Wash. Post Transforms Hamas into a 'Moderate' Pussycat

by Leo Rennert

For years, the Washington Post has refused to call Hamas as a terrorist group -- the designation given it by the United States and the European Union, and of course, by Israel, which still mourns hundreds of its citizens murdered by Hamas. To avoid use of the T-for-terrorism label, the Post substituted "militant," its most favorite euphemism.

But hold the presses: Hamas has gone beyond "militant" and turned into a downright "moderate" and "pragmatic" organization that no longer may resort to violence against Israel, according to Joel Greenberg, the Post's Jerusalem correspondent.

In a Dec. 22 article, Greenberg happily reports that, with the advent of the Arab Spring, Hamas is evolving from a terrorist -- sorry, militant -- past into an adherent of far more peaceful tactics ("Hamas signals willingness to deal with moderates -- Arab Spring prompts thaw; talks with Fatah planned in Cairo" page A13)

Here's how Greenberg makes this great leap in presenting the "new" Hamas. In his lead paragraph, he starts by assuring Post readers that Hamas "is showing signs of pragmatism as its sense of isolation fades." He then further explains that Hamas wants to "strengthen ties with Arab countries where moderate Islamists have made political gains," like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In its long quest to sanitize Hamas, the Post now is shifting from "militant" to a presumably even more kosher "moderate Islamist" label. Remember it well: "Moderate Islamist" -- what a neat oxymoron. "Islamist" for a long time has been a media favorite to distinguish peaceful Muslims from radical, violence-bent ones, like Islamists. But now we're to understand that there is a sub-brand of "Islamist" with a "moderate" bent. Well, tell that to the 8 million Cops in Egypt who are not exactly thrilled with the prospect of being ruled by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, and by the somewhat less "moderate Islamist" Salafis, who together are winning 70 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.

But Greenberg, ever a delusional optimist in his Palestinian coverage, ignores or dismisses any concerns about what the Arab Spring really has wrought. And where others have observed continued tensions between Hamas, which rules Gaza, and Fatah, which reigns in the West Bank, Greenberg sees a happy coming together of the two rival factions.

"On the political front," he writes, there have been signs of flexibility on a key issue that has divided Hamas and Fatah: the use of arms in the confrontation with Israel." While he grants that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh only recently asserted that "armed resistance is the only way to liberate our land from the sea to the river (i.e. eliminate Israel altogether), Greenberg puts more weight on a newly stated position of Khaled Mashal, Hamas's top leader, who raised the option of "popular resistance."

Another bright ray of hope! Gone is a bellicose term like "armed resistance," replaced now by "popular resistance" -- a term, according to Greenberg, "for the unarmed protests that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has encouraged in the West Bank." In case you're not up to this vital semantic difference in Greenberg's vocabulary, be advised that "armed resistance" is bad; but "popular resistance" is OK.

Never mind that under his Gandhiesque "popular resistance," Abbas has yet to disband his own terrorist wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades" and keeps glorifying terrorist killers and naming public places after them. Greenberg, in full delusional mode, is sticking by his Panglossian confidence that all's now for the best in the best of Palestinian society -- Hamasland.

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers.

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

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

The Muslim Brotherhood Unmasked

by Herbert I. London

While the current administration has a stake in referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as "moderate" and "largely secular," there is a reality very different from the view at Foggy Bottom.

The Brotherhood is a popular movement of Islam founded in 1928 by Hasan al Banna, the most prominent representative of what is sometimes referred to as Islamism. For al Banna, whatever ails the Muslim world – the umma – can be addressed by the simple sentence: "Islam is the solution." Religious law – Shariah, or "The Way" – is to be restored to its central place as an organizing principle for every sphere of life.

From the Muslim Brotherhood's point of view, whatever ails the world can be traced to the West's pernicious influence. The West stole scientific secrets, deprived Muslims of their religious faith and converted them into docile subjects. While resentment is the main current of Islamism, it has curiously united with modern mass media to spread the faith. Similarly, while the West is deplored, the technical achievements of the West are often welcomed, and even aspects of democracy – such as the civil code – which can be exploited to advance Islam, are admired. The Brotherhood openly calls for free elections, but only as a way to gain and legitimate its authority. This duality is what confuses the detractors of Islamism. Hoping for the best, some critics rely on their assertions of what we would like to believe, that the Muslim Brotherhood is indeed "moderate" and "largely secular."

In the recent Egyptian elections, journalists distinguished between the "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood and the extreme Salafists -- without noting that al Banna considered himself a Salafist, as apparently do most of the members of the Brotherhood. The Islamist synthesis of modernity and tradition is attractive to those torn between these two ideological perspectives. But make no mistake, the Muslim Brotherhood accepts modernity only to the extent it confirms an uncompromising commitment to religious dogma and imperial political designs.

According to the Islamist world view, Allah has vouchsafed to mankind a full and perfect doctrine of human behavior. And to the extent the political order is predicated on divine decree, there isn't room for rejection, whether it be in the name of democracy or individual rights. Laws cannot be passed that explicitly challenge the commands of Allah. If people can be permitted to do what Allah has forbidden, Shariah law can never be compatible with liberal democracy. If the Koran, written by the Archangel Gabriel, at the behest of Allah, says the consumption of alcohol is forbidden, there is no authority that can grant legislative sanction. In this case, as in so many others, the religious value system guarantees "civilized" behavior. So when Islamists say they want representative government, what they mean is legislation compatible with the Koran.

Who is the ultimate arbiter of state-based legislation? The imams who reflect the wisdom and compassion of Allah. For the Brotherhood, there must be absolute loyalty to fixed and eternal rules, a condition that inevitably suffocates research, free will, science and art.

Egypt is now caught in a web woven by the Muslim Brotherhood. Democracy without the Brotherhood is inconceivable, and democracy with the Brotherhood is impossible. The movement cannot be denied if free elections are permitted, but the infrastructure of democracy cannot be created so long as there is a formal adherence to Shariah.

Yet ,in most Arab countries the Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized group. This grants it an advantage over liberal rivals that are splintered into many fractions. If the West confronts the Brotherhood's leadership, it merely confirms the belief that the conspiracists are right in their belief that the West is trying to undermine Islam. If the West does not confront the Islamists, the liberals are bound to be defeated. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. In a Kantian sense, democratic impulses should – at some point – rise to the surface, especially if Brotherhood policies do not produce jobs or adequate food supplies. Dictatorships have a way of destroying themselves when the "eternal verities" that they hold onto cannot yield the basic human needs that have been promised. It is one thing to be a good Muslim who prays five times a day; it is quite another thing to rely on one meal a day for sustenance.

Herbert London is president emeritus of Hudson Institute, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the book Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction Books).

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2691/muslim-brotherhood-unmasked

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

Radical Islamic Television Arrives in Spain

by Soeren Kern

Two radical Islamic television stations will begin 24-hour broadcasting to Spanish-speaking audiences in Spain and Latin America from new studios in Madrid.

The first channel, sponsored by the government of Iran, will focus on spreading Shiite Islam, the dominant religion in Iran. It began broadcasting on December 21.

The second channel, sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia, will focus on spreading Wahhabi Islam, the dominant religion in Saudi Arabia. It will begin broadcasting on January 1.

The inaugural broadcasts of Islamic television in Spain were deliberately timed to coincide with the Christmas holidays, and represent yet another example of the gradual encroachment of Islam in post-Christian Spain.

The new Iranian channel, Hispan TV, will focus on news and television series produced in Iran and dubbed into Spanish. The main program on the network will be a show called "Debate Abierto" (Open Debate), which the government of Iran views as a key tool for promoting Shia Islam in Spain and Latin America.

"This new television network in Spanish will play a crucial role in reflecting the ideological legitimation of our system in the world," according to Ezzatollah Zarghami, Director General of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), the government-owned media corporation in charge of controlling Iranian national radio and television broadcasting.

The new Saudi channel, Córdoba Televisión, will broadcast documentaries and debates on religion with the aim of propagating the extremist Wahhabi sect of Islam to audiences in the Spanish-speaking world. Wahhabism is a violent fundamentalist doctrine that not only rejects all other forms of Islam, but also seeks to challenge and destroy Judaism and Christianity.

Córdoba Televisión, based in the Madrid suburb of San Sebastian de los Reyes, is the brainchild of the radical Saudi cleric Abdul Aziz al-Fawzan, the spiritual mentor for one of the Islamists who carried out the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001.

Al-Fawzan, who has a reputation for preaching inflammatory sermons on Saudi television, is especially noted for his hatred of Christianity and his calls for the marginalization of women. He also preaches hate against the United States and Israel, and believes that "slavery is a part of Islam, slavery is a part of Jihad, and Jihad will remain as long as there is Islam."

The name Córdoba Televisión, which also plans to branch out into Spanish radio, is a masterpiece of Islamist propaganda. Córdoba is a city in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia, once the capital of the Islamic Emirate of Al-Andalus, which ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492.

Many Muslims believe that the territories they lost during the Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to return and establish their rule there – a belief based on the Islamic precept that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain under Muslim domination.

As a result, the name Córdoba continues to represent a potent symbol of Islamic conquest to many Muslims around the world.

Córdoba Televisión will not only provide Al-Fawzan with a new platform from which to spread Wahhabi doctrine to some 500 million potential viewers in the Spanish-speaking world, it also forms part of "an extremist Islamist offensive to recover Al-Andalus, the lost Muslim paradise that is being occupied by the Spanish," according to anti-terrorism experts interviewed by the Madrid-based newspaper ABC.

Spanish intelligence analysts are especially concerned that Córdoba Televisión will become a key Saudi tool for preaching Jihad in Spain and Latin America. They are also worried that by preaching radical Islam, al-Fawzan will destabilize the Muslim community in Spain.

They point to the long-standing rivalry between the governments of Saudi Arabia and Morocco for control over the estimated 1.5 million Muslims in Spain. Both governments have been accused to trying to establish a Muslim protectorate in Spain by vying for control over the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities (FEERI) and the Union of Islamic Communities of Spain (UCIDE), the two most important Islamic associations in Spain.

The broadcasting licenses for the two Islamist television channels, approved by the outgoing Socialist government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, represent a significant advance for radical Islam in Spain.

During his seven-and-a-half years in office (his term ended on December 21, 2011, the same day the Iranian government began its broadcasting and proselytizing operations in Spain), Zapatero, a leftwing anti-clerical ideologue known for his deep-seated hatred of Christianity, pursued a close partnership with Islam aimed at displacing Judeo-Christian influences from Spain.

In an effort to transform Spain into a European mecca of postmodern multiculturalism, Zapatero opened the floodgates of Muslim immigration from North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Spain is now home to literally thousands of hardline Islamists who are permitted to preach their extremist ideologies with impunity in mosques and prayer centers around the country.

According to some estimates, more than 100 mosques in Spain have Wahhabi imams preaching to the faithful each Friday. These imams are preaching hatred for the West and the need to establish a parallel Muslim society in Spain. They teach that Islamic Sharia law is above Spanish civil law, and some have gone so far as to set up Sharia tribunals to judge the conduct of both practicing and non-practicing Muslims in Spain. Others have established religious police in Spanish towns and cities that harass and attack those who do not comply with Islamic law.

It remains unclear how the incoming Conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will deal with the problem of radical Islam in Spain. On the campaign trail, he signaled that he would take a harder line when he promised that, if elected, he would implement a burqa ban similar to the one in France.

The new government can also be expected to monitor closely the rhetoric aired by the two new Islamist television broadcasters. But beyond that, Spain already has been transformed by Islam to such an extent that any significant government pushback will encounter fierce resistance from the Islamists who believe history is on their side.

Soeren Kern is Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2692/islamic-television-spain

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

Berkeley Hillel’s Betrayal of Israel

by Daniel Greenfield

The University of California, Berkeley​ is ground zero for the campus war against Israel. Students for Justice in Palestine emerged on the Berkeley campus and its annual Israel Apartheid Week is a festival of hate with chilling overtones. But it’s also a campus where Jewish student groups are divided between a pro-Israel majority and an anti-Israel minority that includes Hillel.

When the Berkeley Jewish Student Union voted not to admit J Street, the left-wing Soros-funded group, Hillel leaders at Berkeley came out in support of the anti-Israel organization, writing: “we encourage JSU to reconsider its vote and include JStreetU as a member” while touting themselves as an inclusive community.

The letter authored by Berkeley Hillel Board of Directors President Barbara Davis and its executive director, Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, claimed that the Berkeley campus affiliate of J Street adheres to Hillel’s Israel guidelines and promised that it would receive their support. In reality though Hillel’s own guidelines exclude organizations that delegitimize Israel, apply a double standard to it or that promote boycotts against it.

Naftalin has said, “We will not allow anyone calling for a boycott against Israel to become part of us.” But J-Street’s national convention featured a panel on BDS whose official description reads, “Our panelists will discuss their views on BDS’s efficacy as a means to end the occupation and move towards final-status talks, and the ways BDS may influence campaigns for peace in the United States and the region.” The panel included Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace, a major boycott promoter.

While J Street’s official position is to distance itself from the BDS movement because some of its proponents call for the destruction of Israel, that same position statement also describes campus boycott efforts as arising from “legitimate and urgent concerns related to peace, justice and human rights” and opposes barring BDSers from events. That means the J Street campus group at Berkeley can feature BDS activists so long as it doesn’t blatantly endorse their views. And the Berkeley Hillel will indirectly be supporting the BDS movement. And it wouldn’t be the first time.

The Berkeley Hillel’s support for J Street shows just how far outside the mainstream it has gone. The Naftalin-Davis letter described a list of other “pro-Israel” organizations that they work with. “Bears for Israel, Tikvah: Students for Israel, Israel Action Committee, Tamid and Kesher Enoshi.”

Kesher Enoshi is, if anything, even worse than J Street. Eyal Mazor, the Kesher Enoshi leader at Berkeley, spoke out in support of the anti-Israel divestment bill in front of the Associated Students Senate and after graduation participated in a Jewish Voice for Peace protest against Netanyahu. Kesher Enoshi conducts campus demonization campaigns against Israel in partnership with groups such as Breaking the Silence, the Israeli equivalent of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, which attacks the right of Jews to live in Jerusalem. One of Kesher Enoshi’s co-founders has gone on to work for Breaking the Silence.

Paradoxically Kesher Enoshi is a member of the Berkeley Jewish Student Union and advertises its events within the Berkeley Hillel, turning the organization into a recruiting center for anti-Israel activism. And Kesher Enoshi collaborated with Students for Justice in Palestine in a bid to push its candidates through into the Jewish Student Union.

Some may view the attitude of the Berkeley Hillel leadership as cowardly, but the campus chapter has a long history of disdaining pro-Israel activism while leaving an open door for left-wing anti-Israel activism. Kesher Enoshi meetings within Hillel have included Students for Justice in Palestine activists, and the former director of the Berkeley Hillel discouraged students from participating in pro-Israel rallies and even displaying the Israeli flag.

Photos taken this year during Israeli Apartheid Week show Naftalin in conversation with Husam Zakharia who later would go on to assault a pro-Israel student and who had earlier attacked Jewish students during a concert. A number of Berkeley Hillel student leaders, including Avital Aboody and Itamar Haritan, have turned into rabidly anti-Israel activists, with Haritan working together with a major Students for Justice in Palestine figure on a blog demonizing Israel.

Newspapers and magazines have run vocal condemnations of the Jewish Student Union for refusing to bring J Street into the fold. An editorial in the Jewish Weekly called it a hit for democracy, even though the denial of membership was based on a democratic vote and the attacks on it are actually an attack on democracy. At The Atlantic an indignant Jeffrey Goldberg blasted the decision as “appalling” and huffed, “Would the Berkeley Jewish Student Union prefer that they join anti-Zionist organizations?”

But assuming, for the sake of argument, that J Street is not an anti-Zionist organization, the same pipelining that allows Students for Justice in Palestine to use Kesher Enoshi to show up in Hillel and Jewish Voice for Peace to show up at J Street means that the line cannot be drawn only at organizations that actually call for the destruction of Israel, but also at organizations that collaborate with them.

A campus organization that repeatedly collaborated with the KKK and included KKK members in its events would not be able to hide behind the flimsy excuses that J Street, Kesher Enoshi and the Berkeley Hillel use to defend their pipelining of radical anti-Israel extremism to Jewish students. While left-wing pundits bemoan the shrinking “big tent” and wage war on the student democracy of the Jewish Student Union, a tent which includes Kesher Enoshi, J Street and their Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine partners, is not a pro-Israel tent. Not by even the lowest standards.

At Haaretz, Bradley Burston complained that the Berkeley JSU has sent the message that “You can be welcomed as a Jew, or you can speak your mind on Israel.” But why shouldn’t there be a consensus that Jewish identity is incompatible with the rejection of the Jewish State? Identities may be diverse and pluralistic, but they cannot be inconsistent with their own nature.

Hillel’s failure to stand up for such a Jewish identity denotes its own failure to come together around a meaningful and consistent Jewish identity. And that failure represents a betrayal of its mission and of the students that depend on it. By endorsing Kesher Enoshi and J Street, the current Berkeley Hillel leadership has shown itself to be as bankrupt as the previous leadership.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/hillel%E2%80%99s-betrayal-of-israel/

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

The Pessimists Win in the Middle East

by Joseph Puder

In the Arab Middle East, a betting man should always bet on a pessimistic outcome to life changing events, because generally speaking, he will be proven right. The so called Arab Spring that began early this year created a sense of euphoria around the world, as well as in America and Israel and especially in the liberal press. Even in Egypt, the largest Arab state, Christian Copts and Muslims shared optimism as to the outcome of the people’s uprising. Although in the minority, the pessimists who warned of an Islamist takeover were dismissed and in fact castigated for their views.

The pessimistic minority however was proven right. In Libya, where longtime dictator Gaddafi was ousted and killed by the revolutionary forces aided by the Obama administration and NATO, the interim leader of Libya, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, head of the Transitional National Council declared in his ‘liberation’ address that Sharia law would govern the new Libya. Sharia – the source of the doctrine of jihad that triggered the attack on America on 9/11. Mustafa Abdel Jalil was careful not to utter the word ‘jihad,’ which is obligatory to anyone following the application of Sharia in the public domain. Rather Jalil’s pronouncement took on the more salacious aspect of Sharia: “We as a Muslim nation have taken Islamic Sharia as the source of legislation; therefore any law that contradicts the principles of Islam is legally nullified. This includes changing marriage laws to allow men to more easily take on a second wife.” In other words, bigamy is now lawful in Libya.

In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring revolutions, the “moderate” Islamic party won 41.47% of the vote in free elections where liberals and Islamists faced off this past weekend. Thousands of Islamist supporters swooped down on central Tunis on Saturday to confront liberal demonstrators rallying against extremism as MPs were drafting a new constitution for Tunisia. The protest was partly a response to ongoing demonstrations at a university outside the capital, where Islamists disrupted courses, demanding a stop to mixed-sex classes and the wearing of full-face veils or niqabs for female students. Shaikh Rashed al-Ghanushi, the leader of the winning Islamist Party Al-Nahdha (“The Revival”), called for jihad against Israel, but in the West he is considered a “moderate Muslim.”

Similarly in Morocco, the Islamic Justice and Development party (PJD), called moderate by the British Guardian newspaper, won the majority of the votes in the parliamentary elections, and for the first time an Islamist, Abdelillah Benkirane, will likely serve as Morocco’s next Prime Minister​.

President Obama and his administration are particularly fond of the Muslim Brotherhood​ (MB) in Egypt. In February this year, the White House demanded that the next government in Egypt “has to include a whole host of non-secular actors (the Muslim Brotherhood fit this bill) that give Egypt a chance to be a stable and reliable partner.”

Fortunately for the MB in Egypt, which adopted the benign name of Freedom and Justice Party and became the largest party in the parliament with 36.6% of the vote, another Islamist party that is far more extreme took second place in the recent elections. The salafist Al-Nour party having garnered 24.4% of the vote in the recent parliamentary elections in Egypt obscures (for many in the press) the true nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. At this point in Egypt’s unfolding history the Islamist parties now control a large majority of the parliament. The difference between the two parties is significant. The salafist Al-Nour seeks to bring 21st century Islam back to the Islam of the 7th century, while the Muslim Brotherhood/Freedom and Justice Party alleges that it wants to fashion 7th century Islam into a 21st century reality. Both parties however intend to see Egypt governed by Sharia Islamic law.

Iran’s Major General Qassem Suleimani, Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, delivered a speech on May 22, 2011 at the Haqqani Theological Seminary in Qum during which he stated that the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa “…provide our revolution with the greatest opportunities. Iran’s victory or defeat no longer takes place in Mehran and Khorramshahr. Our boundaries have expanded and we must witness victory in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. This is the fruit of the Islamic revolution.” Suleimani sent a clear message to the Obama administration that in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Morocco, and for that matter anywhere else in the Arab world where a revolution might occur, a new Islamist Iran-like state will emerge.

The Arab world is marching towards an “Arab Winter,” as the authoritarian regimes that fell by the wayside have given way to the emergence of even darker regimes, steeped in Islamist intolerance and hatred of the West and Israel. The Islamist​ victories in Tunisia, Libya, Morocco and Egypt were not supposed to happen according to the Western governments, including the Obama administration. In Washington, the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before the House Intelligence Committee, and declared that Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood​ movement is “largely secular…” It prompted Richard Engel​, NBC’s News Chief Foreign correspondent to call Clapper’s statement “a wild misreading of the organization.”
Last month a pre-election Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo’s most prominent mosque turned into a venomous anti-Israel protest with attendants vowing to “one day kill all Jews.” This is the same MB that we are told by members of the western media and governments is “moderate” and “marginal.” The same MB that liberal western pundits claimed is only 20% of the vote.

Interviewed by Fox News, Frank Gaffney​, head of the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, articulated the contrast in how Obama dealt with the aftermath of the stolen 2009 elections in Iran when millions of Iranian demonstrated against the theocratic regime, and last February demonstrations in Egypt. The Obama administration’s cautious response to the uprising in Iran – a vicious US enemy – was explained as being part of President Obama’s attempt to “engage” Iran. In Egypt however, Obama called for the swift departure of former President Hosni Mubarak – a US ally. According to Gaffney, “The President of the United States​ in both cases did the bidding of the Islamists, who wanted to preserve the regime in Iran and who wanted to remove the regime in Egypt. Gaffney told Fox News, “I think that quite apart from what his intentions were, in so doing, he made all the more predictable the very unhappy outcome that I think is playing out before our eyes.”

In Egypt, the largest Arab Muslim country, secular liberals and especially Christian Copts are no longer harboring illusions about the revolution called the “Arab Spring.” For them it is already a dreadful “Arab Winter.” And, for all the optimists in the West, next time they’ll be better off betting on the worst case scenario when it comes to revolutions in the Arab Muslim world.

Joseph Puder

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/22/the-pessimists-win-in-the-middle-east/

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

The Chicken Theory of Islamist Parties

by Shoshana Bryen

The "pothole theory" is time-honored in the U.S.; if a party doesn't meet local needs, it will be ousted in the next election. It is a hopeful theory, because it is self-correcting.

With Islamic conservatism sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, the administration has been portraying the Muslim Brotherhood as a service provider responsive to "the people" and thus to the pothole theory. The underlying assumptions are:

a) The Brotherhood will submit itself to "the people" periodically for reelection.
b) Other parties will be able to criticize the Brotherhood and offer an alternative.
c) The Brotherhood will transfer power to the opposition if "the people" so choose.

This is a stretch on many levels, but more worrisome than the pothole theory is the "chicken theory" of organizational "wings."

This postulates that while the Brotherhood (and Hamas and Hezb'allah) may have "wings" that are anti-Western, anti-Semitic, violent, homophobic, misogynistic, and totalitarian, its humanitarian "wings" need to be preserved. The goal of the West is to sever the nasty wings so the democratic wings prevail, or hope that the nasty wings wither as "the people" vote. This ignores the role of the Islamists in creating the very poverty they ameliorate and the possibility that people vote for the Brotherhood because they agree with the nasty parts of its program.

The Washington Times helped the administration out last week with an "all politics is local" story, citing Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics and Sara Silvestri of City University, London¹. "What voters are doing is voting for a clean break with the old regimes. It is local politics at its best," said Gerges. "Poor Arabs^[2] in the poorest neighborhoods don't know what Islamists stand for, but are voting for them because they know them[.] ... We shouldn't be surprised by the Islamists' rise, but I think they will rise and fall on their ability to deliver the goods."

Silvestri preemptively blamed the West for the future failure of the violent wing to disappear. "There will be more to lose by condemning or ostracizing Islamic voices. It could cause resentment and grievances among the Muslim audience," she said. "There are exceptions that we have to take into account, but it doesn't mean that every electoral process will lead to a Hitler and [such] in the Middle East," she added, perhaps not realizing that she wasn't bolstering her case.

The chicken theory has been a staple of the American -- and Israeli -- approach to Palestinians. At the height of the "second intifada," the Palestinian war against Israel, an IDF official explained that his job was to ensure that the Red Cross, UNRWA, World Food Aid, and others had unimpeded access to the Palestinian population, despite the terrorism against Israeli civilians. Israel, he said, didn't want "the Palestinian people" to suffer for their leadership.

In 2003, then-Secretary of State Powell said of Hamas, "If an organization that has a terrorist component to it, a terrorist wing to it, totally abandons that, gives it up and there is no question in anyone's mind that it is part of its past, then that is a different organization." According to The Washington Times, Powell "praised the extremist group's 'social wing' for doing 'things for people in need.'"

Today, as Hamas rains ever more accurate missiles into Israel, the Israeli government still provides food and medical assistance to "the people" in Gaza. During Operation Cast Lead and since, the IDF has carefully catalogued its aid to Gaza, lest the world -- like Gerges -- think that Israel believes that "the people" who elected Hamas didn't know what they were doing.

The Washington Post once editorialized that it was "time for Hamas to prove" that it was a responsible governing partner by severing its association with its own terrorist "wing." Israel was urged to separate the "Palestinian people wing" from the "government-they-elected-wing" as if the terrorists were the (late, lamented) "Scoop Jackson wing" of the Democratic Party, or the "conservative wing" of the Republican Party.

But the Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezb'allah are not political parties; they are the political arm of the Islamic revivalist movement. One way they gain power is by ensuring -- through violence and intimidation -- that their own people have no other option for survival.

Hamas spent years using Palestinian workers in Israel to commit acts of terrorism, including at crossing points and in fishing zones, forcing Israel to restrict access by Palestinians to work in Israel and at sea. With fewer Palestinians bringing home Israeli paychecks, more are poor, and more are beholden to Hamas. The terrorist "wing" increased Palestinian poverty so the social service "wing" could ameliorate it.

In Egypt, the Brotherhood has attacked tourism, a primary source of necessary foreign currency, for years and has been sabotaging the vital pipelines in the Sinai. Foreign exchange is fleeing the country. More poor Egyptians mean more need for the Brotherhood to supply more services. Watch as the United States tries to slide the billions in military aid it provided to the Mubarak government over to the Brotherhood so "the people" don't suffer.

Money and aid are fungible.

By insisting that the social service "wings" of Islamist organizations are worthy of support despite the propensity of the whole to violence against their own people and others, the West has allowed Hamas, the Brotherhood, and Hezb'allah to spend their Iranian, al-Qaeda, Chinese, or other subsidies on weapons and political organization.

Like every other chicken, Islamist organizations need two wings -- and they like having two wings, especially when the West pays for the one and makes excuses for the other.

---

¹ The story has been removed from the Washington Times site with the comment, "Every so often we are forced to remove stories from our site. We're sorry but you just happened to request one of them." It was retrieved only with difficulty.

² "Poor Arabs" should be offended by Gerges' inference to the effect that they don't know that their religious leadership stands for religious leadership.

Shoshana Bryen has more than 30 years' experience as a defense policy analyst and has been taking American military officers and defense professionals to Israel since 1982. She was previously senior director for security policy at JINSA.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/12/the_chicken_theory_of_islamist_parties.html

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

Spain's Jew-Hating Majority

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

"The levels of anti-Semitism in Spain are among the highest in Europe," wrote the Spanish daily, El Pais. According to a poll, presented on November 30 during the Fourth International Seminary on Antisemitism hosted at the Caja Navarra Foundation in Madrid, 52% of Spanish students declared that they would not like to have a Jewish classmate sitting next to them, and 58% of adults thought that Jews have too much power and that they are all too rich.

The organizers of the Madrid conference said they were sad an bewildered that anti-Semitism "is a problem that is often denied in the country." The Federation of the Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) also stated that although surveys indicate that there are high levels of "hostility" towards Jews, "most leaders and media persons believe there is no prejudice whatsoever against Jews." However, sociologist Alejandro Baer explains that the situation has become unbearable and that it is time to face the problem: "In Spain, insults, writings and slogans against Jews are considered normal."

Baer added that anti-Semitism in Spain is particularly surprising, as "there are hardly any Jews." Even though the percentage of Jews in Spain is only the 0.2% of the population, negative stereotypes are very much present and they are the symptom of a "social pathology."

Anti-Semitism has been Spain's problem since the reconquista in 1492, when the Catholic Kings, Isabel and Ferdinand, obliged the Jewish community either to convert to Catholicism or to flee the country. Over 300,000 Jews left Spain; those who remained where absorbed into the Catholic community, apart from a few who continued to practice their faith in secret (Marranos)..

Along the years the ant-Semitic bias has been present within the Spanish society. During the Francisco Franco's dictatorship, the regime aligned itself to the anti-Semitic sentiment that prevailed in the European extreme-right dictatorships. The seminar stressed that during the 40 years of his dictatorship, the idea that Jews were the people that killed the Christian founder of the Church, Jesus, was deeply rooted in the society. During every mass, the priest would call for the conversion or punishment of the "wicked Jews," until the Vatican Council removed this tradition in 1965. Up to the end of his life, Franco kept indicating in his speeches that Jews and masons were Spain's main national enemies.

With the advent of democracy, things changed for the better, even though at popular level prejudices against Jews continued to thrive. The creation of the State of Israel only added to the prejudice. Some Spanish regimes have not missed the opportunity to display a clear aversion to the Jewish state, thereby whipping up hatred against the Jews in the general public. It took Spain until 1986 to recognize Israel diplomatically.

During the two-day conference in Madrid, the president of the FCJE, Isaac Querub Caro, tried to describe the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Spain, saying that this hate is so illogical that it is hard to explain it: "We are often asked why the Jews have been being hated so much and for so long. The question has to be made to those who hate us, not to those who are hated."

Carolina Aisen, coordinator of the Observatory on Anti-Semitism, has stressed that so far, "Spanish ant-Semitism does not involve any act of violence… Mostly, [attacks] consist of writings or offensive comments on different media outlets or on the Internet, but there is no personal aggression." It was noted that there is, however, a tendency within the Spanish institutions to underestimate the danger deriving from continuously slandering Jews. Author and jurist Jorge Trias Sagnier reminded the audience that last April the Supreme Court of Madrid acquitted four neo-Nazis, as it is not considered a crime to utter sentences such as, "Germans were wrong not to burn them all," or that "Jews are a pestilential and dangerous breed."Trías Sagnier, who participated in the debate, " The Penal Struggle against Anti-Semitism and Hate Offenses," expressed his repugnance of the Tribunal's sentencing, describing it as "barbaric."

The event ended with the hope that European efforts will be initiated by Institutions to end this worrying situation, that, according to the Israeli Ambassador to Spain, Alon Bar, is doomed to increase. The Ambassador argued that in times of economic crisis, minorities are usually attacked, used as the scapegoats of all the evil in the society. "The goal is to expose the invisibility and denial of the problem in Spain, focusing on cultural, legal and educational aspects," the FCJE's president concluded.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2678/spain-jew-hating

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

Muslim Persecution of Christians: November 2011

by Raymond Ibrahim

The so-called "Arab Spring" continues to transition into a "Christian Winter," including in those nations undergoing democratic change, such as Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis dominated the elections—unsurprisingly so, considering the Obama administration has actually been training Islamists for elections.

Arab regimes not overthrown by the "Arab Spring" are under mounting international pressure; these include the secular Assad regime of Syria, where Christians, who comprise some 10% of the population, are fearful of the future, having seen the effects of democracy in neighboring nations such as Iraq, where, since the fall of the Saddam regime, Christians have been all but decimated.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that "Christians are being refused refugee status [in the U.S.] and face persecution and many times certain death for their religious beliefs under [Islamic] Sharia [law], while whole Muslim communities are entering the U.S. by the tens of thousands per month despite the fact that they face no religious persecution."

Categorized by theme, November's batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed according to theme and in alphabetical order by country, not necessarily severity.

Churches

Ethiopia: More than 500 Muslim students assisted by Muslim police burned down a church, while screaming "Allahu Akbar" ["Allah is Greatest!"]: the church was built on land used by Christians for more than 60 years, but now a court has ruled that it was built "without a permit."

Indonesia: Hundreds of "hard-line" Muslims rallied to decry the "arrogance" of a beleaguered church that, though kept shuttered by authorities, has been ordered open by the Supreme Court. Church members have been forced to hold services on the sidewalk, even as Indonesia's leading Muslim clerics warned Christians that it would be "wise and sensible" for the church to yield to "the feelings of the local believers, specifically Muslims."

Iran: The nation's minister of intelligence said that house churches in his country are a threat to Iranian youth, and acknowledged a new series of efforts to fight the growth of the house church movement in Iran.

Nigeria: Islamic militants shouting "Allahu Akbar" carried out coordinated attacks on churches and police stations, including opening fire on a congregation of "mostly women and children," killing dozens. The attacks occurred in a region where hundreds of people were earlier killed during violence that erupted after President Jonathan, a Christian, beat his closet Muslim rival in April elections.

Turkey: The ancient Aghia Sophia church has been turned into a mosque. Playing an important role in ecumenical history, the church was first transformed into a mosque in 1331 by the jihadist Ottoman state. As a sign of secularization, however, in 1920 it was turned into a museum. Its transformation again into a mosque is a reflection of Turkey's re-Islamization.

Apostasy and Proselytism

Afghanis around the world are being threatened for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity. One exile, who changed his name after fleeing Afghanistan in 2007 when an Islamic court issued an arrest warrant for his conversion, is still receiving threats: "They [Afghan officials] were very angry and saying that they will hit me by knife and kill me." Even in distant Norway last September, an Afghan convert to Christianity was scalded with boiling water and acid at a refugee processing center: "If you do not return to Islam, we will kill you," his attackers reportedly told him.

Algeria: Five Christians were jailed for "worshiping in an unregistered location." International Christian Concern (ICC), an advocacy group investigating the case, states that the five Christians are charged with "proselytizing," "unauthorized worship," and "insulting Islam."

Iran: Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, who caught the attention of the world after being imprisoned and awaiting execution for leaving Islam, remains behind bars as officials continue to come up with excuses to force him to renounce Christianity; the latest is that "everyone is [born] a Muslim." A Christian couple "who had been snatched and illegally-detained" by authorities for eight months without any formal charges, were finally released, beaten again, and have since fled the country. While imprisoned, they were "ridiculed and debased" for their Christian faith.

Kashmir: Muslim police arrested and beat seven converts from Islam in an attempt to obtain a confession against the priest who baptized them. After the grand mufti alleged that Muslim youths were alternatively being "lured" and "forced" to convert by an Anglican priest "in exchange for money," the priest was arrested in a "humiliating" manner. Recently released, his life is now "in serious danger."

Kenya: A gang of Muslims stabbed and beat with iron rods a 25-year-old Somali refugee, breaking his teeth; he was then stripped naked, covered with dirt, and left unconscious near a church. Although he was raised Christian since age 7, he was attacked on the "assumption that as a Somali he was born into Islam and was therefore an apostate deserving of death."

Nigeria: The Muslim militant group, Boko Haram, executed two children of an ex-terrorist and "murderer" because he converted to Christianity. When still a terrorist, he "was poised to slit the throat of a Christian victim" when "he was suddenly struck with the weight of the evil he was about to commit." After finding he converted to Christianity, "Boko Haram members invaded his home, kidnapped his two children and informed him that they were going to execute them in retribution for his disloyalty to Islam. Clutching his phone, the man heard the sound of the guns that murdered his children."

Killings

Egypt: After a Christian inadvertently killed a Muslim in a quarrel begun by the latter, thousands of Muslims rose in violence, "collectively punishing" the Copts of the village. Two Christians "not party to the altercation" were killed; others were stabbed and critically wounded. As usual, "after killing the Copts, Muslims went on a rampage, looting and burning Christian-owned homes and businesses." Even so, "Muslims insist they have not yet avenged" the death of their co-religionist, and there are fears of "a wholesale massacre of Copts." Many Christians have fled their homes or are in hiding.

Kenya: Suspected Islamic extremists, apparently angered at the use of wine during communion—Islam forbids alcohol—threw a grenade near a church compound killing two, including an 8-year-old girl, and critically wounding three others. The pastor of another congregation received a message threatening him either to flee the region "within 48 hours or you see bomb blast taking your life and we know your house, Christians will see war. Don't take it so lightly. We are for your neck."

Nigeria: In the latest round of violence, soon after mosque prayers were heard, hundreds of armed Muslims invaded Christian villages, "like a swarm of bees," killing, looting, and destroying virtually everything in sight; at the end of their four-hour rampage, some 150 people had been killed—at least 130 of them Christians. Another 45 Christians were also killed by another set of Muslims shouting "Allahu Akbar!," who burned, looted, and killed. Hundreds of people are still missing; the attacks have included the bombing of at least ten church buildings. Nearly all the Christians in the area have fled the region.

Pakistan: A 25 year-old Christian was shot dead by "an unidentified gunman in what his family believes was a radical Muslim group's targeting of a Christian." According to the son, "We firmly believe that my father was killed because of his preaching of the Bible, because there is no other reason." He began to receive threats "after voicing his desire to start a welfare organization for the poor Christians" of the region.

"Dhimmitude"

(General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslim "Second-Class Citizens")

November's major instances of dhimmitude come from two Muslim nations notorious for violating Christian rights—Egypt and Pakistan—neither of which is even cited in the U.S. State Department's recent International Religious Freedom report:

Egypt: Following October's Maspero massacre, when the military killed dozens of Christians, some run over intentionally by armored vehicles, Egypt's military prosecutor detained 34 Christians, including teens under 16, on charges of "inciting violence, carrying arms and insulting the armed forces"; many of the detainees were not even at the scene and were just collected from the streets for "being a Christian." Three are under 16 years of age, including one who, after having an operation to extract a bullet from his jaw, was chained to his hospital bed. Hundreds of Christians also came under attack from Muslims throwing stones and bottles, after the Christians protested against the violence at Maspero: "Supporters of an Islamist candidate for upcoming parliamentary election joined in the attack on the Copts." Meanwhile, a senior leader of the Salafi party, which came in second after the Muslim Brotherhood in recent elections, blamed Christians for their own massacre, calling "Allah's curse on them." Muslim Brotherhood leaders asserted that only "drunks, druggies, and adulterers" are against the implementation of Sharia—a clear reference to Egypt's Christians.

Pakistan: A new U.S. government commission report indicates that Pakistani school textbooks foster intolerance of Christians, Hindus, and all non-Muslims, while most teachers view religious minorities as "enemies of Islam." "Religious minorities are often portrayed as inferior or second-class citizens who have been granted limited rights and privileges by generous Pakistani Muslims, for which they should be grateful," notes the report. Accordingly, in an attempted land-grab, Muslim police and cohorts of a retired military official, beat two Christian women with "batons and punches," inflicting a serious wound to one of the women's eyes after the women spoke up in defense of their land, and shot at Christians who came to help the women. "In the last few years Muslims have made several attempts to seize the land from the Christians, usually succeeding because Christians are a marginalized minority." Likewise, under a "false charge of theft," a Christian couple was arrested and severely beaten by police; the pregnant wife was "kicked and punched" even as her interrogators threatened "to kill her unborn fetus." A policeman offered to remove the theft charges if the husband would only "renounce Christianity and convert to Islam."

About this Series

Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, "Muslim Persecution of Christians" was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of Muslim persecution of Christians that surface each month. It serves two purposes:

1. To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, Muslim persecution of Christians.
2. To show that such persecution is not "random," but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; apostasy and blasphemy laws that criminalize and punish with death to those who "offend" Islam; theft and plunder in of jizya, tribute expected from non-Muslim and therefore second-class citizens, or dhimmis; overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the west, to India in the east, and throughout the West wherever there are Muslims—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Raymond Ibrahim, an Islam and Middle East specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2676/muslim-persecution-of-christians-november-2011

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

The Obama Administration’s Islamist Whitewashing Campaign

by Joseph Klein

The Obama administration continues to deny that we are at war with Islamist jihadists. Indeed, the word “jihad” itself is forbidden in Obama-land if used to describe the Islamist warriors. At its highest levels, the Obama administration insists on using bland euphemisms rather than accurate language describing the Islamist ideology we are fighting.

As far as the Obama administration is concerned, the global war against Islamist killers is an “Overseas Contingency Operation.” The Fort Hood massacre, in which thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded by an Islamist jihadist, is described by Obama officials as “workplace violence.”

In one of the most recent examples of political correctness gone amok, Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, refused to acknowledge that we are fighting a radical ideology that has anything to do with Islam. Asked during a joint Senate-House committee hearing last week, conducted by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism,” Stockton said “No sir. We are at war with al-Qaeda, its affiliates.” Stockton was then asked to at least concede that al-Qaeda is acting out violent Islamist extremism. Refusing to answer the question directly, he stuck to his talking point that “We are not at war with Islam.”

Stockton was spewing his nonsense at the same time as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton​’s State Department hosted a three-day international conference in Washington, D.C., which included her friends from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), representatives from the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and representatives from countries and international organizations “selected on the basis of their geographic, religious, and political diversity.” It turns out that more than a third of the countries selected were Muslim. The Arab League was represented in addition to the OIC. Religious diversity was not enough, however, to secure the Jewish state of Israel an invitation.

The purpose of the D.C. conference was to discuss ways to implement the provisions of a new United Nations resolution, the product of a deal reached between the OIC and the Obama administration, entitled “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief.”

The deal was for the OIC to at least temporarily put on hold its annual campaign to have the United Nations pass its “defamation of religions” resolutions, in favor of the “compromise” resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council in March of this year and then passed by the UN General Assembly in November.

The title of the new “compromise” resolution may be different from the OIC’s “Combating defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC has successfully steered through the UN over the last ten years or so. However, the net effect is that with the new UN resolution in hand and the full cooperation of the Obama administration, the OIC will actually be closer to achieving its objective, which to stamp out speech deemed offensive to Muslims.

Continuing the Obama administration’s submission to the OIC’s wishes, Clinton met with OIC officials in Istanbul last July, at a conference she co-hosted, to embark on what has become known as the “Istanbul Process.” The ostensible purpose of the Istanbul Process is to work with Muslim majority countries, the OIC and other interested nations on exploring specific steps to combat intolerance, negative stereotyping, discrimination and violence on the basis of religion or belief.

Clinton, in full spin mode, insisted that the new UN resolution was totally consistent with the free speech protections of the First Amendment, as opposed to the “defamation of religions” resolutions that the OIC was willing to have replaced. At the same time, Clinton assured the OIC that she was perfectly on board with using “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.” She also invited OIC representatives to Washington, D.C. to begin implementing the Istanbul Process, which culminated in last week’s three-day closed door conference.

The OIC, meanwhile, is engaging in a bait and switch game. Reporting after the meeting in Istanbul on what it expected to happen next, the OIC stated: “The upcoming [Washington] meetings . . . [will] help in enacting domestic laws for the countries involved in the issue, as well as formulating international laws preventing inciting hatred resulting from the continued defamation of religions.” In other words, banning “defamation of religions” was still on the OIC’s agenda, even if it had to be achieved through indirection.

About a month after the Istanbul meeting, OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu​ insisted that “no one has the right to insult another for their beliefs or to incite hatred and prejudice.”

Is Hillary Clinton​ so obtuse that she fails to understand the OIC’s true intentions? Alternatively, is she trying to publicly assure American citizens that their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and press are safe, while working behind the scenes with her OIC partners to find acceptable ways to stifle speech offensive to Muslims? I think the latter is the case, as the Obama administration examines employing legal mechanisms such as hate speech laws and vigorous enforcement of very broadly interpreted anti-discrimination laws, as well as using the “shaming” campaign Clinton talked up in Istanbul. Her actions are right in line with Barack Obama​’s vow to the Muslim world in his June 2009 Cairo speech: “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States​ to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam whenever they appear.”

Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and serving as a commissioner on the official but independent U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, was invited to attend just the opening and closing sessions of last week’s conference. That was bad enough.

Shea was very concerned about the conference after it was first announced last July, seeing right through the OIC’s maneuvering. She came away even more concerned after she heard what was being said at the conference, beyond Hillary Clinton’s platitudes about the importance of free expression and religious tolerance. “It is a scandal that the US is partnering on an issue regarding free speech with an organization like the OIC that is committed to undermining free speech,” Shea concluded.

Here, in Shea’s own words, are some of the things she heard:

[L]egal and security officials of a delegation which will remain unnamed gave a sweeping overview of American founding principles on religious freedom and how they have been breached time and again in American history by attacks against a broad variety of religious minority groups — including now against Muslims. A raft of current cases was mentioned; America’s relative exemplary and distinctive achievement in upholding religious freedom in an emphatically pluralistic society was not. That same speaker reassured the audience, which was packed with diplomats from around the world, that the Obama administration is working diligently to prosecute American Islamophobes and is transforming the U.S. Justice Department into the conscience of the nation, though it could no doubt learn a thing or two from the assembled delegates on other ways to stop persistent religious intolerance in America.

As mentioned above, the three-day Washington, D.C. conference was closed to the public, with very little reporting on what went on – particularly on what transpired between the opening and closing sessions that Nina Shea attended. However, I did manage to learn of one illustrative closed break-out session that confirms Ms. Shea’s concerns. The session consisted of a review by U.S. Department of Homeland officials regarding the training that the department delivers to federal, state, and local law enforcement on “Countering Violent Extremism,” together with a mock training session. It was an exercise in multi-cultural and diversity training. Ignoring the Islamist source of the most dangerous acts of “violent extremism” today, the session showcased the kind of misleading, politically correct training that the Obama administration is pushing, including community outreach programs, guides for community interaction and discussion of purported stereotypes of religious communities.

The Obama administration is helping the OIC to immunize Islamist ideology and law from critical scrutiny, under the banner of combating “Islamophobia.” As a result, our First Amendment right of free expression – starting with expression that the Obama administration and the Islamists “abhor” – are in jeopardy.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/12/21/the-obama-administrations-islamist-whitewashing-campaign/

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