Tag Archives: Islamism

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

Online Jihadi Publications Luring Teens

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The cover of the spring 2013 edition Al-Qaeda's slick, English online 'Inspire' magazine.

The cover of the spring 2013 edition Al-Qaeda’s slick, English online ‘Inspire’ magazine.

The Clarion Project:

Radical Islamists around the world have been reacting online to the bomb attacks that struck the Boston Marathon last month.

Since America intensified its counterterrorism efforts against al-Qaeda over the last several years, the terrorist group’s leaders have called on their followers in the United States to carry out smaller-scale attacks while at the same time providing online education and teach them how to carry them out.

According to Shiraz Maher of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization, the bombings at the Boston Marathon not only caught U.S. intelligence services by surprise, but debate raged onjihadist websites over the motivations and its implications.

“In the most generic and broadest sense, there was a sense of celebration on the jihadi forums. These guys are committed jihadists. They hate the United States and the West,” Maher said.

Terror analyst Raffaello Pantucci of the Royal United Services Institute says al-Qaeda cells are encouraging radicalized individuals in the West through the internet. Al-Qaeda has developed a new tactic which essentially teaches that even if it cannot take lives directly, it wants to inflict economic and financial losses on the United States and the West generally.

This is “Open-source jihad as they call it, in which individuals are very much empowered or the emphasis is on them to launch attacks where they can on targets that they specifically identify using materials on hand,” Pantucci said.

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Radicals Moderates and Islamists

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angry-muslimsBy Daniel Greenfield:

The radical-moderate continuum that has defined the dialogue on Islam in the War on Terror is not an authentic perspective, it is an observer perspective.

To the Western observer, a suicide bomber is radical, a Muslim Imam willing to perform gay weddings is moderate and the Muslim Brotherhood leader who supports some acts of terror, but not others, is moderately radical or radically moderate.

These descriptions tell us nothing about Islam or about what Muslims believe, but do tell us a great deal about its observers and what they believe. They turn Islam into inkblots that reveal more about the interpreter than the splotch of ink being interpreted.

Muslims are not radical or moderate. The radical-moderate continuum is how liberal countries rate individuals and countries to decide how well they will harmonize with the national and international consensus. Even if that consensus only exists in their own mind. The label of moderate does not mean a rejection of violence. Otherwise it could hardly be applied to the Muslim Brotherhood. What it means is a willingness to collaborate with Western governments and progressive organizations.

The radical-moderate labels are useful for liberals, but useless for anyone who wants to asses reality. It is tied into a number of false notions that are necessary for maintaining the status quo of liberal democracies. Notions such as the equal moral stature and interchangeability of all religions and peoples are key to running a liberal democracy, but they make it impossible to have a rational conservation about Islam.

In liberal democracies, no one really discusses Islam as a religion. That discussion is preemptively aborted by the defense of the general category of religion. To criticize Islam is to challenge the category of protection for all religions, much as to attack Communism during the Cold War was to attack the First Amendment.

The general category makes it necessary to subdivide the specific religion or ideology into a moderate majority and a tiny minority of extremists. This categorization tells us nothing about Islam and everything about the political and intellectual classes that refuse to rationally discuss it.

Islam is neither moderate nor extreme. It simply is. Extremism and moderate are an observer perspective. That does not mean that Islam is all one thing, an impermeable block. But the one thing that it is not, is liberal.

Liberal Islam is secular Islam, in the same way that liberal Christianity and liberal Judaism are both secularized in their subservience to liberal values. There are indeed secular Muslims out there, but they are a tiny minority of secularists even in the secular West. Their influence is minimal. And it likely would be minimal even if the Saudis weren’t spending fortunes in oil money to control the expressions of Islam in the West.

Even these secular Muslims are not necessarily non-violent. What they lack is the broader worldview of Islamic nationalism, that some label Islamism. They will support Arab Nationalist terrorism, which defines peoples by nation, rather than the Islamic Nationalism, which defines them by religion.

Islamic nationalism is not a religion. Nor is it a separate branch of Islam. It is influenced by movements within Islam, but those movements are largely reformist efforts aimed at returning to a more uncompromised Islam. And it is not limited to these movements. The majority of Muslims identify with Islamic nationalism to some degree.

Islamism is simply the political implementation of Islam which is already political. Islamism does not politicize an apolitical religion, it applies a political religion to politics. And most Muslims support that for the simple reason that they are Muslims and Islam is their religion. They may quibble over some of the details and they may be fooled by some smooth talk, but the same may be said of many supporters of National Socialism and Bolshevism. What matters is not whether every single German who thought Hitler had some good ideas supported the concentration camps or whether every single Communist supported the Gulags. Certainly not all did. What matters is that they supported the systems and leaders that made those things possible even when the warning signs were there.

muslim rageNo Islamist movement represents a complete break with Islam. Not even a partial break. The greatest stressors that Islamic terrorist groups impose on their religious codes is the treatment of other Muslims as infidels. And that alone is a telling statement about the tolerance for interfaith violence in their religion. It isn’t war that stresses Islamic codes, it’s internecine warfare.

Western observers may label those who identify with Al Qaeda as extremists and those who identify with the Muslim Brotherhood as moderates, but these are cosmetic differences. Islamist organizations are not a separate religion. They are the practical implementation of the religion. If we are to have a truer continuum, it would run from secular to religious, rather than moderate to extremist.

What makes Islamists dangerous are not their means, such as flying planes into skyscrapers, but their ends, which involve a global theocracy that reduces non-Muslims to enemies and slaves. Whether this end is accomplished through bombs or elections makes little difference. Hitler and Stalin would be no different whether they won elections or seized power by force. Not so long as their ends involved war, mass slavery and genocide.

The trouble with Islamic nationalism is Islam. There is no way of getting around that. Terrorism is an aspect of the problem. But the problem is a violent system that views the lives of non-Muslims and dissenting Muslims as worthless.

When Muslim terrorists set off bombs in Boston, Mumbai, Jerusalem or anywhere else, what they are really communicating is not some passionate grievance, but an ideology that has no regard for the lives of non-Muslims. That same message is communicated by the treatment of Western prisoners in Dubai or the treatment of Western hostages in Nigeria. It is a message rooted in the xenophobia of the Koran and it is a warning of the system that these acts of oppression and terror are intended to build.

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Islamism won in the Arab Spring. It won the Western Diaspora. The idea that we can detach Islam from its political application by branding its political application extremist has failed. The two are intertwined. We cannot weaken Islamism except by weakening Islam, economically, militarily and demographically.

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Islam Vs. Islamism: A Case for Wishful Thinkers

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By Walid Shoebat:

“Our killer question is ‘How do you propose to defeat Islamism?’ Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it.”

This is what historian and Middle East analyst Daniel Pipes asks [1] in his recent Washington Times article.

To support his argument, Pipes makes an unsubstantiated claim [2] that a majority of Muslims are moderate and that Islamism is only,

supported by 10-15 percent [2] of Muslims…

So how and why did he come up with such numbers? Pipes uses different studies and surveys about which he himself confesses [2]: “These ambiguous and contradictorypercentages lead to no clear, specific count of Islamists.” Why then use such statistics? It is only to serve the major argument he made in my first paragraph.

And there are more “confessions.” Pipes writes: “Out of a quantitative mish-mash, I suggested just three days after 9/11 [3] that some 10-15 percent of Muslims are determined Islamists.” This is in itself contradictory and is even absolutely nonsense mathematically as he clearly admits. To further support this conservative number, Pipes adds:

 Indonesian survey and election results led R. William Liddle and Saiful Mujani [4] in 2003 to conclude that the number of Islamists “is no more than 15 percent of the total Indonesian Muslim population.”

He did this while he ignored his other statement:

In contrast, a 2008 survey of 8,000 Indonesian Muslims by Roy Morgan Research [5] found 40 percent of Indonesians favoring hadd criminal punishments (such as cutting off the hands of thieves) and 52 percent favoring some form of Islamic legal code.

So here we have 52% of Indonesians are extremists, not 15%.

DanielPipes

Yet even that doesn’t determine the correct percentages to separate Muslims from Islamists. To say that “views on 9/11″ or “supporting Hadd” (Islamic punishment) is the yardstick to measure the percentages is also absurd and mathematically false. What if a Muslim doesn’t support 9/11 or Hadd but supports the idea that it takes two women in a court of law to equal the testimony of a man? Will Pipes count him as a moderate Muslim or an extremist Islamist? If he chooses “moderate,” then Pakistan got it right. No matter what Pipes chooses, it debunks all his unsubstantiated claims about moderate Islam.

What if a Muslim couldn’t care less about Sharia, jihad, and 9/11, yet he kills his sister for marrying a Jew? Is he a “Muslim” or is he an “Islamist”?

And what if we even use terrorism as a yardstick as Pipes prefers; in Saudi Arabia and across the Muslim world, you have many who do not support al-Qaeda. Are these then counted as moderates? In Pipes’ view the answer is “yes.” But this is false. Last week I had an exchange with Sheikh Faisal Al-Harbi, who chastised me on such issues,stating that his clan (Al-Harbi) would not support terrorism. Indeed, on his clan’s official website [7] they denounce al-Qaeda, adding:

Jihad for the sake of Allah is to go to war with the infidels and the polytheists to remove these and enforce Unitarianism. That is after inviting them to Islam and they reject the invitation (Da’wa). This Jihad is then organized and supervised by the Imam.

That cannot be placed in the moderate Islam camp. In light of this and my other arguments, Pipes’ percentages are escalating dramatically.

The true number for Islamists is 100%. Here, let me add more beef to my claim. What if a Muslim denounces today’s jihad, sharia, Islamic state and all? Is he then moderate?

Read more at PJ Media

 

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch weighs in on the debate:

As made clear in our FAQ, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch was created as part of an ongoing effort to track and an analyze the activities of the Global Muslim Brotherhood that we define as “global network of individuals and organizations that developed as Muslim Brotherhood members dispersed to other countries while fleeing the periodic crackdowns on the organization in Egypt.” The GMBDW considers the Muslim Brotherhood, in all its manifestations, to be both the wellspring as well the most important ongoing influence on Islamism in the world today. Therefore, in line with what Dr. Pipes has written, we want to reassert that the GMBDW also makes the distinction between Islam the religion and Islamism which we would characterize as even a greater threat to Muslim-majority nations than it is in the West.

That said, the GMBDW does take issue with one passage in Dr. Pipe’s otherwise salutary article.

He writes:

Those who make all Islam their enemy not only succumb to a simplistic and essentialist illusion but they lack any mechanism to defeat it. We who focus on Islamism see World War II and the Cold War as models for subduing the third totalitarianism. We understand that radical Islam is the problem and moderate Islam is the solution. We work with anti-Islamist Muslims to vanquish a common scourge. We will triumph over this new variant of barbarism so that a modern form of Islam can emerge.

We are not convinced that that World War II and/or the Cold War are appropriate models for taking on modern Islamism as we do not believe that Islamism can productively be analyzed in these terms. Therefore, those that adopt such models run the risk of advocating inappropriate strategies for taking on the problem. Further elaboration of this theme involves a degree of complexity and will have to wait for future analysis.

 

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The Axis Behind Benghazi

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20121030_white-house-benghazi-LIBYAby CAPTAIN GARY HARRINGTON, U.S. NAVY (RET)

There is now a burgeoning cornucopia of common sense revelations concerning the administration’s Benghazi cover up. Despite a new lucidity flowing from the drip, dripping deck chairs of deception and correctness, reporters have yet to define the iceberg clearly: I’m convinced it is an unholy civil union of political Islamists and U.S. transnational progressives. One party delivers, the other obfuscates and mollifies foreign and domestic violence.

There is a common thread linking the ever-lengthening list of Islamist outrages. That thread runs from Wahhabi economic jihad yesterday to diplomatic jihad today. In between, strategies of ideological, political, intelligence, and subversive jihad flowered. The seed corn of petro dollars poured into our intellectual centers years ago. Today, the Islamists’ bitter fruits are too numerous to count. CAIR-Ikhwan friendly advisors work closely with our highest defense, military and intelligence officials, and former Bush career Flag officers purge all references to Islamists from the training of our splendid young warriors. In 2005, a Middle East scholar artfully identified, weaved and published these troubling threads in his book, “Future Jihad – Terrorist Strategies Against America” (See chapter 9, page 137 for a quick overview).

I suspect the “Mother of All Answers” must be to this question: “If transnational progressive security policies are good for America’s defense, why won’t their champions explain and defend them in the public square as they apply to the goals of Salafist Jihadists?” Recent U.S. policies seem to have had a worsening effect in precisely those countries where there has been an administration push.

The Administration’s obfuscation of the identity, threats and motivating ideology among Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and the Muslim Brotherhood appears to manifest itself in a hyper tolerance of serial failures at CIA, FBI, DOD, and Homeland Defense. What’s wrong with this picture? I suspect the earnest people in those offices labor with half their brains tied behind their backs.
Read more: Family Security Matters

Homeland Security guidelines advise deference to pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists

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By Charles C. Johnson:

The Department of Homeland Security, which under Secretary Janet Napolitano has shown a keen interest in monitoring and warning about outspoken conservatives, takes a very different approach in monitoring political Islamists, according to a 2011 memo on protecting the free speech rights of pro-Shariah Muslim supremacists.

In a checklist obtained by The Daily Caller entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Dos and Don’ts” the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties notifies local and national law enforcement officials that it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.

This policy stands in stark contrast to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis’ 2009 memo “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” [pdf], which warned of the dangers posed by pro-life advocates, critics of same-sex marriage and groups concerned with abiding by the U.S. Constitution, among others.

The advice of the Dos and Don’ts list is far more conciliatory. “Don’t use training that equates radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other constitutionally-protected activity, including disliking the U.S. government without being violent,” the manual’s authors write in a section on training being “sensitive to constitutional values.”

The manual, which was produced by an inter-agency working group from DHS and the National Counterterrorism Center, advises, “Trainers who equate the desire for Sharia law with criminal activity violate basic tenets of the First Amendment.”

The checklist also advised against using moderate Muslim “trainers who are self-professed ‘Muslim reformers’” because they “may further an interest group agenda instead of delivering generally accepted, unbiased information.”

The manual advises trainees not to assume Muslim Americans are “using democratic processes, like litigation and free speech, to subvert democracy and install Sharia law.”

Read more at Daily Caller

 

 

Islam vs. Islamism, again

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4262329508_45b1258d1b_zBy Robert Spencer:

This is a familiar controversy to longtime Jihad Watch readers; in November 2011 I published an article in National Review responding to a piece by Andy McCarthy and criticizing the Islam/Islamism distinction for obscuring the fact that doctrines of warfare and subjugation are found in Islam’s core texts.

I’ve long rejected the term “Islamist” for reasons I explained in that piece: “…the distinction is artificial and imposed from without. There are not, in other words, Islamist mosques and non-Islamist mosques, distinguishable from one another by the sign outside each, like Baptist and Methodist churches. On the contrary, ‘Islamists’ move among non-political, non-supremacist Muslims with no difficulty; no Islamic authorities are putting them out of mosques, or setting up separate institutions to distinguish themselves from the ‘Islamists.’ Mevlid Jasarevic [a jihadist in Sarajevo] could and did visit mosques in Austria, Serbia, and Bosnia without impediment before he started shooting on Friday; no one stopped him from entering because he was an ‘Islamist.’”

And so to say we must work with ordinary Muslims while eschewing collaboration with Islamists is not precisely a distinction without a difference, but a distinction that is practically imperceptible and, in many cases, in fact not there at all.

This is not to say that Islam can never be reformed. Many strange things have happened in history: events that no one 100 or 50 or sometimes even 10 years before they happened would have or could have predicted. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, but in 1986 and 1987 there were still plenty of learned analysts all over the airwaves and in the corridors of power in Washington talking about how we were going to have to deal with the Soviet Bloc for generations to come. So I will never say that something can never happen. But we have to recognize fully and honestly the obstacles in the way of it happening so as to make a truly realistic assessment of the situation we’re in, and apply remedies that are most likely to work, as well as to accord with our own fundamental principles.

This piece by Daniel Pipes has stirred up some controversy already; Pamela Geller comments here; Andrew Bostom weighs in here; and Walid Shoebat here.

“Islam and its infidels,” by Daniel Pipes in the Washington Times, May 13:

What motives lay behind last month’s Boston Marathon bombing and the would-be attack on a Via Rail Canada train?Leftists and establishmentarians variously offer imprecise and tired replies — such as “violent extremism” or anger at Western imperialism — unworthy of serious discussion. Conservatives, in contrast, engage in a lively and serious debate among themselves: some say Islam the religion provides motive; others say it’s a modern extremist variant of the religion, known as radical Islam or Islamism.

As a participant in the latter debate, here’s my argument for focusing on Islamism.

Those arguing for Islam itself as the problem (such as Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) point to the consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice. Agreeing with Geert Wilders’ film “Fitna,” they point to striking continuities between Koranic verses and jihad actions. They quote Islamic scriptures to establish the centrality of Muslim supremacism, jihad and misogyny, concluding that a moderate form of Islam is impossible. They point to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s deriding the very idea of a moderate Islam. Their killer question is “Was Muhammad a Muslim or an Islamist?” They contend that we who blame Islamism do so out of political correctness or cowardliness.

To which, we reply: Yes, certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally. Moderate Muslims exist, but lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power. Mr. Erdogan’s denial of moderate Islam points to a curious overlap between Islamism and the anti-Islam viewpoint. Muhammad was a plain Muslim, not an Islamist, for the latter concept dates back only to the 1920s. And no, we are not cowardly but offer our true analysis.

 

Not only do moderate Muslims “lack Islamists’ near-hegemonic power”; they also lack the justification in the Qur’an and Hadith that Islamic jihadists always point to in order to gain recruits among peaceful Muslims, as well as to justify their actions. And this is a key point: if Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali (both, not incidentally, ex-Muslims) are right that there is a “consistency from Muhammad’s life and the contents of the Koran and Hadith to current Muslim practice,” and they most certainly are, as Daniel Pipes apparently acknowledges when he says that “certain continuities do exist, and Islamists definitely follow the Koran and Hadith literally,” then attempts to prescind from Qur’anic literalism in order to reform Islam and create a more peaceful version of the faith will always be challenged by the literalists (who are and have always been the mainstream in Islam) as heretics and apostates.

Read more at Jihad Watch

Muslim Brotherhood: Convention to Protect Women is Anti-Islamic

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Women wearing sharia-proscribed clothing.

Women wearing sharia-proscribed clothing.

By Ryan Mauro:

The Muslim Brotherhood’s official website in Arabic has published an article highlighting the comments of a senior Egyptian Islamist scholar criticizing the United Nations Violence Against Women Convention for violating Islam and promoting Westernization.

Dr. Muhammad Al-Mukhtar Al-Mahdi, a member of Al-Azhar University’s Council of Senior Scholars and head of the Sharia Association, was reacting to the endorsement of the U.N. convention by Dr. Mervat Al-Talawi, the leader of Egypt’s National Council for Women.

Dr. Al-Mahdi said that the U.N. convention is part of a war on Islam and that women are treated better under Sharia than Western law. He claimed “that Islam has given women a place of honor, and has allowed them to take part in the country’s awakening, while in the West, the women have to search for employment and rely only on themselves. Islam, on the other hand, has given women partners or husbands to take care of them.”

In other words, women in the West are oppressed because they are allowed to work and to be self-sufficient. He also said that their roles as mothers, wives and daughters are protected under Sharia.

Al-Mahdi’s description of a woman’s place under Sharia Law is a good example of how Islamists present the issue of women’s rights. In their view, Sharia Law brings true freedom, justice and equality to women. When they use those comforting terms, they are actually talking about Sharia-based governance.

Read more at The Clarion Project

 

Obama Pushes Funds for Islamists —- Trashes Their Christian Victims

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Boko-Haram-Violence-450x286By :

The “Islamist apologist choir” described in Cinnamon Stillwell’s recent story “Profs on Boston Bombing” doesn’t sing solely on behalf of Chechnya and Cambridge. Some of that choir’s most dreadful caterwauling today is in support of Nigeria’s yet-undesignated terrorists, Boko Haram. The choir stalls are located in the U.S. State Department, which not only refuses to designate the jihadists as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), but maligns and defames Boko Haram’s Christian victims, as well.

Boko Haram’s latest attack, killing at least 42, took place on Tuesday, May 7, in the already battle-worn town of Bama, in Nigeria’s northeast Borno State. Borno, one of 12 states under Sharia, has suffered heavy losses under the Islamists. Some believe that Boko Haram has taken over northern Borno State much as Islamists took over northern Mali. At least 277 had been killed by Boko Haram in Borno State in 2013 before this attack.  According to an AP story the Tuesday event involved “coordinated attacks by Islamic extremists armed with heavy machine guns” in multiple locations around Bama. The jihadists also raided a federal prison, freeing 105 inmates.

Military spokesman Lt. Colonel Sagir Musa told AP that “some 200 fighters in buses and pickup trucks mounted with machine guns attacked the barracks of the 202 Battalion of Nigeria’s beleaguered army.” Musa, who said two soldiers and 10 insurgents died in the attack, revealed that the attackers “came in army uniform pretending to be soldiers.” The Islamists killed 14 prison guards. They also attacked and razed a police station, a police barracks, a magistrate’s court, and local government offices, according to Lt. Col. Musa. Bama police commander Sagir Abubakar reported that at least 22 police officers, three children and a woman were killed in the attacks.

Boko Haram frequently attacks Nigeria’s police and military forces. In 2012 as documented by the Facts on Nigeria Violence website, there were at least 67 attacks, almost exclusively by Boko Haram, against military barracks, police stations, prisons, and other government facilities, as well as against individual soldiers, policemen, and civil servants. But Boko Haram’s main targets are northern Nigeria’s Christians and churches.

The official name of Boko Haram, Jamā’a Ahl al-sunnah li-da’wa wa al-jihād, can be translated “People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad.” Its goal is to establish a pure Islamic state in northern Nigeria, removing the Christian presence – either by conversion, expulsion, or extermination. Boko Haram appears to prefer the third option. According to the World Watch Monitor (WWM) report on global Christian persecution, Nigeria had a higher death toll from anti-Christian persecution and violence than the rest of the world combined. WWM concluded that Nigeria is “the most violent place on earth for Christians.”

In a recent Front Page Magazine article, Daniel Greenfield exposed the unfortunate moral equivalence found in the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF) 2013 report on Nigeria. While much of the report is very good and condemns Boko Haram, impunity, and the forced imposition of Sharia, USCIRF appears to have developed the same pathological impulse that afflicts the rest of the federal government, to never blame Islam. As a result, portions of the report mischaracterize certain acts of violence by both Boko Haram and other Islamists targeting Christians, and criticize northern Nigerian Christian leaders for calling the situation what it is: persecution.

USCIRF’s egregious observations and recommendations are actually State Department policy. For instance, USCIRF parrots former Asst. Sec. of State for Africa, Johnnie Carson, who declared in a congressional hearing, “It is important to note that religion is not the primary driver behind extremist violence in Nigeria” and that “the Nigerian government must effectively engage communities vulnerable to extremist violence by addressing the underlying political and socio-economic problems in the North.” USCIRF reports that “The U.S. government consistently has urged the Nigerian government to expand its strategy against Boko Haram from solely a military solution to addressing problems of economic and political marginalization in the north,” says USCIRF, “arguing that Boko Haram’s motivations are not religious but socio-economic.”

Read more at Front Page

Terrorist Haven in Libya

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Mideast Libya US Prophet Film

A Libyan follower of Ansar al-Sharia Brigades carries a sign during a protest in front of the Tibesti Hotel, in Benghazi / AP

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The Ansar al Sharia Brigade, the Islamist terror group linked to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, continues to operate freely in that Libyan city, according to U.S. military officials.

The group remains active in the Mediterranean port city, operating patrols and checkpoints, and earlier this year reached an agreement with other Islamist groups allowing it to operate openly, said military officials familiar with intelligence reports from North Africa.

The group “continues to spread its ideology in the Benghazi area, particularly targeting youth,” said one official, who noted that the lack of central government security was the key reason the militia has not been suppressed.

The officials disclosed details of the group’s activities on condition of anonymity.

Ansar al Sharia also is using Facebook to publicize its activities, including charitable work in poor areas, and is constructing some buildings. It also claimed to be operating a medical clinic in Benghazi. Other activities include repairing schools and holding conferences for local youth.

According to the officials, the group successfully exploited the weakness of security authorities in Benghazi and Libya in general to boost its presence. The group is attempting to reinvent itself as a humanitarian and charitable organization after the Sept. 11 attack.

Read more at Washington Free Beacon

 

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