The Majdalani Effect, The Zawahiri Strategy and the Curse on the Middle East

by Barry Rubin

In a rare glimpse behind the curtain, a Palestinian scandal sheds a lot of light on the Palestinian Authority, Arab politics, and Western illusions. Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Labor Ahmed Majdalani was being interviewed by a radio station when, not realizing that his microphone was on, he referred to Palestinian workers as “brothers of whores.” Hundreds of callers complained. Majdalani’s answer? He claimed he was talking about Israelis, not Palestinians!

What does this tell us? First, that Arab and Muslim-majority society ie still, in 2011, extremely traditional. Despite all the rhetoric of popular struggle, leftism, anti-imperialism, and so on, the leaders of both the establishment and, less surprisingly, the Islamists, and even of the “liberals” are extremely reactionary. They have total contempt for their own people and little or no interest in bettering their lot. Aid money goes into their pockets; power goes to their heads.

Where naïve Western leftists, liberals, and often “experts” see some kind of mirror-image of themselves, there is something quite different on display. That’s one reason why the “Arab Spring” has failed and led to something worse, even while the West celebrates it from wishful thinking and many locals do so out of desperate hope.

And then there’s a particularly vivid example of the “old switcheroo,” the con-man’s substitution of a scapegoat to hide his own culpability. No, it isn’t your own leaders who betray you and exploit you, it’s the Jews or the Americans, the Zionists and the Crusaders.

Western observers simply can’t believe that this political con-game works because they see through the scam. Of course, it’s always easier for people to understand another society’s foibles. But, yes, even today it works. We’ve seen the return of the old hatreds to Turkey, where many thought they were banished forever.

Electoral politics brings out the best and worst in people. They can be the domain of reasoned debate but are also the playground of demagogues.

Deep down, most Westerners can’t really believe that people would elect the Muslim Brotherhood in a fair balloting. Such a result, they reason, can only be the result of a deep trauma or of a shallow propaganda trick that can be exposed and reversed. I’m amused to see that even now, in December 2011, with so much evidence available, the main critique of my work is that I exaggerate the power of the Islamists.

Friends and colleagues tell me that people simply don’t want to face the dangers of the situation. For regular people, it is just too unpleasant; for policymakers, though, it requires awareness and action. Egyptians, Iranians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Turks, among others, know what’s going on. Israelis are in a special position to comprehend it also. The same applies to a lot of other people around the world, notably in Central Europe.

There is also, however a profound belief that people and governments are going to be “rational actors.” What is defined as “rational” is a materialistic desire for more goods and for more freedom, as that is defined in the West. It’s not so simple. As Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini explained three decades ago, the revolution is not about lowering the price of watermelons.

That’s also why the Nazi analogy is so used and over-used, in a desperate attempt to find some historical example that can get through to Westerners the idea that non-materialistic factors and an appeal to irrational beliefs can sway a populace.

But aren’t there people like Majdalani in the Western world? Of course, there are. More and more of them. I call this the “Middle Easternization” of the West.

What has happened is that regimes have lost their monopoly on the Majdalani Effect. For decades, for example, the Syrian regime used Israel and the West as a scapegoat for the lack of freedom and well-being in that society. It worked. No longer does it work for the Syrian regime because that government is discredited with its own people—which doesn’t mean, by the way, that it is going to fail when employed by others.

But the technique will still work for the Islamists. Majdalani’s quick thinking might not save his own job, nor did it save the Mubarak regime—because the army wanted the dictator gone–but it will still save and create many a new dictatorship. It is true that new governments are coming into power because of their predecessors’ corruption, repression, and inability to deliver material benefits. But their successors are campaigning on claiming they are able to fight the West and Israel even more effectively.

The best presentation of these points was made in Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian and a top leader of al-Qaida. True, while al-Qaida planted the seeds, the Muslim Brotherhood reaped the harvest. But that doesn’t make his points any the less relevant.

In a remarkable passage in his book, Zawahiri explained:

“The Muslim nation will not participate [in an Islamist revolution] unless the slogans of the mujahidin are understood by the masses of the Muslim nation….

“The one slogan that has been well understood by the nation and to which it has been responding for the past 50 years is the call for jihad against Israel [and] against the U.S. presence…The jihad movement has moved to the center of the leadership of the nation when it adopted the slogan of liberating the nation from its external enemies and when it portrayed it as a battle of Islam against infidelity and infidels.”

It is misleadingly easy to think that the “Arab Spring” has cancelled out the Majdalani Effect and the Zawahiri strategy. We were told repeatedly that there were no anti-American or anti-Israel signs in Tahrir Square. They didn’t need signs. The slogans are already in people’s heads.

Barry Rubin

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2011/12/the-majdalani-effect-the-zawahiri-strategy-and-the-curse-on-the-middle-east/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Assad's Stupendous Nose Growth

by Rick Moran

This must be read in its entirety to be believed. But these are some of the things Syrian President Bashar Assad told ABC News.

VOA:

In a rare interview that aired Wednesday, Assad told ABC News that although he is president he does not "own the country, so they are not my forces." The Syrian leader said there is "a big difference" between having "a policy to crack down and having mistakes committed by some officials."

Assad questioned the U.N. death toll of 4,000 since unrest erupted in March, saying most victims were government supporters. He also denied the veracity of claims that Hamza al-Khateeb, 13, whose death galvanized protests and inflamed world opinion was killed after being shot, burned and castrated.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner repeated the U.S. view that Assad is engaged in a brutal crackdown on a peaceful opposition movement. He said he finds it "ludicrous" that the Syrian president is "attempting to hide behind a sort of shell game and claim he does not exercise authority in his own country."

If Assad were Pinocchio, his nose would be the size of a cue stick. Either he is oblvious [sic] to the fact that no one believes his lies, or he is so out of touch with reality, he actually believes what he's saying.

Either way, it means the bloodshed will continue.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/assads_stupendous_nose_growth.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Court Forbids Muslim Student from Praying in Berlin School

by Stephen Brown

Germany’s leftist school teachers are breathing a tremendous sigh of relief – at least for the moment – due to a court ruling last week that forbids a Muslim student from praying in his Berlin school. German leftists, who used multiculturalism to get Christianity out of the public schools, were relieved Leipzig’s federal administrative court prevented Islam from filling the vacuum they created when it decreed the school had a right to prevent students from performing the Muslim mid-day prayer ritual, since it could disturb school peace.

“This is not a verdict against Islam,” stated Der Spiegel, Germany’s largest news publication, in hailing the decision. “It is a verdict for the sensible separation of state and religion.”

The ruling’s only drawback, however, was that the court stressed its decision applied only to this one school and not to the whole country.

The events leading to the anti-prayer legal ruling actually began in November, 2007, when a Muslim student, Yunus Mitschele, who was then 14, knelt down in a school corridor during a school break along with seven other Muslim students and began to pray towards Mecca, while several other “astonished” students looked on. A teacher fetched the school’s principal, Brigitte Burchardt, who waited until the prayer was finished to speak to the students, telling them, as one German newspaper reported, that “it is perhaps not a good idea what they are doing there…that church and state are largely separate…and about how it would affect other students.” Burchardt also forbid a repetition.

Afterwards, the principal spoke with the students’ parents, since she feared such a demonstrative prayer display could endanger the peace in the multicultural school. The school in question, the Diesterweg Gymnasium, an academic high school for students going on to post-secondary studies, contains students representing 29 different nationalities and five major world religions, including different strains of Islam. The German newspaper Die Welt reports that in the past this religious diversity “has lead to conflicts, and therefore the school administration had to intervene” in this case.

Burchardt came to an understanding with seven of the Muslim students and their parents; but Mitschele’s father, a German convert to Islam, would not accept her prayer prohibition and took the matter to court. In 2008, he obtained a temporary order from a lower Berlin court that would allow his son to perform his prayers once a day at school but only during a break.

“He (Yunus) was the first student in Germany to demand the right to conduct his prayers at school,” Spiegel stated.

Mitschele returned to court in 2009 to have his right to pray in school confirmed, basing his claim on the fact religious freedom is guaranteed in the German constitution. Since observant Muslims pray five times a day, he would have to pray during school hours, it was argued. In September of that year, the court agreed Mitschele did have this constitutional right and therefore should be allowed to pray in school. After the ruling, the Diesterweg Gymnasium allotted Mitschele a prayer room, although the court “did not demand it.”

But one German journalist, writing in May, 2010, wondered how important praying really was to Mitschele, since, in the eight months after the ruling, he had used this prayer room a grand total of only 14 times. In his defense, Mitschele says he couldn’t always find a teacher with a key to the room, which appears rather odd. After all, why would the school take the trouble to provide him with a prayer room, especially after this case had received so much media attention, and then not ensure access? It also appears neither the court nor the German media received a complaint from him or his father regarding his inablity to perform this supposedly all-important mid-day prayer, especially after they had gone to so much trouble to obtain this right.

This leads one to wonder whether the whole Diesterweg Gymnasium affair was simply a provocation, taking after the movement in Europe to bring Islam out of the mosques and into the public sphere. Public spaces, including whole streets, have been taken over in European cities for prayer by kneeling Muslims. These public demonstrations are not so much about piety, but rather more about establishing a dominant position for Islam in European societies by visibly occupying their public areas.

Public schools would be a tempting, and important, target in this drive, since in schools it would also be about the hearts and minds of children. But in Mitschele’s case, once the value gained by the visibility of his praying in the school’s public space, the hallway, was lost by the assignment of a prayer room, his interest in the mid-day prayer may have waned correspondingly.

In 2010, the German legal system appeared to have regained a bit of its sanity when, on appeal from the city’s education authorities, Berlin’s highest administrative court put aside the lower court’s ruling. The leftist coalition that rules the city not only rightly saw the schools’ “religious neutrality” endangered by the 2008 ruling, but also its whole multicultural integration policy for students. This policy is known by the strange moniker “Pacification Through Neutrality,” inferring Berlin schools are potential multicultural war zones.

The administrative court based its decision on the fact that this “religious neutrality” was necessary to maintain a peaceful environment in the Diesterweg Gymnasium, since it contained so many students from different religious backgrounds. The Muslim prayer ritual, the court decided, contained a “considerable potential for violence” if performed in the school and could cause a perception among students of different religious beliefs that they were being denied full religious freedom.

“This is a good day for German schools,” said Principal Burchardt after the ruling, probably very happy her school was going to remain among the pacified.

But Burchardt’s joy must have been short-lived, as Mitschele then launched an appeal of the Berlin court’s decision in the federal administrative court in Leipzig. And although his appeal was defeated last week, the Leipzig court still deemed prayer could, “in principle,” take place in other public schools, depending on the circumstances.

“The school must see whether it is truly necessary for peace in the school to restrict religious freedom,” said Werner Neumann, the presiding judge.

Considering the number of schools in Germany, although he lost his case, Mitschele may still have scored a success. His legal odyssey has possibly opened the door for hundreds of similar legal challenges concerning Muslim school prayer in the future.

This is not the first time Muslim provocateurs have challenged the “religious neutrality” of German schools. Some female Muslim teachers continued to wear headscarves in the classroom after they were banned in most German states. In 2009, the chairman of Germany’s Turkish Association proposed that all students in Germany, both Muslim and non-Muslim, get a holiday on the Muslim festival day that marks the end of Ramadan.

The chairman claimed such a move would be a sign of tolerance when, as one German journalist noted, it is actually a stealthy way to introduce a Muslim holiday into the schools. This, in turn, would promote Islam in the schools at the expense of other religions.

Unfortunately for Germany, the Islamic supremacists, who can never accept Islam being equal to other religions, will never stop trying to establish Islam’s superiority in the schools. So German school authorities can probably expect more court challenges and disruptions.

Ironically, it is Germany’s leftist multiculturalists who paved the way for the Islamic supremacists. Like elsewhere in the West, the multiculturalists were the ones who destroyed the dominant societal position their own native culture enjoyed to create the level playing field the supremacists are now trying to dominate.

And what is particularly evil is that Western multiculturalists culturally levelled their societies not out of love or respect for other cultures, which were mostly unfamiliar to them until they landed on their shores, but rather out of hatred for their own. And as the world has so often seen, and the West is currently seeing with Islamic supremacism, nothing good ever comes out of hatred.

Stephen Brown

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/07/court-forbids-muslim-student-from-praying-in-berlin-school/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama: I’ve Done More for Israel’s Security Than Any President

by Mark Tapson

When you’re the most anti-Israel president in the history of America’s relationship with that staunch Middle Eastern ally, self-delusion would seem to be a useful defense mechanism. Speaking recently to prominent Jewish supporters at a New York City fundraiser, President Obama said:

I try not to pat myself too much on the back, but this administration has done more for the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.

It’s difficult to decide which claim in this statement is more arrogant and laughable: that Obama’s accomplishments are so laudable and numerous that he must refrain from patting himself on the back too much, or that his administration has been the most supportive of Israel’s security. As argued in the Horowitz Freedom Center’s new video, “Obama: The Anti-Israel President,” the reality is that no administration has done less to secure Israel from Muslim aggression.

“Obviously, no ally is more important than the state of Israel,” Obama added at the fundraiser. Actually, it’s not so obvious. From Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who told Israel to “mend fences” with saber-rattling Turkey, try harder with new Islamist state Egypt, and “just get to the damned table” with the Palestinians; to Howard Gutman, our ambassador to Belgium, who actually blamed Islamic anti-Semitism on Israel’s resistance to Palestinian terrorism, the Obama administration doesn’t even bother to conceal its frustration with Israel’s refusal to roll over and die. If only the intransigent occupier Israel would make even more concessions for peace, the theory goes, then apparently all Middle East conflict and anti-Semitism itself would vanish forever in a burst of rainbows and unicorns.

This attitude flows down from the very top – Obama himself. From his first day in office, Obama distinguished himself by his hostility towards the Jewish state. He told Jews they can’t build homes in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of Judaism for thousands of years. He forced Israel to negotiate with Hamas, who has sworn to obliterate Israel. He demanded that Israel surrender its right to negotiate defensible borders by reverting to the untenable lines that existed before 1967.

Since their first meeting in May, 2009, Obama has treated Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a series of humiliating snubs, including presenting him with a list of demands and then leaving him to mull them over while he went to dinner with his family. Last month Obama was caught disparaging him on a live microphone with French President Nicolas Sarkozy: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day.”

Meanwhile Obama literally throws his arms around Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, whose rhetoric toward Israel is increasingly threatening. After Israel intercepted a terrorist flotilla trying to break the Gaza arms blockade, Erdogan called it “cause for war” and said Israel had to “pay a price for its aggression and crimes.” The Obama administration then pressured Israel to apologize to Turkey over the incident.

At the fundraiser, Obama also insisted that the U.S. stands firmly “on the side of democracy” and with Israel. And yet he refused to help the democratic opposition forces of Iran and Syria, and his intervention in Libya and Egypt led to both countries being delivered into the hands of Israel’s enemies. Democracy is only as good as the values brought to it by the parties involved; when “democratic” elections lead to the ascendance of the Hitler-worshipping Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example, then merely “standing on the side of democracy” isn’t supportive enough. With President Mubarak​ gone, the new Egyptian regime has restored the relations with Iran that had been severed for 35 years, ended the arms blockade of Gaza, and merely looked on while the Israeli embassy in Cairo was stormed and overrun by agents of the Brotherhood.

Middle East analyst Barry Rubin sums it up:

[T]the Obama Administration encourages and supports the coming to power of fanatically anti-Israel groups, then have the nerve to say Israel is becoming isolated because it isn’t making enough concessions! They encourage and support the rise of regimes that are totally against any peace with Israel or any two-state solution, then have the nerve to say that Israel can defuse the situation by making peace.

Obama explained the reasoning behind his boast:

Whether it’s making sure that our intelligence cooperation is effective, to making sure that we’re able to construct something like an iron dome so that we don’t have missiles raining down on Tel Aviv, we have been consistent in insisting that we don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.

Apart from the fact that “something like an iron dome” over Tel Aviv sounds terribly unworkable for all sorts of reasons, it wouldn’t be necessary at all if Obama 1) had not paved the way for the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt and al Qaeda in Libya, 2) had supported Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution and helped bring down that fundamentalist state’s threatening theocratic regime; and 3) had put the screws to Hamas rather than Israel for peace process concessions.

Obama and his people are not the only ones in the grip of delusion regarding Israel’s security. American Jewish Congress chairman Jack Rosen, who hosted the fundraiser at his home, seconded Obama’s vote of self-confidence. While acknowledging that “there are many in the Jewish community who are concerned” about the strained relationship between Israel and the United States, Rosen said

America has never been as supportive of the state of Israel as President Obama and his administration.

With suicidally clueless Jews like this and an American president like Obama claiming to be Israel’s best friends, she hardly needs enemies. And yet this tiny sliver of a pro-American democracy is surrounded by a swelling tide of genocidal hostility. You would never know it, however, from listening to Obama’s smug self-congratulation.

Mark Tapson

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/07/obama-i%E2%80%99ve-done-more-for-israel%E2%80%99s-security-than-any-president/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Maldives Muslims Fight for the Right to Flog

by Daniel Greenfield

When the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay​ visited the Maldives, she wasn’t expecting to make much of a splash there. Officially the Republic of Maldives is a Constitutional democracy with open elections that any Muslim can vote in (not being a Muslim happens to be against the law in the Maldives). Unofficially it’s a paranoid theocracy based on Sharia law where an Indian teacher who drew a compass had to be hurriedly evacuated after students mistook it for a cross.

The United Nations Human Rights apparatus generally tries to avoid looking too closely at human rights in Muslim countries because it knows exactly what it will find. The Maldives is a case in point. So when Navi Pillay stopped by the Maldives she followed the formula to the letter, praising the human rights progress in the Maldives and after a few minutes of that, briefly suggested that perhaps they should stop flogging women accused of premarital sex.

Naturally Pillay did not put it as harshly as I just did. In her words, “The fact that people, especially women, are still flogged in the Maldives is a serious blot on the country’s otherwise increasingly positive and progressive image overseas.” But how progressive can a country be when it outlaws the practice of any religion besides Islam and holds blasphemy trials and where a judge ruled that four men who gang raped a 14 year old would not be imprisoned because the girl had reached the age of puberty?

Despite Pillay’s careful wording, Muslims in the Maldives reacted by holding a protest that accused her of being a “racist Zionist” out to undermine Islam. This was an unfortunate setback for Pillay who had spent a good deal of time condemning Israel, only to be accused of being a “racist Zionist” for suggesting that flogging women might be undermining the progressive image of a country where a cross shaped design on a water bottle is a major scandal.

Maldives’ Foreign Minister Ahmed Naseem reassured his fellow Muslims that the government was not about to do anything crazy like ending the flogging of women. “”What’s there to discuss about flogging? There is nothing to debate about in a matter clearly stated in the religion of Islam. No one can argue with Allah. Our foreign ministry will not allow that to happen.”

That is literally true as arguing with Allah is against the law in the Maldives. Two years ago a drunk who tried arguing with Allah was sent to court and was forced to recite the Shahadah, the Islamic profession of faith. But Pillay had been careful not to argue with Allah. In her remarks she praised the Maldives for “reaching out in the Islamic world to promote dialogue on the compatibility of Islam and human rights” only to get a harsh reminder that in the real world Islam and human rights were as compatible as oil and water.

The Republic of Maldives, along with Libya, Cuba, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia is a member of the UN Human Rights Council, which has not been paying much attention to the right of women not to be flogged in the name of Allah, as it has to the right of Hamas members to blow up Israeli children. The Maldives had met most of the official benchmarks on human rights, so long as no one looked too closely at the fine print.

CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, had been ratified by the Republic of Maldives, with one very minor caveat. “The Government of the Republic of the Maldives reserves its right to apply article 16 of the Convention… without prejudice to the provisions of Islamic sharia, which govern all marital and family relations of the 100 per cent Muslim population of the Maldives.” Which is to say that the Maldives will only grant those rights to women that don’t conflict with a 7th century document that treats women as legal and moral inferiors. But from the UN point of view, that makes the Maldives better than the US which has not ratified CEDAW at all.

Pillay warned that the floggings leave the Republic of Maldives “in breach of its obligations under several international treaties”. Presumably she meant human rights conventions like CEDAW, which no Muslim country allows to override the Koran. And that’s truer than it was before the Arab Spring toppled some of the last governments which even bothered with the facade of secularism.

The cluelessness displayed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights went further as earlier in her remarks she described her “illuminating talks with members of the Human Rights Commission of Maldives”. One of those commissioners, Sheikh Ahmed Abdul Kareem had declared a few years back that music was illegal and against Islam. Not any specific type of music… all music.

When a human rights commission member calls for banning all music that is the first hint that the commission may be running on a somewhat different understanding of human rights. Indeed the first mission of the Human Rights Commission of Maldives is to “protect, preserve and promote human rights in the Maldives in accordance with Islamic Shari’ah and the Constitution of the Maldives.” And if Sharia requires banning music, then protecting social order and religious unity by banning music is suddenly a human right.

It then follows that this is the recommendation of the Human Rights Commission of Maldives.

“When the number of people whose thinking and beliefs that contradict the beautiful Islamic principles are increasing, it is very important that the concerned government authorities bring out to the citizens the authentic information about religion (Islam) in a responsible manner. We would like to point out that, to save the society from religious divisions it is very important that the role played by the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs be broadened.”

Is saving society from “religious divisions” by expanding the powers of a theocratic body really what human rights are all about? But that is the way it is in the Maldives and throughout the Muslim world. The failure to recognize that truth is the major blind spot of the international organizations that have fallen for the farce of Muslim human rights created out of thin air and terminology.

While the UN has applauded the Potemkin villages of Maldives human rights agencies, not a single rape case was taken to court in four years despite numerous reports of rapes and gang rapes. But in one year alone, 146 women were flogged for the crime of premarital sex. The Sharia dominated system was unable to get around to convicting any rapists, but it managed to convict and flog over a hundred women.

These two statistics say all that needs to be said about human rights in the Maldives and the United Nations’ willful blindness in the face of real human rights abuses.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/07/maldives-muslims-fight-for-the-right-to-flog/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Salafists Surge in Egypt

by Ryan Mauro

The West has long feared the advent of the Muslim Brotherhood​ in Egypt, but the first round’s election results released Sunday night show an even worse group of Islamists surging: The Salafists. Nearly one-fourth of Egyptians voted for the group whose puritanism makes the Brotherhood look moderate.

On Sunday night, the Egyptian government released partial results for the first round of elections. Sixty-two percent of eligible Egyptians voted. The Muslim Brotherhood came in first place with 36.6%, followed by the Salafist bloc with 24.4%. The non-Islamists, the Egyptian Bloc and the Wafd Party​, came in 13.4 and 7.1 percent respectively. It was a landslide victory for the Islamists, who are now expected to control about two-thirds of the parliament once all rounds of voting are completed.

The Muslim Brotherhood is not a moderate group, but it appears reformist when compared to the Salafists. Whereas the Brotherhood embraces elections, the Salafists are hostile to the very concept of voting. The Brotherhood is pragmatic and aware of political constraints, whereas the Salafists have no qualms about expressing their desire to turn Egypt into another Saudi Arabia. The Brotherhood is “moderate” in comparison to the Salafists like Hamas is “moderate” compared to Al-Qaeda.

The success of the Salafists is particularly terrifying because they are honest about their objectives. Some supporters of the Brotherhood are misled about the group’s ideology. All of the Salafists’ supporters know what they are asking for when voting. The Salafists regularly call for closing movie theaters, gender segregation, creating a morality police, stoning adulterers, severing the hands of thieves and banning alcohol and “fornication.”

“I want to say: Citizenship restricted by Islamic Shariah, freedom restricted by Islamic Shariah, equality restricted by Islamic Shariah…Shariah is obligatory, not just the principles—freedom and justice and all that,” said one top Egyptian Salafist leader, Sheikh Abdel Moneim el-Shahat.

“In the land of Islam, I can’t let people decide what is permissible or what is prohibited,” says another.

One of the parties belonging to the Salafist bloc, al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya, has Aboud al-Zumour, the mastermind of the assassination of Anwar Sadat​, as one of its leaders. He still speaks affectionately about his old colleague, Ayman al-Zawahiri, calling him a “very kind and nice man.” He says he disagrees with his killings of civilians and tourists, but supports “resistance” against “occupiers.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, a group that supports terrorism and Shariah-based governance, criticized the Salafists for their inflammatory rhetoric. The Brotherhood favors a more incremental approach. The Deputy Supreme Guide, for example, says “the enforcement of Shariah punishments will need time, and will only come after Islam is planted in every heart and masters the life of people, and then Islamic punishments can be applied.”

The White House has yet to express alarm over the election results. The Israeli Defense Minister, on the other hand, said the results are “very, very disturbing.” Hamas is elated, as expected.

The non-Islamist Egyptians, many of whom wanted elections delayed so they could better prepare, were simply overmatched. Under the non-democratic regimes, the Islamists were still able to organize in mosques and by offering social services. The secularists had mere months to play catch-up. As Raymond Ibrahim explains, Anwar Sadat allowed the Brotherhood to build its support and infiltrate the institutions of government and society. In addition, approximately one-third of Egyptians are illiterate, limiting independent thought and forcing them to rely upon imams for political guidance.

“The simple voter didn’t know anyone on the ballot, no liberal political figures were allowed to emerge and lead, under Mubarak or during the post-Mubarak transition,” said Bassem Kamel of the Social Democratic Party.

To make matters worse, the upcoming elections for the lower house of parliament are even more favorable to the Islamists, specifically the Salafists. The first round included places where secularists should have had their best shot like Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and the Red Sea coast. A poll earlier this year found the Muslim Brotherhood with miniscule support in Cairo and Alexandria, but the Islamists still won by a landslide. The elections on December 14 and 27 will include the Salafist strongholds. The Salafists are confidently predicting that they’ll even outperform the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood is trying to cast itself as the force that will save Egypt from the Salafist puritans. It wants to ally with the liberal forces instead, but this is self-serving. It knows that the Salafists will vote with its agenda almost every time, creating an unofficial bloc in parliament. The Brotherhood’s goal is to sooth its opponents’ worries, to create a united front against the ruling military council and to share any blame it gets for stumbles in Egypt’s next phase.

The secular liberals in Egypt are therefore stuck between a rock and a hard place. It must either coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood or it will allow an Islamist super-coalition to dominate parliament. It also faces Islamists on the one hand and the ruling military council on the other.

Luckily for the West, the ruling military council does not intend to give up its power so easily. It is “vexed and concerned” about the results. It earlier vowed to prevent the rise of “another Khomeini.” We will soon see how serious the council was about that pledge.

Ryan Mauro

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/06/salafist-surge-in-egypt/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Tunisia's Religious Police

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

A "committee for the promotion of virtue and the prevention of vice" has been launched in Tunisia. It is not an official committee, but it is supported by Salafist groups there. Political parties are remaining astonishingly idle, totally incompetent to stop a violent minority that is threatening personal liberties. The Tunisian civil society is active against the committee, but does not have the political instruments to take action against this newly formed organization.

These self-appointed custodians of Islamic virtues are aggressively intervening in public life: They occupy mosques and Quranic schools, and are trying to impose on them imams with Salafist views. They are verbally and physically aggressive towards women who do not abide by their code of dress, they also physically and psychologically assault intellectuals and film makers.

Lately, they have come under the spotlight after they decided to forbid Professor Ikbal Gharbi, appointed by the government to the post of director of the religious radio station Zitouna FM, to enter her office. The reason, according to them, was that Prof. Gharbi had no religious background, despite her being an eminent professor of at the Theological Zitouna University in Tunis. In reality, this committee objects to a woman being in charge of a religious radio station, and for Prof. Gharbi being known as a reformist with a modernist interpretation of the Quran.

The Tunisian media outlet Kapitalis asks in an article what the objectives are of such a committee and what the effects will be over the different classes of the population. The editorial writer, Meriem.Kh, on the media outlet Investir en Tunisie reminds us that the religious police were created in Saudi Arabia in 1940 to implement Islamic rules and prescriptions, and that nowadays there are still countries with special police forces dedicated to force people to observe religious rules. But then she asks the central question: "Is this the fate of Tunisia? Is this post-revolutionary Tunisia?"

Certainly, many liberal and secular Tunisians, worrying if their liberties are at risk, are asking the same question,and if the liberal political parties, now in the opposition, are capable of fighting for individual rights. The response from the government on the committee was formal. Contacted by the press, Mr. Hichem Meddeb, spokesperson for the Ministry of Interior, said that the ministry had not received any official request for the recognition of the said committee. He added that, if such a request should be presented, no authorization would be granted. It could not be otherwise, he said, because in Tunisia the law on associations forbids members to break into the lives of other people. However, the so far government has failed to take action against these Islamic zealots.

Only a firm reaction from the secular and liberal sector of the country -- a majority if only they had been united and not fragmented into a myriad tiny parties -- can prevent Tunisia from becoming a confessional country. This is the second phase of the revolution after the fall of former dictator Zine Abidine Ben Ali -- the real battle ahead for democracy in Tunisia.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2644/tunisia-religious-police

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Israel’s Mona Lisa Weapon

by Steven Plaut

She’s unforgettable, she’s a legend though
… It’s kinda incredible

— From “Mona Lisa” by Britney Spears

Meet Israel’s secret weapon against terrorism, code named “Mona Lisa.” Not only is Mona Lisa an effective weapon against Arab anti-Israel terrorism and Islamofascism, but she is also one of the most effective weapons in the Israeli arsenal against the guttersnipes screaming about imaginary “Israel Apartheid.” Let us sit back and watch in amusement as Hitlerjugend from the “Boycott and Divest from Israel” movement and their fellow jihad travelers try to cope with our Mona.

There are two critical things you need to know about this new secret weapon. The first is that Mona Lisa is the real name of an Israeli woman combat soldier. At her parents’ suggestion – she writes it as a single word, Monalisa (Nat King Cole did the same!). The second thing you need to know is that she is an Arab.

Monalisa Abdo is a nineteen year old combat soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces. She serves in one of Israel’s elite anti-terror units. Moreover she wears the legendary red army boots that only Israel’s most elite fighting units wear, the Israeli equivalents of the American SEALS and green berets. My own military experiences are timid in comparison with what soldiers do and no one would ever think of letting me even get near a pair of red combat boots.

Monalisa grew up in Haifa. Most Israeli Arabs are not conscripted into the Israeli military, but they may volunteer to serve if they wish. Some do so out of patriotism and loyalty to the state, and some do so because of the career benefits and training that will help them later in the workplace. Monalisa is clearly among the former. Her story and an interview with her appear in the December 2, 2011 issue of Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper.

She describes the nasty comments some Arabs made to her and her family members when she signed up. She dismisses them. And her parents are squarely behind her. “Israeli Arabs need to serve in the Israeli military,” she insists in the interview, “to give to the country and not just take.” Israel is our country and we need to serve it, she believes. And military service is beneficial for those who serve, she adds, teaching them discipline and responsibility. Monalisa’s older sister Michelin, age 21, has also decided to enlist and will start her service in a few days. In the same unit as Mona.

Monalisa not only asked to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces but signed up for an elite combat unit named “Karkel,” in which both men and women serve side by side on the front lines. Karkel is the name of a wild desert cat that lives in Israel’s south. The unit is station in the Arava desert close to the border with Egypt. Hunting down terrorist infiltrators is its specialty.

She describes her first day in uniform, when she was being outfitted with equipment and fatigues. The orderlies gave her the ordinary black combat boots that non-elite soldiers wear. “You gave me the wrong boots,” she insisted, “I demand the red combat boots.” And she got them. She says that when she first put them on, she felt like a super-model. And while old men like myself are not supposed to notice such things in 19 year olds, from her photo it is clear she really could pass for a model if she decided to pursue that instead of military service.

Since starting her tour of duty, she has taken the non-commissioned officer training course and is already a NCO. When asked in the interview how she gets along with the Jewish women soldiers, she says just great. “There are no differences among us, we support and help one another.”

And about her name. Where did it come from? “My father wanted me to always walk with pride with my head erect, and it had just that effect upon me,” she explains.

Come to think of it, maybe we have here the most effect[ive] countermeasure yet against the Western campus bashers of Israel, the anti-Semitic professors, and the jihadi wannabes holding their anti-Israel protests and whining about Israeli “apartheid.” In reality, Israel is of course the only Middle East state that is not an apartheid regime. Maybe Israel should let loose Monalisa, Michelin, and the rest of the red-booted fighting tigresses and invite them to apply those boots to some anti-Israel protester posteriors with extreme prejudice!

Steven Plaut

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/06/israel%E2%80%99s-mona-lisa-weapon/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Prosecutor Warns Not to Ignore al-Shabaab Threat

by IPT News

U.S. policymakers need "to take al-Shabaab seriously" when the Somali terror group talks about targeting the United States, longtime federal prosecutor W. Anders Folk told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

He emphasized that Al-Shabaab, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the larger al-Qaida organization share a common ideology: one marked by virulent hostility towards America.

Al-Shabaab's ideology "is almost word for word similar to what we heard from al-Qaida pre-9/11 and what we have heard post-9/11. What we hear is an ideology that endorses murder of innocent civilians," Folk said in an interview. "We see al-Shabaab training their recruits in tactics and techniques similar to what recruits learn in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

As with al-Qaida, al-Shabaab recruits receive military training and Islamist religious indoctrination. They are taught skills that "have been constants from terrorist training camp to terrorist training camp," Folk said.

According to an investigative report issued in July by the House Homeland Security Committee's majority staff, Shabaab-related federal indictments "account for the largest number and significant upward trend in homegrown terrorism cases" filed by the Justice Department, with at least 38 cases unsealed since 2009.

Folk, who prosecuted many of those as an assistant United States attorney for Minnesota from 2005-10, joined the Minneapolis law firm Leonard, Street and Deinard. He emphasized that al-Shabaab's strategic goals are not limited to seizing power in Somalia.

The July 2010 twin bombings in Kampala, Uganda which killed 76 people demonstrated that al-Shabaab "is operational outside Somalia," Folk said. "They have actively sought out through the Internet and other digital media recruits from the West, [and] we've heard at least one of these recruits discussing a call to jihad by individuals in the United States."

Folk was referring to Abdisalan Ali of Minneapolis, identified by al-Shabaab as the suicide bomber in an Oct. 29 attack in Mogadishu that killed 10 people. "My brothers and sisters, do jihad in America, do jihad in Canada, do jihad in England, anywhere in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Australia," Ali said in an audiotape message released by al-Shabaab.

He was the third Somali-American since October 2008 to blow himself up while fighting for al-Shabaab. The House Homeland Security Committee concluded that 40 or more Americans have joined the group, with at least 15 of them dying while fighting alongside al-Shabaab. "Nowhere near that number of Americans have been killed fighting with any other foreign terrorist group," the panel said. "At least 21 or more American Shabaab members overseas remain unaccounted for and pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland."

Asked about assertions that al-Shabaab is too small to endanger the United States, Folk responded that said many people believed the same thing about al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) right up to Christmas Day 2009, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, tried to carry out a suicide attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 using explosives concealed in his underwear.

The attempted attack on the plane, which was flying from Amsterdam to Detroit, showed that AQAP could no longer be dismissed as a purely regional threat. Folk believes that al-Shabaab, which has made numerous threats against the United States, could also develop its own capability to target this country.

The failure to prevent Abdulmutallab from boarding Flight 253 offers a "sobering" assessment of the gaps in U.S. security procedures, he said.

Abdulmutallab's father, a prominent Nigerian businessman and former cabinet minister, had repeatedly warned U.S. officials that Umar was dangerous. He tried to persuade American diplomats that as a radicalized Muslim who had dropped out of school in Great Britain and traveled to Yemen, a hotbed of radicalism, his son posed a threat.

U.S. officials said the information provided by the father was not specific enough to take away Umar's visa or place him on a no-fly list. He was instead put on a lower-security "watch list," allowing him to board the U.S.-bound flight he attempted to bomb hours later.

In Somalia, a country without a functioning central government, U.S. security officials face much greater challenges in obtaining information about jihadist threats. Somalia "lacks any infrastructure, any real central government," Folk said. "There's no passport control, no border or customs, no central computers to monitor whether people are coming and going through the country."

Al-Shabaab Continues Recruiting Americans

Perhaps no community has been more heavily impacted by al-Shabaab activities in the United States than Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Since September 2007, more than 20 men,most of them ethnic Somalis, left the Twin Cities and traveled to Somalia to train with al-Shabaab.

Al-Shabaab's recruiting includes Internet videos aimed at glamorizing its activities. They celebrate the deaths of "martyrs" in fighting for jihad and ridicule their enemies in Somalia and the West.

In Minneapolis, al-Shabaab also used its American recruits to recruit new jihadists, Folk said. One of those he prosecuted was Mahamud Said Omar. A Somali-American and legal permanent resident of the United States, Omar was extradited back to America from the Netherlands in August to stand trial on charges of providing material support for terrorism.

The first group of Minnesota men to go to Somalia to join al-Shabaab left in December 2007. According to a federal affidavit outlining the government's case against Omar, he "provided money to members of the conspiracy to facilitate their travel to Somalia and told the men that he would support them financially in Somalia."

In January 2008, Omar traveled from Minnesota to Somalia, where he visited some of the Minnesotans at an al-Shabaab safe house, the affidavit said. He stayed there overnight and provided money to support operations there and purchase an AK-47 assault rifle. Omar returned to Minneapolis, and in August 2008, he allegedly accompanied two Shabaab recruits from Minnesota to the airport to begin their travel to Somalia.

According to Folk, a violent, tumultuous one-week period in the fall of 2008 serves to illustrate the power of al-Shabaab's jihadist message.

On Oct. 29, 2008, one of the men who had left Minnesota the year before and had stayed at the same safe house as Omar participated in one of five simultaneous suicide bombings in northern Somalia which killed 20 people. He was Shirwa Ahmed, 26, who drove a Toyota truck packed with explosives into an office of the Puntland Intelligence Service. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Ahmed became the first American suicide bomber in Somalia.

Prosecutors say that a few days after Ahmed blew himself up, Omar hosted a gathering for several men who were about to leave Minneapolis for Somalia. Two of those who attended the gathering left the Twin Cities days later to join al-Shabaab.

This combination of mass-casualty terror followed by additional jihadist recruitment provides the best evidence of the power of al-Shabaab's message, Folk told the IPT. It tells the American people "everything you need to know" about the effectiveness of the rhetoric al-Shabaab uses to recruit new members.

Federal authorities wiretapped Omar's telephone while investigating the disappearances. Investigators say they recorded conversations in which he expressed concern about the "uproar" over the disappearances and said he might leave town.

Omar left the United States in late November 2008.

A federal grand jury indicted Omar in August 2009 for providing material support to terrorism. Arrested by Dutch authorities several months later, Omar was extradited to the United States in August. He pled not guilty and remains in jail awaiting trial.

Despite a continuing U.S. government campaign against al-Shabaab, the group shows no signs of ending its efforts to recruit Americans. Folk believes that Omar Hammami (AKA Abu Mansur al-Amriki), a Muslim convert from Alabama who is a senior al-Shabaab commander, "is a great PR tool to recruit Westerners," telling people that "You too can come over to Somalia and enjoy great success and power like I did. You can speak English and that'll work just fine."

In order to defeat al-Shabaab, "you have to have a multi-pronged attack," he added. This approach would range from outreach to Somali communities in the United States, to "expanding bases in the Horn of Africa," and "the increased use of drone surveillance and drone strikes as a way to kind of get at the root of the problem in Somalia."

In addition, the federal government must use "all means at its disposal, including electronic surveillance, and all of the other tools" law enforcement has "to identify whether there are criminal conspiracies in the United States reaching back to Somalia to support Shabaab."

Al-Shabaab has many reasons to continue recruiting Americans, because they provide an important source of manpower for the terrorist enterprise. The Minneapolis recruits have worked in "all aspects" of the al-Shabaab's operations, Folk said, including combat, suicide bombings and military recruitment. In addition, Americans could prove useful in attaining another Shabaab goal – striking the United States.

"Travel documents are quite important because it's difficult to get into the United States," he said. "If you have U.S. travel documents, it reduces the barriers to entry."

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3323/prosecutor-warns-not-to-ignore-al-shabaab-threat

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Defense Cuts Will Kill Massive Number of Jobs

by Taylor Dinerman

When it comes to jobs in the US aerospace and defense industry, the White House and the Democrats have been responsible for directly killing at least 39.000 jobs between 2008 and 2010. This estimate is based on figures published by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA).

Now the AIA has just published a study showing that roughly one million jobs will be lost if the catastrophic defense budget cuts -- supposed to happen automatically as set up byt the "Supercommittee" in the aftermath of last summer's debt ceiling deal -- has failed to come up with an acceptable solution to the nation's fiscal problems. The Defense Department cuts , possibly amounting to as much as a trillion dollars, would entail job losses in the hundreds of thousands. Including jobs that would be lost through indirect effects as reported by the AIA, bringing the total of jobs lost to to more than a million, and adding more than half a percentage point to the national unemployment rate. The losses would be concentrated in California, Virginia, Texas and Massachusetts.

Moreover, the million American jobs lost in this round of budget cuts might be just the first. If the US falls into an austerity trap, in which budget cuts and tax increases choke off economic growth, such as the ones currently plaguing the Greeks, Spaniards and Italians, the outlook for jobs could get even worse. Without growth, the sacrifices needed to service the massive national debt and at the same time to pay the Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, will force even further huge cuts in both the defense and non-defense parts of the Federal budget.

There are roughly six million jobs directly associated with America's Aerospace and Defense industries. If the US were to lose one or two million of these jobs on top of all the jobs that have been lost since 2008, the effect would be devastating. The loss of US superpower status would tear into the US Government's ability to borrow money at relatively low interest rates. The future of the dollar as the world's major reserve currency, which depends in part on America's raw military power, would be in doubt.

If the US were to devote as much to its defense as, say, France -- 2.5% of GDP in 2010 -- instead of the roughly 4.5% it now spends on national security, its ability to secure the peace in places as diverse as Central Europe and Central America or the Indian Ocean would disappear. Middle East and South Asian turmoil would drive up the price of crude oil and other commodities, prolonging the global recession and making it even harder to balance the the US budget.

It is important to note that Europe's current economic difficulties are in no way caused by excessive military spending. Greece, largely due to the ongoing tension with Turkey spent 3.2% of GDP in 2010; Italy spent 1.8% and Spain spent 1.1%. As a rule of thumb, serious economic problems caused by defense spending do not develop unless a nation devotes more than 10% of its GDP to its military forces. This is what happened to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when it devoted at least 14%, perhaps a lot more, of its GDP to its military establishment.

The relationship between economic growth, jobs and defense spending is murky, to say the least. Military programs can sometimes result in major commercial technological breakthroughs, such as microelectronics or the internet. Military spending, however, is a wasteful method of producing results that might be done better by venture capitalists; yet history shows that the US defense department has been amazingly successful in fostering new technology. Economists may just have to learn to readjust.

One thing Franklin Roosevelt, Nicolas Sarkozy and Mitt Romney have in common is a belief that building naval ships is a good thing -- for both national military power and for employment. Shipbuilding not only requires a lot of blue collar labor to build the ships, it also uses vast quantities of steel, and other material, most of which comes directly from US industry.

In the 1930s, FDR used a portion of his New Deal , and Works Progress Administration to build a class of cruisers for the US Navy. In 2009 when Obama was promoting his Stimulus package -- which conspicuously lacked any military spending --- French President Nicolas Sarkozy pushed through the French Parliament a stimulus bill that included money for an extra amphibious assault ship. Mitt Romney's defense plan, which he recently presented in South Carolina, included a promise to increase shipbuilding from nine ships a year in the current plan to 15. Increased shipbuilding would seem to be a winning policy, both economically and strategically .

Military spending is more than just an insurance policy; it is an investment in national power. Other aspects of national power, such as economic growth, science and technology education, and sound fiscal and monetary policy, are all part of the mix that gives a nation significant clout on the global stage. To dismantle US military power in pursuit of government solvency is to throw one part of America's power unnecessarily to the wolves in the hope that the other parts may survive. Military weakness will not balance the budget, grow the economy or find anyone a job.

Taylor Dinerman

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2643/defense-cuts-kill-jobs

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Fatah Elections Detached from Reality

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has just announced that he wants to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2012.

Abbas aides said this week that their Fatah faction has begun preparing for the upcoming elections. They added that Hamas would be allowed to participate in the vote for the second time since 2006.

What is surprising is that Fatah leaders are now reassuring their supporters that this time they will win the elections.

It is not yet clear what Fatah's optimism is based on. One Fatah official, Azzam al-Ahmed, explained that the Palestinians are "different" from the rest of the Arabs and that is why they will not vote again for Hamas.

"In spite of the rise of Islamists to power in a number of Arab countries, Fatah will win the elections because the Palestinians are different," al-Ahmed, who is closely associated with Abbas, was quoted as saying.

Abbas's insistence on holding new elections, and al-Ahmed's optimistic predication, show that Fatah is detached from reality.

Obviously, Abbas and his aides have chosen to bury their heads in the sand as a way of escaping seeing the reality as it is.

Fatah is probably the only Arab party that continues to view the current turmoil in the Arab world as a secular-led campaign to bring freedom, democracy and reform to Arab countries.

The victory of the Islamists in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt has only strengthened Hamas -- the Palestinian branch of Muslim Brotherhood. That is why it was no surprise that Hamas leaders were the first -- and only --Palestinians to welcome the results of the parliamentary elections in Egypt.

The Islamist tsunami that is currently sweeping the Arab world is bad news for Abbas and his Fatah loyalists, who continue to live in denial. The victory of the Islamists in Egypt will not only bolster Hamas's standing, but also severely undermine Abbas's authority.

By the time the Palestinians go the ballot boxes in May, the Islamists will most likely have made further gains in other Arab countries. On the day of elections, the Palestinians will in all undoubtedly be surrounded by Islamist governments and parliaments supporting Hamas financially.

Abbas needs to wake up and realize that holding elections under the current circumstances would be tantamount to suicide. Who knows better than he that Fatah continues to suffer from a problem of credibility largely because of its failure to reform, and that he would do well to draw the appropriate conclusions from Fatah's defeat to Hamas in 2006.

But if Abbas insists on going ahead with the elections -- which will certainly bring Hamas to the West Bank as well -- then the Americans and Europeans should suspend their efforts to resume the "peace process" with Israel until after the planned elections in the Palestinian territories.

Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2642/fatah-elections

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Egypt's Sham Election

by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat

According to Egypt's elections committee, the Muslim Brotherhood won 37 percent of the vote of the first round of voting in Egypt; and the Salafis, who promote a yet more extreme Islamist program, won 24 percent, giving them together a jaw-dropping 61 percent of the vote.

One pleased Egyptian voter.

This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?

Legitimate or rigged? No one took seriously Soviet elections with their inevitable 99-percent returns for the Communists; and while the process and outcome of the Egyptian elections are less blatant, they deserve similar skepticism. The game is more subtle, but it's still a game, and here is how it's played:

The Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1928) and the military dictatorship (ruling Egypt since 1952) have a parallel ideology and a long history that makes them simultaneously rivals and allies. Over the decades, they off-and-on cooperated in an autocratic system bound by Islamic law (Shari'a) and in oppressing liberal, secular elements.

In this spirit, Anwar El-Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and now Mohamed Tantawi tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money. For example, when George W. Bush pressured Mubarak to permit more political participation, the latter responded by having 88 Muslim Brotherhood members elected to parliament, thereby warning Washington that democracy = an Islamist takeover. The apparent weakness of non-Islamists scared the West from further insisting on a transition to political participation. But a close look at the 2005 elections finds that the regime helped the Islamists gain its 20 percent of the seats.

The logo for the leading Salafi party, An-Nur.

Today, Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) still play this tired old game. Note the various methods: (1) Reports of electoral fraud have emerged, for example in Helwan. (2) SCAF has, according to the prominent Islamist Safwat Hijazi, offered a "deal" to the Islamists: it shares power with them on condition that they turn a blind eye to its corruption.

(3) The military has subsidized both the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi political parties during the recent parliamentary elections. Marc Ginsburg reports on a SCAF slush fund totaling millions of dollars in "the form of 'walk around' money, clothing and food giveaways" that enabled hundreds of local chapters of Islamist political organizations to buy votes. Ginsburg tells of a SCAF emissary who "met secretly with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist oriented political movements last April to establish local political 'action committee' bank accounts to funnel an underground supply chain of financial and commodity support."

Other Middle Eastern dictators, such as the Yemeni president and Palestinian Authority chairman, also play this double game, pretending to be anti-Islamist moderates and Western allies while, in fact, being toughs who cooperate with Islamists and repress true moderates. Even anti-Western tyrants like Assad of Syria and Qaddafi of Libya play the same opportunistic game in times of need, portraying massive uprisings against them as Islamist movements. (Recall how Qaddafi blamed the Libyan insurrection on Al-Qaeda lacing teenagers' coffee with hallucinatory pills.)

Salafis won one-fifth of the votes? Something fishy here.

Dominate Egypt? If the military colludes with Islamists to remain in power, obviously it, and not Islamists retains ultimate control. This is the key point that conventional analysts miss: the recent election results allow the military to keep power. As aspiring Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei correctly notes, "it is all in the hands of SCAF right now."

True, if Islamists control the parliament (not a sure thing; the military could yet decide to reduce their percentage in future rounds of an unusually complex voting procedure open to abuse), they acquire certain privileges and move the country further toward the Shari'a – as far, anyway, as SCAF permits. This maintains the long-term trend of Islamization underway since the military seized power in 1952.

What about Western policy? First, press SCAF to build the civil society that must precede real democracy, so that the modern and moderate civilians in Egypt have a chance to express themselves.

Second, instantly cease all economic aid to Cairo. It is unacceptable that Western taxpayers pay, even indirectly, for Islamizing Egypt. Resume funding only when the government allows secular Muslims, liberals, and Copts, among others, freely to express and organize themselves.

Third, oppose both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis. Less extreme or more, Islamists of every description are our worst enemies.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Cynthia Farahat is an Egyptian activist and co-author of a book about the Tahrir Square protests.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/10389/egypt-sham-election

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Islamic Ascendancy Intensifies US Appeasement

by Isi Leibler

It is ironic that whereas President Obama portrays himself as a friend of Israel whilst soliciting funds from Jewish donors, two senior members of his team were providing chilling insights to what Israel may expect should the current administration be returned to office.

After reaffirming that the US retains "an unshakable commitment to Israel's security”, Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, crudely told a Brookings Institution forum, that it was high time for Israel to "get to the damn negotiating table". He ignored the fact that even after a 10 month settlement freeze, the Palestinians had refused to engage in direct negotiations with Israelis. He went on to repeat the mindless mantra that Israel is "partly" responsible for its diplomatic isolation. He demanded that Israel take further bold action to overcome the conflict with the Palestinians by making additional unilateral concessions which the Arabs would no doubt take on board in the context of their long-term strategy to dismantle the Jewish State in stages.

He demanded that Israel "reach out to mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability”, specifically mentioning Turkey and Egypt. Here, he also he failed to take account of Israel's extraordinary efforts to retain good relations with Egypt which is currently in the process of being taken over by Jihadist groups and disregarded the fact that Erdogan’s Turkey is now openly allied with the genocidal Hamas. For a US Secretary of Defense to implicitly blame Israel for the erosion of relations with these countries is simply inexplicable.

In the same speech, he warned Israel that if it acted alone in relation to Iran, it would place America in an unenviable position, cost many lives and lead to global economic chaos. As former deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams observed, Panetta eased Iranian concerns by effectively nullifying long-standing American statements that "all options are on the table" to curb the nuclear threat.

A Secretary of Defense does not make such statements unless he has the backing of his President.

Panetta’s provocative address was followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who pontificated on Israel as a democratic state and harshly criticized proposed legislation restricting the foreign funding of non-governmental organizations. Whereas this has generated considerable controversy in Israel, it is unprecedented for an American Secretary of State to become involved in such a debate and publicly criticize the government of a purportedly close ally. Especially when one considers that Clinton has hardly been forthright in condemning human rights violations and vile anti-Semitic outbursts displayed in Moslem countries or by groups who are emerging as the new dominant forces in such countries.

Even more disconcerting were Clinton’s remarks concerning a marginal number of misguided Israeli soldiers who sought to boycott events in which women singers participated. This issue and the clumsy manner in which it was handled by the IDF, has admittedly distressed many Israelis. But what justifies an American Secretary of State who says nothing about women’s rights in Saudi Arabia or other Arab countries, becoming involved in this? And to make an analogy of this episode with the segregation of African-Americans in the 1950s does not merely reflect ignorance, but is downright offensive. Clinton even said that this Israeli behavior reminded her of the way Iranians treated women.

Finally, the Jewish US ambassador in Belgium, Howard Gutman, appointed to the role because he was a major fundraiser for Obama, tells European Jewish leaders and lawyers that "a distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned, and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians". The clear innuendo was that-Muslim anti-Semitism is a byproduct of Israeli intransigence in the Middle East, and therefore, can be understood and implicitly justified. These sickening remarks were made by a US Ambassador to Belgium, one of the most anti-Israeli countries in Europe.

These outbursts signal that despite favorable public opinion and congressional support, Israel continues to face hostility and difficulties from the US administration.

The timing of these provocative outbursts makes them especially reprehensible. They occurred concurrently with the election results from Egypt which confirmed that the Moslem Brotherhood combined with the even more extreme Salafis emerged with 60% of the vote, reflecting the radical Islamist tide sweeping throughout all the North African Arab states.

In fact, our worst fears have been realized and Israel is now surrounded by a ring of fanatically hostile Islamic states. The Moslem Brotherhood, creator of Hamas, is an outright jihadist organization whose charter unequivocally calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of all Jews.

In this context, it is exasperating and sickening to continue to be subject to delusionary spins by Western politicians and liberal media suggesting that the Moslem Brotherhood has turned a new page, is now tolerant and, to quote some US administration officials, is even in the process of becoming "secular".

In addition the only issue over which Sunnis and Shiites have been able to overcome their passionate differences is their frenzied shared hatred of Israel and dissemination of anti-Semitic propaganda indistinguishable from the vilest Nazi propaganda.

Yet, in the Islamic grand order, Israel and the Jews are merely the "canary in the mine" and represent a minor component of their global ambitions. Were Israel to disappear from the map or succumb to Islamic aggression, far from easing tensions, it would merely embolden Islamists towards their goal of conquering Europe and ultimately global domination.

Israel can do little to influence the course of events in the Arab countries and its leaders have wisely stood aside.

But it is surely now time for the Obama Administration to recognize that its policies of appeasement have led to disastrous consequences. Instead of trying to mollify Islamists by distancing themselves and making one sided criticisms against Israel, they should gird themselves for a long-term struggle against fanatical Islamists who have been conditioned into believing that they can best achieve their global objectives through intransigence and intensification of violence.

American Jews can make an important contribution in this area. Yet alas, most of their leaders remained silent despite the reprehensible remarks directed against Israel by leading Obama Administration officials. Whilst not surprisingly, the ZOA, Simon Wiesenthal Center, and Jewish Republicans protested, as of now, of the Jewish establishment leaders only Abe Foxman of the ADL actually condemned Leon Panetta’s remarks. The other principal American Jewish agencies responded with deafening silence. One is even tempted to enquire whether they have in fact collectively decided not to rock the boat and to eliminate Israeli related issues from political discourse. How else can one explain the absence of response to such provocations? Which leads us to ask, will Jews at the grassroots level remain satisfied that their principal spokesmen remain silent on such issues.

Isi Leibler ileibler@netvision.net.il

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com

This column was originally published in Israel Hayom

Source: http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=3783

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