by Mordechai Kedar
Read the article in the original עבריתJohn Walker Lindh is a citizen of the United States who was born in Washington, D.C. in the year 1981. Lindh was not born a Muslim. He converted when he was 16 years old and then traveled to Yemen in order to learn Arabic. In 2000 he traveled to Afghanistan and underwent an educational and training course in al-Farouq, an al-Qaeda training camp. He made contact with the organization of Mujahadeen in Pakistan, and was caught in 2001 in Afghanistan serving as a jihadist with the Taliban. He was convicted of fighting for an illegal organization and sentenced to twenty years in the Terre Haute prison in the state of Indiana.
Read the article in Italiano (translated by Yehudit Weisz, edited by Angelo Pezzana)
In prison, Lindh continued to preach to his fellow prisoners and exhort them to be persistent in their jihad against the United States and the jihad to enforce Muslim Shari'a law on all of humanity. As a result, the prison authorities limited his participation in public prayer to only one time per week, on Friday. He appealed to the court, demanding to be allowed to participate in public prayer five times a day. The judge of the federal court, Jane Magnus-Stinson, found - contrary to the opinion of the prison authorities - that despite the fact that Lindh does not recognize the legality of the American court or the authority of her honor the judge, he nevertheless has the right to pray in public and to meet with his comrades five times every day, even if it means that the prison must beef up its security arrangements in order to accommodate his wishes.
This is not an isolated case. The United States has been driven for the past several years by "political correctness", which censors any reference to a person's faith, even if this faith instigates him to wage holy war against the United States. According to this approach, if someone claims that the United States is the "little Satan", Americans must accept this characterization as correct and legitimate, and if the American is uncomfortable with this, he should do some soul searching to ascertain the reason that caused the Other - who is clearly miserable, hungry and neglected because of the crimes of the United States - to regard him as Satan.
Political correctness is what dictates conduct in the highest echelons of leadership in the United States: most citizens of the country consider it to be unacceptable to say that President Obama comes from a Muslim family, and believe that it is not legitimate to refer to Obama's religion in any way. This is why the campaign against Obama that was based on this fact failed to prevent him from being re-elected.
The federal investigative bodies have also been seized by American political correctness; and two years ago, in keeping with instructions from above, training programs for the FBI agents and other investigative agencies were changed, so that today, an interrogator is forbidden to relate to the religion or beliefs of someone under investigation, even if his faith or beliefs actually incite him to murderous jihad against the state. Authorities of the state forbid the use of the expression "Islamic terror", and laundered expressions such as "ideological violence" must be used instead.
The slaughter that Major Nidal Malik Hasan perpetrated against his comrades at the Fort Hood base in Texas in order to prevent them from going to Afghanistan, is described by the authorities as "workplace violence". For the adherents of political correctness, the fact that Hasan was in contact with Anwar Awlaki, the Yemeni-American terrorist who was subsequently eliminated, does not contradict the theory of political correctness that characterizes Islam as a religion of peace and love, hugs and kisses. "Islam" - so they believe - is based on the Arabic word "salam", which means "peace", because the superficiality that characterizes the American media discourages people from looking it up and discovering that the real meaning of the word "Islam" is "surrender" or "submission".
The writer of these lines, together with an American colleague, an attorney by the name of David Yerushalmi, published an article about two years ago, "Shari'a and Violence in Mosques of the United States". This article is based on analysis of data and material that was collected in approximately one hundred mosques across the United States. Included in this material are two interesting pamphlets, in clear English: one is "40 Hadiths on Jihad" (a hadith is part of the Islamic oral tradition that relates to the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad), and this booklet is a song of praise to jihad, to the jihadist and to his reward in the world to come. Jihad in this booklet is not against illness, poverty, neglect and corruption, and not even against the evil inclination, but against anyone who is not Muslim, and implicitly, every American who does not convert to Islam.
Another booklet that is distributed in mosques of the United States is entitled "What should you do if you are arrested or investigated by the racist, fascist and criminal police, or the racist, fascist FBI?". This guide book is written - according to what is printed on the title page - by Dr. al-Hajj Idris Muhammad, and is issued by the publishing house "al-Amin" in New York. In this booklet the writer instructs the reader in how to withstand interrogation relating to his religion and jihad against the "Great Satan", by exploiting the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. These rights are considered the most important rights in the United States, even if by exercising them, the United States is rendered less able to fight the enemies who conduct their jihad against it from within and from its prisons.
Problematic Islamic activity also exists within the institutions of higher learning in the United States. This writer has collected flyers in the mosques of one of the academic institutions, that instruct Muslim and Arab students how to manage charitable funds, how to stand up to law enforcement agencies, how to conduct oneself and how to identify and protect oneself from intelligence agents who infiltrate Islamic groups. All of this is, of course, legal, but smells quite bad.
Many mosques in the United States are built today in quiet and serene residential neighborhoods, despite the residents having officially expressed their objection to the building of these mosques. Obviously, in every quiet suburb where a mosque is built, the price of the houses goes down, since the commotion associated with the arrival of the worshipers disturbs the peace and quiet in these areas. Residents are compelled to appeal to the courts to prevent the mosques from sounding the call to prayer on loudspeakers in the early hours of the day because the non-Muslims do not want to wake up at five in the morning. The courts tend to reject these suits and allow the mosques to disturb the quiet of the early morning watch in the name of political correctness. Planning authorities are also influenced negatively by political correctness, allowing mosques to be built even if it will cause a significant devaluation in the prices of real estate and large losses to the owners of the houses, who originally bought their homes in a quiet place and at a high price.
The building of mosques gained momentum after the planning authorities of New York - who are guided by political correctness - allowed a mosque to be built near Ground Zero, the place where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, which were attacked by Islamic terror on the 11th of September 2001, used to stand. The fact is that no Muslims live in this area; nevertheless, even the objection of many individuals and groups failed to overcome the political correctness of the planning authorities.
In the United States today, there are approximately seven million Muslims, and their numbers are increasing quickly, owing to the fact that they have a higher birth rate than the low average American rate standing at 1.6 children per woman, and also because of immigration. The Muslims have established organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations - CAIR - whose main mission is to improve the image of Islam in American public opinion. The fact that the people who now head these organizations or headed them in the past are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamic movements does not put a damper on the desire of government leaders to cozy up to these organizations, because they are are driven by the obsession to endear themselves to Islam, and they consider these organizations to be the authentic representatives of the Muslims in the United States.
Many investment companies in the United States offer their clients investment plans that are consistent with Islamic Shari'a.
Islamic money, much of which comes from oil profits, is invested in academic institutions, and the conduct of an academic institution that receives significant donations from an Islamic source is influenced by these donations. About one year ago the University of Yale closed the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) which was headed by a Jewish professor by the name of Charles (Asher) Small, immediately after this university received a large donation from a Saudi source. The Carter Center, the research center of former president Jimmy Carter, operates out of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, with Saudi money. Is there a connection between this fact and Carter's book: "Palestine - Peace, not Apartheid"?
The activity of Islamic institutions in the United States often focuses on Israel, and more than a few of these institutions hold yearly events called "Israeli Apartheid Week". Surprisingly, there are Jewish students and staff members, and even Israelis, who take part in this anti-Israeli activity, which are obviously driven by clear anti-semitic motives. MK Jamal Zahalka from the Israeli Arab National Democratic Assembly party is a star from this movement who is in great demand. The Jewish students are intimidated, and taking a pro-Israeli stance makes them a target for criticism and even violence by those who wish to portray Israel as an apartheid state. The Jewish students are also afraid to express pro-Israeli positions in class, because there are lecturers, and not only from Arab or Muslim countries, who might lower the grades of a student who dares to challenge the statement that Israel is an apartheid state.
The picture in the United States is disturbing: in my opinion the United States is treading in Europe's footsteps of 15 years ago: what one sees today in the United States we saw in Europe 15 years ago, and if America doesn't wake up it will find itself in another 15 years in the situation that Europe is in today.
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Dr. Kedar is available for lectures
Dr. Mordechai Kedar (Mordechai.Kedar@biu.ac.il) is an Israeli scholar of Arabic and Islam, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. He specializes in Islamic ideology and movements, the political discourse of Arab countries, the Arabic mass media, and the Syrian domestic arena.
Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav with permission from the author.
Additional articles by Dr. Kedar
Source: The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel. Also published in Makor Rishon, a Hebrew weekly newspaper.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the author.
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