Tag Archives: Qatar Foundation

Tariq Ramadan Center To Hold International Conference; Many Global Muslim Brotherhood Luminaries To Attend

Posted on by
1

 

Tariq Ramadan

Tariq Ramadan

GlobalMB @ March 12, 2013

A Middle Eastern news portal is reporting that the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), a new research center headed by Global Muslim Brotherhood figure Tariq Ramadan, is holding an international conference to be attended by a number of Global Muslim Brotherhood luminaries. According to an Al Bawaba report:

Published March 10th, 2013 – 04:43 GMT The Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) will be holding a high-level international conference entitled ‘Arts and Politics from an Islamic Perspective: Critical Questions’ on March 9th, 2013. This is the first such event to be organised by CILE, a member of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. The one-day conference will take place at Qatar Foundation’s Student Center, and aims to bring together scholars of Islamic jurisprudence, artists and politicians to discuss and tackle critical issues pertinent to today’s cultural and political spheres. A number of well-regarded experts will partake in the seminar. Participants in the first session, ‘Islamic Ethics’, will include Sheikh Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi, Chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars; Sheikh Dr Ali Al-Qaradaghi, Secretary General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars; Sheikh Dr Ahmed Raissouni, Chairman of the League of Sunni Scholars; and Professor Muhammad Kamal Hassan, Rector of the International Islamic University of Malaysia. The second session will discuss ‘Ethics and Arts’. Participants will include the British singer/songwriter Dr Yusuf Islam, Egyptian singer and guitarist Hamza Namira, Moroccan singer and composer Saloua Chaoudry, and Egyptian researcher and Islamic calligrapher Dr Ahmed Moustafa. The third and final panel, ‘Politics and Ethics’, will include Dr Abdel Moneim Abul Futuh, former Egyptian presidential candidate, prominent Turkish sociologist Prof Nilufer Gole, and Prof Norman Finkelstein, the American political scientist, activist and author. CILE, a member of the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, specialises in Islamic legislation and ethical thought, with a main focus on applied principles. The centre has a vision of reform that is guided by the fundamental tenets of the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah (teachings of Prophet Mohammed), and the Maqasid (objectives) of Islamic Jurisprudence. CILE aims to bring about a more just and moral world through a methodological and theoretical framework that can lead to practical applications and tangible contributions.”

Tariq Ramadan is perhaps best described as an independent power center within the global Brotherhood with sufficient stature as the son of Said Ramadan, and the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood to challenge positions taken by important Brotherhood leaders. His statements and writings have been extensively analyzed and he has been accused by critics of promoting anti-Semitism and fundamentalism, albeit by subtle means. On the other hand, his supporters promote him as as example of an Islamic reformer who is in the forefront of developing a “Euro Islam.” Ramadan is currently professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of Theology and senior research fellow at St. Antony’s College (Oxford), Dohisha University (Kyoto, Japan) and at the Lokahi Foundation (London). Previous posts discussed his dismissal from his positions as an adviser on integration for the city of Rotterdam and from a Dutch University over his role as a talk show host on Iranian TV. A ban on Ramadan traveling to the US was lifted in January 2010 and several posts have discussed his visits to the US where he appeared at various US Muslim Brotherhood venues including giving the keynote at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)-Chicago annual banquet in April 2010.

Qaradawi, a virulent anti-Semite is often referred to here as the most important leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood, an acknowledgement of his role as the de facto spiritual leader of the movement. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to lead the Egyptian Brotherhood after the death of the Supreme Guide. Based in Qatar, Sheikh Qaradawi has reportedly amassed substantial wealth through his role as Shari’ah adviser to many important Islamic banks and funds. He is also considered to be the “spiritual guide” for Hamas and his fatwas in support of suicide bombings against Israeli citizens were instrumental in the development of the phenomenon. A recent post has discussed a video compilation of Qaradawi’s extremist statements. A post from August reported that  Qaradawi had been included as part of a list of Islamic scholars to be appointed to an Egyptian national board of senior Islamic scholars (Ulema). Al-Azhar is considered to be the main center of Islamic and Arabic learning in the world.

Read more

Also see Discover The Networks Profile on Tariq Ramadan

 

Qatar: Banker to the Global Jihad

Posted on by
Reply
Prime Minister of Qatar Sheik al-Thani with Hamas' Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh during al-Thani's solidarity visit to Gaza in October 2012 (Photo: Reuters)

Prime Minister of Qatar Sheik al-Thani with Hamas’ Prime Minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh during al-Thani’s solidarity visit to Gaza in October 2012 (Photo: Reuters)

By Clare Lopez

The tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdom of Qatar exerts an international influence in financial, military, political and theological affairs that’s way out of proportion to its diminutive physical presence as a peninsular appendage of Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast. Thanks to its enormous wealth, courtesy of abundant oil and natural gas reserves, Qatar has been flexing its muscles both regionally and well beyond.

Independent since 1971, this former British protectorate that is led by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, a Sandhurst Military Academy graduate, not only has been on a major spending spree, snapping up prime properties from London to China, but is also reportedly bankrolling the global jihad movement.

Home away from home since 1961 for the Muslim Brotherhood’s senior jurist, the Egyptian Yousef al-Qaradawi, Qatar is the headquarters of Al-Jazeera television.  Al-Jazeera is owned by the Qatar Media Corporation and is the broadcast outlet of choice for jihadist groups from Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah to the Muslim Brotherhood. Seeking access to the U.S. market for a while, Al-Jazeera just got its foot in the door to propagate its anti-American, antisemitic, terror and violence agenda with the acquisition of former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV network this January.

During his long exile in Qatar, al-Qaradawi developed a massive following across the Muslim world through use of the internet and TV. His hugely popular TV program, “Life and Islamic Law,” which airs weekly on Al-Jazeera, is viewed by tens of millions of Muslims.

The Qatar Foundation hosted the January 2012 launch of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE), whose Director of Research is none other than al-Qaradawi’s protégé, the scion of the Brotherhood’s founding family, Tariq Ramadan.

Inaugurated just in time to begin providing guidance on Islamic legislation for all the new Ikhwan-dominated regimes now consolidating power across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, CILE aims to ensure that 21st century realities remain firmly aligned with core Islamic teaching.

There should be no lack of practical applications to occupy Ramadan and the CILE staff, as Qatar reportedly has been backing its ideological convictions with money — lots of money.

According to the New York Times, the Obama administration first gave its approval in early 2011 for Qatar to send weapons shipments to Libyan rebels fighting to oust Muammar Qaddafi, who had been working to suppress Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Once the U.S. government reversed its policy in order to support the jihadist rebels whose ranks were dominated by Al-Qaeda, it was Qatari money and Qatari weapons that put them on the road to victory. U.S. and NATO support, coordinated out of Benghazi, Libya by Christopher Stevens, the U.S. designated liaison to the Al-Qaeda militias, ensured the subsequent expansion of Al-Qaeda beyond Libya and across the Islamic Maghreb as well as West Africa.

Reports in the French media in mid-2012 accused Qatar of providing unspecified amounts of weapons and funding in dollars to Al-Qaeda-linked militias across North and West Africa, including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO, in French) and Ansar al-Dine.

Apparently betting on the continued rise of Islamic influence across the region, Qatar is parlaying its Islamic credentials for both business and jihadist objectives. According to the respected French weekly Le Canard Enchainé, Qatar is well-entrenched in the region — but especially in Mali — and has been operating under cover of a network of humanitarian NGOs it has established there such as the Qatari Red Crescent, madrassas and other charities.

Read more at Radical Islam

Muslim Brotherhood group to ‘connect all U.S. schools’

Posted on by
2

 

Vartan Gregorian

Vartan Gregorian

by Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – A Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization has partnered with the U.S. Department of Education and the State Department to facilitate an online program aiming to connect all U.S. schools with classrooms abroad by 2016.

Vartan Gregorian, a board member of the organization, the Qatar Foundation International, was appointed in 2009 to President Obama’s White House Fellowships Commission.

WND previously exposed that Gregorian served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by former Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.

Documentation shows Gregorian was central in Ayers’ recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge – a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.

Obama also later said his job at the project qualified him to run for public office, as WND previously reported.

Connecting schools to fulfill Obama pledge

The Qatar Foundation International, or QFI, in 2011 partnered with the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to facilitate matchmaking between classrooms in the U.S. and international schools through something called the “Connect All Schools” project.

QFI, funded by the Qatari government, explains on its website the initiative was founded in response to Obama’s call in his June 2009 speech to the Arab world in Cairo, Egypt, to “create a new online network, so a young person in Kansas can communicate instantly with a young person in Cairo.”

QFI relates how more than 100 U.S. schools and organizations have already connected on the interactive website.

The stated goal of the initiative is to “connect every school in the U.S. with the world by 2016.”

This is not the QFI’s first foray into the U.S. education system.

WND reported last May the Qatar-based foundation awarded “Curriculum Grants” to seven U.S. schools and language organizations to “develop comprehensive and innovative curricula and teaching materials to be used in any Arabic language classroom.”

QFI, based in Washington, D.C., is the U.S. branch of the Qatar Foundation, founded in 1995 by Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Thani is still the group’s vice-chairman, while one of his three wives, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairs the organization’s board.

Thani also launched Al Jazeera in 1996 and served as the television network’s chairman.

The Qatar foundation is close to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In January 2012, it launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics under the guidance of Tariq Ramadan, who serves as the center’s director.

Ramadan is the grandson of the notorious founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Ramadan was banned from the U.S. until 2010 when the Obama administration issued him a visa to give a lecture at a New York school.

QFI, meanwhile, named several institutions after Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many regard Qaradawi as the de facto spiritual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The foundation instituted the Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi Scholarships and in 2009 established a research center named the Qaradawi Center for Islamic Moderation and Renewal.

Qaradawi has personally attended scores of foundation events, including conferences at which he served as a keynote speaker.

Qaradawi achieved star status because of his regular sermons and interviews on Al Jazeera.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism documents Qardawi openly permitted the killing of American troops in Iraq and praised the “heroic deeds” of “Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades and others.”

Obama, Ayers connection

Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corp. charitable foundation, was appointed by Obama in 2009 as a White House fellow. Born in Tabriz, Iran, Gregorian served for eight years as president of the New York Public Library and was also president of Brown University.

As Brown president, Gregorian served on the selection committee of the Annenberg Foundation, which funded Ayers’ Chicago Annenberg Challenge with a $49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge grant over five years. Ayers was one of five founding members of the Annenberg Challenge who wrote to the Annenberg Foundation for the initial funding.

Steve Diamond, a political-science and law professor and a blogger who has posted on Obama, previously posted a letter from Nov. 18, 1994, in which Gregorian, serving as the point man on Annenberg’s selection committee, asked Ayers to “compose the governing board” of the Challenge’s collaborative project with “people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago.”

Ayers and other founding Challenge members then recruited Obama to serve as the project chairman.

Read more at WND

Qatar’s New Pearl: Al Jazeera America

Posted on by
4

by Michael Curtis

Al Jazeera every week airs its superstar, Muslim Brotherhood leader Yousuf al-Qaradawi, who is barred from entering the US and other Western countries. He has repeatedly called for the Muslim world to damage the U.S. economy by boycotting American products, as well as often rendering opinions such as, “Oh Allah, kill them [Jews] down to the very last one.” One can see why Qatar’s leadership would like to propagate “a Qatari sponsored narrative of events, and shape that narrative and how it is seen.” Most moving is to hear that Al Gore finds these opinions as “aligned with our point of view.”

Most disturbing about the sale of Al Gore and Joel Hyatt’s Current TV to Al Jazeera are the reported sanctimonious remarks about the character of the Current Network and the comparable frame of mind of Al Jazeera. Qatar’s leadership, according to Gulf analyst Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, would like to propagate “a Qatari sponsored narrative of events in the Middle East and elsewhere,” and be “able to shape that narrative and and how it is seen.” Al Jazeera regularly promotes its superstar, Muslim Brotherhood leader Yousuf al Qaradawi, who is barred from entering the US and other Western countries. He has for years said such things as : “The last punishment [against the Jews] was carried out by Hitler. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers,” and “Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them [Jews]. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one”. Given Al Jazeera’s record of backing the Islamist revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, one can see why Qatar’s leadership would “like to be able to shape that narrative and how it is seen.” Al-Qaradawi has also said, according to the peerless MEMRI.org, that Islam’s “conquest of Rome” will save Europe from its subjugation to materialism and promiscuity, and that Islam will return to Europe as a conquerer.

Al Jazeera has also, according to MEMRI, “continued to call for the Muslim world to to damage the U.S. economy by boycotting American products.” In justifying the sale, Gore apparently explained to the The Blaze: “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with out point of view.” His partner, Joel Hyatt, added: “Al-Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current,” and that the Qatari network intends to “invest heavily” in new programming. Got it. Most moving is to hear that Al Gore finds these statements as “aligned with our point of view.”

In a withering article, Amin Farouk disposed of the benign view of the activity of the Doha network and chronicled its Islamist agenda. Others, apparently already aware of it, responded accordingly: Time Warner, the second-largest cable company in the U.S., immediately refused to carry either Current or Al Jazeera.

Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani 2Qatar, the country and the political system which founded and controls Al Jazeera, has been dominated by the al-Thani family for almost 150 years, and is now ruled by Sheikh Hamad bin Khaalifa al-Thani, an absolute monarch who deposed his father in 1995 to become Emir. In 1995, Emir al-Thani established The Qatar Foundation, currently headed by his second wife, Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, “to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world,” according to a report by MEMRI’s Steven Stalinsky. The Qatar Foundation’s “Education City”, which the Qatar Foundation calls its “flagship project,” brings students to Qatar from Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth and Cornell to meet leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Partners of the Qatar Foundation include, among others, institutions from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Mexico, and institutions such as Microsoft, Cisco, Conoco-Phillis, Exxon Mobil, Rolls-Royce, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, Gartner Lee (Canada), as well as several additional universities in the U.S., Canada, Spain, France, and the U.K. Students who are U.S. citizens from American universities are eligible for federal student aid through the U.S. Department of Education, as well as scholarships “for prospective students” from the Qatar Foundation. In article in Texas A&M’s newspaper, April 24, 2009, the university’s assistant dean for Finance and Administration states, “Essentially all costs of A&M [at Education City] are covered by the Qatar Foundation” and suggests that “professors are given significant financial and U.S. Taxation incentives for working at A&M Qatar.”

Meanwhile, Al-Qaradawi, head of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and the International Council of Muslim Scholars, and who was voted number three on the list of the 100 Top Intellectuals worldwide by Foreign Policy magazine (July/August 2008), inaugurated the Islamic Studies program and also maintains a significant presence partly through the Al-Qaradawi Center for Research and Modern Thought, and the Sheikh Al-Qaradawi Scholarship program . Meanwhile, as he receives awards, he calls on television for boycotts of products from the U.S., for the “conquest of Rome,” and for another genocide against the Jews, this time at the hands of the Muslims.

Qatar was once a center of pearl fishing, as well as a British protectorate until 1971, when it became independent and refused to join the United Arab Emirates. Now it is one of the world’s richest countries, and its leader evidently wishes to to be influential. With a population of about 1.7 million, of whom only 300,000 are citizens, Qatar, which produces about 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day and has more than 15% of the world’s proven gas resources, and is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Thanks to the increase in oil prices, its GDP is currently about $175 billion, and per capita income is $100,000 — the highest in the Arab world, and almost double that of the U.S.

Emir al-Thani has not been slow in exerting the role of his country in world economic and political affairs. The small land of pearl divers has now become a global energy power, and al-Thani appears an ambitious political leader, playing a major role in enflaming, steering and then resolving regional conflicts, as well as being an important investor in European economies. In October 2012, the Emir visited Gaza, where he and made a pledge of $400 million to the terrorist group Hamas. Qatar’s international role can only be enhanced by its selection to be the host of the 2022 FIFA world soccer competition, the first of any Middle East country.

Read more at Gatestone Institute
Related articles

Muslim Brotherhood infiltrates U.S. public schools?

Posted on by
2

by Aaron Klein at WND:

A flurry of news media reports last week highlighted a Harlem public elementary school that will become the first in New York to require students to study Arabic.

Entirely unreported is that the organization that co-created and funded the Arabic language program for the New York school, WND has found, maintains close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while the group’s founder also started the Al Jazeera television network.

The Qatar Foundation International, or QFI, a nonprofit group financed by the government of Qatar, gave Harlem’s Hamilton Heights, a K-5 public school, a $250,000 grant to support the Arabic program for three years.

The school’s Arabic language program was reportedly developed by QFI and the the Global Language Project.

In addition to the Harlem school, WND found that QFI just awarded “Curriculum Grants” to seven U.S. schools and language organizations to “develop comprehensive and innovative curricula and teaching materials to be used in any Arabic language classroom.”

The schools include Bell High School, a Los Angeles public school, and Safford K-8 in Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District.

QFI, based in Washington, D.C., is the U.S. branch of the Qatar Foundation, founded in 1995 by Qatar’s ruling emir, Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani.

Thani is still the group’s vice-chairman, while his wife, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairs the organization’s board.

Thani also launched Al Jazeera in 1996 and served as the television network’s chairman.

The Qatar foundation is close to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In January, it launched the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics under the guidance of Tariq Ramadan, who serves as the center’s director.

Ramadan is the grandson of the notorious founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna. Ramadan was banned from the U.S. until 2010 when the Obama administration issued him a visa to give a lecture at a New York school.

The Qatar Foundation, meanwhile, named several institutions after Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the top leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many regard Qaradawi as the de facto spiritual leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

Read more

I don’t mind Arabic being taught in our schools because we need translators we can trust. Just not funded by foreign nationals that want to transform the US into an Islamic nation. The curriculum is going to have to be scrutinized very carefully.