Turkey Stakes Claim in America With $100 Million Mega-Mosque

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A drawing of Turkey's $100 million mega-mosque complex being built in Maryland

A drawing of Turkey’s $100 million mega-mosque complex being built in Maryland

The construction project in Maryland is about more than a mega-mosque. It’s symbol of how Turkey aspires to lead the Islamic ummah, including the American Muslim community.

By Ryan Mauro:

The Islamist government of Turkey is building a 15-acre, $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland. Prime Minister Erdogan visited the site on May 15 in a ceremony that was attended by the leaders of two groups linked to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood. Also present was the Maryland Secretary of State, representing Maryland Governor and likely Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, Martin O’Malley.

The mega-mosque is called the Turkish American Culture and Civilization Center and, according to the Muslim Link,  it “will likely become the largest and most striking examples of Islamic architecture in the western hemisphere” when it is finished in 2014. The Muslim Link explicitly says it is “a project of the government of Turkey.”

On May 15, Prime Minister Erdogan spoke to hundreds of people at the construction site and said he’d come back for the opening ceremony next year. He warned the audience that there are groups promoting “Islamophobia,” branding potential critics as paranoid bigots. Erdogan recently said that “Islamophobia” and Zionism are equivalent to fascism and anti-Semitism, saying they are a “crime against humanity.”

On the same trip to the U.S., Erdogan brought a special guest: The father of one of the Islamists killed in Israel’s 2010 raid on a Turkish flotilla that tried to break Israel’s legal blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Erdogan reportedly wanted to him to meet President Obama.

The site will have five buildings, including a mosque “constructed using 16th century Ottoman architecture that can hold 750 worshipers.” The site’s design reinforces concerns that Turkey wants to restore its glory days as the Ottoman Empire.

The event was also attended by the leaders of two U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities.

The first, Naeem Baig, is the president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA). A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo, which says its “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within,” lists ICNA as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” It even refers to meetings with ICNA with talk about a merger.

ICNA is linked to the Pakistani Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami and its conferences feature radical speakers. A former ICNA president was recently indicted for horrific war crimes committed during Bangladesh’s 1971 succession from Pakistan – the torture and murder or 18 political opponents.

The second official from a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity that attended the event was Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA and several of its components are listed as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the same 1991 Brotherhood memo. ISNA was also an unindicted co-conspiratorin the Holy Land Foundation case, dubbed the largest Islamic terror-funding trial in the history of the U.S.  Federal prosecutors in the case also listed ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

Read more at The Clarion Project

France’s Growing Islamist Problem

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franceBy Ryan Mauro:

The reaction to a recent Muslim robbery of a priest in France is a sad indication of where the country is headed. A Catholic official pointed out, “If it had been an imam or rabbi, he [the Interior Minister] would already been on the spot.” This is no surprise, as Socialist President Hollande’s pandering to the Muslim population played a large role in his election.

The incident began when four Muslims surrounded the priest and told him to hand over his cell phone. One thief knocked him unconscious. The attack may have been motivated by criminality and not jihad, but the two are part of a common trend.

There are over 750 government-designated “Sensitive Urban Zones” in France, referred to as “No-Go Zones” by Dr. Daniel Pipes. About 5 million Muslims live in these areas of France where law enforcement doesn’t exercise decisive control. When the authorities do have to step in, a violent backlash quickly arises. There are many videos of Muslim worshippers holding illegal prayers in the streets when their mosques overflow without any response from police.

On New Year’s, about 1,200 cars were set on fire and police clashed with residents in the Muslim-majority districts of Strasbourg and Mulhouse. In August, a two-day rampage was sparked when a Muslim was arrested for driving without a license around the time of a funeral. Massive riots have broken out in these no-go zones because of the hostility to reasonable law enforcement. Over half of the French prison population is Muslim, where many are radicalized.

A lack of integration is the most common factor in Islamic terrorists. These unassimilated areas are not just breeding grounds for criminals, but for extremism as well—particularly when foreign Islamist governments and organizations get involved.

The Saudi Arabia-based Muslim World League, described by Andrew McCarthy as “the Muslim Brotherhood’s principal vehicle for the international propagation of Islamic supremacist ideology,” is helping finance the construction of 200 new mosques. The French Council of the Muslim Faith wants to eventually doublethe 2,500 mosques in the country.

Qatar, the supposed U.S. “ally” that subsidizes the Muslim Brotherhood, is also active in France’s Muslim community. It is financing mosques and the Union of Islamic Organizations in France, the Muslim Brotherhood’s main branch there. It demands the government to pass a law against “Islamophobia.” The Qatari government is also investing $65 million in the suburbs where over 1 million Muslim immigrants live.

This isn’t purely an act of humanitarianism or a business investment. The Qatari constitution is based on Sharia Law. The Christians in Qatar, almost 6% of the population, are allowed to practice their faith but cannot proselytize  to Muslims. Hypocritically, Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani publicly pledged in December 2011 to “spare no effort” to proselytize the Islamic teachings of Muhammad al-Wahhab, the founder of what is often called “Wahhabism.”

Read more at Front Page

The Silent Tragedy of Child Marriage

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shutterstock_71657752By Robert Spencer:

Last Friday, an Afghan journalist named Mustafa Kazemi posted on Facebook a harrowing story about an eight-year-old girl in the Khashrood district of Nimruz province in Afghanistan, who was sold off into marriage to a mullah in his late 50s, and who bled to death on their wedding night.

It was one of many such tragedies in a land that little notes nor long remembers such deaths. An eight-year-old girl sold into marriage and dead after a brutal sexual assault that her body could not withstand is no more noteworthy than a pack animal that collapses under a too-heavy weight. It’s time and money wasted, that’s all. Forget about it. Get another one.

Indeed, the day after Kazemi posted his account, pro-Sharia lawmakers in Afghanistan blocked a proposed Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women, which would have set criminal penalties for child marriage. Pro-Sharia legislator Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada denounced the law as un-Islamic, explaining: “Whatever is against Islamic law, we don’t even need to speak about it.”

That means that more girls like the eight-year-old in the Khashrood district will continue to suffer. For few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic law than the permissibility of child marriage. Islamic tradition records that Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when he consummated the marriage:

“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).

Another tradition has Aisha herself recount the scene:

The Prophet engaged me when I was a girl of six (years). We went to Medina and stayed at the home of Bani-al-Harith bin Khazraj. Then I got ill and my hair fell down. Later on my hair grew (again) and my mother, Um Ruman, came to me while I was playing in a swing with some of my girl friends. She called me, and I went to her, not knowing what she wanted to do to me. She caught me by the hand and made me stand at the door of the house. I was breathless then, and when my breathing became Allright, she took some water and rubbed my face and head with it. Then she took me into the house. There in the house I saw some Ansari women who said, “Best wishes and Allah’s Blessing and a good luck.” Then she entrusted me to them and they prepared me (for the marriage). Unexpectedly Allah’s Apostle came to me in the forenoon and my mother handed me over to him, and at that time I was a girl of nine years of age. (Bukhari 5.58.234).

Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years old.

Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is considered exemplary in this unto today. And so in April 2011, the Bangladesh Mufti Fazlul Haque Amini declared that those trying to pass a law banning child marriage in that country were putting Muhammad in a bad light: “Banning child marriage will cause challenging the marriage of the holy prophet of Islam… [putting] the moral character of the prophet into controversy and challenge.” He added a threat: “Islam permits child marriage and it will not be tolerated if any ruler will ever try to touch this issue in the name of giving more rights to women.” The Mufti said that 200,000 jihadists were ready to sacrifice their lives for any law restricting child marriage.

Read more at PJ Media

 

Jihad in America

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Front Page:

Editor’s note: Frontpage is proud to announce that our Shillman Journalism Fellow, Mark Tapson, co-wrote this documentary.

On the bright, beautiful, and crisp fall day that was early morning, September 11, 2001, few Americans were familiar with stealth jihad, or considered Islamic terrorism a threat to America.  Yet, there was a voice crying in the wilderness, warning of a danger that already existed here.  That voice belonged to Steven Emerson, whose documentary film titled Jihad in America was aired by PBS on November 21, 1994.  Islamic militant groups in America, including CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) began their protestations and intimidation even before the broadcast date.  Since the airing, the use of intimidation has been ramped up and gone global, having a stifling impact on terrorism/jihad-related broadcasts in the mainstream media throughout the Western world. This oppressive atmosphere has affected the conduct of Western governments, including the Obama administration.

Emerson’s newly released Jihad in America: The Grand Deception is a must-watch documentary — an educational tool for Americans to learn about the network of stealth Islamist jihadists in the U.S. that has grown in the aftermath of 9/11.  The fact that evil lurks just under the surface in America (brought to life last month at the Boston Marathon) seems to be difficult to acknowledge, yet ignoring it is at our peril.  Unfortunately, Americans have a short memory span, and most prefer to turn away from unpleasant realities, especially in the Obama Age.  Hence, all the more reason to circulate information about this essential documentary.

The 70-minute documentary by Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) deals with the covert structure and growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun) and other such radical Muslim groups, masquerading under the deceitful moniker of apolitical religious groups, as well as civil rights groups in the U.S. This IPT documentary reveals how the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has infiltrated the highest institutions of the land, including the Obama White House, the U.S. Congress, U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security, Hollywood, the mainstream media, law enforcement in various states, the publishing industry and American museums.  The film not only presents examples of MB infiltration, but reveals how the MB and its affiliates intimidate policymakers to submit to their demands by their use of our open democracy to undermine our institutions, all of which is done to further their quest for global rule under Sharia law.

This film includes previously unseen interviews with articulate and most courageous Muslim individuals, former FBI agents and federal prosecutors, a prominent Hollywood director, journalists, as well as a top official of the Muslim Brotherhood.  This documentary features secretly recorded audio and video speeches of radical Islamists, including individual preachers and groups, original MB documents, and unsealed federal documents.

In an interview Steven Emerson had with Lou Dobbs of Fox News on January 21, 2013, the host introduced The Grand Deception as follows: “Our guest [Steven Emerson] says that the ‘Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamist off shoots are hiding in plain sight right here in the U.S.’”  What followed is Emerson’s explanation of the documentary title. “A group of Muslim Brotherhood activists secretly got together in Philadelphia in 1993 in a meeting that was actually wiretapped [the wiretaps have since been declassified] by the FBI.  They [the MB activists] openly talked about deception as the primary campaign tactic that they would use to change the image of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. by creating new front groups, by changing the terminology, and by claiming they were against terrorism publicly, but in fact raising funds for Hamas privately. The word deception is the word that I used in the title because that is exactly what is going on throughout the country with these radical Islamic groups.”

One of the radical Islamists the documentary presents is a Brooklyn, NY-based Imam named Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who, according to Emerson, had been invited in 1991 to give an invocation to the U.S. Congress (the first Muslim to so) and would subsequently be recorded saying about the U.S., “You know what this country is? It is a garbage can, it is filthy and sick.” The film also points out that this anti-American, hate-spewing Imam, was invited to appear at anti-terrorism conferences and was paid by the U.S. government.

Muslim Brotherhood victories in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have provided encouragement for the hundreds of MB cells worldwide, including those in the U.S.

The film shows Attorney General Eric Holder undergoing congressional drilling in 2010 from Rep. Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on how he refused to acknowledge the role of radical Muslims in terrorism on American soil and refused to use the words “radical Muslim” or “Muslim.”

In another frame of the film, Dr. Mamoun Fandy, an Egyptian-born American scholar, President of the Fandy Associates think tank and a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, declared that the MB is the “mother” of all radical Muslim groups.  He pointed out that “instead of isolating the MB, the West and the U.S. [especially under President Obama] have engaged them and regarded them as “moderate.” According to Fandy, the West was tremendously naïveabout the nature and intentions of the MB.  According to Emerson (in conversation with this writer), Fandy was let go by Georgetown University because of his views on the MB.

The film records the spiritual leader of the MB, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, speaking to a Muslim audience in Toledo, OH and revealing the goals of the MB.  “We will conquer Europe and we will conquer America for Islam through religious proselytization” (dawa in Arabic). MB documents captured by the FBI in 1991 further reveal this insidious plan by the MB to conquer America for Islam.  It includes increased immigration and settlement as part of the MB’s plot of stealth Jihad, just as they have done in Europe.  Their aim is to destroy Western civilization from within by destabilizing “their miserable house,” and replacing it with God’s religion — Islam.

Read more at Front Page

PJM EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Diplomats Report New Benghazi Whistleblowers with Info Devastating to Clinton and Obama

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pic_giant_051013_The-Benghazi-LiePJ Media, by Roger L Simon:

More whistleblowers will emerge shortly in the escalating Benghazi scandal, according to two former U.S. diplomats who spoke with PJ Media Monday afternoon.

These whistleblowers, colleagues of the former diplomats, are currently securing legal counsel because they work in areas not fully protected by the Whistleblower law.

According to the diplomats, what these whistleblowers will say will be at least as explosive as what we have already learned about the scandal, including details about what really transpired in Benghazi that are potentially devastating to both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The former diplomats inform PJM the new revelations concentrate in two areas — what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi and the pressure put on General Carter Ham, then in command of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and therefore responsible for Libya, not to act to protect jeopardized U.S. personnel.

Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.

Hillary Clinton still wanted to proceed because, in part, as one of the diplomats said, she wanted “to overthrow Gaddafi on the cheap.”

This left Stevens in the position of having to clean up the scandalous enterprise when it became clear that the “insurgents” actually were al-Qaeda – indeed, in the view of one of the diplomats, the same group that attacked the consulate and ended up killing Stevens.

The former diplomat who spoke with PJ Media regarded the whole enterprise as totally amateurish and likened it to the Mike Nichols film Charlie Wilson’s War about a clueless congressman who supplies Stingers to the Afghan guerrillas. “It’s as if Hillary and the others just watched that movie and said ‘Hey, let’s do that!’” the diplomat said.

He added that he and his colleagues think the leaking of General David Petraeus’ affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell was timed to silence the former CIA chief on these matters.

Regarding General Ham, military contacts of the diplomats tell them that AFRICOM had Special Ops “assets in place that could have come to the aid of the Benghazi consulate immediately (not in six hours).”

Ham was told by the White House not to send the aid to the trapped men, but Ham decided to disobey and did so anyway, whereupon the White House “called his deputy and had the deputy threaten to relieve Ham of his command.”

The White House motivation in all this is as yet unclear, but it is known that Ham retired quietly in April 2013 as head of AFRICOM.

PJ Media recognizes this is largely hearsay, but the two diplomats sounded quite credible. One of them was in a position of responsibility in a dangerous area of Iraq in 2004.

We will report more as we learn it.

Obamastan

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obamastanBy Melanie Phillips:

Fort Hood, Benghazi, the Boston bombings, Iran/Syria, Israel. The pattern is unmistakeable; the danger to America is exponentially increasing; the scandal is deepening into something nearer to a national crisis.

The Obama administration is playing down the Islamist threat to the US and the free world, empowering Islamists at home and abroad, endangering America and betraying its allies — and covering up its egregious failure to protect the homeland as a result of all the above, while instead blaming America for its own victimisation.

What is coming out in the Benghazi hearings would be jaw-dropping if it had not been apparent from the get-go that the administration failed to protect its own people in the beseiged American mission where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his staff were murdered in 2012, then lied about the fact that this was an Islamist attack, and then covered up both its failure and its lie. (Apparent, that is, to some — but not to the American media, most of which gave the Obama administration a free pass on the scandal in order to ensure the smooth re-election of The One).

But the administration has form on this — serious, continuing form. After the Fort Hood massacre in 2009, in which an Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas shouting ‘Allahu akhbar’, not only was it revealed that his radicalisation and extremist links had been ignored but the Department of Defense and federal law enforcement agencies classified the shootings merely as an act of ‘workplace violence’.

Read more at Melanie’s Blog

Switzerland: Multicultural Paradise?

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images (48)by Soeren Kern:

 

In March, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service announced that a growing number of jihadists are being recruited in Switzerland. The number of robberies and assaults on Swiss trains has skyrocketed to such an extent that the Swiss government recently opted to equip transport police with firearms, and at least 1,400 women in Switzerland have been victims of forced marriages.

A controversial new report by the Swiss government claims that Muslim immigrants are so well integrated into Swiss society that no further federal policies or programs are needed to promote Muslim integration or to counter Islamic extremism.

Published by the Swiss Federal Council [Bundesrat] on May 8, the 102-page study — known by the short title, “The Situation of Muslims in Switzerland” — so completely downplays the countless problems associated with Muslim immigration in Switzerland that the report has been ridiculed as being worthy of a “case study in political correctness.”

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The study has left many Swiss voters scratching their heads in disbelief because it is common knowledge that the twin issues of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration are far more problematic than the rosy assessment proffered by Swiss cabinet.

According to a recent survey of popular perceptions of Islam produced by the Bertelsmann Foundation, fully half of all Swiss voters view Islam as a threat to their country, and 58% believe it does not belong in the Western world. Two-thirds of Swiss voters view Islam as a source of conflict. Considering that hardly a day goes by without news of some Islam-related problem in Switzerland, those survey results are not surprising.

In May 2013, for example, it emerged that more than two-thirds of the pupils attending 80 schools in Zürich do not speak any German. At one school in the Sihlfeld district of Zürich, only one pupil is a native German speaker. In Basel, the lack of German language skills among Muslim immigrants is so acute that politicians are seeking to establish quotas at the so-called ghetto schools, requiring that at least 30% of the students at any given school be native German speakers.

Also in May, the Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled that a 14-year-old Muslim girl could not be excused from swimming lessons just because the teacher was male. Her parents had sought permission, but school officials had rejected the request. In its ruling, the Supreme Court referred to a 2008 ruling that established the principle that obligatory swimming lessons take precedence over religious duties.

In April, it emerged that since the beginning of the Arab Spring, the crime rate in Switzerland has doubled, and some politicians are now demanding that all male asylum seekers from North Africa and the Middle East provide DNA samples that would be stored in a data bank to help Swiss police investigate crimes.

In March, the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) warned that a growing number of jihadists [holy warriors] are being recruited in Switzerland. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Berner Oberländer on March 11, the head of Swiss intelligence, Markus Seiler, said, “What worries us, is that there are more and more people in our country who are recruiting Swiss people for jihad.” More than two dozen Swiss Muslims are thought to have travelled to Syria to join the fighting there.

In February, the Vimentis polling platform, in its annual survey for 2013, found that immigration is by far the top issue of concern for Swiss voters. It also found that nearly 70% of Swiss voters favor increasing the number of police officers in the country due to rising levels of insecurity.

In January, Swiss authorities said they are bracing for a massive increase in asylum seekers in 2013. The government had budgeted for 23,000 asylum applications for 2013, but that figure is forecast to hit 30,000. Costs to deal with political refugees are expected to explode to 1.43 billion francs ($1.5 billion).

In November 2012, the chief of police for the Swiss canton of Zug, Beat Villiger, said Switzerland needs at least1,500 more police officers to fight a crime wave perpetrated by foreign gangs. Villiger said: “The professionalization of criminals in the areas of pickpocketing, tricks and skimming [from ATM machines using duplicate credit card readers and wireless cameras] is rising.” He also called for special prisons for failed asylum seekers and increased video surveillance in trains. The number of robberies and assaults on Swiss trains has skyrocketed to such an extent that the Swiss government recently opted to equip transport police with firearms.

Also in November, Swiss police arrested several members of a Muslim gang called Jamahat who forced adolescents from disadvantaged families in the cities of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds to convert to Islam and then to sell drugs. The Jamahat gang is made up of young Muslim men originally from Afghanistan, Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia. According to police, the group “is attempting to radicalize its activities by seeking to impose — by physical and psychological violence — a monopoly on the sale of marijuana in our region.”

In nearby Lausanne, the imam of a local mosque was accused of polygamy after he married a Swiss woman who converted to Islam. Both the imam and the woman were already legally married to other spouses. The polygamous marriage was performed in a religious ceremony; however, in Switzerland only civil marriages are officially recognized by the state.

In October, Muslims complained about “offensive” advertising by Swiss Airlines. The campaign included large-format posters depicting an airplane with the red and white cross of the Swiss flag painted on the tail fin, accompanied by the slogan “Cross is Trump” [Kreuz ist Trumpf, a play on words referring to card games]. Muslims were outraged by what they said was a “Christian slogan used as a provocation and attack against Islam.” Swiss Airlines said its advertising campaign carries no religious or political message.

Also in October, a sixth grade boy at a school in Winterthur was forced to change schools after Muslim children repeatedly pressured him to convert to Islam. The problems began after one of the boys, whose father is an imam, tried to force the boy to pray to Allah. After the boy refused, the Muslim child began ridiculing his Christian faith. Soon thereafter, other Muslim classmates (14 of the 19 boys in the sixth grade class are Muslim) began harassing the boy, even calling for him to be killed for refusing to bow the knee to Allah. Muslim children at the same school have also sought to enforce Islamic dress codes.

That same month, a gym teacher at the André-Chavanne school in Geneva prevented female students from using a track field on Fridays because of complaints from a nearby mosque. When outraged parents confronted the teacher, she justified her action by saying she was concerned for the girls’ safety because Muslims had previously shouted insults at them.

In September, the Swiss House of Representatives voted against banning Muslim women from wearing burkas in public spaces. Parliamentarians who voted against the burka ban argued it would “encourage negative opinions of Switzerland” and “hurt tourism from Muslim countries.”

In August, a study conducted by a pair of academics from the University of Neuchâtel found that at least 1,400 Muslim women in Switzerland have been the victims of forced marriages. Most forced marriages involve Muslim immigrants from the Balkans, Turkey and Sri Lanka.

In June, Swiss police warned that radical Muslim groups are using Switzerland as a base from which to promote jihad in Europe and beyond. Islamists in Switzerland are providing jihadists with logistical support, and also stepping up their use of Internet websites there to spread Islamic propaganda as well as to incite their supporters to commit acts of terrorism and violence. In response to the rising threat from radical Islam, Swiss police launched a new specialist IT research department to intensify efforts to monitor jihadist websites and their operators.

In February, leading Islamic groups in Switzerland announced plans to establish their own parliament that will enable all of the country’s Muslims to “speak with one voice,” and that their new “parliament” will be based on the principles of Islamic Sharia law. Swiss analysts, according to an exposé published by the newspaper Basler Zeitung, say the initiative is an effort to establish a “parallel” legislative body in Switzerland that will be a mouthpiece for Islamic fundamentalists who are seeking to impose Sharia law in the country.

In January, the extremist Islamic Central Council of Switzerland (IZRS) announced that it was trying to raise money from countries in the Persian Gulf to build a 20-million Swiss franc ($21 million) mega-mosque in Bern. With three floors, the planned mosque would be the biggest in Switzerland. In addition to a prayer room for more than 500 worshippers, the building would have conference and training rooms, shops, underground parking and a garden.

In September 2011, an immigrant group based in Bern called for the emblematic white cross to be removed from the Swiss national flag because as a Christian symbol it “no longer corresponds to today’s multicultural Switzerland.” In an interview with the Swiss newspaper Aargauer Zeitung, a Muslim activist said the cross has a Christian background, and while the Christian roots of Switzerland should be respected, “it is necessary to separate church and state” because “Switzerland today has a great religious and cultural diversity. One has to ask if the State wants to continue building up a symbol in which many people no longer believe.”

Read more at Gatestone Institute

Interfaith Event Teaches That U.S. Is ‘Aiding’ Oppression

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mpacBy Ryan Mauro:

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) returned to All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California on May 5 to address the topic of radicalization in the wake of the Boston bombings. The church leader said there is a “crisis” of “Islamophobia” in America. MPAC denounced violence but said terrorism is a response to the U.S. “aiding and abetting oppression” at the behest of the military-industrial complex.

At the May 5 event, church leader Rev. Ed Bacon said that he “literally had my life changed and my thinking changed because of these two leaders,” referring to MPAC leaders Maher Hathout and Salam al-Marayati. He went so far as to say that the Islamic Center of Southern California, where Hathout is a spokesman and Muslim Brotherhood texts are used, is “my mosque.”

At the event, both MPAC leaders denounced terrorism and said Muslims must provide a counter-narrative to the violent themes that radicalize. Hathout said that too many Muslims are “soft” in confronting the radical ideas and have a “gang” mentality where they automatically side with other Muslims against non-Muslims.

However, Hathout said America is run by an elite minority beholden to lobbyists. He said that American democracy is threatened by “Islamophobia”  driven by supremacists who believe “the other” doesn’t deserve equal rights.

Al-Marayati rightly pointed out that there is an ideological struggle and reform in Islamic teaching is needed, but attributed the conflict to anger over the aggression of America and its allies.

“When a superpower is aiding and abetting oppression and there are grievances, and people react in a violent way, they [Americans] look at the violence and they say it is not time to deal with the grievances,” he said.

He claimed that there is a “cottage industry” of anti-Muslim activists that is part of a “larger machine,” including the military-industrial complex and special interests. These conspirators “want more contracts for more weapons to countries that only use these weapons against their own people or against civilians.”

MPAC held its last annual conference at this church, where Reverend Ed Bacon denounced “evangelical Zionism” as an evil on par with slavery. The church and MPAC held a press conference to declare their critics “right-wing extremists” who are “hateful.”

The critics noted that MPAC was founded by Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, including Senior Adviser Maher Hathout’s brother who was a “close disciple” of the group’s founder, Hassan al-Banna. Maher Hathout says he remains “very proud” of his time in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but emphasizes it was 60 years ago. His brother said they came to the U.S. to spread the “Islamic Movement” of al-Banna.

After coming to America, one or both of the Hathout brothers was connected to the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, as a 1989 document shows. MPAC has maintained a close alliance with U.S. Brotherhood entities ever since. In 1997, Maher Hathout promoted Hassan al-Banna as one of the “reformists,” along with other Islamists like Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who MPAC still hosts. In 1998 and 1999, he and al-Marayati legitimized Hezbollah’s attacks on Israeli soldiers.

In 2000, Hathout said a “general intifada” would overthrow Arab governments guilty of “treason” for not confronting the “butchers” of Israel. Around this time, MPAC started becoming more conscious of the language it was using. Hathout said he regretted the “harshness of my remarks” when they received negative attention, but not the message. Tellingly, a radical named Mahdi Bray continued to serve as MPAC’s Political Director.

Read more at Front Page

“Grand Deception” Documentary by Steven Emerson Racks Up Film Festival Honors

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IPT News
May 17, 2013

“Jihad in America: The Grand Deception,” a new film by Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson, was honored this week as the best documentary at the 2013 International Beverly Hills Film Festival.

A jury of entertainment industry professionals selected the film, which also won best documentary at last month’s Myrtle Beach International Film Festival.

The 70-minute film focuses on the Muslim Brotherhood and its penetration in the United States. It features documents and recordings from federal investigations, undercover recordings and interviews with FBI agents, federal prosecutors and Muslim experts on radical Islam.

“I am honored by the recognition the judges in Beverly Hills and Myrtle Beach have given ‘The Grand Deception,’” Emerson said. “This shows what happens when people break through the noise which often dominates discussion on this issue, actually watch the film and judge for themselves. The problem of covert Muslim Brotherhood activity in America is a serious one, and my film explores it with original source documents and a list of sources with first-hand experience combating it.”

The film also placed third at the Sunset International Film Festival in Los Angeles and is an official selection for upcoming festivals in New York and Madrid.

“As much of an honor as it is to be recognized for this work, Grand Deception co-director Rachel Milton told the Beverly Hills gala attendees upon accepting event’s crystal plaque, “it is more important that the subject matter of our film be recognized and discussed. And that is the subject of radical Islam, something that touches everyone’s life whether they realize it or not.”

Audience members from a screening in Myrtle Beach called the film “very powerful” and “a smack in the face.” “People really need to see this,” said another.

The Grand Deception is a follow-up to Emerson’s 1994 documentary “Jihad in America,” which won the George Polk Award for outstanding documentary and the Investigative Reporters and Editors’ Tom Renner Award for investigative reporting.

The documentary has impressed other viewers, with Orange County Register editorial writer Rory Cohen calling it a “must see” for showing “how far the Muslim Brotherhood has reached within our own political fabric in less than three decades.”

“‘The Grand Deception’ exposes radical Islamists in their own words,” wrote Muslim physician Qanta Ahmed, calling that something “shattering to any Muslim in America – and is exactly why our communities invite unwanted scrutiny. In their own voices, American Islamists demand violent jihad against the United States.”

Producers say they want the film to start a debate about the political application of Islam – or Islamism – as anti-Islamist Muslim activist Zuhdi Jasser explains in this outtake:

Additional clips from can be seen here.

US Gov’t: Radical Muslims Approved, Moderates Shunned

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Muslim advisorsBy Ryan Mauro:

A 2011 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document released by The Daily Caller advises government agencies against training about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and to shun “Muslim reformers.”

Shockingly, the advisory committee that likely influenced these guidelines includes numerous individuals affiliated with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.

The document says it is a list of “tips for federal, state and local government and law enforcement officials organizing CVE [Countering Violent Extremism], cultural awareness, counter-radicalization, or counterterrorism training.” It was produced by the Department of Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in cooperation with the National Counterterrorism Center.

The DHS suggestions in the document include:

Don’t use training premised on theories with little or no evidence to support them. Examples (from the report “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace”) of unsubstantiated theories include:

a. Many mainstream Muslim organizations have terrorist ties.

b Mainstream Muslim organizations are fronts for Islamic political organizations whose true desire is to establish Sharia law in America. Muslim Americans are using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.

The “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace” report cited depicts concerns about the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood as the fabrications of anti-Muslim bigots. Moreover, it defends the Brotherhood, saying it is a moderate group that wouldn’t use front groups in America.

In reality, solid evidence exists to the contrary – evidence ironically from the federal government’s own determinations as well as documents from the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood itself including a 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood explanatory memorandum that explicitly states: “[O]ur work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

The Brotherhood memorandum lists “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”  The list includes “mainstream” Muslim-American groups—the very same groups which appear to have influenced these very same Department of Homeland Security guidelines (see below).

Specifically, the federal government designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) as unindicted co-conspirators in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas. Federal prosecutors labeled these three mainstream groups as U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities in 2007. In 2009, the designations were upheld by District Court Judge Solis because of “ample” evidence linking them to Hamas.

The Clarion Project has broken numerous stories about other Islamist groups doing exactly what the DHS dismisses in the current training document as “unsubstantiated theories.”

For example, a Pennsylvania-based group, Sankore Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), tells Muslims to engage in “litigation jihad” to advance Sharia law in America.

A California-based group, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), which issues authoritative fatwas, or religious declarations, said in a 2007 Arabic paper presented at one of its conferences it recommends that Muslims become judges and use deception to implement sharia law to the best of their ability. To call their rulings unsettling would be a gross understatement.

These are important facts but the DHS guidelines would leave law enforcement personnel ignorant of them.

On the topic of “Muslim Reformers,” the DHS document had this to say:

Don’t use trainers who answer primarily to interest groups. For example, trainers who are self-professed “Muslim reformers” may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted unbiased information.

This is a chilling reflection of how the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups have succeeded in marginalizing their competitors. (SeeThe Clarion Project.org’s CAIR Lashes Out at Non-Islamist Muslim Group where CAIR labels their competitors as being part of an “Islamophobia” network.)

In fact, the Brotherhood groups have become treasured partners of the Obama Administration, while their opponents have been shut out of the policy process. Radical Islamists with known connections to terrorism have had an open door to the White House, but moderate Muslims are not among the list of invitees.

Read more at The Clarion Project