Muslim Brotherhood and Obama: Partners In Taqiyya

by Joseph Klein

To convince the world that sharia-based laws protect personal freedoms and human rights for all, Islamists engage in the time-honored Muslim tradition of lying about their own beliefs to conceal their true nature. This form of deception is known as “taqiyya.” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is engaging in taqiyya as it prepares to lead Egypt’s newly elected parliament and to assure Egyptian citizens and the world at large that they are peace-loving advocates of universal human rights. The Obama administration is buying this taqiyya hook, line and sinker — and spreading it.

Just last week, for example, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson met with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie, congratulating the group for the victory of their political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), in the elections for a new parliament. She listened attentively as Badie assured her that sharia law “ensures personal freedoms for all.” When Badie told her the United States had to prove to Muslims that it has seen the error of its ways in past dealings with the Muslim world, Patterson followed the lead of President Obama. She apologized for what she said were past American mistakes and promised that the U.S. will “learn from them to avoid their recurrence in the future.”

Back in Washington, D.C., State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a January 5th press briefing that the United States trusts the Muslim Brotherhood party’s good intentions. Choosing to downplay an interview by a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader with Al Hayat, in which he said that the treaty with Israel is not binding, Nuland responded:

We’ve seen this press report. I would say that it is one member of the Muslim Brotherhood. We have‬ had other assurances from the party with regard to their commitment not only to universal human rights, but to the international obligations that the Government of Egypt has undertaken.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its Obama administration partners in taqiyya ask us to accept at face value the Brotherhood’s current face of moderation. We are supposed to believe that it has eschewed violence, wants to maintain peaceful relations with Israel and is dedicated to fostering an open pluralistic democracy in Egypt in which all of its citizens are treated equally.

The facts unfortunately do not support this rosy picture. For example, the “one member of the Muslim Brotherhood” whose hostile remarks earlier this month against Israel were dismissed as irrelevant by the State Department spokeswoman was the Brotherhood’s deputy leader, Dr. Rashad Bayoumi. He said in his interview that his organization will not recognize Israel “under any circumstance.” Bayoumi added that “we do not recognize Israel at all. [Israel is] an occupying criminal enemy.”

Dr. Bayoumi’s interview took place just a few weeks after Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohammed Badie welcomed Hamas’s Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, at the Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters. Haniyeh said during his visit that “Our presence with the Brotherhood threatens the Israeli entity.” For his part, Badie had nothing but praise for Hamas, which has not renounced violence and was after all the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dr. Mahmoud Saad al-Katatni, the Director of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party until he resigned on January 21, 2012 to serve as the speaker of the new Egyptian parliament, said last month that the parliament is expected to reevaluate the Camp David peace treaty that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed with Israel in 1979:

A long time has passed since the Camp David accord was signed and like the other agreements it needs reevaluation and this is in the hands of the Parliament[.]

Al-Katatni denied a report in an Israeli newspaper that had claimed the Muslim Brotherhood has reached understandings with the United States and Israel regarding the importance of safeguarding the peace treaty with Israel:

The report in the newspaper is completely unfounded. There have been no contacts or understandings with the American or Israeli side about the peace treaty that President Anwar Sadat signed in 1979.

Is the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated leader’s equivocation on a 32-year-old treaty, which has maintained peace between Egypt and Israel, what the State Department’s spokeswoman had in mind when she expressed confidence in the Muslim Brotherhood’s “commitment… to the international obligations that the Government of Egypt has undertaken”?

And what do we make of the report from the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which closely monitors the Arab media, about the recent virulent anti-Semitic writings appearing on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, Ikhwanonline.com? The report stated:

The website of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in Egypt, Ikhwanonline.com, contains articles with antisemitic motifs, including Holocaust denial and descriptions of the ‘Jewish character’ as covetous, exploitative, and a source of evil in human society. While articles of this tenor have been posted on the site in the past, their posting has recently taken on greater importance in light of the group’s increasing strength following the ouster of the Mubarak regime, as reflected by the results of the recent parliamentary elections.

In addition to antisemitic content, articles on the site also include praise for jihad and martyrdom, and condemnation of negotiation as a means of regaining Islamic lands. Among these are articles calling to kill Zionists and praising the September 9, 2011 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo – which one article called a landmark of the Egyptian revolution.

Saying one thing to guarantee Obama administration support for the Muslim Brotherhood and saying another on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website is vintage Islamist taqiyya.

How about universal human rights such as freedom of religion and expression? Again, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Obama administration want us to forget about the Muslim Brotherhood’s past positions on denying certain rights to women and religious minorities. They expect everyone to fall in line and embrace the “moderate” leadership of today, exemplified by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie, and the former director of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party, who was just chosen as the speaker of the parliament, Mahmoud Saad al-Katatni.

Both Badie and al-Katatni espouse sharia law as the basis for governing Egypt, but maintain that sharia law, inclusive democracy and universal human rights are all compatible with each other. To this end, as noted above, Badie claims that sharia law “ensures personal freedoms for all.” Al-Katatni said in an interview with al-Jazeera that the Freedom and Justice Party “is not a religious party but it’s a civil party… that seeks a modern and democratic state but with a ‘Islamic reference’.” The Muslim Brotherhood’s website describes al-Katatni as “renowned for his moderate stances.”

If we look beneath the rhetorical facade, we find that both these supposed moderates have simply redefined their notion of “democracy” and “human rights” to fit into the sharia pigeonhole. Badie, for example, reportedly told a rally last year that “it is not permissible for democracy to allow what is forbidden (haram) or forbid what is allowed (halal) even if the entire nation agreed to it.” In addition to condemning gay marriage, he included in the “forbidden” category the right of a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man:

[W]e will not allow under the pretext of national unity that a Muslim woman would get married to a Christian man which violates the Islamic law.

Al-Katatni’s idea of a civil, democratic state is simply one that is not run by the military. He explained in his interview with al-Jazeera that “we all know that the country should be governed by an elected civil body and the army should go back to their barracks.” He said in the interview that the principles guiding the Freedom and Justice Party are “the principles of the Islamic Sharia law and they are included in the Egyptian Constitution.”

Al-Katatni demonstrated last November his view of the limitations imposed on free expression under the “the principles of the Islamic Sharia.” Not content with confining himself to Egyptian law, al-Katatni denounced the French magazine Charlie Hebdo for publishing cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohamed. He called the magazine’s exercise of free expression in the secular state of France a heinous crime and demanded that the French government take all legal and professional penal actions against the publication.

Meanwhile, back in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood joined the ultraconservative Salafists in backing a lawsuit against a wealthy Coptic Christian, Naguib Sawiris, who has publicly raised concerns about a government dominated by Islamists. He has been charged with committing “blasphemy and insulting Islam” for posting a cartoon of a bearded Mickey Mouse and a veiled Minnie Mouse on Twitter.

“Sawiris is one of the biggest supporters of the Egyptian liberal parties,” Wagih Yacoub, a Coptic human rights activist, said. “What the Islamists are trying to do is break him down. They are trying to scare him…The [Muslim] Brotherhood is among those behind the war on Sawiris.”

Aidan Clay, regional manager for the Middle East of the International Christian Concern, a non-governmental organization that campaigns on behalf of persecuted Christians world-wide, said that the Muslim Brotherhood’s support for the lawsuit against Sawiris “is one more example that any attempt made by the Brotherhood to appear moderate is merely a façade.”

As part of that facade, al-Katatni has promised that the rights of Coptic Christians will be respected in the new “democratic” Egypt and pointed to Coptic Christian membership in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party as proof of its inclusiveness. Yet out of nearly 9,000 party members, as of May 2011, there were only 93 Coptic Christians – slightly over 1%. Christians today make up approximately 10% of Egypt’s population.

True, the Freedom and Justice Party reached out to a Coptic Christian, Rafiq Habib, to serve as the party’s vice president. But the Muslim Brotherhood could not have found a better front man for its agenda.

Habib, who has had a long-term relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, believes that the state must be governed by religion to which man-made laws are subservient. He opposes the secular model of a democratic state for Egypt and has said that Christians must learn to live under Islamic rule:

The Egyptian society will continue to be an Islamic society and the Christians must return to their conservative identity and join it in one identity as happened before. If we go back 50 years, the whole society looked conservative and very Islamic, though the Christians were a little cautious of the Islamic identity. But if we go more than 100 years back, we find that Christians were unified with the Islamic society under Islamic Sharia and under the Islamic state and there was no problem… Sharia as a basis can reshape the nation-state to Islamic state in 2 or 3 years if applied.

This is a reformulation of classic dhimmitude – non-Muslims living submissively under sharia law and giving deference to their Muslim neighbors.

In its detailed analysis of the dichotomy between the Muslim Brotherhood’s words and actions, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research concluded:

The ambiguous and loophole-ridden rhetoric of the Brotherhood casts serious doubts on the belief that it could serve as a coalescing force for moderation and liberal reform.

The Obama administration eased the Muslim Brotherhood’s path to power by actively engaging with it as if it were something that it clearly is not – a moderate democratic organization that believes in equal rights for all of its citizens and is committed to maintaining a long-standing peaceful co-existence with Israel.

The Obama administration was not simply reacting to events within Egypt and choosing the least undesirable alternative to support. It helped shape those events, starting with its insistence that members of the Muslim Brotherhood attend Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in June 2009.

The Egyptian people have elected the members of their new parliament and decided in overwhelming numbers that it should be dominated by Islamists. That is their choice. But we can respect their right to make their own choice in a free and fair election without sugar coating the implications of that choice for peace and human rights. The Obama administration has decided instead to become an active partner in the Muslim Brotherhood’s taqiyya.

Joseph Klein

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/24/muslim-brotherhood-and-obama-partners-in-taqiyya/

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

American Laws for American Courts

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Shortly before Newt Gingrich's decisive victory in South Carolina last week, he was asked a critical question by a Palmetto State voter: Would he support a Muslim candidate for president? The former Speaker of the House answered in a way that was both characteristically insightful and profoundly helpful with respect to one of the most serious challenges our country faces at the moment.

Mr. Gingrich responded by saying it depends on a critical factor: Is the candidate "a modern person who happens to worship Allah"? Or "a person who belonged to any kind of belief in shariah, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us"? Speaker Gingrich observed that the former would not be a problem, while the latter would be a "mortal threat." The Georgia Republican went on to assert the need for federal legislation that would prevent shariah from being applied in U.S. courts.

Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are squealing like, well, stuck haram (or impure) pigs. After all, they have been working overtime to try to obscure the true nature of shariah and to prevent the enactment of legislation that would interfere with the considerable progress being made below the radar in states across the country: the insinuation of shariah into the American judiciary.

Resorting to their standard technique of ad hominem attacks, CAIR and its friends have derided Mr. Gingrich's stance as "racist," "bigoted" and "Islamophobic." Such comments evidently were not persuasive to South Carolina voters - and they should be equally dismissed by everybody else.

The simple fact of the matter is that shariah defines the fault line between people who are Muslims but can love our country, respect and enjoy its freedoms and support our form of government and Constitution on the one hand, and those who are obliged by doctrine to oppose all those things. Worse, adherents to shariah must - in accordance with that doctrine - seek, as Speaker Gingrich says, "to impose it on the rest of us."

For the latter Muslims, the preferred way of achieving such submission is, as Mohammed taught, through violence. Where that would be impractical and/or counterproductive for the moment, however, their doctrine encourages the use of stealthy techniques to advance the same, supremacist goal.

The Muslim Brotherhood in America calls this "civilization jihad." It seeks through, for example, the use of shariah in U.S. courts to insinuate their program here at the expense of our constitutional rights and state public policy.

A sense of how far along we are in this process was provided by a study conducted last year by the Center for Security Policy. Entitled Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases, the report is a microcosm of U.S. jurisprudence. Its findings were alarming: Out of a sample of 50 cases, in 27 instances in 23 states, the courts involved allowed the use of shariah to adjudicate the dispute.

In almost all of the cases, that outcome was at the expense of the constitutional rights of American women or children. Under shariah, they simply do not enjoy the same stature and are not entitled to the same freedoms as they are under U.S. law.

In November 2010, seventy percent of the voters of Oklahoma approved an amendment to the state constitution that would have barred shariah from being used in Oklahoma's courts. No sooner had the balloting ended than the local franchise of CAIR - an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial - asked for an injunction on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate Muslims' constitutional rights. A federal judge agreed, and was recently upheld by an appellate court.

Fortunately, those who concur with Newt Gingrich on the nature of the threat posed by shariah and who want to prevent its further penetration into this country have another option. Three states - Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona - have already enacted a statute known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC). It prohibits the use of any foreign law in the state's courts that would interfere with U.S. constitutional rights or state public policy.

While shariah would certainly be covered by ALAC, it is not singled out for special treatment. No challenge has been mounted thus far in any of the states where it is the law today. And some 20 other states are actively considering ALAC's adoption in the current legislative session.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its friends desperately hope to stave off the further enactment of American Laws for American Courts. They recognize that it can effectively thwart a key part of their civilization jihad in this country. They also have seen that, wherever ALAC is considered, more and more of our countrymen are becoming aware of the problem Newt Gingrich has helped define: the threat from shariah and the need to keep its adherents from imposing that toxic, anti-constitutional doctrine on the rest of us, whether by stealth in our courts (among other places) or through terrifying violence.

For all these reasons, we should ensure that neither shariah nor any other form of foreign or transnational law is allowed to trump our constitutional rights. To the Muslim Brotherhood's fury, ALAC is a way of doing it in a constitutionally sound and highly teachable way.

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

Source: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/p18912.xml

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

‘Unprecedented’ EU Sanctions on Iran a Farce

by Rick Moran

The European Union has agreed to an “unprecedented” set of sanctions against Iran, banning the importation of Iranian oil to its member states while also imposing currency and commodity sanctions on Iran’s central bank. But far from forcing Iran into a corner, the latest sanctions leave a backdoor open to the regime, affording it more time and cover to pursue its nuclear objectives.

Three of the weakest economies in Europe will be hit hard by the oil embargo. Italy, Greece, and Spain import 68% of EU oil from Iran. All three nations are in the midst of a sovereign debt crisis that won’t be improved by the scramble to replace the supply of oil from Tehran.

The EU also agreed to ban sales of petrochemical supplies to the Iranians as well as freezing the assets of Iran’s central bank. Gold, silver, and other commodity deals will also be banned.

But, as proof that these tough sounding sanctions will have the bite of a toothless lion, the ban is not scheduled to take effect for several months — July 1 — as EU nations need time to replace the oil imported from Iran with other sources of supply. This will give the Iranians plenty of time to find other buyers for their oil — if they don’t close the spigot to Europe immediately. The official Fars News Agency quoted one Iranian official suggesting that Tehran should halt sales to Europe now “so that the price of oil soars and the Europeans … have trouble.”

The Iranians have also once again threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, but most analysts see that as a bluff since Iran doesn’t have the firepower to stand up to the US Navy, which would almost certainly be called upon to keep the Strait open.

Some states, such as Greece, pleaded with the EU not to impose any oil sanctions at all, or at least, radically alter the terms of the ban. The Greeks import about 20% of their oil from Iran on extremely favorable terms and covering the shortfall and getting the same deal from other oil producing states will almost certainly prove to be impossible. Considering the precarious nature of the Greek economy and an angry, restive populace, civil unrest is not out of the question if gasoline prices skyrocket.

Thus, another round of sanctions against Iran, designed to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table in order to convince the regime to halt its uranium enrichment program, continues to reveal the paralysis of the world community in the face of a determined, radical, terrorist state that is undeterred in its drive to possess the ultimate guarantee against mocking the prophet. The thought of the most powerful weapon on Earth in the hands of the most irresponsible nation on the planet doesn’t seem to elicit much in the way of urgency on the part of any nation in the world — except Israel, of course. And Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be in a wait-and-see mode as far as sanctions are concerned — at least for the moment. Washington has warned Israel several times not to attack Iran on its own, but the Israeli government doesn’t seem confident that the sanctions will halt Tehran’s drive to possess nuclear weapons.

There have been 4 rounds of sanctions against Iran passed by the United Nations. Each round in itself is severely underwhelming. Beginning in December 2006, the Security Council banned the sale of nuclear related materials and froze the assets of some regime officials. In March 2007, the UN expanded the asset freeze and slapped an arms embargo on Iran. In March of 2008, the asset freeze was extended again, and member states were authorized to monitor ships and planes headed for Iran as well as individuals involved in the nuclear program.

The last round of international sanctions passed in June of 2010, froze the funds of individuals and businesses connected to the Revolutionary Guards and went after the financial sector of the Iranian economy.

In addition to international sanctions, about a dozen individual states — including the US, the EU, Japan, and Australia — have added their own national sanctions on everything from penalizing companies that do business with Iran to preventing the sale of oil and gas equipment to replace Tehran’s aging oil infrastructure.

The result? Pitifully minor annoyances to the Iranian economy and little evidence that it has slowed the mullahs’ drive to build a nuclear weapon. During the time that the sanctions have been in place, the Iranians have installed 5,000 working centrifuges at their main enrichment facility in Nantanz that is busy enriching hundreds of pounds of uranium, completed construction of the reactor at Bushehr and made it operational, constructed at least one and probably more smaller enrichment facilities such as the one built into a mountain outside of Qom, and, according to the nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, are rapidly developing the technical capability to marry a nuclear bomb to their missiles.

To be fair, there is some evidence that the last round of sanctions against Iran’s central bank have generated the kind of pain they were designed to cause. The only problem; it is ordinary Iranians who are feeling the pinch as inflation has soared 50% for some basic food items like meat and milk. The economy is a wreck — more a result of mismanagement by the government than the sanctions — and there is some indication that the oil sector of the economy is beset by supply problems as spare parts and new equipment are hard to come by.

But Ivan Eland, a senior fellow with the Independent Institute, writes in the Washington Times that sanctions rarely work:

The problem with all sanctions is that they erode over time as the target nation redirects its products to countries that aren’t participating in the sanctions or finds ways to trade illegally with entities in the sanctioning countries. With such market “reordering” and outright evasion, the target country is rarely starved of export revenues.

Specifically with regard to Iran, Eland notes that “despite the existing sanctions on Iran’s petroleum sector, the country exported some $71.6 billion worth of petroleum products in 2010, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).” And the Iranians have said that 2011 was even better.

Noted above, the sanctions have had little effect on the ability of the Iranians to progress toward building a nuclear weapon, although there is some evidence that efforts to prevent the Iranians from upgrading their centrifuges, as well as continue their rapid development of ballistic missiles have achieved limited success. A recent UN report on the effectiveness of the international sanctions notes “sanctions are slowing Iran’s nuclear programme but not yet having an impact on the decision calculus of its leadership with respect to halting enrichment and heavy water-related activities.”

But it is far too little and it is becoming far too late. The chimera that the “decision calculus” of the regime factors in the suffering of ordinary people, or even the modernization of its aging oil sector is more of the same: the international community fooling itself into thinking that the Iranians can be deterred from possessing a nuclear weapon through the kind of sanctions that have been imposed thus far.

A total embargo of oil sales from Iran coupled with an attempt to interrupt its importation of gasoline would be more to the point as far as imposing sanctions with bite. But the world economy can ill afford to lose Iran’s 4 million bbl of oil a day without a serious shock to prices — a shock that the fragile economic recoveries in the West would be ill-prepared to manage. And while Iran used to import about a third of its refined gasoline, that has changed over the last 3 years, as rationing and a slowing economy have closed the gap between what Iran can refine in country and what it must get from outside sources.

In short, there is no magic combination of sanctions that can induce the Iranians to halt their enrichment activities. There never has been. As long as the current leadership is in power, Iran will continue its steady progress toward the inevitable. Even if the Iranians agree to sit down with the EU and US to negotiate, there is little the West can offer the Iranians that would change their minds. More likely, they would use the talks to buy time to create the capability of constructing a weapon in a matter of months — or weeks.

European Union leaders cannot really believe the additional sanctions they have imposed will act as a deterrence, or force the Iranians to the negotiating table, or do anything except make the creaky Iranian economy seize up with ordinary Iranians taking the brunt of the sanctions’ effects. It is more of the same from the international community — playing a myopic game of make-believe that by imposing sanctions on Iran, they are making a whit of difference in Tehran’s hegemonistic plans to dominate the region and wipe the state of Israel off the face of the Earth.

Rick Moran

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/24/unprecedented-eu-sanctions-on-iran-a-farce/

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

More Straight Talk from Newt

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said he has no problem with a Muslim American president so long as he rejects Sharia religious law, a condition that has upset Muslims leaders in the United States.

Muslim journalist Ali Younes jabbed Gingrich with a loaded question last week in South Carolina before the state’s primaries, which Gingrich handily won. He told Gingrich that South Carolina has a governor from Indian origin and that a Jew and a woman formerly have run for president and vice president of the United States.

"Would you support a Muslim American running for president?” Younes asked. With a hint of what he may as the political future of the United States in coming years, Younes also asked, “Would you endorse...a Muslim-American, [who] could possibly be running for president?”

Gingrich did not flinch and replied, "A truly modern person who happened to worship Allah would not be a threat. A person who belonged to any kind of belief in Sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us, would be a mortal threat."

“I am totally opposed to Sharia law being accepted by any court n the United States and I favor a federal law that pre-empts it and says Sharia law will not be used in any court.”

The Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim lobby in the United States, labeled Gingrich’s comments as evidence of his being "one of the nation's worst promoters of anti-Muslim bigotry.”

CAIR Legislative Director Corey Sayolor stated, "Newt Gingrich's vision of America segregates our citizens by faith. His outdated political ideas look backward to a time when Catholics and Jews were vilified and their faiths called a threat.”

Younes also questioned Gingrich on his statements that the “Palestinians are an invented people” and asked, “What do you suggest should happen to them? Should they become Israeli citizens?”

Gingrich answered, “If the Hamas and the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and they meant it, and they hunt down and stop the terrorists and the bombing, I would favor peace with the Palestinians and I would favor an independent Palestinian state.”

He added, "In November, 11 missiles were fired on Israel. That is not a peace process. That is war.”

Younes wrote for Al Arabiya Monday and quoted American Arab columnist Ray Hanania who argued that Gingrich's conditions are ”like the U.S. Congress asking the government to end crime in the streets of America as a condition of balancing the budget.”

Gingrich totally rejected the Arab world’s so-called “right of return,” a demand that millions of descendants of former Israeli Arabs be allowed to immigrate to Israel. “There is no natural right of return,” said Gingrich. “East Germans have no right of return to Poland, Greeks have no right of return to return to Turkey, and Poles have no right to return to Russia.”

In Younes’ article Monday, he quoted Arab American political analyst Osama Abu Katta as saying, “According to his argument, Jewish immigrants from around the world have no right to go to Palestine and take over that country claiming the right of return to their biblical lands.”

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/152009#.Tx6WHYFvIi4

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

Don't Ignore Electoral Fraud in Egypt

by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat

When Egypt's Lower House convened on Jan. 23, Islamists held 360 out of its 498 seats, or 72 percent. This astounding figure, however, reflects less the country's public opinion than it does a ploy by the ruling military leadership to remain in power.

In a recent article ("Egypt's Sham Election," Dec. 6) we argued that just as Anwar El-Sadat and Hosni Mubarak in the past "tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money," so do Mohamed Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) "still play this tired old game."

Mohamed ElBaradei left the presidential race complaining about its fraudulent quality.

We offered three proofs for this assertion: (1) local electoral deceits; (2) the SCAF offer of a "deal" to the Islamists; and (3) the military having subsidized Islamist political parties. Seven weeks later, various signs point to fraud on a far grander scale.

The Free Egyptians Party, Egypt's leading classic liberal political party, announced on Jan. 10 that it had filed more than 500 complaints about Lower House elections "but no legal action was taken" in response. The party pulled out of forthcoming Upper House elections because "violators are awarded with electoral gains and those abiding by the laws are punished" and called for their cancellation.

Mohamed ElBaradei, former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) withdrew his candidacy for president on Jan. 14 because of his perception of rigged elections: "My conscience," he announced, "does not permit me to run for the presidency or any other official position unless it is within a real democratic system."

Logo of the Egyptian National Council. Its slogan: "Bread - Freedom - Social Justice."

Six parliamentary candidates filed official complaints against a range of officials and demanded that the elections be annulled and redone, reports the newspaper El-Badil in its Jan. 10 edition. One of the candidates, a Wafd Party candidate named Ibrahim Kamel, explained how he acquired government documents indicating that fewer than 40 million Egyptians were eligible to vote, while the current elections included 52 million voters, implying 12 million fraudulent ballots. This increase was achieved, he said, by taking the names and identification numbers of legitimate voters and duplicating them between 2 and 32 times in other electoral precincts.

Mamdouh Hamza, head of the Egyptian National Council, an NGO, confirmed this tampering to El-Badil, dubbing it "the biggest crime of fraud in Egyptian history." He demanded that the Lower House elections be redone from scratch.

In contrast, the victorious Islamists, who despise democracy, made little effort to conceal their electoral success through fraud. Some of them went so far as proudly and unapologetically to assert that it's their Islamic duty to be dishonest. Tal'at Zahran, a leading Salafi, called the democratic system "infidel," "criminal," and "out of the Elders of Zion." He cynically observed that "it is our duty to forge elections; God will reward us for this."

Tal'at Zahran, wearing Arabian (not Egyptian) clothing, signaling his Salafi outlook.

Revealingly, Zahran also praised Tantawi: "Just as we gave Mubarak the bay'a [Islamic oath of loyalty], we now support SCAF. If Tantawi decides to stay in power, we will support him until the day he dies." Reports indicate that Islamists and the military are working smoothly together on such key matters as military autonomy and amending the 1971 constitution. Their cooperation makes sense, for Islamists seek Muslim unity so as to focus full attention on the infidel enemy (especially Jews and Christians).

With so much evidence of fraud at hand, it bewilders us that Western politicians, journalists, and scholars continue to see the shoddy results of the just-concluded Egyptian elections as a valid expression of popular will. Where are the cynical journalists casting doubt on the Salafis coming from nowhere to win 28 percent of the vote? Why do hard-boiled analysts, who see right through rigged elections in Russia and Syria, fall for "the biggest crime of fraud in Egyptian history"? Perhaps because they give Cairo a break on account of it having cooperated with Western powers for nearly 40 years; or perhaps because Tantawi rigs more convincingly.

Given SCAF's explicit disdain for the election results, we are also surprised that analysts expect these significantly to bear on the country's future. In fact, SCAF manipulated the recent elections for its own benefit; Islamists are pawns in this drama, not kings. We are witnessing not an ideological revolution but a military officer corps staying dominant to enjoy the sweet fruits of tyranny.

Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube fellow at the Hoover Institution. Ms Farahat (CynthiaFarahat.com) is an Egyptian activist and co-author of a book about the Tahrir Square protests. © 2012 by Daniel Pipes and Cynthia Farahat. All rights reserved.

Source: National Review Online; http://www.danielpipes.org/10548/egypt-electoral-fraud

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

North American Muslims Join Effort to Support Husain Haqqani

by Ann Snyder

Politics can be a dangerous business in Pakistan.

As the "memogate" controversy shows no signs of abating, a group of American and Canadian Muslims joined the push for U.S. government intervention on behalf of Husain Haqqani, the former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S. In a January 12^th letter to Secretary of State Clinton, the group called upon the Secretary and the Obama administration to "let Pakistan's military chief General Kayani and ISI boss General Pasha know that they will be held responsible for any harm that comes to Ambassador Haqqani."

Penned by the American Islamic Leadership Coalition (AILC), the letter was joined by several prominent moderate and reform-minded Muslims, including signatories M. Zuhdi Jasser, Tarek Fatah, Raquel Evita Saraswati, and Mona Eltahawy. The letter speaks in glowing terms of Haqqani, saying:

As North American Muslim leaders, we highly regard Ambassador Haqqani as not only the Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., but also because he has always represented moderate Islamic values and has been vocal in his opposition to radical elements in Islam. He is a source of pride for moderate Muslims in North America. During his stay in the United States, Ambassador Haqqani was an effective, intelligent and articulate refutation of all the negative stereotypes of Muslims created by the Islamist leadership inside America.

The request follows a similar letter by a group of scholars on January 7^th, as well a plea by Hudson Institute's Nina Shea, to make saving Haqqani a key issue on the U.S.'s "priority diplomatic agenda with Pakistan."

The "memogate" controversy began in October when Mansoor Ijaz published an op-ed in The Financial Times claiming that "a senior Pakistani diplomat" had requested his help delivering a letter to Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, requesting the U.S. to intervene in support of the civilian government against a possible military coup. Already tense relations between the military and the civilian government worsened following the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden. As the world (including some in Pakistan) speculated who might have been complicit in allowing bin Laden to hide in what seemed like plain view, tensions rose within Pakistan over where blame should lie for allowing a U.S. raid into Pakistani territory in the first place. The memo called for U.S. assistance in tipping the scale toward civilian control but also made significant concessions to the U.S. including promises to take steps to rout out those who may have been involved in aiding bin Laden and al-Qaeda, to develop a more transparent system with regard to Pakistan's nuclear program, and to turn over perpetrators of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Haqqani became embroiled in "memogate" when Ijaz named him as the previously unidentified senior diplomat---a charge that Haqqani flatly denies. Haqqani returned to Pakistan to address the matter but has since resigned his post. He may not leave the country (his passport was taken) and the media frenzy over the affair, including accusations he committed treason, has left him in fear for his life.

His fears are well founded. Just last year, Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, and minority affairs minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, were assassinated for criticizing Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Haqqani, who gave the eulogy at Bhatti's funeral, is a more moderate, anti-Islamist voice in Pakistani politics, a fact that may have placed him in jeopardy. Nina Shea suggests, "There is every reason to believe that the real reason Haqqani is being targeted is that he is a prominent moderate Muslim, one of the few remaining in Pakistan's government." Haqqani's wife, Farahnaz Ispahani, echoes these sentiments, saying of the situation, "It is part of a broader issue: the systematic elimination or marginalization of every intellectual and leader in Pakistan who has stood up to the institutionalization of a militarized Islamist state."

If Haqqani falls victim to either an unjust legal process or street "justice," it will only reinforce the harsh message already being directed at those in Pakistan and elsewhere who might otherwise speak out against Islamism—Keep quiet, or else!

Ann Snyder

Source: http://www.legal-project.org/blog/2012/01/north-american-muslims-join-efforts-to-support

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

Violent Jihadist Video Riles Norway

by Bruce Bawer

It was, shall we say, an interesting week in Norway. On Tuesday, January 17, a video was posted on YouTube that called for Norwegian soldiers to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. Over images of Norwegian soldiers and of Norway’s prime minister, foreign minister, and crown prince, a text calling for Allah to “destroy them and let it be painful” was read aloud in Arabic, with subtitles in Norwegian. The video, which concluded with an image of Norway’s flag in flames, urged Muslims to show up for a protest rally on Friday outside the parliament building in Oslo.

The video provoked instant outrage. On Wednesday, the security police arrested a suspect, but announced that even if the rally organizers proved to be responsible for the video, their permit wouldn’t be withdrawn. It soon emerged that there were connections between the video and a Facebook group whose members included Arfan Bhatti, one of four men arrested in 2006 for shooting at the Oslo synagogue. (Bhatti was also suspected by police of plotting to blow up the U.S. and Israeli embassies.) Another member was Mohyeldeen Mohammed, who at a jihadist rally two years ago threatened Norway with its own 9/11.

And guess who else turned out to be an active member of the Facebook group? None other than Aisha Shezadi Kausar (20), whom I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – the girl who’s being sent around to schools by the Norwegian literary establishment so she can brainwash kids into thinking the niqab is just dandy. (Her essay, “You, Me, and Niqab,” has been reprinted in a collection of essays being distributed to students all over the country.) On Facebook, Kausar clicked “like” on the news of the upcoming rally.

On Thursday, the Communist daily Klassekampen ran a sympathetic interview with Kausar. When Niqab Girl walked into a café with interviewer Åse Brandvold, the customers emitted audible groans. Brandvold: “Her garment provokes them….Only the eyes show. They are radiant.” Kausar: “I want to go over to them and say: Hi, I’m Aisha, and I’m an ordinary person.” Yes, an “ordinary person” who admitted to Brandvold that she planned to take part in the Saturday rally and who, when asked to comment on the video, said: “It’s just a video.” Though Brandvold pressed her (ever so slightly), Niqab Girl refused to condemn the video: “I’m tired of Muslims always being expected to distance themselves from one another all the time.”

At some point during the week came the stunning announcement by the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) that Islamists represent the major terrorist threat to the country. Needless to say, this news should not have been stunning to anybody, but (as I describe in a forthcoming e-book) ever since last July 22, when anti-jihadist Anders Behring Breivik bombed a building in Oslo and massacred several dozen teenagers on the island of Utøya, the Norwegian political and cultural elite has done a very effective job of suppressing criticism of Islam on the grounds that the “lesson” of Breivik’s actions is that ethnic Norwegians must stop saying unpleasant things about Islam and embrace their bold, bearded, berobed, and belligerent fellow countrymen as friends and neighbors.

So it was that PST got slammed on a Thursday night TV debate program by Muslim leaders who called for it to stop demonizing their community and pay more attention to the threat of violence by Islam-hating “Christian terrorist” groups in Norway. (Never mind that, as a terrorism expert bravely pointed out on the show, there are no such groups in Norway.) On the same broadcast, the head of the aggressive, fast-growing Islam Net, Fahad Qureshi (whose every comment was greeted by a storm of applause from his followers in the studio audience) attacked a politician for having called the perpetrators of the threatening video “vermin”: instead of being dehumanized, Qureshi insisted, the jihadists who’d made that video should be accorded respect and invited to take part in dialogue.

What was particularly perverse about this picture was that the politician whom Qureshi called on the carpet, Abid Q. Raja, is also a Muslim – one who’s made clear his own Islamist sympathies but who, in the current bizarre atmosphere, comes off, in comparison with the likes of Qureshi, as a moderate, a patriot, a stalwart champion of the royal house and of Norwegian democracy. (The possibility that such confrontations between top-flight Norwegian Muslims are part of a calculated good cop/bad cop strategy cannot be discounted.)

Anyway, Friday came around, and the big rally proved anti-climactic, to say the least. Muslim leaders had spent the week begging their coreligionists to stay away lest they screw up the post-Breivik interdict on Islam criticism. Nearly every Muslim in Norway obeyed. Dozens of journalists and scores of cops turned up for the protest – as did I – but only a few protesters. I stayed around long enough to hear Bhatti spewing into a microphone his contempt for America, Israel, “infidels,” and “kufr,” and echoing the threats uttered on the Norway-out-of-Afghanistan video. (Unfortunately, my video of Bhatti’s rant shows him and his supporters from about thirty yards away; the mounted policewoman seen in the foreground wouldn’t let me get closer.)

On Saturday afternoon, the top headline on the website of Norway’s biggest newspaper, VG, was about Niqab Girl. It turned out that the indirect government funding of her promotion tour for female subordination (her sponsor, the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association, receives generous state support) was now being criticized by members of parliament from several parties – which raised the hope that there might actually be a limit to some of these people’s mind-boggling dhimmitude. Still, Wanda Voldner, head of Foreningen Les!, the group that’s sending Niqab Girl around to the schools, said there were no plans to end her tour.

VG further revealed that Niqab Girl – surprise! – supports the Taliban and prefers sharia to democracy. Voldner had no problems with this, either: “She doesn’t call for violence….We don’t see why we should change a collaboration that’s already underway.” The general secretary of the Norwegian Non-Fiction Writers and Translators Association (NFF) agreed: “There are many authors who have many different opinions….NFF doesn’t censor.”

No – neither of these groups would ever, ever censor an author. Perish the thought! Unless, of course, the author in question was a critic of Islam. No, as far as the Norwegian establishment is concerned, it’s perfectly legitimate to invite an “author” whose entire oeuvre consists of a thousand-word piece of propaganda to “lecture” to kids on the pretext that she’s talking about her “work”; but to invite an actual working writer who actually knows a thing or two about Islam to tell the same students the truth about it – and about the Koran, and sharia law, and jihad (and to explain why Niqab Girl’s lecture tour is, in fact, a form of jihad) – would be hate speech, pure and simple.

The only hope for an about-face on this march into madness lies with the Norwegian people. Can parents who have sons battling the Taliban in Afghanistan actually accept that their taxes are paying for a Taliban supporter to indoctrinate their younger children in Norwegian classrooms? For heaven’s sake, if this doesn’t raise enough people’s hackles to make a difference, what will?

Bruce Bawer

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/23/violent-jihadist-video-riles-norway/

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

Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred

by Mark Tapson

In the wake of the farcically mislabeled “Arab Spring,” we are witnessing a swelling tide of Jew-hatred emanating from the triumphant Islamists throughout the Middle East who don’t even bother to conceal it. And why should they? Our own willfully blind and/or complicit media downplay it or ignore it altogether.

Some argue that what is mistaken for contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism is just a reaction to Israel’s “occupation” and “genocidal oppression” of the Palestinians. Or that it is not intrinsic to Islam but derives from the influence of Nazism. Or that it is a perversion of Islam on the part of a tiny minority of extremists. What are the true roots of Islamic Jew-hatred?

Andrew Bostom, M.D., M.S., has documented the answer. An Associate Professor of Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, the major teaching affiliate of Brown University Medical School, he is the author of two essential, extraordinary, and meticulously documented works of scholarship, The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, and of the upcoming Sharia versus Freedom (with a foreword by the incomparable Andrew C. McCarthy). He has published articles and commentary on Islam here on FrontPage and in the Washington Times, National Review Online, Revue Politique, American Thinker, and elsewhere in print and online.

This Tuesday in Los Angeles, Mr. Bostom will present “Understanding the Islam in Muslim Jew-Hatred.” See here for information about attending.

Mark Tapson: Dr. Bostom, what inspired you as a scholar to focus on Islam?

Andrew Bostom: It’s pretty straightforward. The stimulus was 9/11/2001. Until then I was simply a medical academic at Rhode Island Hospital (the major teaching hospital of The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University), and an average citizen trying to keep abreast of world events. I am not particularly religious as a Jew though I certainly support the state of Israel. But I grew up in New York, living in Queens most of my life, and I went to medical school in Brooklyn. My wife and I still have family in New York City, so the day of 9/11/2001 itself was traumatic, trying to make sure everyone was OK. A colleague’s wife was in the second tower. She was very lucky, barely getting out before it collapsed.

On the way home I grabbed a book by Karen Armstrong about Islam. I was reading it and commenting to my wife that it just didn’t seem to jibe. (I learned later that Armstrong is a notorious apologist.) As I read it out loud my wife was just laughing. I didn’t find it particularly funny. Nor the news reports over the next days that were transparently apologetic. And I was alarmed at stories that appeared in the New York Times (and other New York area newspapers) about an Egyptian Imam who was preaching at a large Mosque in Manhattan, and spreading conspiracy theories about Jews leaving the World Trade Center in advance of the attacks, due to their “prior knowledge.”

So I started reading independently. A small book by Yossef Bodansky, a terrorism expert, discussed Islamic anti-semitism as a political instrument, and referenced the work of Bat Ye’or on the dhimmi. I got that book by Bat Ye’or, and everything else she has written in English—all her books, essays, and published lectures. I met Bat Ye’or after a correspondence with Daniel Pipes, and brought her to Brown University to give a guest lecture. She became a very close mentor, and introduced me to Ibn Warraq and that’s how things started. I had begun writing short essays within a year of 9/11. Ibn Warraq resided with us in 2003, for a time, and he encouraged me to consider a book project. I was increasingly interested in the Jihad and it was with Warraq’s support that I put that first book, The Legacy of Jihad, together.

MT: What do you say to the common defense that Islam preaches tolerance toward Christians and Jews – “the people of the book” – and that Jew-hatred is not inherent within it?

AB: Although often invoked, these apologetic canards are diametrically opposed to Islamic doctrine and the sad, if predictable historical realities this sacralized hatred has engendered.

What has always been the nature of the system of governance imposed upon indigenous non-Muslims conquered by Islam’s timeless, institutionalized jihad wars?

In his seminal The Laws of Islamic Governance, al-Mawardi (d. 1058) — a renowned jurist of Baghdad — examined the regulations pertaining to the lands and infidel populations subjugated by jihad. This is the origin of the system of dhimmitude. The native infidel “dhimmi” (which derives from both the word for “pact” and also “guilt” — guilty of religious errors) population had to recognize Islamic ownership of their land, submit to Islamic law, and accept payment of the Koranic poll tax (jizya, the tax paid in lieu of being slain) based on Koran 9:29. Al-Mawardi notes: “The enemy makes a payment in return for peace and reconciliation. … Reconciliation and security last as long as the payment is made. If the payment ceases, then the jihad resumes.” A treaty of reconciliation may be renewable, but must not exceed 10 years.

This same basic formulation was reiterated during a January 8, 1998, interview by Muslim Brotherhood “Spiritual Guide,” and immensely popular Al-Jazeera television personality Yusuf al-Qaradawi, confirming how jihad continues to regulate the relations between Muslims and non-Muslims to this day. The “contract of the jizya,” or “dhimma,” encompassed other obligatory and recommended obligations for the conquered non-Muslim “dhimmi” peoples. Collectively, these “obligations” formed the discriminatory system of dhimmitude imposed upon non-Muslims — Jews and Christians, as well as Zoroastrians, Hindus, and Buddhists — subjugated by jihad. Some of the more salient features of dhimmitude include:

– The prohibition of arms for the vanquished dhimmis

– The prohibition of church bells

– Restrictions concerning the building and restoration of churches, synagogues, and temples

– Inequality between Muslims and non-Muslims with regard to taxes and penal law

– The refusal of dhimmi testimony by Muslim courts

– A requirement that Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims, including Zoroastrians and Hindus, wear special clothes

– The overall humiliation and abasement of non-Muslims

It is important to note that these regulations and attitudes were institutionalized as permanent features of the sacred Islamic law, or Sharia. The writings of the much lionized Sufi theologian and jurist al-Ghazali (d. 1111) highlight how the institution of dhimmitude was simply a normative and prominent feature of the Sharia:

The dhimmi is obliged not to mention Allah or His Apostle. … Jews, Christians, and Majians must pay the jizya [poll tax on non-Muslims]. … On offering up the jizya, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits [the dhimmi] on the protruberant bone beneath his ear [i.e., the mandible]. … They are not permitted to ostentatiously display their wine or church bells. … Their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse or mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle-work is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They [the dhimmis] have to wear [an identifying] patch [on their clothing], even women, and even in the [public] baths. … [Dhimmis] must hold their tongue.

The practical consequences of such a discriminatory system were summarized by the great historian of Muslim and non-Muslim (especially Jewish) relations during classical Islam, S.D. Goitein, in 1970 :

Taxation [by the Muslim government] was merciless, and a very large section of the population must have lived permanently at the starvation level. From many Geniza letters [a trove of Oriental Jewish correspondence etc., particularly from the Middle Ages, discovered in Egypt] one gets the impression that the poor were concerned more with getting money for the payment of their taxes than for food and clothing, for failure of payment usually induced cruel punishment. … The Muslim state was quite the opposite of the ideals … embedded in the constitution of the United States. An Islamic state was part of or coincided with dar al-Islam, the House of Islam. Its treasury was … the money of the Muslims. Christians and Jews were not citizens of the state, not even second class citizens. They were outsiders under the protection of the Muslim state, a status characterized by the term dhimma … They were also exposed to a great number of discriminatory and humiliating laws. … As it lies in the very nature of such restrictions, soon additional humiliations were added, and before the second century of Islam was out, a complete body of legislation in this matter was in existence. … In times and places in which they became too oppressive they lead to the dwindling or even complete extinction of the minorities.

Important scholars of Islamic Antisemitism — from Hartwig Hirschfeld in the mid-1880s, Georges Vajda in the late 1930s, S.D. Goitein in 1971, and Haggai Ben-Shammai in 1988 — have demonstrated, collectively, all of the following:

– Clear historical evidence of specific Islamic anti-semitism, from the Geniza record of the high Middle Ages — including the coinage of a unique Hebrew word to characterize such Muslim Jew hatred, sinuth — published in full by Goitein as of 1971

– The content of foundational Muslim sources detailing the sacralized rationale for Islam’s anti-Jewish bigotry, including Hartwig Hirschfeld’s mid-1880s essay series on Muhammad’s subjugation of the Jews of Medina, based upon the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad

– George Vajda’s elegant, comprehensive 1937 analysis focusing primarily on the hadith (the putative words and deeds of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, as recorded by his earliest pious Muslim companions)

– Haggai Ben-Shammai’s concise 1988 study of key examples of Jew-hatred in the Koran and Koranic exegesis

For example, Koran 3:112 is featured before the pre-amble to Hamas’ foundational Covenant—it is literally part of the very first statement of the document. Here is the standard Arberry translation of 3:112:

Abasement shall be pitched on them, wherever they are come upon, except they be in a bond of God, and a bond of the people; they will be laden with the burden of God’s anger, and poverty shall be pitched on them; that, because they disbelieved in God’s signs, and slew the Prophets without right; that, for that they acted rebelliously and were transgressors.

In classical and modern Koranic exegeses by seminal, authoritative Islamic theologians this central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and pigs (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been “…cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary’s son” (5:78). Muhammad himself — Islam’s founding prophet — repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322), “He [Muhammad] then recited the verse [5:78]: ‘…curses were pronounced on those among the children of Israel who rejected Faith, by the tongue of David and of Jesus the son of Mary’”. And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews—as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64—of being “spreaders of war and corruption,” a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Koranic curse (verses 2:61/3:112) upon the Jews for (primarily) rejecting, even slaying Allah’s prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus (or at least his “body double” 4:157-4:158), is updated with perfect thematic logic in the canonical hadith: following the Muslims’ initial conquest of the Jewish farming oasis of Khaybar, one of the vanquished Jewesses reportedly served Muhammad poisoned mutton (or goat), which resulted, ultimately, in his protracted, agonizing death. And Ibn Saad’s sira account—the sira being the earliest pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad—maintains that Muhammad’s poisoning resulted from a well-coordinated Jewish conspiracy.

As characterized in the hadith, Muslim eschatology highlights the Jews’ supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjâl – the Muslim equivalent of the Anti-Christ – or according to another tradition, the Dajjâl is himself Jewish. At his appearance, other traditions maintain that the Dajjâl will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan, or Jerusalem, wrapped in their robes, and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjâl is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered—everything will deliver them up except for the so-called gharkad tree, as per the canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) included in the 1988 Hamas Covenant (in article 7). This hadith is cited in the Covenant as a sacralized, obligatory call for a Muslim genocide of the Jews:

…the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes. The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985)

Moreover, findings reported by the politically left Israel Foundation, July 15, 2011, from an “intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” revealed that 73% of this representative statistical sample of Palestinians surveyed agree with the dictates of the annihilationist canonical hadith (i.e., Sahih Muslim, Book 41, Number 6985) quoted in the Hamas Covenant.

Unfortunately, Hamas’ views on Islamic Jew hatred, are entirely concordant with those of the most authoritative religious educational institution within Sunni Islam for over 1000 years, since the late 10^th century—Al Azhar University, in Cairo, Egypt. Consider a fatwa written January 5, 1956 by then Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Hasan Ma’moun, and signed by the leading members of the Fatwa Committee of Al Azhar, and the major representatives of all four Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. [English translation from State Department Telegram 1763/ Embassy (Cairo) Telegram 1256 D441214] This ruling elaborated the following key initial point: that all of historical Palestine—modern Jordan, Israel, and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza—having been conquered by jihad, was a permanent possession of the global Muslim umma (community), “fay territory”—booty or spoils—to be governed eternally by Islamic Law. The January, 1956 Al Azhar fatwa’s language and arguments are indistinguishable from those employed by Hamas (in its Covenant), revealing the same conjoined motivations of jihad, and conspiratorial Islamic Jew hatred:

Muslims cannot conclude peace with those Jews who have usurped the territory of Palestine and attacked its people and their property in any manner which allows the Jews to continue as a state in that sacred Muslim territory.

[as] Jews have taken a part of Palestine and there established their non-Islamic government and have also evacuated from that part most of its Muslim inhabitants… Jihad… to restore the country to its people.. is the duty of all Muslims, not just those who can undertake it. And since all Islamic countries constitute the abode of every Muslim, the Jihad is imperative for both the Muslims inhabiting the territory attacked, and Muslims everywhere else because even though some sections have not been attacked directly, the attack nevertheless took place on a part of the Muslim territory which is a legitimate residence for any Muslim.

Everyone knows that from the early days of Islam to the present day the Jews have been plotting against Islam and Muslims and the Islamic homeland. They do not propose to be content with the attack they made on Palestine and Al Aqsa Mosque, but they plan for the possession of all Islamic territories from the Nile to the Euphrates.

The continual, monotonous invocation by Al Azhar clerics of such jihadist and antisemitic motifs from the Koran (or other foundational Muslim texts) is entirely consistent with the published writings and statements of the late Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi—Grand Imam of this pre-eminent Islamic religious institution from 1996, till his death in March 2010.

My book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism includes extensive first time English translations of Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions. Tantawi wrote these words rationalizing Muslim Jew-hatred, in his 700 page treatise:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word…[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], ⁴¹ the bad ones do not.

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, a position he held for 14-years. These were the expressed, “carefully researched” views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope – the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 85 to 90% of the world’s Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi never mollified such hatemongering beliefs after becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on “dialogue” (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as “enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs” (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear.

Here is but a very incomplete sampling of barely known pogroms and mass murderous violence against Jews living under Islamic rule, across space and time, all resulting from the combined effects of jihadism, general anti-dhimmi, and/or specifically Antisemitic motifs in Islam: 6,000 Jews massacred in Fez in 1033; hundreds of Jews slaughtered in Muslim Cordoba between 1010 and 1015; 4,000 Jews killed in Muslim riots in Grenada in 1066, wiping out the entire community; the Berber Muslim Almohad depredations of Jews (and Christians) in Spain and North Africa between 1130 and 1232, which killed tens of thousands, while forcibly converting thousands more, and subjecting the forced Jewish converts to Islam to a Muslim Inquisition; the 1291 pogroms in Baghdad and its environs, which killed (at least) hundreds of Jews; the 1465 pogrom against the Jews of Fez; the late 15th century pogrom against the Jews of the Southern Moroccan oasis town of Touat; the 1679 pogroms against, and then expulsion of 10,000 Jews from Sanaa, Yemen to the unlivable, hot and dry Plain of Tihama, from which only 1,000 returned alive, in 1680, 90% having died from exposure; recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence—including pogroms and forced conversions—throughout the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran (for example, Tabriz) Judenrein; the 1834 pogrom in Safed where raging Muslim mobs killed and grievously wounded hundreds of Jews; the 1888 massacres of Jews in Isfahan and Shiraz, Iran; the 1910 pogrom in Shiraz; the pillage and destruction of the Casablanca, Morocco ghetto in 1907; the pillage of the ghetto of Fez Morocco in 1912; the government sanctioned anti-Jewish pogroms by Muslims in Turkish Eastern Thrace during June-July, 1934 which ethnically cleansed at least 3000 Jews; and the series of pogroms, expropriations, and finally mass expulsions of some 900,000 Jews from Arab Muslim nations, beginning in 1941 in Baghdad (the murderous “Farhud,” during which 600 Jews were murdered, and at least 12,000 pillaged)—eventually involving cities and towns in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Syria, Aden, Bahrain, and culminating in 1967 in Tunisia—that accompanied the planning and creation of a Jewish state, Israel, on a portion of the Jews’ ancestral homeland.

Part 2, tomorrow: Dr. Bostom discusses the nexus of Islam and Nazism and describes his forthcoming book.

Mark Tapson

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/23/understanding-the-islam-in-muslim-jew-hatred/

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

Anti-Semitism in Chile

by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Strong antisemitic comments appeared on Chilean websites after the arrest of a young Israeli tourist in connection with a forest fire that destroyed thousands of hectares in the Chile's Torres de Paine national park in Patagonia. The media reports that Rotem Singer, 23, a tourist from Israel, failed to extinguish burning toilet paper and that was allegedly how the fire started. If Singer is convicted, he could face up to 60 days in jail; however he denies any involvement in the fire and insists he is certain that the tissue paper he had lit had already been extinguished before the fire began. The authorities have ordered Singer to remain in Chile while an investigation is carried out.

The news that an Israeli Jew might have been the culprit for starting the forest fire immediately created an explosion of conspiracy theories over the internet, with many Chileans focusing intensely on on antisemitic explanation for the fire, but wondering what could have been the "ulterior motive" of "the Jews" to start a fire there. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that several Chilean news web sites "found" the reason for the arson in a 19th century antisemitic conspiracy theory known as the "Andinia Plan," according to which Jews want to gain control of the land in the Patagonian region and were carrying out this plan by destroying the ecological reserve.

The website Verdad Ahora ["The Truth Now"], which claims that the Andinia plan was launched in the International Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897, gives ridiculous and absurd explanations on how the Jews are plotting to occupy Patagonia: "The plan is based on burning the region of Patagonia, so that the government of Chile […] would create a law to protect the area […] in order to declare the area 'under UN's protection' and then will allow the establishment of a Jewish State, as they did in Palestine."

Verdad Ahora also states that given the existence of the Andinia plan, it is therefore clear that the fire was set by the young Israeli, who was obeying the orders of the State of Israel. According to Chilean conspiracy theories, the State of Israel is financing trips for young Israeli reservists to go to Chile to take over Patagonia.

Chilean Senator Eugenio Tuma, who belongs to the social-democratic Democracy Party, and is President of the Commission on Foreign Relations of the Chilean Senate, also seems to support these conspiracy theories, even though he did not address the Andinia plan itself. The Senator recently claimed that the Israeli Government regularly sends military men to tour Patagonia, and stated that it is not normal that close to 10,000 youngsters who serve, or who have served, in the military will tour Southern Chile and Argentina as part of tourist plans paid for by their country.

Another Chilean MP claimed there were cases where active officers of the Israeli army accompanied or supervised these representatives, who travel in groups, because the government is aware that these are people who suffer from severe behavioral problems.

The truth is that many Israelis, after the Army, which is compulsory in Israel, take a sabbatical year, before starting university. Many Israelis go to South America, but many more prefer going to Asia -- but all at their own expense. The Israeli government does not pay for any trips. The truth, however, does not seem to interest Chilean conspiracy theorists, who are enthusiastically filling social networks with antisemitic remarks: "Shitty Jews," "Jews murderers," "Let's hang the Jews" and "Israelis commit genocides," among others.

Even the Chilean MP Fuad Chahin, who belongs to the Christian Democratic Party, was among those posting antisemitic comments on Twitter. The MP, in his personal account, questioned whether the young Israeli who has been accused of setting fire is really a tourist or actually an agent of State of Israel. "I bet that the Israeli 'tourist' who caused the blaze is one of those sent by his government after killing Palestinian children," wrote Chahin. The website Israel en Linea reports that some Chilean MPs were also heard saying that the "best punishment for the Israeli guy would be to hand him to Palestinians in Gaza."

The Israeli author Alberto Mazor wrote that as long as it was not known that the alleged perpetrator of the fire was a Jew, the Chileans were complaining about the government that did not act in time to stop the ecological catastrophe; however once there was the alleged involvement of a Jew from Israel, the demonization immediately started.

The Chilean Jewish community is now afraid of possible attacks against Jews there. Just a year ago, the ADL sent out a communiqué showing concern about the desecration of Jewish cemeteries and anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted on synagogues in Chile. The ADL mentioned that in some instances, the graffiti included swastikas and the words "Juden Raus" (Jews Out). The President of Chile's Jewish Community and his son have received death threats.

As Mazor states, in time the park in Patagonia will flourish again with the help of forestry engineers. However, Mazor comments, all the water of the Pacific might not be enough to extinguish the antisemitism in Chile.

Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2775/anti-semitism-chile

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

Britain's Rising Tide of Islam

by Soeren Kern

The number of young Muslims in British prisons has skyrocketed over the past two decades and, according to a Muslim advisor to the United Kingdom's Prison Service, Islamic preachers are to blame.

There are now almost 11,000 Muslim males, mostly in their teens or twenties, in British prisons. This figure is almost six times what it was 20 years ago and represents 12.6% of the total prison population in England and Wales -- a huge over-representation considering that Muslims comprise around 5% of the British population. By comparison, in 1991 there were 1,957 Muslim inmates in British prisons.

In a January 13 interview with the London-based newspaper, The Times (registration required), Ahtsham Ali, the President of the Islamic Society of Britain, and who also advises Her Majesty's Prison Service, said that outmoded attitudes among imams were the primary reason record numbers of young British Muslims, many of Pakistani origin, are turning to crime.

Many mosques, Ali said, fail to offer facilities relevant to young, British-born second- and third-generation Muslims, while imams who do not speak English and focus only on religious rituals and measuring beard lengths, are frequently brought in from abroad. As a result, apparently, many disillusioned Muslim youth are turning away from religion. Ali also blamed family breakdowns, problems resulting from arranged marriages, drugs and the absence of good male role models for the increasing numbers of Muslim males under the age of 30 who are ending up in prison.

"Nearly all mosques are their own independent kingdoms," Ali said, "and they will decide what to do. Mosque committees have supreme power. Most will get imams imported from other countries who cannot speak English. More importantly they cannot relate to second and third-generation youngsters growing up here."

"It is a tragedy," Ali continued. "I have seen youngsters -- the next generation -- just totally switch off from it. This is dangerous. It allows others to take advantage, to take up the vacuum."

Ali said that often the only time Muslims encountered imams who could speak fluent English was when they ended up in prison.

In other news, according to official figures compiled for the first time, 371,000 immigrants who were admitted to Britain to work, study or go on vacation are now claiming unemployment benefits. Of these people, 258,000 are from outside the European Union.

An investigation conducted by the British government revealed that most of these migrants are from Muslim countries, primarily Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Iraq and Iran. The migrants -- who can claim unemployment, housing and incapacity benefits -- are currently costing British taxpayers billions of pounds a year.

In a January 19 article for the London-based Daily Telegraph, Chris Grayling, the employment minister, and Damian Green, the immigration minister, said that the large number of migrants claiming benefits has been increased by the "organizational chaos" of Britain's immigration system. "It should never have been allowed to happen and Labour should be embarrassed by what it left behind."

"We are determined to sort things out," they added. "Firstly by building an immigration system that is properly controlled and which people can have confidence in. And secondly by building a new generation of data systems that will ensure that no one can come to Britain and claim benefits to which they are not entitled."

The revelations came just months after it was discovered that tens of thousands of Muslim immigrants in Britain are practicing bigamy or polygamy to collect bigger social welfare payments from the British state.

The September 24 media report shows that the phenomenon of bigamy and polygamy -- permitted by Islamic Sharia law -- is far more widespread in Britain than previously believed, even though there it is a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The rapid growth in multiple marriages is being fuelled by multicultural policies that grant special rights to Muslim immigrants who demand that Sharia law be reflected in both British law and the social welfare benefits system.

The report quotes two senior social welfare experts based in Lancashire (one of the most "multicultural" areas in Britain), who estimate that there are now at least 20,000 bigamous or polygamous Muslim unions in England and Wales. This would imply that if the average size of such a "family" is 15 people around 300,000 people are living in polygamous families in Britain.

Further, the multiple marriages are encouraged by recent changes to the British welfare system: it allows Muslim immigrants to have a second, third or fourth wife (or in some cases five or more) treated as a single mother who can get a house and an array of other state payments for herself and her children at the taxpayers' expense.

In other news, the BBC reported on January 16 that the use of Islamic Sharia law is growing in Britain, with thousands of Muslims now using it to settle disputes each year.

At least 85 Sharia councils are now operating in Britain and some Sharia bodies such as the Islamic Sharia Council -- based in Leyton, east London, it is the largest such council in Britain -- have seen a large increase in their cases in the past five years.

Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad, a representative of the Islamic Sharia Council, told the BBC that his cases have "easily more than tripled over the past three to five years. On average, every month we can deal with anything from 200 to 300 cases. A few years ago it was just a small fraction of that. Muslims are becoming more aligned with their faith and more aware of what we are offering them."

Separately, a prominent lawyer, Sadakat Kadri -- who also happens to be a Harvard Law School contemporary of US President Barack Obama -- called for Britain to become more Sharia-literate.

In a January 15 interview with the Guardian newspaper, Kadri said it is "very important that they [Sharia law councils] be acknowledged and allowed to exist." He also said the courts were good for "the community as a whole."

Not everyone agrees. Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, has long opposed the use of Sharia in Britain, and told the Guardian that the rule of law "must not be compromised by the introduction of a theocratic legal system operating in parallel."

"There can be no convincing case made for it," he said, "to have even a toe-hold in Western societies that have developed a mature and far superior legal system. I regard any legal system based on a theocratic model as being dangerous and innately unjust. There is no escaping the fact -- whatever interpretation you put on it -- that Sharia treats women differently from men."

In other Islam-related news, three Muslim men from Derby in central England have become the first people in Britain to be convicted of homophobia after they distributed leaflets calling for homosexual people to be killed.

In what has been called a landmark case, a jury at Derby crown court ruled on January 20 that Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed had breached hate crime legislation by handing out the leaflets outside the Jama mosque in Derby in July 2010.

The leaflets said, "The death sentence is the only way this immoral crime can be erased from corrupting society and act as a deterrent for any other ill person who is remotely inclined in this bent way." The only dispute among "the classical authorities" of Islam was the method employed to carry out the death penalty, the leaflet claimed.

Meanwhile, an atheist group at University College London sparked uproar after publishing a cartoon on its Facebook page depicting Jesus and "Mo" sharing a beer at a pub. A student Muslim group demanded the cartoon be removed, but the atheist group refused and started a petition to defend its freedom of expression. The final outcome of this controversy is still pending.

Also in London, the British media regulator Ofcom on January 20 revoked the broadcasting license of the Iranian news channel Press TV. Ofcom said Press TV, a 24-hour news and propaganda channel owned by the Iranian government, had broken licensing rules by failing to declare that its editorial base is in Tehran rather than London.

The dustup began in December after Ofcom fined Press TV £100,000 ($155,000) for broadcasting an unauthorized interview with the Newsweek journalist Maziar Bahari, who was imprisoned in Iran in June 2009 in the wake of the uprising that followed the disputed election.

Ofcom said the interview with Bahari had been conducted under duress and that during the investigation of that case it had emerged that the Iranian government was controlling the editorial operations of Press TV directly from Tehran.

Finally, the British government learned that it is stuck with Abu Qatada, a radical Islamic preacher once described by the former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon as the "spiritual head of the mujahedin [Muslim guerrilla warriors engaged in a jihad] in Britain."

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, ruled on January 17 that Abu Qatada (his real name is Omar Mahmoud Mohammed Othman) cannot be extradited to his native Jordan, where he has twice been convicted in absentia of terrorism charges, as Qatada claims that his trial there would be tainted by evidence obtained by torture.

The British government has been reluctant to put Qatada on trial in Britain; doing so in an open court would involve revealing intelligence secrets. Britain has therefore insisted that he be returned to Jordan.

The ECHR -- which sits above Britain's own Supreme Court as the final arbiter of appeals -- ruled that departing Qatada would "legitimize the torture of witnesses and suspects" and "result in a flagrant denial of justice." The court's decision can be appealed within three months, but if upheld, would require that Qatada be charged in Britain or released.

British Prime Minister David Cameron plans to travel to Strasbourg to present British proposals for limiting the ECHR's powers to overrule the findings of the domestic courts. One idea involves a "democratic override": it would allow national parliaments to annul court rulings on issues affecting national security.

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

Source: http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2776/britain-islam-rising

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