Tag Archives: New York Times

Qatar Funding Jihadis in Global Sharia Push

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Fighters from Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadi opposition group in Syria funded by Qatar. (Photo:© Reuters)

Fighters from Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadi opposition group in Syria funded by Qatar. (Photo:© Reuters)

By Clare Lopez:

As the Syrian civil war continues to tear that country apart, with possible use of chemical weapons (by somebody) reported and certain commission of atrocities on all sides, calls for Western and especially U.S. intervention are mounting.

Some want a “no fly zone” so that Bashar al-Assad’s forces can be prevented from aerial bombardment of his people, civilians and rebels alike. Some want the Obama administration to arm the rebels directly (or at least more directly than it already has been for the last year or more). Some, like U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), want both a no-fly zone and more weapons for the rebels. Sen. Graham has even pushed for the insertion of U.S. ground forces into the Syrian conflict.

The trouble is that most U.S. lawmakers realize there just aren’t a lot of good candidates among the rebels whose victory would actually advance core U.S. national security interests in the region. Where in Syria is there a capable, credible rebel force openly dedicated to anything but Sunni Islam and Islamic Law?

Aside from some out-funded, outgunned and outmanned militias among the umbrella Syrian Free Army (SFA) that have been identified and met by Major General Paul Vallely, USA (ret.), thanks to decades of inaction and neglect of pro-Western voices by U.S. leadership, the most powerful forces now opposing the Assad regime are Islamic jihadis, sponsored by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other theocratic regimes.

The loss of SFA commander Col. Riad al-Assad in March 2013 to a bomb that left him seriously injured and out of the fight was a critical blow to opposition forces not aligned with either the al-Qa’eda militia, Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Muslim Brotherhood.

Since at least October 2012, when it first warned that most of the weapons being shipped to the rebels by Qatar and Saudi Arabia were going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists,” even the New York Times has been sounding some well-considered notes of caution about calls for deeper U.S. involvement.  Following up in April 2013, Times journalist Ben Hubbard reported that “nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of” but rather that “[a]cross Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists.”

So, acknowledged hard-line Salafis like al-Qa’eda and Saudi Arabia aside, what might be expected in Syrian territory seized by Qatari-backed (i.e., Muslim Brotherhood-aligned) fighters?

While ostensibly a U.S. ally, Qatar in fact shares little with American core principles such as gender, ethnic and faith equality, genuine pluralism, tolerance, individual liberty or liberal secular democracy.

For starters, Qatar is an authoritarian monarchy whose legal system is dominated by sharia (Islamic) law. Article I of the 1972 Qatari constitution declares with finality that “its religion is Islam and the Islamic Shari’a is the main source of legislation.” Qatari judges are graduates of Saudi schools of Islamic jurisprudence or Egypt’s al-Azhar University. Qatar’s sharia courts have full jurisdiction in all civil and criminal matters over both Qatari nationals and resident or visiting Muslims from other countries.

Read more at The Clarion Project

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U.S., Allies Creating Ascendency of Islamist Radicals in Syria

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SyriaFreeArmyFightersBigThe Clarion Project:

The U.S. and its allies have directly created the problem of Islamist radicals running the insurgency in Syria by providing support to them, all the while saying that they were simply supporting a domestic democratic uprising that reluctantly turned violent only after the regime turned to force.

In its report, the New York Times summed up the situation in Syria by saying, “Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

The report went on to explain that most of the so-called rebels, or freedom fighters, seeking to overthrow the brutal but secular Assad regime are all radical Islamists. These are the same rebels to whom the US is giving hundreds of millions of dollars in nonmilitary aid.

Senator John McCain said that the problem caused by U.S. interventionism on behalf of the Islamist insurgents in Syria is all the fault of the non-interventionists. “Everything that the non-interventionists said would happen in Syria if we intervened has happened. The jihadists are on the ascendency, there are chemical weapons being used and the massacres continue,” he said.

The lead group, al-Nusra Front, is considered a terrorist group by the U.S. and is directly affiliated with al-Qaeda, to whose leaders it has pledged loyalty. The rest are radical Islamists of various stripes who have pushed aside secular fighting forces. They have already seized the government’s oil fields. They are beginning to repress wary secular activists with Islamic courts. If they obtain control of the chemical weapons compound, there is no telling what horrors they could visit upon the Syrian people and beyond.

Another prominent group, Ahrar al-Sham, shares much of Al Nusra’s extremist ideology but is made up mostly of Syrians.

The two groups are most active in the north and east and are widely respected by other rebels for their fighting abilities and their ample arsenal, much of it given by sympathetic donors from the Gulf states.

Read more at The Clarion Project

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Moral relativism and jihad

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Two events happened on Wednesday which should send a shiver down the spine of everyone concerned about the future of the American Jewish community. But to understand their importance it is important to consider the context in which they occurred.

On January 13, The New York Times reported on a series of virulently anti-Jewish comments Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made in speeches given in 2010. Among other things, Morsi said, “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” He said that Egyptian children “must feed on hatred; hatred must continue. The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.”

In another speech, he called Jews “bloodsuckers,” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.”

Two weeks after the Times ran the story, the Obama administration sent four F-16 fighter jets to Egypt as part of a military aid package announced in December 2012 entailing the provision of 20 F-16s and 200 M1-A1 Abrams tanks.

The Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other prominent American Jewish groups did not oppose the weapons transfer.

With the American Jewish leadership silent on the issue, Israel found its national security championed by Sen. Rand Paul. He attached an amendment to a budget bill that would bar the US from transferring the advanced weapons platforms to Egypt.

Paul explained, “Egypt is currently governed by a religious zealot… who said recently that Jews were bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and pigs. This doesn’t sound like the kind of stable personality we [sh]ould be sending our most sophisticated weapons to.”

Paul’s amendment was overwhelmingly defeated, due in large part to the silence of the American Jewish leadership.

The Times noted that Morsi’s castigation of Jews as “apes and pigs” was “a slur for Jews that is familiar across the Muslim world.”

Significantly the Times failed to note that the reason it is familiar is because it comes from both the Koran and the hadith. The scripturally based denigration of Jews as apes and pigs is legion among leading clerics of both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam.

It was not a coincidence that the Times failed to mention why Morsi’s castigation of Jews as apes and pigs was so familiar to Muslim audiences.

The Islamic sources of Muslim Brotherhood Jew hatred, and indeed, hatred of Jews by Islamic leaders from both the Sunni and Shi’ite worlds, is largely overlooked by the liberal ideological camp. And the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish leadership is associated with the liberal ideological camp.

If the Times acknowledged that the Jew hatred espoused by Morsi and his colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as by their Shi’ite colleagues in the Iranian regime and Hezbollah is based on the Koran, they would have to acknowledge that Islamic Jew hatred and other bigotry is not necessarily antithetical to mainstream Islamic teaching. And that is something that the Times, like its fellow liberal institutions, is not capable of acknowledging.

They are incapable of acknowledging this possibility because considering it would implicitly require a critical study of jihadist doctrine. And a critical study of jihadist doctrine would show that the doctrine of jihad, or Islamic holy war, subscribed to by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, as well as by the Iranian regime and Hezbollah and their affiliates, is widely supported, violent, bigoted, evil and dangerous to the free world.

And that isn’t even the biggest problem with studying the doctrine of jihad. The biggest problem is that a critical study of the doctrine of jihad would force liberal institutions like theNew York Times and the institutional leadership of the American Jewish community alike to abandon the reigning dogma of the liberal ideological camp – moral relativism.

Moral relativism is based on a refusal to call evil evil and a concomitant willingness to denigrate truth if truth requires you to notice evil.

Since pointing out the reality of the danger the jihadist doctrines propagated by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood involves the implicit demand that people make distinctions between good and evil and side with good against evil, moral relativists – that is most liberals – cannot contend with jihad.

David Reaboi: Who’s Arming Syrian Jihadist Groups?

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David Reaboi, Vice President for Strategic Communications at the Center for Security Policy, appeared on FoxNews.com to discuss the increasingly deadly weapons Syrian jihadist groups are using during the Civil War there. He notes the latest news about the sophisticated and expensive AS50 sniper rifle (or a copy) in the hands of a Hamas-run rebel militia called the Descendants of the Prophet Brigade, and argues against the US intervening in the conflict. Despite the heartbreaking casualties of civil war, now in its second year, there is no good outcome for the United States.

 
David raised some important points during the interview:

  • Recent NYT reporting reveals Qatar and Saudi money is being used to send arms into Syria from Croatia possibly with the cooperation of the CIA
  • The Independent Commission (ARB – Accountability Review Board) criticized the State Department for calling in the February 17th Martyrs Brigade for security at the consulate in Benghazi.
  • David says he doesn’t trust our intelligence bureaucracy to know who the good guys and the bad guys are because they have removed the study of ideology from the equation. “So once you take out what these guys actually believe, all you’re left with is competing personalities, and that doesn’t tell you very much about where they want to go in the long run.”
  • It is the position of the Center For Security Policy that the United States should not become involved in the Syrian war because we would be forced to support “the bad guys”. The choice being discussed in Washington is between “moderate” Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood versus more militant Salafi or al-Qaeda al-Nusra front type groups. There is no good outcome.

 

 

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Shariah’s Assault on Free Speech: Warriors Who Refuse to be Silenced

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The Center for Security Policy is pleased to broadcast Shariah’s Assault on Free Speech: Warriors Who Refuse to be Silenced, a program of the Irwin M. and H. Ethel Hausman Memorial Free Speech Speakers’ Series in Stoughton, Massachusetts on Wednesday, March 20, 2013. The event will begin at 7:00PM.

To attend in person, please purchase tickets and RSVP.

Also being made available live on youtube for free:

About the Speakers

12Lars Hedegaard is a portrait of courage, tenacity, and wit, under even the most trying circumstances.  Hedegaard is President of the Danish Free Press Society, a historian and a journalist. He is also the survivor of a recent assassination attempt on his life last month in his home in Denmark.
Lars Hedegaard in the Wall Street Journal | Lars Hedegaard and the Enemies of Truthfulness

16 Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of twelve books, including two New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). His latest book is Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins (ISI).

19Tiffany Gabbay serves as Assistant Editor and Foreign Affairs Editor for TheBlaze and has been a writer for over a decade. Her passion for politics and expertise in Middle East affairs was fostered at an early age by her father, a successful entrepreneur and Israeli war hero. Previously, Tiffany worked as a journalist on Capitol Hill where she interviewed some of the Beltway’s biggest names including Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Sen. Dick Durbin and many others.  She is a graduate of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C. and studied communications at the London Institute – University of the Arts, London.

21Andrew G. Bostom (MD, MS) is an author and Associate Professor of Medicine at Brown University Medical School. He is also well known for his writings on Islam as the author ofThe Legacy of Jihad (2005), and editor of 2008 anthology of primary sources and secondary studies on the theme of Muslim antisemitism,The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History. In October 2012 Bostom published his third compendium Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism (Prometheus Books).

Michael Graham is a talk radio host, writer, and conservative political commentator. The author of four books, including the first major publisher book on the Tea Party movement-”THAT’S NO ANGRY MOB, THAT’S MY MOM!” (Regnery, 2010)-Michael is also a columnist for the Boston Herald.

New York Times Encourages Attacks Against Jews

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RETRO-ISRAEL-INTIFADA-PALESTINIANSBy :

The New York Times has crossed the line this weekend by encouraging Palestinian Arabs to embark upon a “third intifada” against Israel with an article by Ben Ehrenreich titled “If There is a Third Intifada, We Want to be the Ones who Started It.” This article is tantamount to calling upon the Arabs to kill Jews.  Against the backdrop of Thursday’s rock attack where a two-year-old Israeli was severely injured with brain injuries when the car she was in veered off the road as a direct results of Arab youth throwing rocks, one wonders where is the decency of the NYT? Rock attacks have caused deaths and serious injuries on Israel’s roads for decades.

The New York Times Magazine celebrated the people who consider their rock attacks “non-violent,” defining them as “peaceful protestors.” Rock-throwers aren’t “peaceful” – anywhere in the world. To even allow Ehrenreich to write an article, rather than an op-ed shows the inherent bias of this outlet.

Read more at Front Page

 

Dutch Muslim Youths Praise Hitler, Claim Millions of Palestinians Are Being Killed

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via Algemeiner:

A video that appeared on Dutch TV recently shows a roundtable of adults and children discussing Jews. The children, who are Muslim Turks, praise Hitler and his genocidal inclinations. One of the boys says, “on the one hand I am satisfied with what Hitler did with the Jews…” while another responds that Hitler was justified in killing millions of Jews because “now millions of Palestinians are being killed.”

The four young boys are joined in a roundtable by an older gentleman (identified as Mehmet Sahin, a researcher at Amsterdam’s Vrije Universiteit) who repeatedly challenges their assertions. When one of the boys asks the interviewer if he hates Jews, they seem surprised when he responds in the negative.

Later, the same boy who originally praised Hitler, says, ” as far as I’m concerned Hitler should have killed all Jews, ” a remark that merited laughs from the group of boys.

The interviewer, who repeatedly expresses his indignation at the boys’ opinions, ask them where they got their hatred for the Jews from–”from friends” they answer, noting that the term “Jew” is used as a curse word and that nobody at their school likes Jews.

Later during the conversation the interviewer calls the boys “pathetic.”

A Dutch Jewish group has called on Holland’s government to probe anti-Semitism in high schools in response to the video.

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‘A Stew of Anti-Muslim Bile and Conspiracy-Laden Forecasts’

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Picture-10-450x295 (1)By :

At 11:20 a.m. on Feb. 5, Lars Hedegaard answered his door bell to an apparent mailman. Instead of receiving a package, however, the 70-year-old Danish historian and journalist found himself face to face with a would-be assassin about one third his age. The assailant shot him once, narrowly missing his head. The gun locked, Hedegaard wrestled with him, and the young man fled.

Given Hedegaard’s criticism of Islam and his even being taken to court on criminal charges of “hate speech,” the attack reverberated in Denmark and beyond. The Associated Pressreported this incident, which was featured prominently in the British press, including the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and the Spectator, as well as in Canada’s National Post. The Wall Street Journal published an article by him about his experience.

When the New York Times belatedly bestirred itself on Feb. 28 to inform its readership about the assassination attempt, it did not so much report the event itself but an alleged Muslim support for Hedegaard to express himself. As implied by the title of Andrew Higgins’ article, “Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak,” he mainly celebrates Danish Islam: “Muslim groups in the country, which were often criticized during the cartoon furor for not speaking out against violence and even deliberately fanning the flames, raised their voices to condemn the attack on Mr. Hedegaard and support his right to express his views, no matter how odious [emphasis added].” This theme pervades the piece; for example, Karen Haekkerup, the minister of social affairs and integration, is quoted pleased that “the Muslim community is now active in the debate.”

(For a close dissection of this agitprop, see Diana West’s evisceration; and see Andrew Bostom’s analysis for a comparison of Higgins to Walter Duranty, the NYT reporter who whitewashed Stalin’s crimes.)

Secondarily Higgins delegitimizes Hedegaard, my topic here. In addition to the snarky “no matter how odious” reference, Higgins dismisses Hedegaard’s “opinions” as “a stew of anti-Muslim bile and conspiracy-laden forecasts of a coming civil war” and claims the Dane has “fanned wild conspiracy theories and sometimes veered into calumny.”

These characterizations of Hedegaard’s work are a vicious travesty. A few specifics:

1. What Higgins airily dismisses as Hedegaard’s “opinions” is in fact a substantial oeuvre in several academic books and articles laden with facts and references dealing with Islamic ideology, Muslim history, and Muslim immigration to Denmark. Those books include:

I krigens hus: Islams kolonisering af Vesten [In the House of War: Islam’s colonization of the West] (with Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen). Aarhus, Hovedland, 2003

1400 års krigen: Islams strategi, EU og frihedens endeligt [The 1400 Year War: Islam’s strategy, the EU and the demise of freedom] (with Mogens Camre). Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2009

Muhammeds piger: Vold, mord og voldtægter i Islams Hus. [Muhammad’s girls: Violence, murder and rape in the House of Islam] Odense, Trykkefrihedsselskabets Bibliotek, 2011

Hedegaard’s major articles include:

“Den 11. september som historie” [September 11 as history] in Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen (eds.), Islam i Vesten: På Koranens vej? Copenhagen, Tiderne Skifter, 2002.

“The Growth of Islam in Denmark and the Future of Secularism” in Kurt Almqvist (ed.), The Secular State and Islam in Europe. Stockholm, Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2007

“Free Speech: Its Benefits and Limitations” in Süheyla Kirca and LuEtt Hanson (eds.), Freedom and Prejudice: Approaches to Media and Culture. Istanbul, Bahcesehir University Press, 2008

“De cartoon-jihad en de opkomst van parallelle samenlevingen” [The cartoon jihad and the emergence of parallel societies] in Hans Jansen and Bert Snel (eds.), Eindstrijd: De finale clash tussen het liberale Westen en een traditionele islam. Amsterdam, Uitgiverij Van Praag, 2009

To the best of my knowledge, no one has claimed these writings contain sloppy scholarship or wrong references. As Hedegaard puts it, “I am a university-trained historian and take my craft seriously.” The real criticism of Hedegaard is not about his scholarship – but that he raises difficult and even unpleasant questions.

Read more at Front Page

Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.

Gay anti-Jewish bigots enable Muslim anti-gay bigots

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pinkwashingBy Adam Savit at Center for Security Policy:

For grievance-based identity groups on the left, embracing Islamic radicals has often been politically expedient but morally deficient.  From women’s organizations who ignore endemic domestic violence in Islamic societies, to black groups who ignore that the Islamic regime in Sudan still enslaves black children, the silence of these purported ‘civil rights’ organizations has been stunningly hypocritical.

Yet all of these groups are expert at mobilizing against what they consider the neo-colonial, racist apartheid regime of Israel.  Israel is also, ironically, the only Middle Eastern country that would tolerate them on its soil.

Considering that gays are routinely beaten, murdered by vigilantes, and executed by sovereign governments in the Islamic world, the tendency of left-wing gay organizations to champion Israel’s jihadist enemies is particularly disturbing.

Writing for the Gatestone Institute, Alan Dershowitz identifies a new strain of anti-Israel hysteria in the gay community which characterizes Israel’s tolerant attitude as ‘Pinkwashing’:

This burlesque of an argument first surfaced in a New York Times op-ed that claimed that Israel’s positive approach to gay rights is “a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violation of Palestinians human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.”

The author of the piece, a ‘professor of the humanities,’ apparently lacks the creativity to imagine that Israel might be exhibiting tolerance for gays, not because it hates Arabs, but because it is a Western democracy that believes in the right of the individual to make his or her own choices.

 

Spot the ‘Xenophobic Butcher’

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Andrew Higgins

Andrew Higgins

By Andrew G. Bostom:

In my earlier blog about NY Times agitprop journalist Andrew Higgins, who calumniated a real journalist and historian, Lars Hedegaard, I mentioned Higgins’ warped hagiography of The Danish Muslim Society, and its two recent leaders, whose role in fomenting the cartoon riot carnage – 200 dead and over 800 wounded — Higgins failed to discuss.

Higgins also singled out for praise Minhaj ul Quran International, which he characterized as “the Danish offshoot of a controversial group in Pakistan that has taken a hard line at home against blasphemy.” Diana West, citing a 2006 article “Free Speech in Denmark“,  which was co-authored by Lars Hedegaard, notes that Minhaj ul Quran’s leader, Tahir ul-Qadri wrote these words, consistent with the Sharia, on the universal application of Islamic “blasphemy” law:

The act of contempt of the finality of the Prophet (peace be upon him) is a crime which can not be tolerated whether its commission is direct or indirect, intentional or un-intentional. The crime is so sanguine that even his repentance can not exempt him from the penalty of death.

Although ul-Qadri, of Pakistani descent, tried to deny his own words, in a failed effort at sacralized Islamic dissimulation, or “taqiyya,” watch the video, below, which captures his proud championing of Pakistan’s blasphemy law and its lethal consequences for non-Muslims, in particular.

 

These liberty-crushing, murder-inciting remarks of ul-Qadri were apparently of no concern to Mr. Higgins. But Higgins did find time to label Anders Gravers (using, perhaps, a deliberately vicious pun on his trade), “a xenophobic butcher from the north,” because Gravers opposes the aggressive efforts of Denmark’s Muslims to Islamize Danish society.  Compare Gravers’ peaceful exercise of free speech,  voicing his strong opposition to Sharia encroachment in his native Denmark, to ul-Qadri’s unabashed call for the murder of non-Muslim “blasphemers”-and then lying about that heinous record of support for the application of Islamic blasphemy law.

Who is the “xenophobic butcher” again, Mr. Higgins?