The Arab Spring and the Arab Bomb

by Ryan Mauro

Iran’s race towards a nuclear bomb is causing its Arab adversaries to contemplate building their own weapons, with Saudi Prince al-Faisal recently hinting that his country is considering the option. The Arab Spring has thrown a wildcard into the impending nuclear arms race, as it is uncertain who is coming to the forefront—and whose hands such capabilities will fall into.

In late June, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former chief of Saudi intelligence, told NATO officials that Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons “would compel Saudi Arabia…to pursue policies which could lead to untold and possibly dramatic consequences.” Another official provided more specificity, saying “We cannot live in a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and we don’t. It’s as simple as that.” Earlier this year, Prince al-Faisal said that the Gulf Cooperation Council must start “acquiring the nuclear might to face that of Iran.” The GCC includes Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Jordan and Morocco are set to become members as well, moving the GCC closer to a NATO-like alliance with the purpose of deterring Iran.

In 2008, King Abdullah privately told the U.S. that if Iran goes nuclear, “everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia.” The Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates gave a similar warning in February 2009. The Saudis have been considering building nuclear capabilities for a long time. In 1999, a top member of the Saudi Royal Family visited a Pakistani uranium enrichment site, as did representatives from the United Arab Emirates separately. It has been long-rumored that the Saudis financed the Pakistani nuclear weapons program and provided discounted oil in exchange for a promise to be provided with weapons if requested.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the Saudis already have the ability to kick-start a program independently. “While there is no direct evidence that Saudi Arabia has chosen a nuclear option, the Saudis have in place a foundation for building a nuclear deterrent,” the organization says. This year, the Saudis bought nuclear-capable missiles from China and began a $300 billion program to build 16 reactors within 20 years. However, some reports indicate that the Saudis lack the nuclear expertise and constructing a weapon could take up to two decades.

The future of Saudi Arabia, however, is very unclear. The Arab Spring has yet to manifest itself in Saudi Arabia in a dramatic fashion, but discontent is simmering. The Royal Family is stuck between the liberal, reform-minded youth and the Wahhabist extremists. The government has embarked on an incredible spending binge to cope with the pressure. King Abdullah is 88 years old and his successor, Crown Prince Sultan​, is 83 years old and is thought to have cancer. The U.S. embassy in Riyadh was reporting as early as May 2009 that he “has been incapacitated by illness for at least (the) past year.” The next in line is Prince Nayef​, a foe of the reformists who has been an ally of the Wahhabists.

Prince Nayef​ promotes 9/11 conspiracy theories, claiming that “Al-Qaeda is backed by Israel and Zionism.” Senator Chuck Schumer demanded his removal in 2003 for his involvement in financing terrorism and Islamic extremism. However, Nayef has ridiculed Saudi imams for not fighting Islamic extremism enough, and said “All our problems come from the Muslim Brotherhood​.” Still, former CIA case officer Robert Baer and Stephen Schwartz of the Center for Islamic Pluralism separately told FrontPage in December that Nayef is likely to promote Islamic extremism and reduce counter-terrorism cooperation with the U.S. Schwarz also warned of “serious social upheaval” in Saudi Arabia if Nayef takes the helm.

Nayef’s ascent and the inevitable clash between reformists and Wahhabists makes a potential Saudi nuke even more concerning. In addition, the country has armed forces trained and equipped by the U.S. A sale of $60 billion worth of arms was agreed upon in October 2010, the largest deal of its kind ever.

There is also a strong possibility that whoever comes to power in Egypt will also begin a nuclear weapons program. The previous regime privately told the U.S. that it may start a weapons program to protect itself from Iran. If Egypt remains an enemy of Iran, then this option will remain on the table. If the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power, it is quite possibly it will also see nuclear weapons as a necessity.

In 2006, the Muslim Brotherhood openly said Egypt must acquire nukes in response to Israel’s arsenal. “We are ready to starve in order to own a nuclear weapon that will represent a real deterrent and will be decisive in the Arab-Israeli conflict,” its parliamentary spokesman said. The former General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Mahdi Akef, said in 2008 that Iran “is entitled to have a nuclear bomb.” In November 2010, Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi was asked if Muslims should build nukes “to terrorize their enemies,” and he answered affirmatively, adding that he was “happy” when Pakistan built them.

In a region where today’s ally can be quickly replaced by tomorrow’s enemy, the spread of nuclear weapons capabilities carries extraordinary risks. Iran’s nuclear weapons program is not just about Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, but all the leaders who will follow in their footsteps.

Ryan Mauro

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/16/the-arab-spring-and-the-arab-bomb/

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

White House Mischief

by Daniel Pipes

The White House engaged in two furtive gambits last week that painfully exposed the Obama administration's amateurish, deceitful Middle East-Islamic policies.

The first case concerned the thorny issue of Jerusalem's legal status in American law. In 1947, the United Nations ruled the holy city to be a corpus separatum (Latin for separated body) and not part of any state. All these years later and despite many changes, U.S. policy holds that Jerusalem is an entity unto itself. It ignores that in 1950 the Government of Israel declared western Jerusalem to be its capital and in 1980 declared the whole of Jerusalem to be the capital. The Executive Branch even ignores U.S. laws from 1995 (requiring a move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem) and 2002 (requiring that U.S. documents recognize Americans born in Jerusalem as being born in Israel). Instead, it insists that the city's disposition be decided through diplomacy.

Challenging this policy, the American parents of Jerusalem-born Menachem Zivotofsky, demanded on his behalf that his birth certificate and his passport list him as having been born in Israel. When the State Department refused, the parents filed a lawsuit; their case has now reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Things started to get interesting on Aug. 4, when Rick Richman of the New York Sun noted that "The White House acknowledges on its own website that Jerusalem is in Israel—as does the State Department and the CIA on theirs," undermining the government's case. Richman pointed to three mentions of "Jerusalem, Israel" in captions to pictures on the White House website in connection with a trip by Joe Biden in March 2010: "Vice President Joe Biden laughs with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, Israel"; "Vice President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel"; and "Vice President Joe Biden has breakfast with Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair . . . in Jerusalem, Israel." Richman deemed this wording to be potentially "pivotal evidence" against the government's case.

One of the pictures on the White House website that mentions "Jerusalem, Israel."

At 3:22 p.m. on Aug. 9, Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard reiterated Richman's point by posting the first of those pictures. Two hours and four minutes later, at 5:26 p.m., Halper reported that "the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to Jerusalem as being in Israel." The new caption read, "Vice President Joe Biden laughs with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem." Someone on the White House staff hoped to pull a fast one. As James Taranto noted in the Wall Street Journal, the Supreme Court does not take kindly to such pranks.

Barack Obama continues George W. Bush's tradition of hosting an iftar at the White House.

The second deceit concerns the guest list for the iftar (breaking-the-Ramadan-fast) dinner at the White House on Aug. 10. The White House published a guest list "of some of the expected attendees" that included 4 members of congress, 36 diplomats, and 11 "community members." To the relief of those who watch such matters, the list mentioned no American Islamists.

But, it turned out, "some" was a weasel-word. Research by the Investigative Project on Terrorism and others established that the published list did not mention the American Islamists attending that dinner, including Haris Tarin of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Mohamed Magid of the Islamic Society of North America, and Awais Sufi of Muslim Advocates.

(Also noteworthy: The White House invited not a single representative of the 12-member non-Islamist group, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition, whose mission statement proclaims the goal "to defend the U.S. Constitution, uphold religious pluralism, protect American security and cherish genuine diversity in the practice of our faith of Islam.")

In combination, two deceits in two days makes one wonder about the morality and even sanity of the White House staff under Barack Obama. Do his munchkins really think they can get away with such sleazy sleights of hand?

One of the Islamists, Awais Sufi, at the White House dinner.

Separately, each of these deceptions warrants condemnation; together, they symbolize the tenor of a failed administration in panic over its lowest-ever poll ratings (43.4 percent approval according to RealClearPolitics.com's aggregation of surveys) and trying to revive its fortunes by whatever means necessary, even if its dishonesty might expose it to ridicule.

More specifically, the two incidents point to the bankruptcy of the administration's Middle East and Islamic policies. The arrogance of 2009 remains in place, now tempered by failure and desperation.

Aug. 16, 2011 update: For a listing of U.S. government mentions of "Jerusalem, Israel," see an amicus brief to the Supreme Court compiled by the Zionist Organization of America, dated Aug. 5, 2011.

Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/10050/white-house-mischief

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Middle Eastern Christians and Anti-Semitism

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

I was recently told by my aunt in Baghdad that there was a widespread belief among Iraqis that some external force was behind the protests and uprisings across the Middle East. What outside conspiracy, I wondered, could be responsible for the Arab Spring? Not to worry, however; George Saliba – the Syriac Orthodox Church's bishop in Lebanon – offers us a simple answer. In an interview with Al-Dunya TV on July 24, Saliba declared that "the source... behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils" in the Arab world is nothing other than Zionism, "deeply rooted in Judaism." The Jews, he says, are responsible for financing and inciting the turmoil in accordance with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

These remarks are not an isolated case among Middle Eastern Christians. The anti-Semitic trend has become especially apparent in the aftermath of Iraq's assault last October on the Syriac Catholic Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad, leaving 58 dead and 67 wounded in the worst attack on the Iraqi Christian community since 2003.

Two months after the atrocity, for example, the Melkite Greek Patriarch Gregory III Laham characterized the terrorist attacks on Iraq's Christians as part of "a Zionist conspiracy against Islam."

He further affirmed, "All this behavior has nothing to do with Islam... but it is actually a conspiracy planned by Zionism... and it aims at undermining and giving a bad image of Islam."

He then said the massacre "is also a conspiracy against Arabs and the predominantly Muslim Arab world that aims at depicting Arabs and Muslims in Arab countries as terrorist and fundamentalist murderers in order to deny them their rights, and especially those of the Palestinians."

While the patriarch has warned of the dangers of Christian emigration and the formation of a "society uniquely Muslim," he attributed the risk of "demographic extinction" solely to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Similarly, in an interview with NBN TV on November 9, 2010, Iraqi priest Father Suheil Qasha claimed that the Jews consider all gentiles to be beasts, and asserted that the "real danger" to Middle Eastern Christians came from Zionism. He went on to state that those who perpetrated the attack on the church in Baghdad were certainly not Muslims, but probably those trained and supervised "by global Zionism."

Anti-Semitism extends to the Coptic Orthodox Church, which, serving around 10 percent of Egypt's population, is the largest single church in the Middle East and North Africa. As liberal Egyptian blogger Samuel Tadros points out, a certain Father Marcos Aziz Khalil wrote in the newspaper Nahdet Masr: "The Jews saw that the Church is their No. 1 enemy, and that without [the] priesthood the Church loses its most important component . Thus the Masonic movement was the secret Zionist hand to create revolution against the clergy."

AT THIS point, many would no doubt be inclined to explain away this anti-Semitism by pointing to the anti-Jewish sentiments that are mainstream among the Muslim populations of the region. Living in such an environment – the reasoning goes – Christians would naturally be careful not to denounce deeply held convictions among their Muslim neighbors for fear of provoking persecution.

However, the cancer of hostility toward Jews among Middle Eastern Christians goes much deeper than that.

Indeed, it is telling that other non-Muslim minorities that have suffered discrimination and violence at the hands of Islamists – including the Yezidis, Mandeans and Bahá'ís – have never blamed Jews or Zionism for their persecution; their religions have not featured anti-Semitic doctrines.

The case of the Bahá'í community is especially important because, with the religion's global center located in Haifa, charges of collaboration with Israel can easily be leveled against Bahá'ís. Yet the Universal House of Justice has never complained of a Jewish/Zionist conspiracy against the Bahá'í communities in Iran and the wider region. Rather, it has always rightly identified the problem as enforcement of traditional Islamic law on the treatment of non-Muslims and apostasy, along with the supremacist attitudes fostered by the promotion of Shari'a.

Ultimately the malaise of anti-Semitism among Middle Eastern Christians is entrenched in charges of deicide (i.e., of killing Jesus) against the Jewish people as a whole. As Saliba put it, Jewish conspiracies are "only natural" because the Jews repaid Christ for his miracles by crucifying him. In particular, Pope Shenouda III of the Coptic Orthodox Church lambasted the Western churches for exonerating Jews for Christ's death, in a televised interview on April 8, 2007. He argued that Jews were "Christ-killers" because "the New Testament says they are."

It is clear that in general, the Eastern churches have yet to move beyond the noxious anti-Semitic motifs repudiated by the Vatican in its Nostra Aetate declaration issued in 1965, after the Second Vatican Council. If anti-Semitism in the Middle East and North Africa is to be eradicated, the burden of theological reform will evidently not be a task for Muslims alone.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is an intern at the Middle East Forum and a student at Oxford University. His website is www.aymennjawad.org

Source: http://www.meforum.org/2997/middle-eastern-christians-anti-semitism

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Abdo's Loyalty to Muslims Always Meant Disloyalty to Americans

by Raymond Ibrahim

To anyone familiar with Muslim doctrine, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo's actions — from refusing to deploy to Afghanistan lest he kill fellow Muslims to plotting a terror attack to kill fellow Americans — make perfect sense and accord well with Islam's dichotomous doctrine of wala wa bara, often translated as "loyalty and enmity."

Built atop numerous Koran verses and backed by Sharia, wala requires Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims, and explains why Abdo refused to deploy to Muslim nations.

While loyalty may appear admirable, it has a flipside, bara, which requires Muslims to disassociate themselves from non-Muslims — to be disloyal to them (see al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri's 60 page treatise titled "Loyalty and Enmity" in The Al Qaeda Reader for details).

For example, Koran 5:51 literally warns Muslims against "taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them," i.e., he becomes an infidel; 58:22 states that true Muslims do not befriend non-Muslims — "even if they be their fathers, sons, brothers, or kin."

Now consider the progress of Abdo and how his actions reveal great doctrinal consistency:

First, he objected to participating in any war in any Muslim country, claiming "conscientious objector" status:

I don't believe I can involve myself in an army that wages war against Muslims. I don't believe I could sleep at night if I take part, in any way, in the killing of a Muslim. … I can't deploy with my unit to Afghanistan and participate in the war — I can't both deploy and be a Muslim.

He would not be the first to object to combating fellow Muslims: Major Nidal Hasan, who went on a shooting spree in Fort Hood in 2009, killing thirteen —and who Abdo heroizes — considered himself to be "a Muslim first and an American second"; the idea of deploying to a Muslim nation, his "worst nightmare," threw him "over the edge." Then there was Sergeant Hasan Akbar, who killed two American soldiers and wounded fourteen in Kuwait "because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq."

Next, though Abdo had no problem openly evincing loyalty to Muslims, trusting that tolerant or sentimental Americans would indulge him, he hid his enmity and disloyalty for those same Americans, in accordance to taqiyya — a doctrine that permits Muslims to deceive infidels. In fact, the Koran's primary justification for deception is in the context of "loyalty and enmity":

Let believers not take for friends and allies infidels [non-Muslims] instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with Allah — unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions (3:28).

Mainstream Muslim reference Tabari interprets this verse thusly:

Only when you are in their [non-Muslims'] power, fearing for yourselves, are you to demonstrate friendship for them with your tongues, while harboring hostility toward them. But do not join them in the particulars of their infidelities, and do not aid them through any action against a Muslim.

Accordingly, while Abdo did not aid Americans against Muslims, he certainly made use of his tongue: to support his "conscientious objector" status, he pointed to "the peace that Islam preaches"; he claimed that he wanted to fight "Islamophobia" and "put a good positive spin out there that Islam is a good, peaceful religion"; and though he tried to murder Americans by emulating the Fort Hood massacre, Abdo originally condemned it, calling it "an act of aggression by a man and not by Islam," insisting that it ran against his beliefs as a Muslim.

Even so, anyone reading between the lines should have noticed his enmity: like Hasan before him, who made no secret of his hatred for infidels in statements in front of classmates, Abdo also made anti-American remarks in class.

Unfortunately, few Americans are aware of doctrines like wala wa bara and taqiyya; worse, they often project their own beliefs and values — from Christianity to secular humanism—onto Islam and Muslims.

For instance, Western people associate piety and religious observance with peace and goodwill: as with Hasan before him — who was described as an "observant Muslim who prayed daily" and "very serious about his religion" — acquaintances shocked at Abdo's terror plot argue that he was "very devoutly religious."

Yet, the fact is there is no inconsistency between piety and prayer on the one hand, and jihad and deceit on the other: all are equally codified in Sharia. Moreover, upholding one doctrine often leads to upholding another: thus loyalty to fellow Muslims is a sure sign of disloyalty to non-Muslims.

Raymond Ibrahim, a widely published author on Islam, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3013/abdo-loyalty-to-muslims

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

The Left's Faustian Bargain

by Caroline Glick

The Palestinians' decision to place the issue of the establishment of a Palestinian state before the United Nations for a vote next month repudiates the principles of the 1993 Oslo peace framework, through which the Palestinian Authority was formed out of the PLO. The Oslo framework dictated that the final status of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem would be determined through direct negotiations between the PLO and Israel.

While brazen, the Palestinians' UN gambit is not the first time that Israel has been confronted with unequivocal proof that the Palestinians have been operating in bad faith. From the outset, PLO leaders from Yassir Arafat down have made statements and taken actions that have demonstrated that from the PLO's perspective, the entire "two-state paradigm," of peacemaking upon which the Oslo process is predicated was nothing more than a ploy.

For instance, after coming under heavy pressure from then opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, in early 1996, then prime minister Shimon Peres was forced to ask Arafat to convene the PLO's governing council in order to cancel the PLO Charter. The Charter repeated calls for Israel's destruction.

Recognizing that Peres's government was on the line, then US president Bill Clinton flew to Gaza to "oversee" the Palestinian National Council's conference and its cancellation of the charter.

Despite Clinton's presence, the charter was never abrogated or even amended. Yet the empty pageantry was enough to convince the leftist Israeli media that Israel had a credible partner for peace in Arafat and so the show went on.

Arafat ended all pretence of good faith in the summer of 2000 when he rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak's offer of Palestinian statehood and instigated the Palestinian terror war. Ever since Arafat chose terror war over peace, his followers' willingness to admit they reject Israel's right to exists has grown.

For instance, on July 13, Fatah's foreign relations boss Nabil Shaath gave an interview to a Lebanese television station in which he stated point blank that the PLO will never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. As he put it, only the Palestinians have a right to a nation state. The Jews of Israel must be subsumed into a "state of all its citizens" that would be dominated by Israeli Arabs and millions of foreign Arabs that would immigrate into the formerly Jewish state.

Shaath's statements, like similar recent statements made by Fatah Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and chief "negotiator" Saeb Erekat were completely ignored by the Israeli Left. As opposition leader Tzipi Livni makes clear every time she has access to a microphone, the Left insists the full blame for the absence of so-called peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians rests on the shoulders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Three weeks after Shaath gave his interview, Livni had a chance to respond to his statements in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly. Asked whether she is certain "there's no plan on the part of seemingly moderate Palestinians to try to take apart Israel in stages," Livni responded that even if there is, it is Netanyahu's fault.

By asserting Israel's right to be recognized as a Jewish state, Netanyahu is weakening Israel, she said. In her words, "Israel is being weakened now by the way Netanyahu speaks. The stronger he speaks, the weaker Israel is."

Livni also claimed the best thing that can happen is for US President Barak Obama to put even more pressure on Netanyahu to make concessions to the Palestinians. As she put it, Obama's pressure made the government understand "that maintaining the status quo with the Palestinians means that there is no status quo with the United States. They understood that there is a price for not negotiating, or for not saying the right words. So this is the brighter perspective."

When Livni gave her interview on Aug. 5, Netanyahu had reportedly agreed to participate in negotiations predicated on the Palestinian-US demand to base the talks on the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu reportedly stipulated however that the Palestinians must recognize Israel's right to exist.

By placing the blame for the absence of negotiations on Netanyahu, like the Palestinians, Livni rejected Netanyahu's demand. That is, the leader of Israel's opposition effectively dismissed her government's demand that Israel's "peace partner" recognize its right to exist. Moreover she asked a foreign power to coerce her government into setting that right aside.

Livni's position is consistent with the position the Israeli Left has adopted since Arafat destroyed the Oslo peace process 11 years ago. Whereas in 1995 the Left still expected the Palestinians to pay lip service to peace with Israel, after Arafat destroyed the peace process, the Left that had embraced the PLO needed to make a choice. Its leaders could either admit they were wrong to embrace the PLO, or they could adopt the PLO's position against Israel. They chose the latter.

The results of this choice have been devastating. For the past 11 years, the Israeli Left has been divorcing itself from Zionism. This began in the wake of the violent riots in the Arab sector in October 2000 when the Barak government formed the Orr Commission of Inquiry. The Orr Commission for the first time conferred extralegal communal rights on radicalized Israeli Arabs, and so denied the police the right to enforce laws equally on all Israelis.

Since then, the trend towards undermining Israeli democracy and the rights of the Jewish majority has been most pronounced in the leftist-dominated Supreme Court. From denying the right of Israeli Jews to develop Jewish communities within the 1949 armistice lines on Jewish privately owned land, to protecting Arab traitors from charges of treason, to striking down the government's legal right to determine immigration policies, the Supreme Court has led the charge in ending Israel's right to assert its right to exist as a Jewish state.

Many of these post-Zionist Court decisions were authored by retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. In June 2009 Barak admitted, "I'm a big believer in 'a state of all its citizens.'"

In Leftist activist circles this trend of joining the Palestinians in rejecting Israel's right to exist has led to foreign-funded local NGOs and activist networks instigating domestic and international campaigns to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

On university campuses, expressions of Zionism and patriotism are increasingly demonized as racist or insensitive. For instance, at its recent graduation ceremony, Haifa University decided not to sing Hatikva out of concern for the feelings of the university's Arab students.

Recently, several leading politicians have argued that Israel should respond to the PLO's UN initiative by abrogating its commitment to the Oslo peace accords and applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria. This is certainly a reasonable response to the Palestinians' clear bad faith.

Far more difficult than responding to the Palestinians' bad faith however is conceiving and implementing a strategy for contending with the Israeli Left's decision to side with the Palestinians against their own country's right to exist.

Caroline Glick

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Source: http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/08/the-lefts-faustian-bargain.php

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

A Guide to the Galaxy of Islamic Anti-Semitism

by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi

It is a truism that anti-Semitism is an extremely prevalent phenomenon in the Muslim world today, but what precisely is the origin of this anti-Jewish prejudice? Is it simply a modern import from Europe, or a continuation from orthodox Islamic theology and Muslim history?

Undoubtedly, some anti-Jewish calumnies did have a European origin, transmitted by missionaries and local Christians to various Muslim populations. For example, Maronites (members of a Catholic church in Lebanon) played a key role in the dissemination of the blood libel motif- namely the charge that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make matzo for Passover- in the Levant during the 19th century.

Further, it is true that historically Jews survived Muslim rule better than other religious groups deemed members of the "people of the book," even though all such non-Muslim minorities were in theory to receive the same discriminatory treatment according to the Pact of Umar (named after Umar ibn al-Khattab: the second caliph of Islam after Mohammed's death).

Many of the conditions of the Pact of Umar are upheld as the ideal model for the treatment of non-Muslims among orthodox, classical Muslim theologians (e.g. the requirement to wear clothing to distinguish the unbelievers from Muslims).

In practice, at least up to the thirteenth century, certain regulations were not strictly enforced, especially when it came to Jews, who were generally able to integrate in Muslim lands better than Christians did. This development was partly due to similarities in some customs promoted by Shari'a and Halakhah: a notable example being dietary prohibitions on pork.

Indeed, in Muslim Spain, Jews were not obliged to dress differently from Muslims, and often wore fine silk and linen apparel.

Meanwhile, as evidence from the Cairo Geniza makes clear, during the Fatimid dynasty's rule in Egypt (969-1171 CE), Jews were frequently able to get involved professionally in the Fatimid government. For a good overview of the treatment of Jews in practice under Islamic rulers during the High Middle Ages, see Mark Cohen's work "Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages."

Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that Mark Cohen ends his study in the thirteenth century because, for a fuller analysis, he could have gone on to explain the general subsequent decline of the Jewish position in Muslim lands, as the Islamic world became increasingly insular, more inclined to orthodox implementation of Shari'a, and less open to foreign ideas and influences.

For instance, over time the situation of Jews in Yemen deteriorated such that among rural Jews chattel slavery became the norm. Pogroms also became more frequent (e.g. Morocco 1728, 1790, 1875, 1884, 1890; Libya 1785, 1860, 1897; Persia 1839, 1867 etc.).

In any case, the evidence indicates that Esther Webman was clearly wrong when she wrote in 1994 that "anti-Semitism did not exist in the traditional Islamic world… [it] is, in fact, a relatively new phenomenon…gaining ground particularly since the eruption of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the mid-twentieth century."

Yes, in practice, Muslim rulers were not as harsh as orthodoxy dictates they should have been on Jews during the High Middle Ages, yet it is noteworthy how such leniency was much to the chagrin of both the clerics and often the Muslim populations at large.

The writings by Jews from that period in the Cairo Geniza use a specific term- sin'uth- to refer to hostility from local Muslims towards Jews. The resentment over the appointment of Jews to positions of authority very occasionally spilled over into outright violence, culminating in the massacre of the Jewish community in Granada in 1066 by a Muslim mob. The hatred was directed at a certain Joseph ibn Naghrela in particular, and at Jews in general.

The sentiment is well reflected in a contemporary poem by Abu Ishaq, who helped to incite the pogrom: "Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them, the breach of faith would be to let them carry on/ They have violated our covenant with them, so how can you be held guilty against the violators?"

Thus, we have the central idea that forms a distinct brand of Islamic anti-Semitism: namely the motif that Jews are most hostile to Islam and Allah's revelations among humanity, and therefore prone to treachery in dealings with others, arrogant self-righteousness, slaying Allah's messengers and prophets, and other forms of evil conduct.

For example, the Qur'an itself affirms, "You will surely find that the people most hostile to the believers are the Jews and pagans" (5:82). This verse could be taken as just a reference to Muhammad's historical conflicts with the Jewish and pagan tribes of Arabia, but orthodoxy did not interpret it that way, seeing the Qur'an as literally valid in its axioms for all times and places.

This theme of unique Jewish hostility in Islam appears to have been a continual thread throughout Muslim history. Writing in the ninth century, the polymath al-Jahiz wrote that the local Muslim populations generally find the Jewish people more repulsive than the Christians because the former, supposedly delighting in their sense of superiority, choose not to intermarry with those outside their religion. He also identified 5:82 quoted above as a reason why the Jews were regarded by the Muslims of his time as more treacherous and guilty of unbelief.

A.B. Clot, a French surgeon who resided in Egypt in the 19th century, reported that the local Egyptians thought that "the Jews hate Islam more than any other nation…Speaking of a fierce enemy, the [Egyptian] Muslims say: 'He hates me the way the Jews hates us.'"

And so today we hear sermons from clerics such as Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, who has often appeared on the Palestinian Authority's state TV channel and in a 2005 sermon cited 5:82 as proof in his eyes of the Jews' evil nature and their conspiring against Gentile nations.

Once we take into account the distinct brand of Islamic anti-Semitism (just as there is a specific strand of Christian anti-Semitism, albeit not as prevalent today as anti-Semitism takes on new forms), it can be seen why so many in the Muslim world have been receptive to the blood libel and works like Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Yet Islamic apologists- Muslim and non-Muslim- remain in denial about this noxious anti-Jewish sentiment, both in Muslim history and in the present day (including sermons like those of Mudeiris and the Hamas Charter).

Only when this anti-Semitism and its roots are confronted openly and honestly can there be a reasonable chance of eradicating this prejudice from the Muslim world at large.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi is an intern at the Middle East Forum and a student at Oxford University. His website is www.aymennjawad.org

Source: http://www.meforum.org/3015/islamic-anti-semitism

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

Foxman: Wrong on Sharia, Too

by Andrew G. Bostom

Abraham Foxman's latest uninformed rant, "Shout down the Sharia myth makers," re-affirms his nonpareil status as the most blindly agenda-driven organizational Jewish "leader." The Anti-Defamation League (ADL)'s Foxman sprays defamatory charges -- rooted in willful ignorance -- against all those legitimately concerned with the ceaseless efforts of mainstream institutional American Islam to insinuate Sharia mores and jurisdiction into US society.

Foxman is the same hypocritical ignoramus who on June 10, 2005 gave the fundamentalist Muslim Prime Minister, and inveterate, if authentic, doctrinally-based Islamic Jew-hater, Recep Tayyip "Mas-Kom-Ya" Erdogan, the ADL's "Courage to Care Award." Two years later, in August, 2007, consistent with this travesty, borne of his dogmatic, uncritical Islamophilia, Foxman infuriated the heavily Armenian community of Watertown, MA (a Boston suburb whose 8,000 Armenian-Americans make up nearly 25 percent of the population). Local Armenians objected, rightfully, to Foxman's denying the ugly established legacy of the World War I era Armenian genocide -- a jihad genocide committed by the Muslim Turks under the direction of their Ottoman rulers. Thus while promoting an ADL campaign to combat bigotry and celebrate diversity in Watertown, "No Place for Hate," Mr. Foxman and the ADL were simultaneously lobbying against legislation recognizing the Armenian genocide in the U.S. House (HR 106) and the Senate (SR 106), including the presentation of letters from the vestigial remnant dhimmi Jewish community of Turkey complemented by, "their own [i.e., the ADL's] statement opposing the bill."

Predictably, Foxman's vicious tirade ignores all evidence of Sharia encroachment in the US, from ominous polling data, to jihad funding trial revelations and the content of more banal Muslim litigation proceedings, mosque surveillance reports, analyses of Islamic education institutions and their Muslim schoolchildren's textbooks, the issuance of obscurantist "fatwas" (Islamic legal rulings) by the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, and finally, an open declaration by one of America's largest mainstream Muslims organizations, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, calling for the (re-)creation of a global Muslim Caliphate, and the imposition of Sharia law in America. Salient details from these illustrative examples, include:

• Data (compiled here) from an April 2001 survey performed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) revealing that 69% of American Muslims in America affirmed that it was "absolutely fundamental" or "very important" to have Salafi (i.e., fundamentalist Islamic) teachings at their mosques, while 67 % of respondents agreed with the statement "America is an immoral, corrupt society." Another poll conducted in Detroit area mosques during 2003 found that 81% of the respondents endorsed the application of the Sharia where Muslims comprised a majority.
• An internal Muslim Brotherhood statement dated May 22, 1991, whose contents were revealed during the Texas Holy Land Foundation jihad-terrorism funding trial. Written by an acolyte of the Brotherhood's major theoretician, lionized Qatari cleric, popular Al-Jazeera television personality, and head of the European Fatwa Council Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the document entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America," is indeed self-explanatory:

The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and by the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.

• The "Sharia and Violence in American Mosques" (Kedar M, Yerushalmi D. The Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2011, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 59-72) studied 100 mosques randomly selected across the U.S. testing the hypothesis that Sharia adherence within mosques (including, among many other factors, gender separation, clothing, male facial hair, jewelry, strictness on alignment shoulder-to-shoulder during prayer, etc.) would correlate with incitement to jihadism. This key summary finding was highlighted by the authors:

...51 percent of mosques had texts that either advocated the use of violence in the pursuit of a Shari'a-based political order or advocated violent jihad as a duty that should be of paramount importance to a Muslim; 30 percent had only texts that were moderately supportive of violence like the Tafsir Ibn Kathir and Fiqh as-Sunna; 19 percent had no violent texts at all.

Thus 81% of this statistical sample representative of US mosques were deemed as moderately (30%) to highly (51%) supportive of promulgating jihad violence to impose Shari'a

• A provisional inquiry "Shariah Law and American State Courts" evaluated 50 Appellate Court cases from 23 states that involved conflicts between Shariah (Islamic law) and American state law. Examples of American judges accepting "input" from Sharia in rendering judgments, included an odious, widely publicized New Jersey ruling that upheld Sharia-sanctioned marital rape. Appellate court intervention was required to reverse this ruling in July 2010-Western legal norms prevailing over the Sharia-with the presiding judge soberly concluding that the Muslim husband's "...conduct in engaging in nonconsensual sexual intercourse was unquestionably knowing, regardless of his view that his [Islamic] religion permitted him to act as he did." Completely ignored at the time of these New Jersey proceedings was the fact that marital rape is not recognized as criminal, i.e., it is sanctioned, by a fatwa of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America! (see below)
• Investigations of textbooks widely used in the New York city area Islamic schools, as well as the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax Virginia which discovered the inculcation of Sharia supremacism, including sacralized disparagement and hatred of non-Muslims, especially Jews. When questioned for the March, 30 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,

Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that...[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.

• The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), whose mission statement maintains the organization was, "...founded to provide guidance for Muslims living in North America...AMJA is a religious organization that does not exploit religion to achieve any political ends, but instead provides practical solutions within the guidelines of Islam and the nation's laws to the various challenges experienced by Muslim communities...", is accepted as such by the mainstream American Muslim community. Notwithstanding this mainstream acceptance, including uncritical endorsement of its recent seventh annual American conference in Houston (October 15-18, 2010) to train American imams, AMJA has issued rulings which sanction the killing of apostates, "blasphemers" (including non-Muslims guilty of this "crime"), or adulterers (by stoning to death), condone female genital mutilation, marital rape, and polygamy, and even endorse the possibility for offensive jihad against the US, as soon as Muslims are strong enough to wage it.
• Finally, as reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest mainstream U.S. Muslim organizations, in its 2010 ICNA Member's Hand Book, openly acknowledges being the American branch of a global jihadist phenomenon referred to as the 'Islamic Movement.' The 2010 Hand Book observes, that branches of this movement "...are active in various parts of the world to achieve the same objectives. It is our obligation as Muslims to engage in the same noble cause here in North America." These efforts will culminate in the (re-)creation of a transnational Islamic superstate, the Caliphate, under the Sharia.

...the united Muslim Ummah [community] in a united Islamic state, governed by an elected khalifah in accordance with the laws of shari'ah.

Forty-five years ago, G.-H. Bousquet elucidated the quintessential nature of the Sharia, and why Muslims seek, endlessly, to impose this system upon all of humanity. Georges Henri (G.-H.) Bousquet (1900-1978), was one of the greatest and most widely published 20^th century specialists on Islamic Law. From 1932 to 1956 Bousquet taught North African sociology at the Faculty of Law in Algeria. His major legal writings include Precis elemantaire de droit muslmane (1936-1940), Du droit musulman et de son application effective dans le monde (1949), Justice francais et coutumes kabiles (1950), and L'Ethique sexuelle de l'Islam (1966).

Bousquet, in his seminal L'Ethique sexuelle de l'Islam ("The Sexual Ethics of Islam"), extracted below, highlights the "doubly totalitarian" nature of Islam-its eternal quest to impose a universal ruling order by jihad warfare-and the permanently stunted "evolution" of that "order", i.e., Islamic Law, the Sharia. Analogous to the undifferentiated cloaca*, which accounts for it being a "casuistic hodegepodge," Islam's Sharia is a retrogressive development compared to the evolution of clear distinctions between "ritual, the law, moral doctrine, good customs in society, etc" within Western European Christendom, and utterly incompatible with modern Western conceptions of universal human rights. [*The cloaca, in zoological anatomy is the posterior orifice that serves as the joint opening for both the intestinal and urinary tracts of certain animal species. Also known as the anal beak, the word cloaca derives from Latin, meaning "sewer." All birds, reptiles, and amphibians possess this combined excretory opening, from which they eliminate both urine and feces, unlike placental mammals, who possess two separate orifices for evacuation.]

[Islam's doubly totalitarian nature] "By force of arms at first, the Muslims had acquired a good part of the civilized world and had created quite strong states, yet without realizing their ideal-the first totalitarian aspect of this religion: to conquer the entire world in order to subject it to a single authority. Moreover-and this gives it a second totalitarian aspect-it constitutes a great theoretical ensemble: the Muslim Law (Sharia), whose study is the science of fiqh [jurisprudence], all of which has the goal of regulating even down to the smallest details the whole life of the believer and the Muslim community."

[Sharia as an undifferentiated, "cloacal" system] "This Law [Islamic Law] is a hodgepodge: we find measures in which we recognize moral precepts, juridical rules, indications of a ritual order, but all these norms that we judge essentially different are treated in the same spirit - casuistically, it may be said - by the Doctors of law, that is to say, by the real representatives of Islam, a religion without priests. The distinctions we make, they do not, for all the rules expounded there manifest, in all their details, the actual state of things, the ideal desired by God, for the Doctors have deduced, starting from the Koran and Tradition, and in an infallible way, the ensemble of rules that the Muslim community ought to follow to obey His inscrutable Will. These norms, considered as definitive by the Doctors for more than a millennium, embrace the whole life of the believer as an individual and of the Community, dealing with (I mention at random): sharing, ritual Prayer, the invitation to a wedding feast, the way of satisfying natural needs, judicature, the use of toothpicks, competitions in archery, safe conduct to give to certain unbelievers, the interdiction for a man to wear rings of gold or silver, retaliation, the way to treat animals, the interdiction on eating pork, care of children, etc., etc. Thus there is in Islam an undifferentiated whole, where modern Europeans distinguish clearly among ritual, the law, moral doctrine, good customs in society, etc. This distinction has even long existed in Christianity: no Catholic would confuse the way of saying mass with moral theology, or with canon law, or the polite way to greet an ecclesiastic, etc. If I may make an indelicate comparison (I would take a loftier example but I cannot think of one so striking): one finds among mammals a bladder, a vagina, and a rectum, whereas birds and reptiles have only an undifferentiated organ, the cloaca, corresponding to a previous stage of evolution. Similarly, divine law, the Sharia, has remained at a stage of evolution more primitive than Christianity. Thus one grasps all the dangers and misunderstandings committed when starting from our concepts to deal with things that do not exist in Islam. We would laugh at a naturalist who spoke of the vagina or the bladder of a bird, but we commit just as inexcusable a mistake when we speak, as of clearly distinct things, about moral doctrine, or about the law or theory of Islam. The Doctors of Law had no idea of these concepts. Similarly there is for them only a single tribunal, with a single judge and universal authority; it is thus inadmissible in Islam to speak of a tribunal for children, of a Court of Appeal, of a Public Minister, of a Court of Assizes [former periodic criminal court in England and Wales, replaced by permanent Crown Court in 1971], and so forth. Apply this example to everything that deals with the Law and you will understand the errors into which one falls by transposing our own ideas into the Muslim world by making distinctions where there is no reason to [emphasis added], by creating European categories where they do not exist.

The contemporary "errors" being committed by Abraham Foxman-a malign buffoon-in word and deed-pose an unacceptable danger to the fabric of US society.

Andrew G. Bostom

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/foxman_wrong_on_sharia_too.html

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

Somalia's Humanitarian Crisis: What Can Be Learned

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

"Somalia is at the heart of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world today," said the United Nations of the he war-torn country experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. Nearly twelve million people are trapped in it; countless others are fleeing rural areas to escape famine with the hope to find food and shelter in larger cities. The U.N. reports that in the first half of 2011 alone, more than 83,000 Somalis have fled into Kenya and over 54,000 into Ethiopia. In July, daily arrivals in each country ranged from 1,300 to 1,700.

Al-Shabab preventing Somalis getting aid

Even though the he present famine is affecting the whole Horn of Africa, the greatest emergency is taking place in Southern Somalia, an area controlled by Al-Shabab, an Islamist organization closely linked to Al-Qaeda. An estimated 2.8 million people, with an estimated number of 1.25 million children there are facing starvation. Although major aid agencies are trying to distribute supplies through local NGOs, Al-Shabab's hardliners are working to prevent Western donations: "They have routinely diverted food and other supplies meant for starving Somalis into their own hands, leaving many foreign donors unwilling to send more aid," according to Voice of America. And according to the New York Times, Al-Shabab is even diverting water from the rivers to send it to farms that pay a tax to the terrorist organization. Further, Islamic militants are arresting Somalis trying to flee, putting them in a detention camps where conditions are such that survival is at risk. Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said there was no famine, and accused the U.N. of having ulterior motives. "We say [the U.N. declaration on famine in Somalia] is totally 100 per cent wrong and baseless propaganda. Yes there is drought, but the conditions are not as bad as they say. They have another objective and it wouldn't surprise us if they were politicizing the situation," Rage said.

Possible divisions inside Al-Shabab

According to the media, the current humanitarian crisis is creating division inside Al-Shabab. On July 6, Al-Shabab spokesman Rage said that the movement would lift the ban on foreign aid to Somalia, but only two weeks later the statement was reversed. In an interview to VOA, Abdiwahab Sheikh Abdi Samed, a Somali political analyst with Southlink Consultants in Nairobi, explained that these mixed messages were the result of a division inside Al-Shabab. "There are two groups, although this division has always existed, it remained hidden: those for the al-Qaida notion of what you call global jihadists, and those who normally are the localists -- the local fighters who are close to the people," Abdi Samed said.

Moreover, the fact that Al-Shabab is blocking aid to the famine's victims seems to be creating frustration against the Islamist movements, which are losing support among the population. Nevertheless, TV channel France 24 reported that the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea estimated that, despite divisions and lack of support, al-Shabab currently generates "between $70 million and $100 million annually from taxation and extortion in areas it controls, notably from the export of charcoal and cross-border contraband into Kenya."

The role of democracy in fighting famine

Nuruddin Farah, a Somali-born novelist living between South Africa and the U.S., recently wrote in the Washington Post that in 1992, when Somalia suffered a tough period of famine, warlords held the nation hostage. To face the crisis, the U.S. sent in the Marines, but in 1993, 18 American service members were killed by Somali gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda. The U.S. ultimately decided to withdraw and, as Farah puts it, "the United Nations rewarded the warlords with undeserved honor, describing them as leaders instead of treating them as criminals." Farah added that, "the warlords were invited to a series of national reconciliation conferences to form a government, and Somalis equated this bizarre turn of events to the notion of entrusting a flock of sheep to hyenas. Only a fool thinks that no harm will come to his sheep."

After the U.Snot become the world's worst humanitarian disaster. The Indian economist and Nobel Prize laureate Amartya Sen once said that famines are easy to prevent and often disappear with the establishment of a multiparty democracy, a free press and an active political opposition: Only in democracies, must political leaders be responsive to the demands of their citizens.

Conclusion

Although drought is always cited as the main culprit when famine strikes, drought is only what triggers the crisis. There are a number of countries often hit by long spells of drought that do not enter into a crisis. A sufficiently developed country economically can still offset such dire consequences by technical means, both by building infrastructure, such as water reservoirs, and by importing goods. For countries that permanently live in extreme poverty, however, one year of drought can mean, as in Somalia, the death of millions. Cyclical droughts will hit Somalia again, possibly in six or seven years' time. Again there will be famine, possibly even worse than today's as by then the country will have been degraded even further.

The events in Somalia could be a lesson for other countries in the world, especially Afghanistan. The words of Farah can also be used to describe what is going on in the war-torn Afghanistan, which ,after the war against the Soviets, was abandoned without help to the country in rebuilding either its infrastructure or a political body. As in Somalia, Al-Qaeda could find a stronghold in the lawless Afghanistan.

If Afghanistan is again going to be abandoned and the Taliban honored and considered interlocutors, as happened in Somalia with its warlords, history will not only repeat itself, but the next humanitarian disaster could well be Afghanistan.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2348/somalia-humanitarian-crisis

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

European Concerns Over Muslim Immigration Go Mainstream

by Soeren Kern

A new opinion survey shows that more than half of all Europeans believe there are too many immigrants in their countries and that immigration is having a negative impact on their lives.

The findings – which come as Europeans are waking up to the consequences of decades of mass immigration from Muslim countries – point to a growing disconnect between European voters and their political masters regarding multicultural policies that encourage Muslim immigrants to remain segregated rather than become integrated into their host nations.

The survey results mirror the findings of dozens of other recent polls. Taken together, they provide ample empirical evidence that scepticism about Muslim immigration is not limited to a "right-wing" political fringe, as proponents of multiculturalism often assert. Mainstream voters across the entire political spectrum are now expressing concerns about the role of Islam in Europe.

The "Global Views on Immigration" survey was conducted by the London-based Ipsos global research firm and published on August 4. It polled citizens in nine European countries: Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

The poll shows a close correlation between the views the natives of a given country have about immigration and the number of, and level of, integration of Muslim immigrants in their countries.

For example, the poll finds that Belgians and Britons hold the most negative views on immigration; these countries also have some of the least integrated Muslim populations in Europe. The poll also shows that among Europeans, Poles have the most positive views on immigration and immigrants; Poland happens to have Europe's smallest Muslim community, which comprises less than 0.1% of that country's total population.

The Ipsos poll shows that as a whole, more than 56% of Europeans believe "there are too many immigrants" in their countries: Belgium (72%), Britain (71%), Italy (67%), Spain (67%), Germany (53%), France (52%), Hungary (50%), Sweden (46%) and Poland (29%).

In response to the polling question "Would you say that immigration has generally had a positive or negative impact?" majorities in all European countries except for Sweden and Poland say the impact has been negative: Belgium (72%), Britain (64%), Italy (56%), Spain (55%), France (54%), Germany (54%), Hungary (52%), Sweden (37%) and Poland (32%). As a whole, only 17.5% of Europeans say immigration has been positive.

Most Europeans also agree with the survey statement "Immigration has placed too much pressure on public services" in their country: Britain (76%), Spain (70%), Belgium (68%), Hungary (59%), Germany (58%), France (56%), Italy (56%), Sweden (40%) and Poland (27%).

The Ipsos survey mirrors the findings of a number of other recent polls which show that Europe's mainstream political parties are losing touch with public opinion on the issue of Muslim immigration.

A new report "Muslim-Western Tensions Persist" was published by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center on July 21. It shows that Europeans believe their relations with Muslims are bad: France (62%), Germany (61%), Spain (58%) and Britain (52%).

The poll also shows that most Europeans believe Muslims in their countries do not want to integrate: Germany (72%), Spain (69%), France (54%) and Britain (52%).

The Pew survey shows that almost 60% of Europeans believe Muslims are "fanatical," 50% believe they are "violent" and only 22% believe they are "respectful of women." In response to the question "Which religion is most violent?" 90% of French say Islam, as do 87% of Spaniards, 79% of Germans and 75% of Britons. The poll also shows that more than two-thirds of Germans (73%), Britons (70%), French (68%) and Spanish (61%) are worried about Islamic extremists in their countries.

A separate poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project shows widespread support in Europe for banning Islamic veils in public, including in schools, hospitals and government offices. The survey shows that 82% of French, 71% of Germans, 62% of Britons and 59% of Spaniards support such a ban.

Another pan-European survey, the "Guardian Euro Poll," shows that concern about Muslim immigration is widespread and not just limited to the political far right. The poll shows that although 62% of Europeans view themselves as "liberal" rather than "traditional" on social issues, pluralities in the four biggest countries (Britain, France, Germany and Spain) are opposed to immigration from outside the European Union. The survey also shows that unrestricted immigration is the first- or second-most serious problem a large number of Europeans face.

In Britain, a poll called the "Searchlight Fear and Hope Survey" shows that huge numbers of Britons would support an anti-immigration English nationalist party if it were not associated with violence and fascist imagery. The poll, conducted by London-based Populus, also shows that more than 50% of Britons agree with the proposition that "Muslims create problems in the UK."

In France, an Ifop poll published by the center-left Le Monde newspaper shows that 42% of French citizens consider the presence of a Muslim community in their country to be "a threat" to their national identity. Moreover, 68% of French say Muslims are "not well integrated in society." Out of these, 61% of the French blame this failure on the "refusal" by Muslims to integrate.

Recent polls also show that up to two-thirds of French voters believe that "multiculturalism" and the integration of Muslims into society have failed. A survey by Ifop for the France-Soir newspaper shows that nearly 40% of French voters believe that Muslim prayer in the streets of France resembles an occupation. An opinion poll published by Le Parisien newspaper shows that voters view Marine Le Pen, who leads the far right National Front party, as the candidate best suited to fix the problem of Muslim immigration.

In Germany, an opinion survey, "Perception and Acceptance of Religious Diversity," conducted by the sociology department of the University of Münster, in partnership with the prestigious TNS Emnid political polling firm, shows that the majority of Germans disagree with a statement by German President Christian Wulff that Islam "belongs in Germany."

The study shows that only 34% of West Germans and 26% of East Germans have a positive view of Muslims. Fewer than 5% of Germans think Islam is a tolerant religion, and only 30% say they approve of the building of mosques. The number of Germans who approve of the building of minarets or the introduction of Muslim holidays is even lower.

Fewer than 10% of West Germans and 5% of East Germans say that Islam is a peaceful religion. More than 40% of Germans believe that the practice of Islam should be vigorously restricted.

Only 20% of Germans and 30% of French believe that Islam is suitable for the Western world. Significantly, more than 80% of those surveyed in Germany, France, Denmark, Portugal and the Netherlands agree with the statement "that Muslims must adapt to our culture."

In the Netherlands, polls show that an overwhelming majority of Dutch voters are sceptical about multiculturalism. According to a Maurice de Hond poll published by the center-right newspaper Trouw on June 19, 74% of Dutch voters say immigrants should conform to Dutch values. Moreover, 83% of those polled say they support a ban on Islamic burqas in public spaces.

A separate Maurice de Hond poll published by the popular NU.nl news website on July 29 shows that 63% of Dutch are "worried about the fact that the influence of Islam in Western European countries is increasing."

Not surprisingly, the center-right government in Holland recently announced plans to abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the country.

In Denmark, a Gallup/Berlingske poll recently published by the center-right Berlingske newspaper shows that 92% of Danish citizens believe Muslim immigrants should "predominantly adopt local Danish customs."

The poll was conducted after the new integration minister, Søren Pind, publicly rejected the idea that Denmark should be a multicultural society. According to Pind, Denmark should welcome foreigners who are willing to adopt and respect Danish values, norms and traditions; those who do not should not be in Denmark at all. "The way I see it, when you choose Denmark, you choose Denmark because you want to become Danish," Pind said.

Considered as a whole, the recent surveys show that majorities of Europeans are now worried about the impact that Muslim immigration is having on their daily lives.

But an arguably more important conclusion to be gleaned from the polling data is that ordinary Europeans are becoming increasingly willing to express their opinions in public.

After decades of a "bread and circuses," European political culture in which the ruling class was able to appease the general public by means of the cradle-to-grave social welfare state, there is now a discernable shift in public discourse in many European countries on the topic of immigration..

If Europe's political class eventually bends to the public will and does an about-face on a social re-engineering project that is transforming the continent beyond recognition, the recent shift in public opinion on immigration may yet mark the beginning of the end of European multiculturalism. Or will it be too little too late?

Soeren Kern

Source: http://www.hudson-ny.org/2349/european-concerns-muslim-immigration

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

The Palestinian September to Remember

by Joseph Klein

The Palestinians are reportedly preparing to present their bid for United Nations membership on September 20, 2011, with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas​ personally presenting the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The request will come two days before the UN-hosted hatefest known as Durban III, where the misnamed “UN World Conference Against Racism” will be used to reaffirm the UN’s previous defamation of Israel as a “racist” state.

Under UN protocol, Ban Ki-moon is expected to submit the Palestinian request to the Security Council, which must recommend UN membership for an independent Palestinian state before the General Assembly can pass a resolution with any legally binding effect.

Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki indicated that the Palestinian Authority chose September for its bid because Lebanon, whose government is now controlled by the terrorist organization Hezbollah and tilts towards Syria and Iran, holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council. Lebanon will use its position to turn the Security Council into a public platform for the Palestinians to exploit, attempting to pressure the United States into abstaining rather than exercising its veto power.

Assuming that the Obama administration does not cave to Islamist pressure and carries out its veto threat, the Palestinians will almost certainly seek a vote in the General Assembly anyway for recognition as an independent (albeit non-UN member) state. Such status may be enough to allow the Palestinians to join various UN agencies such as UNESCO and UNICEF.

The Palestinians will get help from their friends in high places in the General Assembly. Qatar will hold the presidency of the General Assembly beginning this September, and Iran will hold one of the vice presidencies.

After 63 years, the Palestinians are trying to get the UN to turn back the clock to the original two-state solution they could have had, but rejected, in 1948. For 20 more years until the 1967 Six Day War​, the Palestinians could have asked their fellow Palestinian-majority state, Jordan, to give up the West Bank and the portion of Jerusalem that Jordan controlled to create a contiguous independent Palestinian state. There were no Jewish settlements to speak of. There was no security fence. In fact, there was no Israeli presence to stop the Palestinians from creating an independent state if Jordan and the other Arab states would have supported them. But the Palestinian terrorist leaders and their “friends” in the Arab world continued to reject a peaceful resolution based on a two-state solution. They continued to press for the elimination of the Jewish State altogether.

Little has changed, as Palestinians try to change history and cast themselves as innocent victims of “Zionist racism” and “apartheid,” rather than take responsibility for their own failures. When Abbas decided to reconcile with the terrorist Hamas organization and form a unity government, he affirmed an alliance with a group whose covenant calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews everywhere. Abbas refuses to consider the one simple concession that will open up a path to a negotiated peace and an independent Palestinian state: recognizing that Israel has as much a right to exist in peace as a Jewish state as its neighbors (including a new Palestinian state) have the right to exist in peace as Islamic states. Moreover, if the Palestinians expect Israel to risk its security by returning to the pre-1967 lines as the basis for negotiations, then the Palestinians must give up their fanciful claim of “right of return” to areas within pre-1967 Israel.

The Palestinians who demand the right of return to all of the land encompassing even pre-1967 Israel are simply trying to steal what does not belong to them. So-called “Palestine” belonged for centuries to the non-Arab Turks from whom Jews purchased large tracts of land and developed it. The truth is that Egyptians and other Arabs from Syria, Yemen and Trans-Jordan migrated from neighboring areas into the Palestine territory. They were not an indigenous population. Indeed, one of the most important Arab migrations into Palestine came from Egypt during the early and mid-nineteenth century, not much before the beginning of significant Jewish migration, which added to the continued Jewish presence in the Holy Land that has existed for more than three thousand years. To say that Arab non-Jewish migrants have any greater claims to all of the land into which they migrated, to the exclusion of Jewish migrants of various ethnic backgrounds who also settled there to join their fellow Jews, demonstrates the same strain of Arab racism that shows up today in Sudan, where the Arab rulers are slaughtering the black population.

Nor do the Palestinians have any legitimate claim to what they call East Jerusalem, which Jordan had seized illegally in 1948 after the Arabs tried to destroy the new Jewish State. This portion of Jerusalem includes Jerusalem’s Old City and some of the holiest sites of Judaism.

There has been no Muslim majority in Jerusalem based on records going as far back as 1844 (referencing Ottoman census figures) through 1945 (referencing British Mandate census and Anglo-American survey data) and continuing through today, which would justify its artificial division. Indeed, we know what happens when Arab Muslims take control of areas containing other religions’ sanctuaries. They often destroy them. When the Jordanians controlled Old Jerusalem​, for example, they desecrated Jewish holy sites. The idea of an East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem divide is no more legitimate than was an East Berlin/West Berlin divide.

The Palestinian victimhood narrative is built on a tissue of lies. This September at the United Nations promises to be more of the same. Any United Nations body that recognizes the Palestinians’ unilateral claim to independent statehood without a negotiated settlement and allows full Palestinian participation should not receive another dollar of U.S. financial support.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/08/15/the-palestinian-september-to-remember/

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