because of its apolitical belief system, TJ seems to leave a gap in the ideological indoctrination of the individual Tablighi because it essentially asks the novice to shun politics and public affairs. The problem in taking this belief system from theory to practice, however, is that some people find they cannot ignore what is happening in the world around them, especially when that world includes wars. This is when some Tablighis become disillusioned with TJ and start turning to jihadist groups that offer religiously sanctioned prescriptions as to how "good Muslims" should deal with life’s injustices.
Once a facilitator identifies such candidates, he often will segregate them from the main congregation in the mosque or community center and put them into small prayer circles or study groups where they can be more easily exposed to jihadist ideology. [Of course, it also has been shown that a person with friends or relatives who ascribe to radical ideology can more easily be radical].
Examples of people making the jump from TJ to radical Islam are the two leading members of the cell responsible for the July 7, 2005, London bombings — Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shahzad Tanweer. Both had life-changing experiences through their exposure to TJ, though by 2001 the men had left the Tablighi mosque they had been attending in the British city of Beeston, because they found it to be too apolitical. They apparently were frustrated by the mosque’s elders, who forbid the discussion of politics in the mosque.
After Khan and Tanweer left the Tablighi mosque, they began attending the smaller Iqra Learning Center bookstore in Beeston, where they reportedly were exposed to frequent political discussions about places such as Iraq, Kashmir and Chechnya. The store’s proprietors reportedly even produced jihad videos depicting crimes by the West against the Muslim world. Exposed to this environment, the two men eventually became radicalized to the point of traveling to Pakistan to attend a terrorist training camp and then returning to the United Kingdom to plan and execute a suicide attack that resulted in the death of them both.
TJ also is used by Jihadists as cover both for recruiting activities, as discussed above, and for travel. Like Khan and Tanweer, many jihadists desire to travel to Pakistan for training, while others want to get to Afghanistan, Kashmir or other places to fight jihad. However, the travel environment is far different today than it was in the early 1980s, when 747 jetliners packed with Jihadists from Saudi Arabia and other places flew into Pakistan en route to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Foreigners traveling to Pakistan today cannot enter the country without a visa, and Pakistani authorities are no longer inclined to issue visas to Jihadists, as Jeffrey Battle and the other members of the Portland Seven had to learn the hard way. Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the friends traveled to China with the intention of entering Afghanistan by way of Pakistan. Once at the Chinese-Pakistani border, however, they found they could not enter Pakistan without a visa. After spending a frustrating month trying to obtain visas from the Pakistani Embassy in Beijing, the seven aspiring Jihadists decided to go their separate ways.
Battle, who reportedly once served as a bodyguard for Black Panther leader Quanell X, later attempted to obtain a visa to Pakistan by saying he was affiliated with TJ. The Pakistanis, probably recognizing him from his prior [and apparently somewhat vocal] visa attempts, denied him again, though he was able to get a visa to travel to Bangladesh using the feigned connection to TJ. Unable to make his way from Bangladesh to Pakistan or Afghanistan, however, Battle returned to the United States, where he was later arrested. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of seditious conspiracy and waging war against the United States.
Similarly, in the spring of 2001 the members of the so-called Lackawanna Six cell traveled to Pakistan under the pretext of studying the Islamic religion and culture at the TJ training center. In reality, the men traveled through Pakistan to Afghanistan, where they attended training at the al-Farooq camp, a training site being run by al Qaeda. Again, the men used TJ as cover for travel, though there is no indication that TJ played any real part in their alleged plot.
Although the TJ organization unintentionally serves as a front for, or conduit to, militant organizations such as al Qaeda, there is no evidence that the Tablighis act willingly as a global unified jihadist recruiting arm. Rather, such activities appear to occur without the knowledge or consent of TJ leaders. Additionally, because of the very size of the organization and it activities in Muslim communities in the West, a great many Muslims have had some sort of contact with the group. TJ itself, however, is not an intentional propagator of terrorism.
Man behind the Cordoba Mosque:

Faisal Abdul Rauf The prospective developer of a $100 million, 13-story mosque 600 feet from Ground Zero presents himself as a Muslim moderate. Yet Kuwait-born Faisal Abdul Rauf also boasts of his issue from an "Egyptian family steeped in religious scholarship". Indeed, Feisal Rauf's Muslim Brotherhood provenance, radical by definition, is as authentic as it gets.

Rauf's father, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf [1917-2004] - an Egyptian contemporary of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna - conveyed to Feisal his family's long tradition of radicalism, which he acquired at Islam's closest equivalent to the Vatican, Al-Azhar University. The elder Dr. Rauf studied and taught there before fleeing Egypt in 1948. That year, Feisal Abdul Rauf was born in Kuwait.

Imam Faisal Rauf has planned for some time to further develop his father's U.S. Islamic expansionism. In 1990, Rauf opened the tiny al-Farah Mosque at 245 West Broadway in lower Manhattan. Area residents did not even notice the mosque until 2006, when the New York State Liquor Authority [SLA] refused to license a new bar on the same block and started yanking others' liquor licenses.

Rauf attended grammar school and high school in the UK and Malaysia, according to his biography. He probably first lived in America only in 1965, at age 17, when his father moved from Malaysia to New York to plan and head the Islamic Cultural Center [not built until the mid-1980s]. Rauf then obtained a BS in physics at Columbia University. In 1971, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where Rauf's father headed the Islamic Center on Massachusetts Ave. His father, buried in Suitland, MD, at the for-profit Washington National Cemetery, also founded three Malaysian Islamic studies programs, including the International Islamic University of Malaysia.
Rauf's early UK education and familiarization with American popular culture and values made him an acutely adept practitioner of Islamic taqiyya - deceptive speech and action to advance the interests and supremacy of Islam. To further that Islamic advancement, Rauf in 1997 established the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA). His Kashmir-born wife Daisy Kahn, an interior designer by profession, has run the organization since 2005.
Rauf then began cultivating new spheres of influence. In about summer 2002, Rauf started lecturing on Islam at the 750-acre southwestern New York campus of Chautauqua Institution, a 136-year-old non-profit where religion director Joan Brown Campbell took Rauf under her wing. Under the rubric of the "Abrahamic" faiths, a convenient cover for Rauf's Islamic activities, Campbell subsequently named him the prospective head of a Muslim house now planned on campus by another Rauf brainchild - the 501(3)c organization Muslim Friends of Chautauqua. Rauf also befriended Karen Armstrong, the former British nun and devotee of Islam.

In 2003, Rauf befriended leaders of Denver's Aspen Institute, including former executive director and four-term Aspen mayor John S. Bennet. In 2004, under ASMA auspices, Rauf organized a meeting of 125 young Muslims and formed Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. With Bennet's help, he co-founded the Cordoba Initiative in Aspen, purportedly to "improve" Muslim-West relations. Rauf gets funding from a variety of other liberal organizations, including, for example, Gloria Steinem's Ms. Foundation.

Now, the same Rauf is set to construct a mosque at Ground Zero, which he claims will prove that ‘Islam is not a violent faith’.

As Islamic attacks on September 11, 2001, destroyed the World Trade Center towers, falling jet debris simultaneously crushed the five-story 1923 structure some 600 feet away that until that morning housed a robust Burlington Coat Factory store. Over the ruin of the former retail outlet, Rauf now plans to build a 13-story, $100 million mosque. Rauf says the Cordoba Initiative bought the former retail building to prove to the world that Islam is not a violent faith.
Imam Rauf says that New York Muslims provided nearly $5 million in cash to buy the Park Place building. Yet in fiscal 2009, Rauf's ASMA received large international donations. In the year ended June 30, 2009 - days before Feisal closed the purchase - ASMA received at least $1.3 million. The largest donation, $576,312, came from Qatar. That Persian Gulf nation has long harbored terror financiers, and even the government stands accused of funding international terrorism. Qatar also has, for decades, hosted Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf al-Qaradawi. The elderly sheikh, a large and founding shareholder in the terror-financing al-Taqwa Bank, champions sharia law, wife beating, and suicide bombing.
ASMA also received $481,942 from Holland's Millennial Development Goals Fund [MDG3], $144,752 from New York's Carnegie Corporation, $53,664 from the U.N. Population Fund [UNFPA], plus donations from the Rockefeller Brothers and Hunt Alternatives funds, among others.

The Ground Zero mosque plan is more than a little reminiscent of a program initiated by Rauf's late father in 1965. That year, Muhammad R. Abdul Rauf moved to New York to plan and head a huge Islamic Cultural Center that took decades to realize. He bought prime Manhattan real estate at 96th St. and 3rd Ave - roughly two thirds of a city block - apparently with $1.3 million in funding from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The late Rauf long retained some of that land in a personal trust. But when construction started on the $17 million mosque in 1984, it had received funding from 46 Islamic nations. By 2010, the enormous Islamic complex had added another two buildings. Since 1984, its founders-envisioned apartment unit has been restricted to Muslims alone.

Whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What's Right with Islam. The book was translated into many languages. In Indonesia's Bahasa, its title translates as "The Call from the WTC Rubble." Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Kuala Lumpur gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir – a terror outfit banned in Germany since 2003, and also outlawed in Bangladesh, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among other places - and ideologically akin to the Muslim Brotherhood. Both seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law [Sharia], and eventually impose Islam and Sharia law worldwide. Most North American Muslim Brotherhood organizations avoid widely publicizing that aim. The Hizb Ut Tahrir however, at a July 2009 Khalifah conference at a suburban Chicago Hilton, openly promised to replace capitalism with Islam and Sharia law.

Now, Imam Rauf is set to construct his dream project, wherefrom possibly the radical Islamists will start Islamization of America. This will not be a mere mosque, but a tower of terrorism to further flex the muscle of militant Islam right inside the heart of United States.
Hope Americans will realize this, before it is too late!

Condemning the movie named ‘Dear Friend Hitler’

2010-06-21T06:13:00.002+02:00

By: Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Indian American Intellectual’s Forum [IAIF], which is based in New York City, USA has issued a press release condemning the forthcoming Indian movie named ‘Dear Friend of Hitler’. This movie is being directed by Rakesh Ranjan Kumar and eminent Indian actors Anupam Kher and Neha Dhupia are playing key roles in it.

IAIF in its press release said, “In the history of humanity Hitler is regarded as an ultimate evil that sent six million Jewish to the gas chambers and propelled the world to second world war that caused the death of tens of millions of people. Hence this news has sent shock waves to many Israeli friends of India in Israel, UK , USA and many other countries.”

According to IAIF, this movie is funded by notorious drug and arms baron dealer Dawood Ibrahim, who operates from United Arab Emirates and Pakistan and it is even reported that Dawood works for Pakistani intelligence agency named ISI [Inter Service Intelligence].

According to the official synopsis of the film, it gives audiences a glimpse into Hitler's "insecurities, his charisma, his paranoia and his sheer genius."

According to latest news, actor Anupam Kher staunchly defended his decision to play Adolf Hitler, finally was forced to step out from this movie at the protest of thousands of his fans. In a statement he said, “Considering the ill-will that the project is generating among my fans, I wish to withdraw from it as I respect their sentiments.”

Meanwhile, Neha Dhupia showed that she has it in her to take on the challenging role of Eva Braun at the launch party of Dear Friend Hitler.

Neha is excited to play the Eva Braun role. She is already researching for her character by watching historical footage and past films made on Eva. The former Miss India (2002) is slowly building her resume with diverse acting roles such as playing a village thug Munni gangster in With Love To Obama, and her first international project, IFC's Bollywood Hero, opposite Chris Kattan.

It is a million dollar question as to why suddenly growing Indian cine Capital Bollywood has decided to make a movie on a devil like Hitler. Many believe that this movie might be a sabotaging project of some anti-Indian elements to some how put Indo-Israel and Indo-US relations into jeopardy. On the other hand, some believe that, this very project shows clearly how anti-Semitism is spreading wings in some of the Asian nations.

In most of the Muslim countries, anti-Semitism and anti-US or anti-Israel sentiment is secretly funded by Iran or some other terror patron nations. Iran in particular, spends millions of dollars every year in spreading hate speech in the Muslim nations through publications, movies and other media. On the other hand, controversial television channels like Al Jazeera or Peace TV are working with a very specific goal and mission of poisoning the minds of Muslim masses against United States, Israel and the West by portraying the very theme of War on Terror as ‘War against Islam’.

A REVIEW OF "THE MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT" BY AARON KLEIN, with Brenda J. Elliott

2010-06-14T18:25:00.000+02:00

BARACK OBAMA UNMASKED

A review of "THE MANCHURIAN PRESIDENT"

Barack Obama's ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists

By; Aaron Klein, with Brenda J. Elliott

Reviewed by: FERN SIDMAN

American journalist, author and radio host, Aaron Klein, along with historian and researcher, Brenda J. Elliott blow the lid off the dome of silence surrounding the Obama administration as they boldly unmask the nation's 44th president in their latest chilling monograph entitled. "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists" (WND Books - May 2010). Providing close to 900 footnotes and countless pages of documentation they reveal surreptitious ties to radical leftists of all stripes. If the title of this book sounds at all familiar, it is a takeoff on the 1959 political thriller novel by Robert Condon called "The Manchurian Candidate" in which the son of a prominent US political family has been brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist party.

While Klein does not infer that President Obama is part of a Communist sleeper cell, he does present an exhaustive investigation into President Obama's background and his radical ties to pivotal figures in the Communist movement, both inside the White House and out who also happen to be major players in crafting legislation, including the economic stimulus package. This weighty tome weaves a complex spider's web of a narrative that is replete with a plethora of names and organizations of radical leftists, hitherto unknown by the public, who helped shape Obama's ideology and career.

Starting with Obama's childhood affiliation as a Sunday school attendee at the First Unitarian in Honolulu, a radical activist church that not only served as sanctuary for draft dodgers in the 1960s and 70s but had strong links to the even more radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Klein embellishes on the movement that gave birth to the underground terrorist offshoot called Weatherman. It was through this organization that Obama liaison Bill Ayers achieved fame as a Pentagon bomber-conspirator and a notorious leftist student agitator. Ayers summed up the Weatherman ideology which he referred to as "an American Red Army" by saying, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents."

Klein informs us that Obama worked directly with Ayers in Chicago back in 1988, after Ayers resurfaced from his underground status amid multiple criminal charges related to his extremist activities. The charges were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct. The two were introduced by Gerald "Jerry" Kellman, a Marxist acolyte of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky, and thus, a professional association was forged as Obama served with the Ayers' run community advocacy coalition called the Alliance for Better Chicago Schools, or ABC. When Obama launched his political career in 1995, the venue for his first fundraiser was the Chicago apartment of Bill Ayers and the two served alongside each other from 1995 to 2000 on a $100 million education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge or CAC.

Says Klein, "To underscore Ayers' radical mentality in 1995, while he worked closely with Obama, the unrepentant terrorist gave an interview in that year for author Ron Chepesiuk's book Sixties Radicals, in which Ayers stated, "I'm a radical, leftist, small 'c' communist."

Following the guidelines of Alinsky-like tactics of working within the system to overthrow the capitalist structure of American government, Klein speaks of Obama's direct links to the CAC's role in "disbursing money through various far-left community organizers, such as ACORN." Such Socialist led organizations and unions like Project VOTE!, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), the AFL-CIO (the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations), AFSCME (American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees) and the Apollo Alliance are also directly linked to ACORN and Obama cronies with "questionable" ties. Quoting from a 2001 book by Jarol B. Manheim, "The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation", Klein says that "by 1986, ACORN had forged institutional ties with AFL-CIO Central Labor Councils in at least 30 cities" and that ACORN's "People's Platform" included such radical reformist objectives as "free medical care, a public defender system, the elimination of the state income tax for low income people and higher welfare benefits."

Obama's associations with the Nation of Islam, Black Liberation Theology and black political extremists are also revealed in nuanced detail, as Klein sheds light on the fact that Obama attended the million man march organized by Nation of Islam leader and rabid Jew hater, Louis Farrakhan. For over 20 years Obama attended the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago where Farrakhan gave guest lectures at the behest of anti-American extremist preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Klein also uncovers the fact that the Nation of Islam was on Obama's payroll in the early days of his political career and that his senior advisor, David Axelrod also maintained ties to radical Islam through his association as a board member of St. Sabena's Church in Chicago which served as a haven for black nationalists of the Nation of Islam variety.

The backgrounds of other key Obama advisors and "Czars" such as Valerie Jarrett, Van Jones, Andy Stern, Cass Sunstein and John Holdren are also carefully scrutinized by Klein as well as their political leanings and the influence they wield in this current administration. Ghastly epiphanies proliferate, as Klein documents the fact that Communist Party member, Frank Marshall Davis who would become a mentor to the young Barack Obama in Hawaii worked closely with Vernon Jarrett, Valerie Jarrett's father-in-law in at least three communist dominated organizations in Chicago in the late 1940s. Former Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, who resigned his post in September of 2009, was forced out of his job by allegations of association with a Marxist group during the 1990s. Having been arrested several times during the 90s for political activism, Jones was quoted in a November 2005 interview with the East Bay Express as saying that while in jail, ""I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical, communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.'"

"The Manchurian President" also exposes how Obama's health-care policy, masked by moderate populist rhetoric, was pushed along and partially crafted by extremists. Some of them reveal in their own words that their principal aim is to achieve corporate socialist goals and a vast increase in government powers.

Klein was recently quoted on FOX news as saying, "It is clear that Barack Obama has ties to an anti-American fringe nexus that was instrumental in building his political career from the beginning all the way through now." He adds that, "I believe this work is crucial to Americans from across the political spectrum, including mainstream Democrats who should be alarmed that their party has been hijacked by an extreme-left bent on permanently changing the party to fits its radical agenda."

This meticulously documented piece of outstanding investigative research is a must read for all good citizens of this great country who are concerned with the future of our cherished freedoms and values.

DEMONSTRATORS SAY "NO" TO MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO

2010-06-07T05:12:00.000+02:00

DEMONSTRATORS SAY "NO" TO MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO

BY: FERN SIDMAN

"No mosque at Ground Zero" was the rallying cry of the day, as thousands of angry demonstrators gathered for a rally to oppose the proposed construction of a 13-story mosque just blocks away from the site of the 9/11 attacks. A palpable patriotism and zeal filled the air on Sunday afternoon, June 6th as Zucotti Park at the corner of Church and Liberty Streets in lower Manhattan was filled to capacity. Rally attendees who came from as far as Chicago and Los Angeles held signs saying, "Ground Zero is a War Memorial - No Mega Mosque here", "You Can Build a Mosque at Ground Zero - When Can We Build a Synagogue in Mecca?", "Pack Your Sharia and Get out", "Mayor Bloomberg: This Mosque Has Radical Ties - and you still approve?" Hundreds of American flags blew in the summer breeze as speakers representing every walk of life condemned the notion of a mosque being erected near the site of the former World Trade Center's twin towers.

The Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the chief sponsor of the project that is to be called The Cordoba House, a name that refers to the city in Spain which, in the Middle Ages, was a center of Islamic culture and learning. Cordoba was also the seat of an Islamic caliphate in which Jews and Christians suffered under second-class dhimmi status and was the site of large-scale pogrom, perpetrated by Muslims, in the year 1011.

The proposed mosque will be built at 45 Park Place, which is the site of a four story edifice built in 1857 and was a Burlington Coat retail store until 9/11, when part of the plane's landing gear crashed through the roof. The building which currently houses a mosque will be razed to make room for the new structure. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission could conceivably thwart the intended project if they determine that the building has historic status, thus rendering it a landmark. Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Commission said a hearing is scheduled to take place on that very subject. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has weighed in on the issue and has expressed support for the project.

Imam Rauf insists that the $150 million project is meant to heal the wounds of 9/11. "We've approached the community because we want this to be an example of how we are cooperating with the members of the community, not only to provide services but also to build a discourse on how Muslims and non-Muslims can cooperate together to push back against the voice of extremism", he said.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy says there are more productive ways to fight Islamic extremism and has questions about the financing. According to reports, the building that occupies the site was purchased last year for $4.85 million in cash by Soho Properties, a real estate company run by Muslims. Imam Rauf, who is also the founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement was an investor in that transaction.

Dr. Jasser said that with such a financial commitment, there needs to be full disclosure about where the money is coming from. "There should be transparency about who those investors are; whether that money is coming from a domestic source or not, and if it's coming from foreign interests we need to know, because I think that's a liability, and it shows that there is another agenda rather than domestic security and tranquility" he said.

Organized by such organizations as 'Stop the Islamization of America', Families of the 9/11 Victims, The New York City Firefighters, the Tea Party Activists of Brooklyn and Staten Island among other such groups, the rally goers stood in the scorching heat and listened to the impassioned words of the litany of speakers. "We're not here today to condemn Muslims or Islam" said Pamela Geller, executive director of 'Stop the Islamization of America', "but we are here today to condemn the kind of mosque that will teach the very same radical ideology that gave birth to the 9/11 attacks", she intoned. "Building a mosque just several blocks away from Ground Zero is an insult and an affront to every single person that was killed on 9/11, to their families, to the first responders and every concerned American who cherishes liberty, democracy and freedom" she continued.

"3000 pairs of eyes are looking down at us today" declared James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force who traveled to New York to speak at the rally. "We must stand together as a free people and tell the world that we will fight the imposition of Sharia law until our last breath. These evil, cowardly bastards who took the lives of those proud Americans on 9/11 will be remembered forever and this mosque which represents the triumph of Islamic fanaticism will not be built if we have anything to say", he said. Mr. Lafferty received thunderous applause when he said, "The good people of the USA must also stand in solid unity with the Israel Defense Forces who are waging a war against Hamas terrorism as was evidenced several days ago when they intercepted a Turkish based flotilla of ships whose aim it was to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. It is the IDF who is on the front lines in the battle against Islamic radicalism and we must support them".

Dr. Babu Suseelan, a Hindu human rights activist told the crowd, "We Hindus and Sikhs have a story to tell. Islamists killed 80 million of us since 700 AD and they continue to kill us. They destroyed 3000 glorious temples and built mosques over them. In the last 60 years, Islamists in Pakistan wiped out infidel Hindu and Sikh populations. At one time we represented 25% of the population and now we are less that 1%. Know this: The 9/11 mosque is not a symbol of understanding. It is a symbol of conquest. Imam Rauf is a master of Taqiyya, which is the use of deception to forward the agenda of Islam. What Faisal Shahzad failed to accomplish in Times Square on May 1st with overt jihad, Imam Rauf will succeed with stealth jihad."

"Not here! Not now!" was the resounding theme of the speech delivered by Jay Townsend, the GOP candidate of the US Senate from New York who will be challenging the incumbent Charles Schumer in the upcoming November elections. "The wounds have not healed, Imam", he said. "And we cannot so soon forget. The hatred that spawned this assault on our sensibilities is still taught in too many of your mosques and inscribed into too many of your prayer rugs. Not here, not now, until you have excised the hatred that is inscribed in the school books of your impressionable young. Not here, not now, until you are willing to say that Israel has the right to exist, that the people of Israel have a right to a life absent of fear of a nuclear armed tyrant who denies the Holocaust" he declared.

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a co-organizer of the rally referenced a June 5th article in the New York Post that said, "The imam behind a proposed mosque near Ground Zero is a prominent member of a group that helped sponsor the pro-Palestinian activists who clashed violently with Israeli commandos at sea this week. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a key figure in Malaysian-based Perdana Global Peace Organization, according to its website. Perdana is the single biggest donor ($366,000) so far to the Free Gaza Movement, a key organizer of the six-ship flotilla that tried to break Israel's blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip Monday."

Members of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI) also made their presence known at the rally through their visual depiction of the heinous murders committed by radical Islamists around the globe. "We are glad that the speakers here today drew a distinction between the Islamic faith and those who commit murder in the name of Allah. We work with Muslims and ex-Muslim dissidents who oppose the pernicious ideology of radical Islam and we are an inclusive alliance of people of all religions and nationalities who cherish freedom" said Dr. Marvin Belsky, a retired internist.

Responding to the remarks of the "Dean" of the White House Press Corps, 89 year old Helen Thomas who told a reporter on May 27th, following a celebration of Jewish Heritage Day at the White House that "the Jews should get the heck out of Palestine. The Palestinians are occupied by those who stole their land. They should go home to Poland and Germany, America, anywhere", Dr. Belsky said, "Ms. Thomas is a disgrace to the White House press corps and she should have her press credentials revoked. She is a virulent anti-Semite that should be roundly condemned."

Other speakers included Anders Gravers of Stop the Islamization of Europe, Simon Deng, the Sudanese ex-slave and campaigner for human rights for Sudanese Christians, Richard Connerney, a philosophy professor at Pace University, Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian ex-Muslim and author of "Now They Call Me Infidel" and "Cruel and Unusual Punishment", Nelly Braginskaya, a 9/11 family member who lost her son, Larry Savinkin, father of Vladimir Savinkin, 21 and president of the September 11th Family Group uniting 9/11 families from the Russian-American community, Dan Maloney, New York Director of the Gathering of Eagles organization and congressional candidate in District 4 in New York, Germano Rivera, who recovered remains on 9/11, Nabil Asaad and Dr. Esmat Zaklama, Coptic Christian human rights activists, Pamela Hall of SIOA-NY and a human righhts activiist, Herb London of the Hudson Institute, and Beverly Carlson of the Band of Mothers, among others.

The rally organizers urged those in attendance today to continue their work against the mosque in their localities and they were exhorted to return for yet another rally in opposition to the mosque on September 10th. The rally concluded with the singing of "God Bless America".

THE JEWISH STATE UNDER SIEGE

2010-06-02T08:31:00.000+02:00

THE JEWISH STATE UNDER SIEGE

Angry demonstrators fire back

BY: FERN SIDMAN

As the world continues to demonize Israel for her role in defending her citizens in the Gaza flotilla debacle, livid Jewish demonstrators pushed back against the onslaught of invectives being hurled at the Jewish state in a rally that was staged on Tuesday evening, June 1st in front of the Turkish Consulate on E 46th Street and 1st Avenue, outside of the United Nations. Organized by the organization called RAJE, the Russian American Jewish Experience, over 300 rally attendees took to the streets in defense of Israel. Holding aloft such signs that read "Israel: We Stand With You", "Gaza Peace Activists Don't Use Clubs or Knives" and "Peace Activists Should Not Support Hamas", the demonstrators held both Israeli and American flags and called for an end to Hamas terrorism.

Dovid Ha'Ivri of the Shromron Liaison office and a resident of the Israeli settlement of Tapuach said, "Any country in the world has a right to defend themselves and Israel is no different. Clearly, this purportedly "Free Gaza" flotilla was filled with Hamas supporters who refused to cooperate with the Israeli military. They had their own nefarious agenda and it's just too bad that the lives of our commandos were put in jeopardy. Orders should have been given that the Mavi Marmara be sunk. Israel has nothing to apologize to the world for and certainly Turkey has no right to pass judgment on Israel after the Holocaust that they inflicted on the Armenian population."

Just several blocks away in front of the Israeli Consulate, several thousand pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas apologists gathered for their own raucous demonstration in which they spewed forth their own inimitable brand of vitriol against Israel. "The Israelis are murderers and pirates and they should be tried for war crimes and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza" said Ahmed Wahad of the organization Al-Awda. Insisting that the mission of the flotilla activists was purely a humanitarian one, he denied allegations that the people on the Mavi Marmara brutally assaulted Israeli commandos as they descended on to the ship. "Look, the people in Gaza are suffering due to the inhumane Israeli blockade of food, medicine and other essential supplies and these people on the boat were victimized by the savage Israeli occupiers", he continued.

Members of the anti-Israel contingent began marching down East 42nd Street towards Times Square shouting, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and "No more US tax dollars for Israel" as they called for the end of the 'occupation' of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

Video evidence of the incident reveals quite clearly that the Israeli commandos came aboard the boat peacefully, without the intention to inflict harm, when they were set upon by passengers wielding metal pipes, clubs, and knives. Several pistols were stolen from the commandos and shots were fired as one commando was thrown overboard into to side boat.

"It's really pretty simple. At one time such terrorist groups as Hamas and Hezbollah believed that the best way to destroy Israel was to murder our citizens either through conventional warfare and through suicidal terrorist attacks. They woke up and came to the conclusion that such actions only garner sympathy for Israel. Now, they are keenly cognizant of the fact that the war they are fighting is through the media and world opinion, so the best way to destroy us is to force us into a position to kill them", said Meir Epstein, 52, of Monsey, NY who traveled down to attend the pro-Israel rally.

Across the street from the Turkish consulate stood Turkish nationals and members of the vehemently anti-Israel Neturei Karta movement who continued to berate Israel while leveling epithets laced with hatred at members of the pro-Israel contingent. "Murderers, occupiers and pirates" they shouted while calling for the annihilation of Israel. "Israel should not exist because it is a racist state and we oppose the Jewish character of the state. Why should the Jews have their own country, when the land that they live on was stolen from the Palestinians. A country composed of Jews cannot be a true democracy", said Fagria Behar, a Turkish national.

The defiant pro-Israel faction continued to shout, "Am Yisroel Chai", (the people of Israel live) and "We have the right to self-defense" while police kept both sides separated behind barricades. "The fact that the UN saw fit to hold an emergency security council session to condemn Israel is nothing new", said Ronn Torrosian, a renowned New York publicist and a board member of RAJE. "It is cesspool of Jew hatred and what these so called peace activists on the Turkish vessel pulled off was nothing short of a cleverly devised anti-Semitic lynching" he added.

What best summed up the collective thoughts of the pro-Israel rally goers was a sign featuring an Israeli flag and the words under it: "It's better to have a Jewish State that's hated by the whole world than an Auschwitz that's loved by it."

TENSIONS BUILD AT MEETING ON GROUND ZERO MOSQUE

2010-05-31T06:36:00.002+02:00

TENSIONS BUILD AT MEETING ON GROUND ZERO MOSQUE

A June 6th rally opposing the construction is planned

BY: FERN SIDMAN

A palpable tension filled the air on Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan on Tuesday evening May 25th, as an emotionally charged meeting was held by Manhattan's Community Board 1 over the proposed construction of a 13-story mosque and cultural center just blocks away from Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 twin towers terror attacks.

After four hours of rancorous public debate, hostilities reached a zenith when members of the board voted 29-1 with 10 abstentions in support of the plan. Several board members proposed a postponement of the vote until the next meeting in order to obtain more detailed information about funding of the project and the organizations sponsoring it, but the motion failed.

The Cordoba Initiative, headed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the chief sponsor of the project that is to be called The Cordoba House, a name that refers to the city in Spain which, in the Middle Ages, was a center of Islamic culture and learning. Cordoba was also the seat of an Islamic caliphate in which Jews and Christians suffered under second-class dhimmi status. It was the site of a large-scale pogrom, perpetrated by Muslims, in the year 1011.

The mosque will be built at 45 Park Place, is the site of a four story edifice built in 1857 and was a Burlington Coat retail store until 9/11, when part of the plane's landing gear crashed through the roof. The building which currently houses a mosque will be razed to make room for the new structure. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission could conceivably thwart the intended project if they determine that the building has historic status, thus rendering it a landmark. Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the Landmarks Commission said a hearing is scheduled to take place on that very subject.

Failing to abide by Roberts Rules of Order, project opponents jeered at the speakers and yelled comments such as, "You're building over a cemetery!" while holding signs that read, "Show respect for the 3000" among other things. Among the groups standing in opposition to the proposed mosque are the Families of the 9/11 Victims, the Tea Party activists of Staten Island and Brooklyn, the New York City Firefighters, Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), Jihad Watch and the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI).

Pamela Geller, executive director of "Stop Islamization of America' (SIOA), an organization that is spearheading the June 6th rally to protest the proposed mosque blasted the Cordoba Initiative and its leader, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, saying the project is "an insult to the people who were murdered there on 9/11 to build a mosque that will teach the same holy book, the same belief-system, that motivated the 9/11 terrorists." She added that, "In Islam there is a history of placing mosques over the cherished sites of conquered people: the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, where the Dome of the Rock now stands, and the conversion of the Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople into a mosque are two of the most famous examples, but there are thousands of others. In the Islamic world a mosque at Ground Zero would be no less unmistakably a sign of Islamic triumphalism and supremacism."
Before the vote, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said that he understood the sensitivities of the families of the 9/11 victims. "I don't think anybody wants to do anything to disrespect those families. They made the ultimate sacrifice" he said. "At the same time, we have to balance diversity and look for opportunities to bring different groups together." Stringer released a statement on behalf of the community board saying that support of the construction of the mosque "sent a clear message that our city is one that promotes diversity and tolerance."

Stringer has been the target of disparaging remarks by Tea Party activist Mark Williams who has called the proposed center a monument to the terror attacks. Stringer has defended his position in support of the plans to build the mosque and has denounced what he perceives to be offensive speech directed at him or at Muslims.

Council member Margaret Chin said early in the meeting that those who assume a posture of strong resistance to the plans for the proposed mosque are "haters and bigots." The reference was directed at members of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI) and others who held aloft signs condemning the decision of the board to support this endeavor. According to a 1991 article in "The City Journal" author Richard Brookhiser revealed Ms. Chin's political agenda. He states, "For Ms. Chin had risen to prominence by way of the Communist Workers Party, a Maoist sect that decided several years ago to begin infiltrating mainstream politics."

Satya Dosapati, a leader of the Hindu Human Rights Watch and an active member of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam said that "my observation has been that people are waking up to the very real threat that Islamic radicalism represents." Mr. Dosapati is working on mobilizing the large Hindu population in central New Jersey and is arranging buses to the rally on June 6th. "We need exceptionally large numbers of people to attend this rally if we want our voices to be heard. We are assembling at 12 noon on June 6th at Zucotti Park on the corner of Church and Liberty Streets and we beseech all those who are concerned about the future of democracy, liberty and freedom to come out."

Imam Rauf insists that the $150 million project is meant to heal the wounds of 9/11. "We've approached the community because we want this to be an example of how we are cooperating with the members of the community, not only to provide services but also to build a discourse on how Muslims and non-Muslims can cooperate together to push back against the voice of extremism", he said.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy says there are more productive ways to fight Islamic extremism and has questions about the financing. According to reports, the building that occupies the site was purchased last year for $4.85 million in cash by Soho Properties, a real estate company run by Muslims. Imam Rauf, who is also the founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement was an investor in that transaction.

Dr. Jasser said that with such a financial commitment, there needs to be full disclosure about where the money is coming from. "There should be transparency about who those investors are; whether that money is coming from a domestic source or not, and if it's coming from foreign interests we need to know, because I think that's a liability, and it shows that there is another agenda rather than domestic security and tranquility" he said.

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of ten books on the nature of Islam expressed doubts about the purportedly benign views of Imam Rauf. "After the 9/11 attacks, Imam Rauf was quoted on the CBS 60 Minutes program of September 30, 2001 as saying, "US policies were an accessory to the 9/11 crime. In the most direct sense Osama Bin Laden was made in the USA". It is clear from the language that Imam Rauf uses now as opposed to back in 2001 that he is a prototypical dissembler as he boldly insinuated that American foreign policy was to blame for the heinous atrocities that took the lives of close to 3,000 people on 9/11" he said.

"Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is an open proponent of Sharia, which institutionalizes discrimination against Jews, Christians, women, and others, and denies freedom of speech and freedom of conscience" said Pamela Geller of SIOA. Her sober warning was crystal clear: "If we do not confront this threat now, then in the future we will see increasing assertiveness from Islamic supremacists in this country; demanding that we accept elements of Islamic law, and increasing conflict as free Americans see their rights being abridged and Muslims set up as a privileged class here."

Perspectives on the Afghan War

2010-05-26T17:50:00.002+02:00

The problem lies in Pakistan

You are right that the "Afghan mission can still be made a worthwhile one, but not if it is left to drift rudderless". However, it is not the goals that need to be debated but rather the strategy.

Unfortunately, the root of the problem continues to be ignored: namely, the Pakistani military and intelligence's support for the various militant groups in Afghanistan as part of their expansionist policy of "strategic depth". The military and intelligence also play a double game as part of their half-hearted co-operation with Nato forces by attacking militant groups that directly threaten Pakistan's stability but providing early warnings and escape routes during security operations against those that do not. This is done in order to receive financial aid from countries such as the US.

Hence, increasing the number of troops could defeat the militant groups in Afghanistan, but the victory would be short-lived as they could simply retreat into Pakistan as they did in the period 2002-2004 and then infiltrate Afghanistan again, similarly to what happened in 2005 and 2006, as can be observed by the sudden spike in the number of troop deaths from 2005 onwards.

At the same time, the situation would deteriorate if Nato forces were to simply withdraw. The militant groups would be strengthened, and the Pakistani military and intelligence would be emboldened to pursue their policy of "strategic depth".

Given the close co-operation between al-Qa'ida, the Taliban Shura based in Quetta, and Punjab-based groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was responsible for the Mumbai attacks, the threat to the whole of South Asia would be increased, and in turn to the West itself, since India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals.

Thus, we must confront the Pakistani military and intelligence on this issue, rather than assuming that we have, in Obama's words, a relationship of "mutual trust" with Pakistan, and try to make them assume responsibility for the situation. This would allow for a safe withdrawal plan that would also put an end to the Pashtun nationalist insurgency in Afghanistan that has arisen in response to the prolonged presence of Nato forces.

Aymenn Jawad

Cardiff

TENS OF THOUSANDS MARK ISRAEL'S 62nd ANNIVERSARY

2010-05-24T09:03:00.001+02:00

TENS OF THOUSANDS MARK ISRAEL'S 62nd ANNIVERSARY

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Fashionable 5th Avenue in New York City morphed into a virtual sea of blue and white on Sunday afternoon, May 23rd, as thousands marched down the famed thoroughfare in a passionate display of support for the State of Israel on her 62nd birthday. The flag of Israel was a ubiquitous site, as marchers representing synagogues, schools, yeshivos and Jewish organizations from around the tri-state area held aloft this indefatigable symbol of Jewish statehood with pride while hoisting decorative banners and signs calling for a united Jerusalem. Scores of spectators from all over the country lined the parade route and joyfully cheered on the marchers as they raised their collective voices in tribute to the glorious legacy of Israel.

For over 20 blocks, Hebrew songs blared through loudspeakers on the abundance of floats representing organizations and businesses supporting Israel as marching bands, dance troupes and choral societies provided their own unique backdrop to the day's festivities. Throngs of ebullient students representing such local area schools as Yeshiva of Flatbush, Magen David, Shulamith High School for Girls, Yeshiva of Manhattan Beach and the East Midwood Hebrew Day School proudly chanted, "Am Yisroel Chai" (the nation of Israel lives) as they paid homage to the rich heritage, ancestry, and history of the Jewish homeland.

Others schools and groups participating in the 2010 Salute to Israel parade included the Yeshiva of Central Queens, Yeshiva University High School for Boys and Girls, the JCH of Bensonhurst, HAFTR - Hebrew Academy of Far Rockaway and the Five Towns, the Jewish Foundation School, the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach, the Moshe Aaron Yeshiva High School, the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy, the Kings Bay YM-YWHA, the Ma'ayanot Yeshiva High School for Girls, the North Shore Hebrew Academy High School, the Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey, the Sephardic Heritage Alliance, the Solomon Schecter Day Schools of Bergen, Essex and Union counties in New Jersey, United Synagogue Youth, the Ramaz School, the Westchester Jewish Conference, Temple Israel of Great Neck, Tzofim Tzabar - Friends of Israel Scouts, the Republican Jewish Coalition, RAJE - Russian American Jewish Experience, the Jewish War Veterans, among many others.

Float sponsors included the American Friends of Magen David Adom, the America-Israel Friendship League, Bank Leumi, Bank Hapoalim, El Al Airlines, the B'nai Zion Foundation and the 92nd Street YM-YWHA.

The parade was not without a polemical element as opponents of the Jewish state gathered along the parade route between 58th and 59th Streets to voice their animus towards Israel. Members of the vociferously anti-Israel Chassidic sect known as Neturei Karta carried Palestinian flags and shouted epithets against the Zionist movement while holding signs saying, "Authentic rabbis oppose the creation of Israel". They were joined by members of the ANSWER Coalition, a left wing pro-Palestinian conglomerate who lambastes Israel as a "racist, apartheid state".

Directly across the street stood members of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI), a nascent organization representing Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and ex-Muslims whose objective is to graphically depict the heinous atrocities committed by radical Islamists against all infidels. Andrew Upton, a founding member of HRCARI said, "We are here today to remind all Americans that Israel is on the front lines in the struggle against radical Islam. If we strengthen Israel, we thereby strengthen all of humanity as radical Islam represents the greatest threat to our freedoms since Nazism prior to World War II."

Christian supporters of Israel such as Linda Rivera of Manhattan also joined the HRCARI counter-protest. Said Ms. Rivera," The Jewish people are finally back in the land that G-d gave them as an everlasting possession and anybody who attempts to steal this land from the Jews is declaring war on G-d. The Obama administration has expressed nothing but extreme hostility towards our stalwart ally Israel while coddling our terrorist enemies such as Iran and that is nothing short of reprehensible."

"Haven't we learned from history that we can't appease terrorists?", intoned Coretta James, an African American woman and fervent supporter of Israel. "I am here today to say as a black woman, that our president if a blatant anti-Semite who should be ashamed of himself for his wayward policies concerning Israel. The Jewish nation cannot be coerced into making a so called 'peace' with an enemy who has sworn her destruction such as the Palestinian leadership", she added.

Rabbi Chaim Shimon of the Millinery Synagogue in Manhattan said, "We are here today to show our solidarity with the one and only Jewish nation. As a Torah observant Jew, my message to President Obama concerning his relations to Jews and Israel comes directly from the Bible which states, 'Those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed'. Mr. President - keep your hands off our holy city of Jerusalem because the G-d of Israel is watching over you."

As the parade reached its conclusion, both marchers and spectators headed towards the "Summerstage" in Central Park for the 17th annual Concert in the Park for Israel. Headlining at this year's musical tribute to Israel were renowned singers Eitan Katz, Gershon Veroba, Dr. Meyer and Baruch Abittan, Jerry Markowitz, Izzy Kieffer, Michael Ian Elias, Elad Snir, accompanied by Israeli pianist extraordinaire Shlomi Aharoni and such groups as Pey Dalid and the Maccabeats (a Yeshiva University a cappella group), among others

The concert, emceed by radio personality Nachum Segal, (JM in the AM), was dedicated to Jerusalem never being divided, not giving up any land anywhere in Eretz Yisroel, and standing up to the mullahs of Iran. Mr. Segal introduced such speakers as New York State Assemblyman David Weprin, director of the Igud HaRabonim, Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum, Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie of the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue, Manhigut Yehudit international director, Shmuel Sackett, Rabbi David Algaze of the Chavurat Israel synagogue in Forest Hills, Rev. Michael Faulkner (Congressional candidate for the 15th district in northern Manhattan), and executive director of the Shomron Liason Office, David HaIvri.

The keynote speakers were MK Danny Danon, Chairman of the World Likud movement and deputy speaker of the Knesset and Michael S. Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee. "Israeli settlements are not an obstacle to peace in the Middle East" said MK Danon. "They are assets to Israel that must be preserved at all costs", he intoned. Mr. Danon, a member of the Betar Zionist youth movement founded by the legendary Zionist revisionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky said that "Jerusalem will remain undivided; despite the pressure that Israel finds herself under by the Obama administration. The real threat to peace and stability in the region is the Iranian nuclear threat which is very real and very lethal and that is something that the US is reluctant to confront in the strongest terms", he declared. In a private interview subsequent to his speech Mr. Danon said, "If need be, Israel has the nuclear capability to deal with Iran's burgeoning nuclear arsenal. Israel did not attend the recent global nuclear summit in Washington because we don't need to be on the receiving end of pressure regarding nuclear disarmament, especially now, as the clock is ticking concerning a possible strike against us by Iran."

"We need very clear indications from Washington concerning its commitment to Israel's security", said Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee. "And the major obstacle here is that we're not getting any indications from the Obama administration about what they are planning to do about the danger that Israel finds herself in, vis-a-via the Iranian nuclear threat. It is our belief that Israel should not be exhorted to make territorial concessions in the name of a false peace. We know that we cannot appease terrorists and the Palestinian Authority and the other Iranian proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah are clearly dedicated to Israel's annihilation", he said.

AMBASSADOR JOHN BOLTON KEYNOTES AT JRP/ATERET COHANIM DINNER IN NEW YORK

2010-05-16T18:03:00.000+02:00

HON. JOHN BOLTON KEYNOTES AT JRP/ATERET COHANIM DINNER

BY: FERN SIDMAN

Warning of the existential perils to Israel, the United States and the entire western world that a nuclear empowered Iran represents, the Honorable John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations delivered a powerful address as keynote speaker at the 2010 Jerusalem Reclamation Project/Ateret Cohanim dinner on Thursday evening, May 13th at Terrace on the Park.

Citing the plethora of misinformation and misimpressions that swirl around the status of Israel, Jerusalem and its surrounding settlements, Ambassador Bolton made several oblique references to the current strain in US-Israeli relations and chastised the Obama administration for pressuring Israel to cease construction of new homes for Jewish residents in East Jerusalem. "People should be able to buy and sell property in Jerusalem, as in any other country, and clearly peace in the region is not dependent on Israel making territorial concessions", he intoned. Referring to the chilly reception and humiliating treatment that was accorded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his most recent visit to Washington, Ambassador Bolton said, "Today, Afghan president Hamid Kharzi was treated to a gala lunch at the White House and shown the kind of respect that we display to our allies. Lest we forget that Israel is our staunchest ally in the Middle East and as such the prime minister of Israel should receive the same respect."

Debunking the ubiquitous myth that peace in the Middle East will be achieved by settling the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ambassador Bolton opined, "The Palestinians are being exploited by their own leaders and the US should not force either proximity or direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians because there is no legitimate Palestinian entity to negotiate with. The US needs to stop digging the hole that they're in because undertaking this huge diplomatic task that will result in failed negotiations will leave the US in a much weaker position."

Calling Iran the "cradle of terrorism", Ambassador Bolton said, "Iran has been developing nuclear weapons for the last 20 years and neither diplomacy nor economic sanctions will be effective deterrents against them. Iran has been hiding from IAEA inspectors, concealing data and destroying concrete proof of nuclear facilities. He also provided evidence of Iran's nuclear ties to the rogue country of North Korea, whose nuclear power plant in Syria was destroyed in a 2007 attack by Israel and spoke of Iran's financing of such terrorist groups as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban. "Because of the ethnic dissatisfaction in Iran, a regime change is warranted and the ousting of the Islamic revolutionary regime that came to power there in 1979", he said to rousing applause. Until that time he said that "Iran cannot be contained or deterred" and suggested that Israel might be put in a position to launch a pre-emptive strike while there are no clear indications from Washington that it will support such a venture.

The ambassador concluded by thanking the members of the JRP/Ateret Cohanim for their unflinching devotion to building Jerusalem and for their tireless efforts on its behalf of its people. The Jerusalem Reclamation Project and Ateret Cohanim are organizations predicated on fulfilling a generations old dream of rebuilding and securing a united Jerusalem, strengthening Jewish roots and reestablishing thriving Jewish communities that are centered around educational institutes in and around the Old City of Jerusalem. Referring to Jerusalem as the "heart and soul" of the Jewish nation, its activities include establishing educational centers, helping to renovate old buildings, installing and maintaining security systems and initiating other Jewish educational projects in an effort to revitalize this important area and have a greater Jewish presence in and around the Old City.

The guests of honor at this year's dinner were Dr. Joseph Frager and Mr. Mel Wadler. Dr. Frager, a renowned gastroenterologist, is the chairman of the board of The Jerusalem Reclamation Project and is widely regarded as one of the leading Jewish activists of today. Mr. Wadler is one of the founding members of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim and established its first office in his home back in 1984. He is a tenacious visionary who has become a driving force in the JRP.

Philanthropists Joseph and Helen Mermelstein were this year's recipients of the auspicious Jerusalem Chai award and were hailed for their "tireless work on behalf of Jews around the world." Credited with securing the release of former Soviet prisoner of conscience Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, the Mermelsteins are also active in helping the settlements in Judea and Samaria by donating swimming pools, basketball courts and day-care centers.

The Bonei Yerushalayim honorees of 2010 included three very special people. Mark and Galina Moerdler have been active involved in various Jewish causes including the JRP, Children of Chernobyl and Amit. Their exemplary dedication and commitment to Jerusalem and Israel is manifested through their constant support of JRP initiatives.

Introduced by Shani Hikind who is the JRP executive vice president, Mr. Moe Tawil was described as a "man of action and devotion" and "a Moses in our time" for his stalwart support of the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Mr. Tawil was born into a family steeped in the Sephardic traditional way of life where education, the study of Torah and Yirat Hashem were woven into the fabric of their daily lives. Mrs. Hikind said that Mr. Tawil was a true Ohev Yisroel who cares deeply for his brethren and that he confided in her that "Torah is the secret to his longevity."

Other Jewish luminaries were also present at the dinner including Rabbi David Algaze of the Chavurat Yisrael synagogue in Forest Hills, New York. Commenting on the recent terrorist attempt in Times Square on May 1st by Pakistani born American citizen, Faisal Shahzad, Rabbi Algaze said, "If our elected officials and the media do not name the enemy as radical Islamists, we will never find them. While stereotyping and profiling any group is abhorrent we must realize that Islam is like no other culture. It seeks worldwide domination in the form of a caliphate and their doctrine is based on the teachings of Muhammed who called for the death of all infidels. Islamic mosques and madrassas are breeding grounds for this kind of nefarious ideology and their preachers and imams cannot stop it."

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) representing the 48th assembly district in Boro Park since 1982 and husband of Shani Hikind of the JRP said of the burgeoning Iranian nuclear threat, "As Ambassador Bolton suggested in his speech, Israel may have no choice but to make the first move against Iran for self-preservation reasons and not to take action may prove to be worse later on." Opining on the US position of such an engagement by Israel he said, "the Obama administration has been a disaster for Israel and the US. This administration has done everything in its power to undermine Israel's security, and thus the ultimate security of the United States."

Deoband fatwa: It's illegal for women to work, support family

2010-05-12T09:58:00.001+02:00

LUCKNOW: Darul Uloom Deoband, the self-appointed guardian for Indian Muslims, in a Talibanesque fatwa that reeked of tribal patriarchy, has decreed that it is "haram" and illegal according to the Sharia for a family to accept a woman's earnings. Clerics at the largest Sunni Muslim seminary after Cairo's Al-Azhar said the decree flowed from the fact that the Sharia prohibited proximity of men and women in the workplace.

"It is unlawful (under the Sharia law) for Muslim women to work in the government or private sector where men and women work together and women have to talk with men frankly and without a veil," said the fatwa issued by a bench of three clerics. The decree was issued over the weekend, but became public late on Monday, seminary sources said.

At a time when there is a rising clamour for job quotas for Muslims in India and a yearning for progress in the community that sees itself as neglected, the fatwa, although unlikely to be heeded, is clearly detrimental.

Even the most conservative Islamic countries, which restrict activities of women, including preventing them from driving, do not bar women from working. At the peak of its power, the Taliban only barred women in professions like medicine from treating men and vice versa. But there was a never a blanket ban on working, although the mullahs made it amply clear that they would like to see the women confined to homes.

The fatwa, however, drew flak among other clerics.

"Men and women in Sharia are entitled to equal rights. If men follow the Sharia, there is no reason why women can't work with them," said Rasheed, the Naib Imam of Lucknow's main Eidgah Mosque in Aishbagh.

Mufti Maulana Khalid Rasheed of Darul Ifta Firangi Meheli -- another radical Islamic body which also issues fatwas -- criticized the Deoband fatwa as a retrograde restriction on Muslim women.

The fatwa was in response to a question whether Muslim women can take up government or private jobs and whether their salary should be termed as `halal' (permissible under the Sharia) or `haram' (forbidden).

Well-known Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawwad, however, justified the fatwa. "Women in Islam are not supposed to go out and earn a living. It's the responsibility of the males in the family," he said. "If a woman has to go for a job, she must make sure that the Sharia restrictions are not compromised," he added, citing the example of Iran, where Muslim women work in offices but have separate seating areas, away from their male counterparts.

In Lucknow, a city with strong secular and progressive traditions, where Muslim families train their daughters to be doctors, engineers and executives, there was a sense of shocked disbelief even in conservative quarters that such a decree could come from those who consider themselves to be advocates of the community.

"I am also a working woman and also ensure that my Sharia is not compromised," said Rukhsana, a lecturer at a girl's college in Lucknow and a member of the executive committee of All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). "It's not necessary that one would have to go against the Sharia when going to work."

"Name one Islamic country which does not have a national airline and does not hire airhostesses? If I know correctly, even the Saudi Airlines has hostesses and they don't wear a veil," said Shabeena Parveen, a computer professional in the city.

Source: The times of India

India moves one step closer to 'Quranic values'....

2010-05-12T09:37:00.013+02:00

ALLAHABAD: In a judgment with far-reaching implications, the Allahabad high court has ruled that a non-Muslim bride must convert to Islam to marry a Muslim. Failing that, the matrimony with a Muslim man would be void as it would contradict Islamic dicta and tenets of the Quran, the court said.

The ruling on Monday by a division bench comprising Justices Vinod Prasad and Rajesh Chandra, came on a writ petition filed by Dilbar Habib Siddiqui. The petitioner had sought quashing of an FIR registered against him on March 17 under sections 323, 366 and 363 of IPC with Naini PS, Allahabad and prayed the court not interfere in his peaceful matrimonial life with Khushboo Jaiswal. The judges directed a speedy probe into the marriage of Siddiqui and ordered the cops to separate Khushboo Jaiswal, who was lodged in Nari Niketan, and hand her over to her parents.

The primary question for adjudication was on whether the FIR could be quashed or not. A perusal of the contents of the FIR indicated that Khushboo Jaiswal was alleged to have been abducted by the petitioner three months prior to its lodging. However, the petitioner had succeeded in preventing the FIR from being registered. The FIR was filed by the girl's mother, Sunita Jaiswal, who alleged that the petitioner had abducted her daughter. She contended that Khushboo never converted to Islam and there was also no documentary evidence to suggest so.

"In our above conclusion we are fortified by the fact that in the affidavit filed by Khusboo herself subsequent to her alleged contract marriage, she has described herself as Khushboo and not by any Islamic name. As Khushboo, she could not have contracted marriage according to Muslim customs. In those documents she has addressed herself as Khushboo Jaiswal," the verdict said.

"Thus, what is conspicuously clear is that Khushboo Jaiswal never converted and embraced Islam and therefore her marital tie with the petitioner Dilbar Habib Siddiqui is a void marriage since the same is contrary to Islamic dicta and tenets of Holy Quran," the court ruled.

Source: The Times Of India

HUMAN RIGHTS RAINBOW COALITION STAGES RALLY IN TIMES SQUARE

2010-05-12T07:53:00.000+02:00

HUMAN RIGHTS RAINBOW COALITION STAGES RALLY IN TIMES SQUARE

BY: FERN SIDMAN

On Tuesday evening, May 11th, the crossroads of the world, better known as Times Square in Manhattan was the scene of a passionate display of fortitude as members of the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam gathered for a rally to expose the existential perils that radical Islam represents to the Western world. Standing just a few blocks from the place where 30 year old Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani born and Taliban trained American citizen attempted to detonate his vehicle filled with deadly explosives on May 1st in order to murder as many tourists and innocent civilians as possible, the leaders of this rainbow coalition of activists sounded a clarion call as onlookers watched and listened.

Comprised of Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and ex-Muslims, the HRCARI is a nascent organization that champions the rights of those who have been victimized and slaughtered by Muslim extremists. Having staged its very first rally in Times Square in May of 2009, their ranks have swelled over the last year with those who are deeply concerned about the cultural indifference to the burgeoning growth of Islamic radicalism.

Charles Jacobs, a board member of the HRCARI and a writer for The Jewish Advocate in Boston said, "Our purpose here today is two-fold. We are here to send a clear message to the press and politicians who have intentionally obfuscated the nature of this most recent terrorist attempt by not labeling the enemy as radical Islam and acquiescing to political correctness. We are also here to educate the public about the pernicious agenda of those radical Islamists who would love nothing more than to obliterate our cherished values of democracy, freedom and liberty."

"The Western world is mired in self-doubt and self-guilt that has been imposed upon us by those post-modern forces on the left and in the sphere of academia who believe we are deserving of the animus of our enemies", he ruefully observed.

Holding aloft signs and banners saying, "Elected Officials and Mass Media - Unveil The Truth: Radical Islam Attacks Humanity", "Stop Billions of Saudi Oil Money that are Funding Worldwide Radical Islamic Intolerance and Terror", "Reform Radical Islmamic Madrassas: Stop Teaching Hate" and displaying placards of those Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, women and gays who have been summarily murdered by brutal Islamic regimes, the rally attendees graphically described the horrific consquences of being an "infidel" in the Muslim world. Martin Rosenthal, a rally attendee from Queens held a homemade sign that said, "Queers Against Radical Islam" and spoke of the heinous atrocities committed against both gay men and women in such countries as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Narain Kataria, the founder of the Indian American Intellectuals Forum said, "Since 9/11/2001, the followers of the so called "religion of peace" have carried out 15101 deadly terrorist attacks and killed more than 75,000 people. It does not requite a rocket scientist to tell us that the aim of the Jihadist is to dominate the entire world, force all of us to surrender and to plant the Islamic flag in Washington, London, Jerusalem and New Delhi, not to mention New York City." He also spoke the mass slaughter of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan. "Pakistan is the nursery of terrorism. Pakistan is the epicenter of Jihad. Pakistan is the most untrustworthy ally in the war on terror. Pakistan is fooling us. They use sophistry and subterfuge to hoodwink us", he declared.

"What we need here in America and throughout the free world is intellectual clarity", said Madeline Brooks, the Manhattan chapter head of Act For America, a national human rights organization that stridently opposes radical Islam and serves as a bulwark against the mendacity of multi-cultural relativists in the progressive camp. "We here in New York are faced with mortal danger each day. We are the prime terror target on this planet. We are in daner of being nuked and the government's denial of this threat only leaves us in a much weaker state and undermines the confidence of the people who reside here. That is the reality of radical Islam and we do ourselves a grave injustice by not confronting it head on with the gravitas that it demands" she continued.

John Kenneth Press, a PhD in history and the author of "Culturism: A Word, A Value, Our Future" (2007 - Social Books) said, "Culturism is a political philosophy, art and science based upon the understanding that cultural diversity is real and important. Western culture believes in free speech, feminism, and the separation of church and state. Islam, for example, does not. Western culture is based on individuals applying their intelligence towards progressive and productive ends. For 1400 years there has been a worldwide Jihad fueled by radical Islam whose objective is death and destruction of all infidels and the sooner that we give voice to this, the sooner that we demand that our government consider this threat as a moral and physical exigency, the sooner we can increase our chances of not falling prey to an Islamic caliphate."

"21st century Nazism is now tantamount to radical Islam" said Andrew Upton, a board member of HRCARI. "There is someone here today holding a sign saying, "Queers Against Radical Islam". We applaud this person for spotlighting the fact that gays and lesbians are considered worthy of death in Islamic countries as are women who are consistently victims of honor murders by male family members for attempting to divorce their husbands, for being raped, for not allowing themselves to be party to forced marriages and for purported violations of Sharia law", he said.

At the conclusion of the rally, the participants took their signs and banners and staged a march throughout the Times Square area calling on all concerned citizens to lobby their elected officials and the press to "jettison the fraud of multi-cultural relativism and politcal correctness in the name of our survival."

THOUSANDS RALLY FOR ISRAEL IN NEW YORK CITY

2010-04-26T19:33:00.002+02:00

THOUSANDS RALLY FOR ISRAEL IN NEW YORK CITY

BY: FERN SIDMAN

"Obama - Stop Pressuring Israel" was the rallying cry of the day, as over 2000 supporters of Israel gathered in front of the Israeli Consulate in New York City on Sunday afternoon, April 25th to express their views on the current strain in relations between the United States and Israel. Organizers of the rally had expected thousands more to attend but the inclement weather kept many away.

The rally was sponsored and organized by the Jewish Action Alliance, an pro-Israel activist organization that is renowned for championing issues of Jewish security. Beth Gilinsky, the spokesperson and chief strategist of the Jewish Action Alliance said, "We are outraged that President Obama is scapegoating Israel and wants to expel Jews from their homes in Jerusalem. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton display more anger about a Jewish family building a home in Jerusalem than Iran building a nuclear bomb." Expressing the sentiments of those in attendance at the rally, she said, "Vast segments of the Jewish community will not tolerate the President's continuing attacks on Israel. Grassroots Jewry will not be silent."

Noticeably absent from the lengthy roster of organizations endorsing this rally were the major American establishment Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, the ADL of B'nai Brith, the American Jewish Congress and the United Jewish Appeal. It has been suggested that these liberal Jewish organizations are supportive of President Obama's agenda in the Middle East and don't want to damage their relations with the current administration. Amongst the plethora of organizations endorsing and participating in the rally were, Stand With Us, a college campus activist organization that spotlights hate speech against Israel, Christians and Jews United for Israel, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, Artists 4 Israel, Z Street, The Jerusalem Reclamation Project, The Center For Defense of Democracies, the AISH Center, AMCHA; Coalition for Jewish Concerns, The Jewish Political Education Foundation and the Endowment for Middle East Truth.

Radio talk show host Steve Malzberg and columnist Rabbi Aryeh Spero served as the masters of ceremony as they introduced a litany of speakers representing a broad spectrum of both Jewish and non-Jewish support for Israel. Rabbi Yaakov Spivak of Monsey, NY, a longtime Jewish activist, radio talk show host and a Daily News columnist intoned, "President Obama, we're here today to tell you something. In Warsaw, they told Jews where we could build, in Lodz they told Jews where we could build, in Paris they told Jews where we could build. You will never tell us where to build in Jerusalem. We are home and Israel is our country. You are not our landlord and we are neither a vassal state nor a banana republic. Our mandate to be here today is none other than our holy Tanach, our bible which says, 'For the sake of Zion I will not be silent and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be quiet."

"The Jewish people are G-d's chosen people" said Rev. Michael Faulkner, an African American minister representing the New Horizon Church. "I remind those in the Obama administration that those who bless the Jewish people will be blessed and those who curse the Jewish people will be cursed. Israel is the only stable, democratic ally in the Middle East and this relationship must be preserved and protected. The strength of the land of Israel and the Jewish people lies with their G-d and I call upon all Jews to return to the mandate of the Almighty G-d of Israel and His holy Torah" he said

Holding aloft signs saying, "Jerusalem: Israel's United and Eternal Capitol", "Hillary Clinton: Pressure Iran, Not Israel", "Obama: Stand Up for America, Stop Bowing to Saudi Kings!" and "Obama: Jews Will Not Be Silent", the rally participants passionately expressed their anger at the shift in US foreign policy as it pertains to Israel. Jackie Donney, 55, a Christian supporter of Israel who traveled from Newton, Pennsylvania to attend the rally said, "Look, we all know the background of Barack Obama. He is a disciple of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, one of the greatest haters of Israel and America. I think it is downright sinful that Obama has placed such tremendous pressure on Israel to make major territorial concessions in the name of a false peace. The Palestinian government is an Iranian proxy and such is bent on the destruction of Israel and the Western world. Just look what happened when Israel forcibly evicted Jews from Gush Katif. It didn't bring peace and now the US is demanding that Israel relinquish parts of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria. I say, 'Never, Never, Never'".

Another rally attendee, Rabbi Joseph Rosenbluh of the Young Israel of Vandeveer Park in Brooklyn said, "In our Tehillim (the Book of Psalms), we learn that our ultimate salvation lies with our Almighty G-d. It is up to all Jews to ferociously cleave to Hashem (G-d), to walk in His ways and to follow His commandments. In every generation we find that there is no shortage of Jew haters and other miscreants who seek our destruction. There is a new Pharoah in town (Obama) who does not know Joseph (the Jewish people) and we comprehend from our history that G-d will deal with our enemies if only we acknowledge His majesty and glory."

A formidable contingent of Hindu and Sikh supporters of Israel was also present at the rally. "We understand all to well that a policy of appeasement towards Islamic radicalism will never bring peace to Israel or the civilized world, declared Satya Dosapati of the Hindu Human Rights Watch. "As Hindus, we have been massacred by Muslims for thousands of years. If President Obama really believes that isolating and demonizing Israel and publicly humiliating Israel's prime minister is not emboldening our Islamic enemies, then something is really wrong. Israel is a peace seeking nation and we unequivocally support their right to their homeland. The world must realize that if Israel falls then the entire world will come under the domination of a blood thirsty Islamic caliphate", he continued.

Meir Rosenblatt, of Passaic, New Jersey said, "At the most recent AIPAC convention, Secretary Clinton said that Israel must relinquish Judea and Samaria in order to maintain both a democratic and Jewish state. It is clear that Israel is sitting on a demographic time bomb that is all too real. 20 years ago there were only two Arab members of Knesset and now there are 10. The Arab birthrate is skyrocketing while the Jewish birthrate is not. There is no educated Jew that can honestly say we weren't warned that this would happen. Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory spoke of this back in the late 1970s and everyone called him a racist and a fascist because they didn't want to hear the painful truth. Now we have boxed ourselves in a corner because we didn't listen to his prescient message."

Helen Freedman of the Americans for a Safe Israel said, "There is no way to establish peace with those who call for your destruction on a daily basis. That is exactly what the Palestinian propaganda campaign is all about. Lies, half-truths and distortions. AFSI is promoting the idea of "Shalom" (peace) through the concept of "Shalem" (a whole Israel). There can only be peace through strength and security. When the Arabs realized that they could not prevail against Israel militarily, they embarked on a course of diplomatic destruction and we are here to speak truth to the canards that they espouse."

Other speakers included Joan Peters, author of the critically acclaimed book, "Of Time Immemorial", Mort Klein of the Zionist Organization of America, Dr. Herbert London of The Hudson Institute, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind who represents the 48th assembly district in Brooklyn and a stalwart Jewish activist and supporter of Israel, radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa and founder of the Guardian Angels, Faith McDonnell of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, Joy Brighton of Stop Shariah Now, Rabbi David Algaze of the World Committee for the Land of Israel, Tamar Edelstein of Crown Heights Women, Bhupinder Bhurji of the Naamdari Sikh Foundation, Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Z Street, State Senator Reuben Diaz, Susan Cohen of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Mallory Danaher of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and Narain Katarian of the Hindu Human Rights Watch.