If you find it hard to believe that women received 40 lashes in Sudan recently for wearing (wide) trousers, read about the life of women under Shari'a (religious Muslim) law. Gaza is almost there, but the rest of the world is the goal. A warning.
Shari’a, that is Muslim law, controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.
In the Western World (including America ) Muslim men are starting to demand Shari’a Law under which wives can not obtain a divorce and men have full and complete control of their children. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending American Universities and other parts of the Western world are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shari'a law.
By publicizing the information below, I hope to help enlightened American and other women avoid becoming slaves under Shari’a Law:
1. In the Muslim faith, a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old, consummating the marriage by 9.
2. A dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman who becomes a slave.
3. Even though a woman is abused she cannot obtain a divorce.
4. To prove rape, a woman must have four male witnesses.
5. Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family.
6. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and do not have to say why the beating occurred.
7. A husband is permitted to have 4 wives and a temporary wife for a limited period at his discretion.
The goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shari’a law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Shari’a) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.
Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.
While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others..
While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with G-d, Shari'a advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.
It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed.
Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.
While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in Egypt and elsewhere.
In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA . Dearborn Mich. is one... and there are others....
It is too bad that so many accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam... While America is getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on America .
More about the author: Nonie Darwish recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law. In it she warns about creeping shari’a law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.
Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to America in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel. He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza.
When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.
But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing and later abandoned Islam.
The visit of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov to Israel this week is a timely reminder that Israel's problems with Islam are not unique. Like Israel, Bulgaria was ruled over by the Ottoman Empire, which exported their population to Bulgaria, oppressed the native Bulgarians, seized their lands and attempted to become the dominant majority. And when the Ottoman Empire lost control over Bulgaria, it left behind a huge Muslim population in Bulgaria.
The key difference between Bulgaria and Israel, is that Bulgaria since the 1870's forced much of its Turkic Muslim population to leave. As a result millions of Turkic Muslims left Bulgaria, leaving it a quieter place than neighboring Yugoslavia or Russia, or for that matter modern day France. Muslim clothing was banned, mosques were torn down and lands held by the Ottoman Muslim settlers were returned to native Bulgarians.
Today Bulgaria still has a troublesome Muslim minority of under a million, led by Ahmet Dogan, and backed by Turkish intelligence, which under Islamist PM Erdogan has branched out into promoting Jihad, much as Pakistan had. But despite Turkish attempts to intervene in Bulgaria, the country's Prime Minister, Boiko Borissov is a staunchly anti-Muslim leader, who has challenged Turkey's EU bid over its expulsion of Bulgarian in the 1920's.Bulgaria is an example and a warning not just to Israel, but to Europe, Russia, Australia, America and many other parts of the world as well.
Had Bulgaria not made life uncomfortable for Muslims, its fate in the 1990's would have probably resembled that of Yugoslavia, torn apart by foreign backed civil war and then carved up by Clinton and Albright. That same fate is now overtaking Israel and will overtake Europe as well.
That is because Israel's Muslim problem is not unique. Israel, like so many other lands, was overrun by Muslim conquerors who repressed the native Jewish population and settled their own population in its stead. The only unique thing about Israel's dilemma is that when the Ottoman Empire was defeated, Israel did not receive its freedom. Instead a British Mandate that was supposed to create a Jewish state, instead tried to create an Arab client state by expanding Arab immigration to Israel, while restricting Jewish immigration.
Had Israel received its freedom after WW1 when its Ottoman overlords departed, it would have never been overrun by Egyptian and Syrian Arabs who were magically transformed into "Palestinians" in the 70's at the behest of the KGB.
Nor would the Holocaust have claimed a fraction of the lives that it did, had Israel existed as an independent nation capable of taking in refugees, instead of having its ports shut to refugees by a British Empire more interested in appeasing Muslims and using them to establish client states under their control. And the worldwide Jihad and Oil for Terror are the aftereffects of British and American appeasement and coddling of Muslim desert sheiks then.
But the past is in the past. The challenge of the future is to learn from it. The long term effects of Muslim expansionism around the world has embedded Muslim minorities in countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Those minorities have always served as a local powder keg, which is now being lit with the help of Saudi petrodollars. Now a new wave of Islamic expansionism through immigration and Jihad is spreading even into regions that had never known the tyranny of Islam such as Australia, North and South America; as well as Europe where Islam had not succeeded in taking root before.
The toxic brew of religious supremacism and nationalist racism represented by Islamic expansionism is a threat to nearly every country in the world, whether they choose to admit it or not. And while Israel's troubles with Islam are more likely to become front page news, because its presence some 700 miles from Mecca is a perennial thumb in the eye of the Jihad-- it is also the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the world.
Islamism insures that Muslims cannot co-exist with non-Muslims except under a harsh dictatorship.
Which leaves free nations with a choice between tyranny and removing the Muslim minority within its borders. The absence of Islam within one's borders does not guarantee peace, but the presence of Islam insures that conflict will come sooner or later. The examples of that are unfortunately all too numerous across the globe, across entire hemispheres where blood is being spilled in the name of Islam.
From suicide bombings to honor killings, from Muslim insurgencies in the countryside to Islamist parties creeping in from within, from Sharia at the point of a sharpened knife to riots in the streets-- where there is Islamism, there can be no peace.
Israel's great mistake was its belief that it could co-exist with Muslims, and for its entire existence has bent over backward to accommodate them. From accepting the UN Partition Plan to sending troops to urge fleeing Arabs to return to Israel, to leaving the Temple Mount in Muslim hands, to the entire disastrous attempt to negotiate a peace with terror by agreeing to the creation of a terrorist state within its borders-- Israel's folly has been to seek peace with an ideology that uses the promise of peace as a lure to convince you to cut your own throat.
Where Islam exists in a nation, it will sooner or later either be suppressed or it will come to dominate. That is a scenario that every nation with a Muslim minority must understand and address, or it will become a Muslim nation with the native population reduced to an oppressed minority or butchered in the night. A totalitarian ideology cannot be made peace with. Either you will defeat it, or it will defeat you.
A DEFAULT by Dubai will put the world of Islamic finance to the test at a time when hard questions are being asked by bankers and lawyers about the protection afforded by financial instruments that are Shariah compliant.
The bond that lies at the heart of the threat of default and financial ignominy for Dubai is a sukuk, an instrument invented by bankers and Islamic scholars to comply with a Shariah (Islamic law) prohibition against the payment of interest on money.
Islamic finance has five pillars: a ban on interest, a ban on speculation, a ban on haram (forbidden) investments, such as pork or gambling, the requirement of partnership or sharing of profit and loss and the requirement of asset backing. Getting round the ban on interest is the problem and opportunity of Islamic finance.
A bond that doesn't (in theory) pay interest sounds unattractive but in the Gulf and Malaysia, Islamic finance has flourished over the past decade.
Typically, interest is expressed as a share in a profit, such as the rent paid for use of a property or asset. According to estimates by HSBC Amanah, the Islamic arm of the British bank, outstanding Islamic finance debt is worth $US822 billion ($902 billion).
Even Western investors have been persuaded to dip their toes in the exotic financial tool, tempted by the deep pool of petrodollars available in the Gulf.
Only days before Dubai revealed its bombshell - a threat of possible default on Nakheel's $US4 billion sukuk - GE Capital, the American financial services group, issued the first sukuk by a Western company, raising $US500 million.
The underpinning of a sukuk with assets makes it attractive for use in property lending or asset leasing. The sukuk issued by GE this week was a loan for aircraft leasing.
GE's decision to use the Islamic finance market for funds reflected renewed confidence in a market that had almost collapsed after expansion in 2007 when the Gulf was awash with money fuelled by high oil prices.
Demand shrivelled after the collapse of Lehman Brothers with only $US16 billion issued last year. More importantly, fears surfaced that sukuk failed to provide the same legal protection as conventional bonds. To date, the legal structure of sukuk has never been tested in a court.
There have been high-profile defaults, including the Saudi Arabian Saad Group and Investment Dar, a Kuwaiti Islamic Investment Fund. Investment Dar owns half of Aston Martin, the luxury British car company, and the fund failed to make a payment in April on a $US100 million sukuk issue. In June, Golden Belt, a $US650 million issue by Saad Group, the investment house controlled by Maan al-Sanea, was downgraded to default status.
The concern is that sukuk creditors may not be protected. According to Neale Downes, a Bahrain-resident partner at Trowers & Hamlins, the law firm, it is not clear how creditors will rank in an insolvency.
In some cases, he said that investors have found themselves competing against other creditors, rather than being able to enforce their claim on the underlying asset supporting the sukuk.
But the repeated declarations of support by Dubai's ruler gave the market confidence that the sovereign would stand behind its debts. Only a month before the Nakheel shock, Dubai raised $US2 billion in sukuk issues.
Peace in the Middle East must wait another 50-100 years to become a reality. By then, all the current Arab dictators would be dead, oil and petrodollar have dwindled, and radical Muslims dead or at least tired.
What has Tony Blair, former British prime minister, achieved since his appointment, in July 2007, as special envoy of the Middle East Peace "Quartet" (comprised of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia)? Nothing.
What has the former U.S. senator, George Mitchell, achieved since assuming his job as the United States Special envoy for the Middle East in January 22, 2009? Nothing.
What have all those Western officials, including Xavier Solana, the Foreign Relations of European Union Coordinator, have achieved through their shuttle diplomacy to the Middle East? Again, nothing.
In the meantime, while the European Union injects billions of dollars in a corrupt Palestinian Authority, the oil Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, and Libya, support Muslim terrorists with their petrodollars across the globe.
Nevertheless, the West still believes that it can help the Israelis and Arabs strike a peace deal.
While Western officials and Western media blast Mugabe of Zimbabwe and the Burmese Junta for their dismal political and human rights record and call them dictators, they do not do the same with Abdullahs of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the Moroccan Hassan, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, and Gaddafi of Libya. They are “kings” and “leaders,” not despotic dictators, although they rule undemocratically and tread on human rights with their feet.
I wonder if Western officials and Western media realize that Arab leaders are unique demagogues and have always been so. I also wonder if these bodies check out the Arab media.
Day in and day out, the Arab media, which most Arabs voraciously consume, highlight deficits of Western policies and practices in the Muslim world. Torturing terrorists by the CIA and killing civilians in Afghanistan by NATO troops are widely reported.
The thousands of political prisoners in Arab jails who are tortured day and night for demanding democracy and human rights are rarely reported about by Arab media. Why should they? Everybody knows that torture of dissidents is quite normal in Arab jails.
Dr. Sami Alrabaa, an ex-Muslim, is a professor of Sociology and an Arab-Muslim culture specialist. He has taught at Kuwait University, King Saud University, and Michigan State University. He also writes for the Jerusalem Post
The Islamic fire, fueled by immense oil income, is raging in certain regions of the world, smoldering in others, and is ready to ignite in yet other parts of the world.
It is imperative for the free people of the world to abandon all illusions about Islam and put out its fire, once and for all.
Multiculturalism, live and-let live, is a delusion of kind-hearted naïve people.
Islam, as fractured as it is, is a non-compromising mono-culture; a cruel culture of a primitive people handed down by Muhammad some 1400 years ago.
It is true that most religions are intended to attenuate human fears. They are based on natural fears, many of which are irrational...but natural nonetheless.
For example, many pagan religious practices were focused on the seasonal cycles related to the harvest. Why? Because if the harvest was poor, their entire civilization could perish, or be weakened to the point where a neighboring tribe would kill them off.
While they misunderstood the scientific basis for weather, they created natural (yet irrational) religious beliefs about weather and harvest. In this sense, religions were psychologically useful and inevitable in addressing natural conditions.
But some religions establish for themselves fears of things which do not exist...which the religion itself invented in order to create and perpetuate fear, and then artificially addressed it in order to establish a political regime.
The political nature of Islam transcends personal spiritualism and becomes a cult of oppression. This is fraud. This is evil. This is Islam.
Islam essentially invents the idea that Christians, Jews, and pagans are abominations and offensive to Allah, and that their very existence represents an attack upon the self-defined Islamic right to reign over the world.
Allah thus enlists Muslim believers to eradicate by force those who offend him and by disbelieving, prevent his rule. True Muslim believers therefore become the enforcers, hit men and mercenaries for their god, in order to establish a global Caliphate for their parasitic clergy.
Their targets are artificially constructed adversaries. Believers are instructed to fear the “great Satan.” and are told that if they do not live up to Allah’s calls to Jihad, they are themselves offensive to Allah and to their families. It’s a “you’re either for me or against me” strategy.
Contrast this with say, Christian fears. Christians too fear offending God, because they believe that God will judge their lives when their bodies die. So their fears are reduced by atoning in personal alignment with the teachings of the Bible.
So, as a political religion, Islam creates artificial fear of alien groups, and then eliminates the fear through war and coercion. Islam pleases Allah with brutality and Jihad. Islam seeks to instill a political regime to enforce its provisions.
When such a political doctrine declares that “resistance is futile”, it is referring to corporeal enforcement by people.
The release by Scottish authorities of convicted Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Baset al-Megrahi from prison has created one of the most negative emotional reactions in the United States and other countries. Moved by anger toward the injustice displayed by Scottish authorities to the families and survivors of the victims of the terror attack against Pan Am Flight 103, Americans and large segments of international public opinion are infuriated by the freeing of the convicted terrorist, even under the so-called Scottish legal values based on compassionate release due to terminal illness.
These exceptional stipulations, when applicable, are designed for criminal cases where one person killed another individual under complex circumstances. A sudden terminal illness is perceived as enough punishment by nature or the divine to grant a severely conditioned release to the family, without any affront to justice and pain to the survivors of the victim.
But that is one thing. Granting freedom to a terrorist who murdered hundreds of innocents civilians bound on an airplane is something that no Scottish, British, American, or international legal value permits. The statements made by Scotland’s minister of justice should not stand in this case. This was no regular murder. This was a mass murder, and compassionate release can only be granted by the survivors of the victims, and should have been legally considered by the national legislatures in Britain and the United States. Read more ...
What are the strategic reasons behind Western reluctance to support Iran's opposition? One theory is that there are immense Oil interests in partnership with the region's Jihadist regimes obstructing the advance of democracy in the region. The reluctance by the Obama Administration and other European Governments to extend their hand of support to Iran's civil society during the June uprising can be explained through the pressures applied by interest groups, including Oil producing regimes not to "meddle" in Iran's affairs and let go of the democratic movement.
We've seen the Administration pressuring Israel, while talking gently to the Iranian government. When staff of the British embassy and a French researcher, were arrested in Tehran, there was only a lukewarm response by the European Union to this humiliation of two of its member states. How can we make sense of this bizarre situation?
It looks like Americans and Europeans have abandoned Iran's civil society. There are strong political and financial interests which block a significant support of democracy in Iran. Politically, the new U.S. Administration has made a massive change in American Foreign Policy moving away from what was known as “spreading democracy” during the past eight years to cutting “realistic” deals with sitting regimes, including the present Jihadi regime in Tehran. If we don’t understand the change that took place in Washington this year, we will fail in understanding the a-historical U.S. attitudes towards Iran’s latest uprising. Read more ...
From Beirut, Chawki Freiha reports on a provocative editorial that appeared in the Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper on November 3 written by Abdelbari Atwan, the first journalist to have met with Osama bin Laden. Titled “Obama’s Historic Intifada,” Atwan praises the probable election of Barack Obama to the White House and claims that with Obama installed in Washington, Islam will be able to “impose its point of view” on the world.
As to be expected, Atwan’s editorial decries the Bush administration because it is “controlled by Zionists… whose objective is to destroy the Arab world and Islam.” Displaying true Muslim conspiratorial thinking, Atwan further claims that all Middle Eastern countries have been under the control Israel, even though the Arabs have the “largest wealth” in the world in petrodollars.
The most alarming part of Atwan’s editorial, however, is that he imagines that with a President Obama in office, Islam will be able to use its oil wealth to control the world.
We have the largest wealth and could save the world from the crisis. If these resources are properly harnessed, we could impose our point of view and serve our cause… The conditions are now fulfilled for the Arabs use their wealth to obtain a U.S. promise favorable and correct historical mistakes committed in Palestine.
Atwan is merely echoing the feeling in the Mid East that a Barack Obama will look upon them with favor or will be so weak that he will not be able to stop Islam from “imposing” its “point of view” upon the world.
If Joe Biden is right that a new president Obama will be “tested in the first 60 days” of his term, it seems as if certain forces in the Mid East are poised to do just that. But, it is obvious that many in the Mid East imagine Obama stands in agreement with their goals in the first place.
A president Obama is no friend to Israel or the west, at least as far as Abdelbari Atwan and many of his comrades are concerned.
The most pressing question that Americans have is: should we support a man for President of the United States that our enemies imagine to be on their side?
By Alistair Lyon ReutersPublished: October 8, 2008
BEIRUT: Like anyone invested in global financial markets, Arab sovereign funds, investment banks and rich individuals are taking a severe beating.
Also getting queasy are those who have poured money into real estate ventures in boomtowns like Dubai or Doha, Qatar, or housing markets like Amman, Damascus and Beirut that have been fueled by remittances and investments from the Gulf.
But they have few other outlets for their wealth in a region where corruption, political instability and sluggish economic change have handicapped growth and development for decades.
"People who have money in the Middle East are deeply plugged into the global financial system," said Rami Khouri, a Middle East commentator based in Beirut. "They have nowhere else to go."
Kouri added, "We are getting a double whammy: the direct impact of the global financial crisis and the cumulative backlash of our own mediocre public policies in the last 40 years."
Middle East stock markets, at first shielded by the region's vast oil money inflows, experienced panic selling this week while there were fears that a five-year Gulf property boom was over and developers would have to merge as financing conditions worsened.
Kuwait on Wednesday lowered its benchmark discount rate by one and one-quarter percentage points to 4.5 percent to shore up its economy, putting pressure on other Gulf banks to follow suit.
A plunge in world oil prices to less than $90 a barrel from a record $147.27 in July has provided another sharp reminder of the vulnerability of many Arab economies to global shocks, even those where free-market policies have made only slow inroads.
"The Arab region is not yet fully globalized," said Louis Hobeika, an economics professor at Notre Dame University in Lebanon. "It represents no more than 2.5 percent of the world economy, from which it is still disconnected, except for oil."
That disconnect might provide some protection from global upheaval, he added.
"However, during a period of recovery, we lose a lot because we don't grow with the rest of the world," Hobeika said.
Anti-Western Islamists and advocates of Arab socialism may also claim that the crisis vindicates their criticism of the evils of globalization and the West. But such critics do not define policies in most Arab states, where political elites have adopted mantras of economic reform, even if its realization and openness have often lagged.
In Egypt, the world crisis should make free-market measures like privatization all the more urgent, said Angus Blair, head of research at Beltone Financial, an investment bank in Cairo.
For example, he said, the government had lost out by deciding in July to cancel the sale of Banque Du Caire, a major Egyptian bank, saying the bids were too low.
"In hindsight, the lack of sale of Banque Du Caire looks misplaced because they could have received a price they will not now be able to receive for many years," Blair said.
"In terms of reform for Egypt and the region, if authorities have any sense, and I think they do in Egypt, they will use this as an opportunity to reform further. Because that is exactly what we need. There is no alternative."
Egypt, like many populous Arab countries outside wealthy Gulf countries, is struggling with poverty and unemployment, partly a legacy of the state-dominated policies of the past.
"You do have people trying to slow down economic reform, but they aren't going to win the day," Khouri, the commentator said. "The reality in all these regimes is that if they don't create jobs and raise people's incomes, they will have massive problems of political stress and unrest. Very few Arab countries have been able to do that in a sustainable way."
Khouri said that some had managed growth rates of 6 percent or 7 percent but that these were often based on oil revenue or investment in real estate, housing or tourism, not new productive activity.
Arab governments might need to rethink their economic strategy, but reform-minded advocates will have to convince skeptical publics that new policies will do more than serve entrenched interests.
What's more, in the short term they are unlikely to listen to any economic sermons from the United States, whose own government's actions in the crisis have run counter to free-market dogma.
"The United States now has zero diplomatic credibility, very little military credibility after Iraq and Afghanistan, and now nearly zero economic credibility," Khouri said. "It's a ghost of its old self, although this is obviously a temporary situation because it is still very powerful
DUBAI, AUGUST 22 - Gulf oil producers are expected to earn a record $562 billion in 2008 as crude prices are projected to remain above $100 and they are pumping at one of their highest levels, according to new data from the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies (CGES), reported by Wam news agency.
Accordingly, the combined oil export earnings of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will soar to their highest level of $562 billion this year.
The UAE's income will swell to an all-time high of $97 billion while that of Saudi Arabia will surge to $307 billion and that of Qatar and Kuwait will peak at $89 billion and $32 billion respectively.
The income, it added, is nearly $234 billion above their 2007 revenues of $328 billion and more than four times their earnings of $137 billion in 2003. In 1998, the GCC's combined revenues plummeted to one of their lowest levels of around $56 billion after oil prices collapsed below $10 a barrel and averaged $12 through the year.
Leo Drollas, deputy manager of CGES said the revenue forecasts for the Gulf states and other Opec members are based on an average Opec basket price of around $110.8 this year compared with nearly $69 in 2007. Saudi Arabiàs output is projected at around 9.5 million bpd in 2008 while that of Kuwait and Qatar is forecast at nearly 2.6 million and 815,000 bpd respectively. 2008-08-22 19:01
Petrodollars could be panacea to US financial quagmire
By Ravi Kumar
With the primaries and caucuses in full flow in the US there is one common assertion in all lofty promises made by the presidential hopefuls: to revitalise the economy which is on the verge of a recession.
Economic pundits, chief executives and money managers across the globe still seem to be clueless about how severe the damage is and how critical the subprime mortgage quagmire would be in the months to come.
America's economic woes just seem to multiply endlessly and corporate bigwigs are falling casualty to this subprime crisis.
Oil prices which continue to escalate rather steeply amid worries of recession also rubs salt into the wounds. US Fed Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke was quick to announce sops in the form of rate cuts and other fiscal stimulus. Read more ...
A $20 million gift from a Saudi Arabian prince to a Georgetown University academic center has not affected its scholarly work, Georgetown's president said in response to questions from a U.S. congressman.
Since receiving the $20 million from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005, "all activities of the Center have been conducted in the most appropriate manner, and with no outside interference of any kind," Georgetown President John J. DeGioia wrote.
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), wrote to DeGioia Feb. 14, saying he was concerned about Prince Alwaleed's gift to Georgetown's Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (which was renamed in the prince's honor) and the affect it had on research. Has anyone at the Center conducted research critical of Saudi educational or human rights policies? Wolf also asked whether the money fueled any of the school's training of current and prospective U.S. Foreign Service personnel. Read more ...
An Islamic group came to Temple University last spring with an offer to provide $1.5 million for an endowed chair in Islamic studies to honor religion professor Mahmoud Ayoub. After months of talks, the deal never got off the ground, once trustees and others raised concerns about the contributor, the International Institute of Islamic Thought, a nonprofit research group that had been under scrutiny as part of a government probe into the funding of suspected terrorists.
Some would like to consider money given by Saudis and other Arab nations to American universities as generous gifts to those U.S. universities who have educated their elites. A closer look reveals a different picture that includes incitement, anti-Semitism and a skewed view of Islam. Read more ...
A few weeks ago, articles published around the world reported that Hezbollah is undergoing two major changes. Both portend greater violence from the Iranian-sponsored global terrorist network.
The first change is a shift in leadership responsibilities. A report published initially in the Saudi owned Sharq al Awsat said the office of Ayatollah Khomenei appointed deputy secretary general Sheikh Naim Qassim as the new supreme commander of Hezbollah forces and the personal representative of the Ayatollah in Lebanon. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, according to this report remains as secretary general of the organization. Sources said this change in control and command is because of "differences in opinions" between Narsrallah and Qassim.
The Hezbollah media arm rushed to deny the veracity of this shift. But observers with direct knowledge of the organization's inside structure said Khamenei indeed ordered changes in Hezbollah's structures, but not because of differences between its leaders. They said it was in preparation for a potential massive move by Hezbollah to seize more power in Lebanon and before a possible clash with the Lebanese Government and the United Nations over the disarmament process. Read more ...
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If you find it hard to believe that women received 40 lashes in Sudan recently for wearing (wide) trousers, read about the life of women under Shari'a (religious Muslim) law. Gaza is almost there, but the rest of the world is the goal. A warning. 
A few weeks ago, articles published around the world reported that Hezbollah is undergoing two major changes. Both portend greater violence from the Iranian-sponsored global terrorist network.
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