The Roots of Muslim paranoia

eurabia-flagBy M. Kamal:

When the twin towers came crashing down, many Muslims believed that it was the work of Mossad or the CIA and that Jews were absent that day. During the Asian Financial Crisis, Dr Mahathir Mohammed, then Prime Minister of Malaysia told his people that it was the Jews that were behind it. Nigerian mothers (who are Muslims) refused to allow their children to be vaccinated because they believed that the Americans were trying to harm them with contaminated vaccine. The cartoon, Tom & Jerry was invented by the Jews because people equated them to rats and they want to change the image of rats into something cute.

All these conspiracy theories are crazy. Yet millions of Muslims believe them. We tend to be mildly amused and ignore them without asking why they find it easy to believe these conspiracy theories which we know to be absurd. Yet a close inquiry into this will yield a mother lode of information into the workings and the world view of Muslim minds. So why then do so many Muslims believe absurd theories?

Firstly, Islam encourages mistrust of the infidel. Here are some Koranic verses concerning what Islam says about unbelievers (12 ):

Koran 3:118
O ye who believe! Take not for intimates others than your own folk, who would spare no pains to ruin you; they love to hamper you. Hatred is revealed by (the utterance of) their mouths, but that which their breasts hide is greater. We have made plain for you the revelations if ye will understand.

Koran 4:144
O ye who believe! Choose not disbelievers for (your) friends in place of believers. Would ye give Allah a clear warrant against you?

(2)Koran 5:51
O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

From this it can be seen that infidels (i.e. unbelievers) are out to do the Muslim in. The infidels hate Muslims and Muslims are discouraged from befriending them.

It says so in the Koran. So it must be true. If from young, you have this sort of attitude towards non-Muslims, then you are going to find conspiracy theories about infidels plotting the destruction of Muslims to be believable. No wonder they become paranoid.

Secondly, Islam has given Muslims an over-inflated self image that cannot square with reality. In the Muslim world-view, Islam is the perfect religion and Muslims are therefore the best nation charged with leading the world. Take a look at this verse from the Koran (3):

Koran 3:110
You are the best of the nations raised up for (the benefit of) men; you enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah; and if the followers of the Book had believed it would have been better for them; of them (some) are believers and most of them are transgressors.

I will talk more about this later. While Muslims are supposed to be the best, it of course follows that non-Muslims are less than best. Koran 9:28 reads (4):

O ye who believe! The idolaters only are unclean. So let them not come near the Inviolable Place of Worship after this their year. If ye fear poverty (from the loss of their merchandise) Allah shall preserve you of His bounty if He will. Lo! Allah is Knower, Wise.

This view is echoed by Ayatollah Sistani whom the US hopes (fat hope) will be a moderate force in Iraq . See his website (5). According to Ayatollah Sistani, kafirs (another name for unbelievers) are dirty and in the same category with urine and feces.

But am I cherry-picking some verses from the Koran just to prove my point? Do Muslims really teach their young to despise and distrust the infidels? Wafa Sultan grew up in Syria . This is what she said (6):

“Until I came to United States I used to believe that Jewish people are not human creatures,” she says. “Unfortunately this is the way I was brought up, to believe that Jews don’t have our human features, they don’t have our human voices.”

In the first week she was in the United States she and her husband went to a shoe shop in Hollywood . Her husband asked the clerk where he was from and when he said that he was an Israeli Jew, “you can’t believe what I did”, she says. “I ran away without shoes, barefoot. My husband followed me. He said, ‘How stupid you are.’ But I said, ‘I cannot tolerate him.’ I was scared to death because he was from Israel ; I reacted in a very bad, negative way, because of the way I had been raised, for the past 30 years of my life.”

She was so afraid of the Jew that she ran away without her shoes on! This is the kind of upbringing that Muslim kids in that part of the world are getting from their parents and teachers.

Read more at No Compulsion

 

Informed and Determined

rita-katz-terrorist-hunter

By Citizen Warrior:

I’m re-reading the book, Terrorist Hunter by Rita Katz, a Jewish woman who grew up in Iraq (and speaks fluent Arabic) and became a researcher for The Investigative Project, dressing like a Muslim woman to infiltrate orthodox Islamic groups operating in America. You can read more about her fascinating story here.

A passage from the book illustrates both the blatant boldness of Islamic groups in the West and the pathetic ignorance of Western media about basic Islamic principles and history. Katz was participating in a rally (dressed as a Muslim) in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. Two thousand protesters showed up. Journalists showed up too, of course.

Katz listened to hate speeches and “exhortations to violence against Jews.” Not Israelis, mind you. Jews. One of the speakers at the rally was Dr. Ayman Sirajuldeen, a member of the Muslim American Society, who led the crowd in chanting, “Death to Jews!” and “Khaibar, Khaibar!”

“Did the journalists gathered here know how chilling this was?” asks Katz in her book. “Obviously not,” she answers. “In the next day’s papers it got written up as a ‘peaceful pro-Palestinian rally.’”

“Kaibar, Khaibar” was chanted at that rally and “many others,” writes Katz. “It echoed all over the country, as Israeli flags burned in the background, from Florida to Texas, New York to California, and back to Washington, DC. To an outsider, this chant, ‘Khaibar, Khaibar, Ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad Safayood,’ sounded perhaps like a cheerful freedom song. Many journalists told me that this was what they thought they were hearing. But its meaning is somewhat different: ‘Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad is coming for you.’ This song originates in a tale from the days of the Prophet Muhammad. As part of his campaign to conquer the Arabian peninsula, Muhammad laid siege to the city of Khaibar, which was inhabited by Jews. After losing several battles to the city’s powerful army, Muhammad decided to try a new tactic. He sent emissaries to Khaibar’s leaders with a message of peace. As soon as a peace treaty was signed and the gates of the city were opened, Jaish Muhammad, Muhammad’s army, stormed the city and butchered every last one of its inhabitants. ‘Khaibar, Khaibar’ means, ‘Let’s trick the Jews into making peace with us, and when they accept our offer, let’s go ahead and kill them all.’”

Do the journalists know this bit of Islamic history? Do they know that it says 91 times in the Koran that Muslims are required to follow Muhammad’s example in every particular? I doubt if one in a thousand knows even that much.

Those of us who have been awakened to the terrifying brilliance of Islam need to step up our game. Our educational campaign needs to be effective and unrelenting. We’re in a race against time. Orthodox Muslims are infiltrating and multiplying. The only thing that can put a stop to them is an informed and determined population of non-Muslims. And the only way our fellow non-Muslims are going to be informed is by hearing it from those who already know. That’s us. They’re not going to hear it at school, in the media, or from politicians. It’s just us.

But we’ve got to be smart about this, not simply passionate. We have to think in terms of small bits and long campaigns. We have to gain and maintain rapport. And we should use the effective tools we have at our disposal. If we do this, we can win.

*******

Citizen Warrior is one of my favorite counter jihad websites. The personal, down to earth pragmatic approach to educating people on civilization jihad is very effective. Go there to learn more about Islam and how to share what you learn with others.

Mosques are the battleground of the war between Islam and the West

 

by Enza Ferreri

“We don’t debate unprofessional councillors, unprincipled journalists, and self-righteous community organizers; we turn the tables on them”: this is how British planning lawyer Gavin Boby, also known as the “mosque buster”, describes the activity of his organization, the Law And Freedom Foundation. He uses the law to stop the building of mosques in the UK by demonstrating to local councils that the building of a mosque or an Islamic centre is actually in violation of British law. And he succeeds: the count so far is 16 victories out of 17 cases.

Gavin Boby is a 48-year-old planning lawyer from Bristol, South-West England. He deals with planning permissions or zoning permissions.

Gavin Boby, the mosque buster

Like many other people in Britain, for almost 10 years Boby had witnessed the progressive penetration of Islam in his country, but like many other people he watched idly not knowing what to do about it.

It was the same feeling of impotence that most of us shared. But then, a couple of years ago, he had this idea. Many mosques disrupt neighbourhoods and drive out long-time residents. Non-Muslim women in particular are made to feel uncomfortable in those areas. Why not use his legal skills to help local communities resist planning applications for mosques?

The BBC video above the article exposes how corrupt the process of granting mosque planning applications can be, showcasing a session in the Rochdale Council’s planning committee in the North of England, during which councillor Begum does not allow discussion before the vote is taken and rushes the other members to vote.

This is very topical in light of the recent revelations that the Boston bombers’ mosque ”has been associated with other terrorism suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism”, has classic jihadi texts in its library, and gave money to two terrorist charities which have been shut down by the U.S. government. But then again, when is something about the violent nature of Islam not topical these days?

Still, this is a good way to introduce the mosque buster’s work. What are mosques? As we know, mosques are not like churches or synagogues, they are far more than houses of worship and contemplation, many of them are centres of jihadist activity that indoctrinate to commit and support violence against infidels. In America, as many as 4 different studies have independently come to the same conclusion that 80 per cent of US mosques ”were teaching jihad, Islamic supremacism, and hatred and contempt for Jews and Christians”.

The Law And Freedom Foundation website declares: “A mosque is not merely a place of worship. Islamic doctrine requires the application of Islamic law within its geographical reach.”

We can see the truth of that in London. It is no coincidence that sharia-law areas or self-declared Muslim areas with Muslim patrols acting like vigilantes in cities like London are near mosques. We are increasingly seeing Muslim patrols in the proximity of mosques saying to passers-by that they can’t walk a dog, wear a skirt, drink alcohol.

In an interview Gavin Boby explains that mosques are being used as the bridgehead, the forefront of the advance of Islam in a territory. What happens in neighbourhoods – usually working class districts which are not used to dealing with officialdom – where a mosque is built is that the area changes forever for its residents, who no longer recognize it and eventually have to move out, due to things like the parking jihad, general harassment, vandalism.

“The parking jihad is” he describes, “soon after the construction of a mosque, people will find no parking space there, their driveway is being blocked or even a car is parked in the driveway inside your property and if you ask them to move their car they’ll say it’s only for an hour.” The parking tends to be used as a way to establish possession and control over the area, of saying: “This is a mosque area, we are the owners now and there’s nothing you can do about it”, and then after that it gets worse until the point when people move out.

“The Koran,” the Bristol lawyer continues, “calls 14 times for the enslavement of non-Muslims, and 3 times for killing the unbelievers wherever they are found. This is obviously against English law. You don’t need to be a good lawyer to fight it but you need to be a very good lawyer to get around it.”

Partly, the mosque buster’s approach is that of finding the contradictions and incompatibilities between Islam and Western fundamental principles (that’s the easy part), and making mosque building and planning regulations become the battleground of these ideological conflicts.

In the same way as Islam is not just a religion but also a political doctrine of supremacy and power, so the mosque is not simply a building of worship but also a political one.

Gavin elaborates:

This is the Islamic doctrine, every mosque is instructed to be based upon the original mosque in Medina, where Muhammad originally in the 7th century set up his religious-political doctrine of social control, and the mosque is a place of government, it is a place where treaties are made, death sentences are passed, armies are blessed and dispatched, it is primarily about political control and it is very much used as a tool of advance. Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey talked about that, the Muslim Brotherhood compared their mosques to battalions and to beehives, where Muslims will gather and then advance, and there’s nothing new about this, it goes back to the 7th century.

So this is the why of the Law And Freedom Foundation’s operation. Now let’s see the how.

Read more at Jihad Watch

Enza Ferreri is an Italian-born, London-based author and journalist. She has been a London correspondent for several Italian magazines and newspapers, including Panorama, L’Espresso, and La Repubblica.

David Wood: An Open Message to Rabbi Jerome Davidson (and Other Critics of Pamela Geller)

Pamela Geller gagged in Great NeckDavid Wood:

My wife and I were looking forward to hearing Pamela Geller speak at Great Neck Synagogue this Sunday. Unfortunately, her speech was canceled due to a relentless campaign of intimidation by an “interfaith” coalition that included not only Muslims, but Jews and Christians as well. We can only wonder why these Jews and Christians, who find Pamela’s speech unacceptable, have no objection to the hate-filled claims we read in the Qur’an and Hadith.

If you happen to be in the New York area, Sunday’s events have been rescheduled elsewhere.

For those who would like to know what the Muslim sources say about unbelievers, here you go:

Qur’an 3:32—Say: Obey Allah and the Apostle; but if they turn back, then surely Allah does not love the unbelievers.

Qur’an 5:51—O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people.

Qur’an 9:29—Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Qur’an 9:30—And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!

Qur’an 9:73—O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.

Qur’an 9:111—Surely Allah has bought of the believers their persons and their property for this, that they shall have the garden; they fight in Allah’s way, so they slay and are slain; a promise which is binding on Him in the Taurat and the Injeel and the Quran; and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? Rejoice therefore in the pledge which you have made; and that is the mighty achievement.

Qur’an 9:123—O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness; and know that Allah is with those who guard (against evil).

Qur’an 47:35—Be not weary and fainthearted, crying for peace, when ye should be uppermost: for Allah is with you, and will never put you in loss for your (good) deeds.

Qur’an 48:29—Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are severe against disbelievers, and merciful among themselves.

Qur’an 98:6—Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun will abide in the Fire of Hell. They are the worst of creatures.

Sahih Muslim 33—It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.

Sahih Muslim 4366—It has been narrated by ‘Umar b. al-Khattab that he heard the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) say: I will expel the Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula and will not leave any but Muslim.

Al-Bukhari, Al-Adab al-Mufrad 1103—Abu Hurayra reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, “Do not give the People of the Book the greeting first. Force them to the narrowest part of the road.”

Sahih al-Bukhari, Ch. 88—Narrated Ibn Umar that the Prophet said, “My livelihood is under the shade of my spear, and he who disobeys my orders will be humiliated by paying Jizya.”

For more on Jihad, click here.

 

FREE SPEECH DEMO AT HABEEB AHMED’S HUMAN RIGHTS OFFICE 1PM, SUNDAY: HABEEB MUST GO!

 

Mr. Habeeb Ahmed, President-Elect,        Islamic Center of Long Island

Mr. Habeeb Ahmed, President-Elect,
Islamic Center of Long Island

Pamela Geller:

After our event on sharia at the Chabad Synagogue on Sunday, where I have been rescheduled to speak at 10am, we will be reconvening in front of Habeeb Ahmed’s Human Rights Commission office. Ahmed used his office to strongarm and bully the Great Neck Synagogue to cancel my talk on Sunday. It’s not far away — only 20 minutes.

We wil we be reading Quranic texts and teachings that command Jew-hatred, demanding that Habeeb Ahmed and all Islamic clerics condemn the religious texts that fuel the hatred of Israel and Jewish people across the world. Let us truly further interfaith dialogue.

Don’t miss this protest.

We will convene at 1p. Join Robert Spencer, Dr. Andrew Bostom and myself. BE THERE

Nassau County Commission on Human Rights
240 Old Country Road, 
 Mineola, NY 11501

1pm

AFDI applauds the Nassau County Attorney’s office investigation. Habeed Ahmed “misused his title” to strongarm a Long Island synagogue into silencing free speech and enforcing the sharia. Habeeb apologized, but that is hardly enough. HE MUST GO (read these emails).

Here is the latest on Habeebgate, the alleged attempt by the Islamic supremacist Habeeb Ahmed of the Nassau County Human Rights Commission to use the power of his position deploy his mujahideen in a covert effort to intimidate the Great Neck synagogue into cancelling my scheduled speech there.

Habeeb and his accomplices ordered their minions to strongarm the shul, make calls, and get the synagogue leaders to cancel a proud Jew scheduled to speak at their synagogue. (more here)

As a result of this egregious violation of the public trust, we urge the Nassau County Executive to remove this thug from office.

We welcome this investigation and hope the imposition of sharia blasphemy laws using public office will be punished to the full extent of the law. American law for American courts. Stop sharia in America.

This is the day’s schedule: Pamela Geller and Cpl Lance Buckley’s father join Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky to speak at Chabad at 10 am on Sunday.

1pm Free Speech Demo at Habeeb’s “Human Rights Commission” Office, 240 Old Country Road, Mineola. Bring flags and free speech signs.

7 pm Pamela Geller and Cpl Lance Buckley’s father join Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg to speak again — Temple Beth-El, 91 Jefferson Boulevard Edison, NJ.

 

Europe: The Submission That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Gilles Bernheim (2ndR), Great Rabbi of Fby Guy Millière:

What is taking shape could be a shift toward the end of the Jewish presence in Europe.

Exactly one year ago, a killer entered the courtyard of a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, and shot in cold blood a rabbi and three children. He said he had wanted to kill more, and to perpetrate a massacre, but that his gun jammed.

During the previous days, he had shot three French soldiers of Arab origin.

The killer was quickly located, besieged by the police for thirty two hours, then riddled with bullets when he tried to escape.

A few weeks later, his statements to the police during the siege were leaked. They showed that he defined himself as a “soldier of Islam” and that he was trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan by al Qaeda affiliates. He said that he wanted to kill French Arab soldiers because they were “traitors to their religion” and that “all traitors” had to be “eliminated.” He also said that he hated “Jews,” that Jews had to be “removed form the face of the earth” and that his only regret was that he did not have “the opportunity to kill more Jews.” Political leaders and the mainstream media immediately said that these statements did not make sense, and they tried to describe him as a “lone wolf” and a “lost boy” who acted “irrationally.” Sociologists explained that he’d had a “hard childhood,” and that he’d had to face “French prejudices” all of his life. Radical Islam and hatred of Jews were almost never evoked.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

See also:

Europe acquiesces while Jews are threatened, and killed. Again (americanthinker.com)

Muslims, Leftists Plot Against Free Speech

Mr. Habeeb Ahmed

Mr. Habeeb Ahmed

By Pamela Geller:

I am set to speak at the Great Neck Synagogue in Great Neck, N.Y., on April 14. But last week, investigative journalist Tom Trento uncovered emails that reveal a coordinated leftist/Muslim campaign to intimidate synagogue officials into canceling my talk.

Within an hour after learning that I was set to speak, Habeeb U. Ahmed of the Islamic Center of Long Island and Commissioner of the Nassau County Human Rights Commission, wrote to a group of area leftist leaders: “Dear Friends, We need to stop her from coming to Great Neck. … Do we do a petition on the stationary of council of churches, The Interfaith Alliance and The Holocaust Center?? Her views are well known. She is the personification of an Islamophobe!!!”

The subsequent email exchange shows how the leftist/Muslim machine operates against freedom fighters. The leftist and Muslim anti-free speech thugs deploy their forces carefully, mirroring Sun Tzu and Muhammad in exploiting the arts of war. They opted, instead of going with a public petition, to go right to the top, target the leadership and apply enormous pressure at the most senior level.

Claire DeRoche

Claire DeRoche

In this case, they set their sights not only on the Great Neck Synagogue, but even on the Chief Rabbi of New York. In the email exchange, Claire Deroche, social justice coordinator of The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Shelter Rock in Manhasset, N.Y., wrote to the group: “The group I was speaking with last night who gave me this information suggested contacting other rabbis in the area who would then contact the Great Neck Synagogue. They also talked about contacting the chief rabbi of the big synagogue in Manhattan and asking him to contact Great Neck Synagogue.”

Their attempt to get Jews to come out against me was understandable – it’s a strategy that has succeeded well in the past. Part of their strategy is to divide and conquer. They have been wildly successful in splitting American Jews and weakening the forces opposing the jihad against the Jews. You never see Muslims protesting Islamic supremacists such as Imam Faisal Rauf or Reza Aslan. But there are always plenty of Jews protesting against defenders of Israel. I have never seen Muslims at pro-Israel rallies. I have seen plenty of Jews at anti-Israel rallies.

Their email campaign shows how this is done – how they use devious tactics to destroy people who speak out against the jihad and Islamic supremacism, mobilize lynch mobs of leftist activists and bully those who support freedom fighters until they cave.

Read more at WND

See also:

Imam on “Human Rights Commission” plots to block Pam Geller’s talk on sharia at Long Island synagogue (creepingsharia.com)

 

More on this via Pamela Geller’s post, The Effort to Impose Islamic Blasphemy Laws on Pamela Geller:

Andrew Bostom has a good exposition of Habeebgate here. And you can see all the emails of the leftist/Islamic supremacist attempt to strong-arm the Great Neck Synagogue into canceling my talk here:

Discussion of Effort to Impose Islamic Blasphemy Law on Writer/Activist Pamela Geller Andrew Bostom, March 23, 2013

Yesterday I was interviewed by Tom Trento who uncovered an e-mail string which revealed the effort of mainstream Sharia supremacist Muslims on Long Island, New York, and their dull-witted non-Muslim abettors, to impose Islamic blasphemy law on writer activist Pamela Geller.

Invoking the bogus issue of “Islamophobia”—an Orwellian effort to turn on its head the sacralized Islamic doctrine of instilling fear in the non-Muslim infidel for the purposes of Islamization—the e-mail string unmasks what in reality is yet another campaign to crush Western free speech, in accord with Islamic blasphemy law.

Go to this segment at ~ 2 hours 31 minutes 25 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELiUVlMlA6A&feature=youtu.be&t=2h31m28s

I love Andrew Bostom! His vocabulary is delightfully challenging and I frequently have to look up at least one word when reading his articles. So I was amused when in this interview Tom Trento remarks (2:43 on the video) on Andrew’s use of the word “spatchcock” to describe Imam Rauf’s portrayal of Islamic Law to deceive. In effect, Rauf ignores the “backbone” or true meaning of individual liberty from our Bill of Rights by trying to say that it conforms to Sharia Law. This is a part of the stealthy redefining of our sacred terms that Stephen Coughlin talks about in explaining the Saul Alinsky underpinnings of Interfaith Dialogue.

No, Andrew didn’t make the word up! For the record, here is the wikipedia defintion: 

spatchcock, otherwise known as “spattlecock”, is poultry or game that has been prepared for roasting or grilling by removing the backbone and sternum of the bird and flattening it out before cooking.[1] The preparation of a bird in such a manner for cooking may also be known as butterflying the bird. The term “spatchcock” is used when the backbone is removed, whether or not the sternum is removed. Removing the sternum allows the bird to be flattened more fully.

“Spatchcock” is also the traditional word for a juvenile chicken (in French, a “poussin”). Poussins or Spatchcocks were generally butterflied in preparation for faster cooking, hence in modern English the word has come to refer to both the bird and the manner in which it was traditionally prepared.

Wolf Issues Report Following Trip To Middle East

images (29)WOLF ISSUES REPORT FOLLOWING VISIT TO MIDDLE EAST DURING TUMULTUOUS TIME OF CHANGE IN THE REGION
Renews Call for Special Envoy to Advocate for Beleaguered Minority Faith Communities, Which are Increasingly Under Assault

 

Washington, D.C. (March 7, 2013) – Rep. Frank Wolf today made a series of policy recommendations – including his continued push for the creation of a Special Envoy for Religious Minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia – following a recent trip to Lebanon and Egypt, where he met with high-ranking government officials, religious leaders, humanitarian aid organizations and refugees who have fled Syria.

The recommendations are included in a 14-page report detailing the trip. Titled “First the Saturday People, Then the Sunday People: The Exodus of Jews and Christians from the Middle East,” the report is set against the backdrop of historic and tumultuous change in the broader Middle East.  The primary focus of Wolf’s trip was to talk to the Syrian Christian community as well as other religious minorities in the region.  He wanted to hear firsthand about their concerns and what the future might hold.  He also wanted to put this issue in the larger context of an imperiled Christian community in the broader Middle East, specifically in Egypt and Iraq. Wolf came away deeply troubled by what he heard and alarmed at what amounted to the changing face of the Middle East.

The report details the virtual elimination of once vibrant Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, and cautions that a similar fate may await the Christian communities in these same lands.  The report’s title reflects this sobering reality.

While in Lebanon, Wolf met with both Christian and Muslim families who had crossed the border from Syria.  He also toured the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which is leading the humanitarian response in Lebanon, and visited two locations where refugees are now living.

Wolf said there is no easy solution to the tragedy that is unfolding in Syria, especially after hearing from many of the people he talked to that dynamics changed with the arrival of foreign fighters.  Wolf was told men from Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and Egypt are now fighting in Syria.  There have been press reports that jihadists from Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iraq are also in Syria.

Wolf said the Syrian Christians he met with all encouraged the church in the West to speak out on their behalf.

In Egypt, Wolf met with one of the last remaining Jews in the country, leaders in the Coptic Christian community, civil society activists and Egyptian government officials, including the prime minister.

Except for his meetings with Egyptian officials, no one painted a rosy picture for the future of Egypt, and many were critical of the United States’ perceived support for the Muslim Brotherhood.  He was told the United States was losing credibility and appeared to have double standards when it came to freedoms in America versus freedoms in other countries.

Wolf reported that the perception among opposition leaders and the minority community was that as long as the Muslim Brotherhood looked out for U.S. interests in the region it could act with impunity within its own borders.  He was told “the United States is helping create a state of terrorism that will be exported to Europe.  The dogma of religion affecting human rights and women’s rights will be worse than the Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia.”

Wolf cautioned that if the Middle East is effectively emptied of the Christian faith it will have grave geopolitical implications.  He urged policymakers not to underestimate the impact of this demographic shift on the prospects for pluralism and democracy in the Middle East.  He also stressed that these ancient faith com¬munities “have inhabited these lands for centuries, and are a vital part of the fabric of global Christendom.”  He urged church leaders in the West to speak out about what is happening not only in Syria, but in the Middle East as a whole, and recommended that Christian leaders from the Middle East be brought to the United States to make the case for greater engagement from the American faith community.  In January, Wolf wrote to more than 300 Protestant and Catholic leaders in the U.S. urging them to use their influence to speak out on behalf of the persecuted church around the globe, specifically in the Middle East.

Wolf has been pushing since January 2011 to establish a high-level Special Envoy at the State Department with the dedicated mission of protecting and preserving religious minority communities in the Middle East and South Central Asia.  The House by a vote of 402-20 in July 2011 approved creating the position, but the effort stalled in the Senate. Wolf has reintroduced this bipartisan legislation in the 113th Congress.

Regarding Egypt, Wolf said the United States should seriously consider conditioning its foreign assistance, specifically military assistance.

“Since the Camp David Peace Accords, Egypt has received over $60 billion in U.S. foreign assistance, the second-largest overall recipient of such funding,” Wolf said. “Given the Mubarak regime’s human rights and religious freedom abuses, I have long-believed this assistance should be conditioned on improvements in these areas.  Now with the Muslim Brotherhood at the helm, and the transition to a mature democracy with all that entails far from certain, I am more convinced than ever that aid to Egypt must be conditioned upon the government respecting and upholding universally recognized human rights norms.”

Wolf said the United States must press President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood more broadly to respect and uphold religious freedom, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assembly and other basic rights. Police reform, too, must be a priority, he said.

“Rather than ramming through the constitution, the Muslim Brotherhood must be urged to embrace an inclusive process that takes into account the concerns of the opposition and various minority groups,” Wolf said.  “Clear benchmarks must be set – and ?an agreed upon framework established – ?that allows policymakers in the U.S. to determine if Egypt is truly on a path to reform.”

Wolf also recommended that Congress consider removing altogether the State Department waiver authority as it relates to aid to Egypt, since the State Department, without fail and irrespective of changes on the ground, uses the waiver.

Wolf said The U.S. embassy should actively seek to cultivate relationships with the liberal, democratic Egyptian opposition groups and individuals, human rights groups, Coptic Christians and other key civil society actors.

“By most accounts, U.S. policy has not evolved to meet the new realities in Egypt,” Wolf said. “We have embraced the Morsi government the same way we embraced the Mubarak government to the detriment of other elements of Egyptian civil society – elements with which we have a natural affinity. While such groups may not take the reins of leadership in the near future, they are central to the Egyptian democratic experiment, and we can bolster their standing and effectiveness if we take the long-term view. In this same vein, aid to Egypt should once again benefit Egyptian civil society, not simply the military and economy.”

Wolf said congressional delegations traveling to Egypt should meet with activists, NGOs and Christian leaders to better understand what is happening on the ground and to hear firsthand the perception of the United States’ support for the Muslim Brotherhood.

The full report can be found here.

Will the Real Anna Baltzer Please Rise?

Anna J. Piller, aka Anna Baltzer

Anna J. Piller, aka Anna Baltzer

By Lee Kaplan:

The individual known as Anna Baltzer, whose name remains questionable in terms of legal legitimacy, leads the US Campaign Against the Israeli Occupation and the Boycott and Divestment Movement (BDS) against Israel. Under that name, she has developed a sinecure traveling to churches and colleges worldwide regaling false tales of atrocities by Israel’s Jews against innocent Palestinians with slick presentations, somehow even grabbing a television appearance at Oxford University.

What’s in a Name?

Using the identity of Anna Baltzer, she claims to have appeared at over 500 venues spreading her revisionist history. Billing herself as the “grandchild of Polish-born Holocaust survivors” and a “Fulbright Scholar” to lend her legitimacy in college venues, Baltzer would appear to be the perfect foil to the Jewish state. But what appears to be emerging now is that the woman known as Anna Baltzer is not who she claims to bet While in the’ West Bank’, she routinely rubs elbows with known terrorists while citing her very questionable background.

Based on my investigation, it would appear that she is enough of an embarrassment to some of her family that she allegedly fabricated the name Anna Baltzer – or otherwise associated herself with that name without undergoing any obvious legal means allowing her to do so, to conceal her true identity. Research found that she has at least three aliases, including the identity as Anna Baltzer under which she personally collects money while rewriting history and spreading disinformation about the Jews

Fulbright Exaggerations & Damage Control

As a journalist I first ran afoul of reporting about Anna Baltzer, when I wrote a series of articles for the Gatestone Institute about her. In those articles I reported that there was no Anna Baltzer on record as being a Fulbright Scholar; that no one with the name Baltzer was on record as a Holocaust survivor from the death camps of Poland, and that no record existed of an Anna Baltzer ever going on a Birthright Tour to Israel. The Birthright Tour is of critical importance to her saga as it is during this event that Baltzer claimed she had been falsely indoctrinated into a pro-Israel position and that it inspired her to research the truth about the Palestinian plight.

When my first investigative article was published, a self-described Jewish anarchist named Daniel Sieradski  began tweeting about her at Oxford.. Sieradski, having the same objectives to eliminate Israel, writes all manner of cynical “Jewish” materials, and continually defends anti-Semites and blames Jews for anti-Semitism.

He then contacted Gatestone with false accusations of sloppy journalism, contending the inaccuracy of my information about Baltzer despite the authenticated data contained in my report. For his evidence, Sieradski merely sent a computer screenshot from the Fulbright website that listed Baltzer’s real name, Anna J. Piller, suggesting that my initial information was incorrect.

Inspection of his “evidence” determined that the page he proclaimed as evidence that Baltzer, known as Anna Piller, was indeed a Fulbright Scholar was quickly dismissed. The “evidence” Sieradski offered was nothing more than a page devoted to students hired as teaching assistants by Fulbright, and not a list of actual Fulbright scholars. That page merely proved that Baltzer, under the surname Piller, was hired as a teaching assistant to teach English at an English language program in Turkey – an Islamic country. A separate list of legitimate Fulbright scholars dating back to 1990 showed no entries or listings under her legal name or alias. At best, she exaggerated her academic qualifications to gain entry to the university speaking circuit. Yet, Sieradski suggested that as a Jew, he felt I owed Anna Baltzer an apology.

Fellow activists from the ISM and Sieradski, who also encourages boycotting of Israel like Anna Baltzer does, flew into action and changed biographical data on the  Wikipedia site to reflect now that her real name was Piller, explaining that this surname was the reason that Baltzer did not appear on the Fulbright Scholarshipwebsite. Such revisions were done after and in likely response to the findings from my initial investigative report.

Roseanne Barr bakes and more names for Baltzer appear

It is important to note that Sieradski is a Jew who is part of the in-house staff and writes for the anarchist magazine, Heeb. The word Heeb is considered a racial slur for Jews. The cover of that magazine once featured the notoriously anti-Israel Roseanne Barr, sporting a Hitler moustache and placing cookies shaped as Jewish people into an oven.

Gatestone removed my articles. Undeterred, I moved my investigative report to to a more heavily trafficked site. I decided to increase the scope of my investigation of the individual using the name Anna Baltzer. There was indeed more to be found.

Most important was her claim of being the grandchild of “Polish-born holocaust survivors”. Today, she is against the existence of Israel as the Jewish national homeland and not only a vindicator of the Palestinian goal to replace the Jewish state with an Arab one, but even of the violence that is practiced by Palestinian terrorists against Jews and other Israelis.

Read more at Arutz Sheva

Allen West interviews investigative journalist and Israeli activist Lee Kaplan about anti-Semitism at American universities. Why is this happening? What can be done about it? And is the political left uniting with the Islamists on campus? Find out in this interesting conversation.

Egypt: Too Big to Fail?

Mohamed-Morsi-via-AFPBy Adam Turner:

Recently, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, a supposed “moderate” Islamist, met with Iran’s anti-Semitic, genocidal, President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Reportedly, they had a friendly discussion.  Perhaps, in addition to the official topics, they also conversed about their mutual anti-Semitic attitudes.  President Ahmadinejad is already well-known for his hatred of the Jews.  President Morsi’s bigotry, on the other hand, has only publicly come to light this past year.  In 2010, President Morsi delivered a speech urging Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” for Jews. Soon after, Morsi described Jews as “these bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.”   When confronted by U.S. Senators on his impolitic language, Morsi implied that this was only a controversy because the American media was controlled by Jews.

But the two Islamist Presidents have much more in common than just their anti-Semitism.  Both lead radical, dictatorial, and anti-American regimes.  Like the radical Iranian government has since 1979, President Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood Party continue to crack down on pro-democracy demonstrations in their country (Egypt), persecute independent members of the media, and actively pursue death sentences against Westerners or Americans engaging in Free Speech IN the West.

Unfortunately, none of this negative behavior by Egypt’s leadership seems to matter much to the U.S. government.  The administration’s immediate response – sending four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt.  A bipartisan Congress voted to support the sale.  This is all part of the $1.5 billion or so U.S. aid, most of it military, which has gone to Egypt annually since 1979.

When questioned about the consistent flow of U.S. aid to Egypt, the same argument is often made by the foreign policy elites – Egypt is the colossus of the Arab world, and it would be irrational and unwise for the U.S. to simply let it become a rogue state, or to collapse, as a failed state.  And so the U.S. money spigot must be kept consistently open, if not cracked a bit wider, regardless of how the Islamist-run Egyptian government acts.  In fact, if you persist in doubting this wisdom, sometimes you are belittled as an ignorant isolationist-like opponent of all foreign aid.

But let’s re-examine that pearl of conventional wisdom regarding U.S. aid to Egypt. It simply isn’t valid, as Egypt under the MB is already a rogue state, and it is also pretty much guaranteed to become a failed state.

The fact that Egypt is a rogue state should be patently obvious at this point.  The Egyptian MB has produced Hamas in Gaza, a well-known terrorist organization.  In fact, the MB and Hamas are so close that thousands of Hamas warriors may have been sent to Egypt to help President Morsi protect his regime by crushing Egyptian democratic protestors.  President Morsi and his MB have already shown their willingness to corrupt the democratic process, kill Egyptian demonstrators, discriminate against the Coptic Christians, allow for the harassment or rape of women, and prevent the exercise of a culture of freedom of speech among ordinary Egyptians and foreigners alike.  For more information, see here, here, here and here.  Even President Obama – in a moment of clarity – revealed that he is unsure whether Egypt’s MB regime is an ally of ours.

Read more at Front Page

Also see:

The Belly Dancing Barometer  by Thomas Friedman