Dr. Andrew Bostom: Muslim Leaders Seek Sharia in the US
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Tag Archives: Sharia Law
Gaffney at Dallas Eagle Forum: Shariah and Civilization Jihad in America
Frank Gaffney spoke to the Dallas Eagle Forum on September 27, 2012, giving a short course on Shariah Law and Civilization Jihad in America.
Center Report Reveals Radical Islamist Views and Agenda of Senior State Department Official Huma Abedin’s Mother
WASHINGTON, D.C.: A book published and translated by the mother of Obama administration State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin provides fresh evidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest aide has deeply problematic foreign associations that could, in violation of departmental guidelines, “create… a heightened risk of foreign exploitation, inducement, manipulation, pressure, or coercion.”
In light of the escalating controversy over the role being played in U.S. security policy-making by Ms. Abedin and others with personal and/or professional ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (see Part 8 of the Center for Security Policy’s online curriculum at MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com), the revelations contained in a new Center report– Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother– could not be more timely, or important.
The Center’s report excerpts and analyzes relevant passages from a book published and translated by Saleha S. Mahmood Abedin called Women in Islam: A Discourse in Rights and Obligations by Fatima Umar Naseef. Naseef is a past head of the “women’s section” and professor of shariah at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, where Dr. Abedin is also on the faculty. The book was published in 1999, the same year Dr. Abedin founded Dar Al Hekma, a university for women also in Jeddah, that Secretary Clinton visited and spoke admiringly of with Huma Abedin in February 2010. [See Remarks on that occasion by Mrs. Clinton, including her comment that Huma holds a "very sensitive and important position" in her department, and those by her hosts.]
Excerpts from Women in Islam in Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother include Islamic shariah justifications for the following practices:
- Stoning for Adultery when Married; Lashing for Adultery when Unmarried
- No Death Penalty for the Murder of an Apostate
- Freedom of Expression Curtailed to What Benefits Islam
- Women’s Right to Participate in Armed Jihad
- Social Interaction Between the Sexes is Forbidden
- Women Have No Right to Abstain from Sex with their Husbands
- A Woman Should Not Let Anyone Into the House Unless Approved by Her Husband
- Female Genital Mutilation is Allowed
- Man-Made Laws “Enslave Women”
The organization responsible for the publication of Women in Islam was the International Islamic Committee for Woman & Child (IICWC), chaired at the time by Dr. Abedin. IICWC misleadingly describes itself as “an international organization of concerned women who are committed to improving the condition of women and children around the world.” In fact, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Muslim World League (MWL) and other Islamist organizations with which it is associated, the IICWC is committed to eviscerating the rights of women and children by imposing everywhere shariah, a code that denies them fundamental – and, in the United States, constitutional – liberties.
Specifically, the book published by Dr. Abedin wholeheartedly affirms: limits on women’s free expression; the permissibility of stoning as a punishment for adultery, killing of apostates and female genital mutilation; the contention that “man-made laws” enslave women; and more. It also endorses women’s right to fight in armed jihad. Women in Islam is available online and sold at the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an Islamist organization co-founded by Huma Abedin’s mother and her late father, Dr. Syed Zainul Abedin.
On July 21, former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy posted an essay at National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone commenting on the request by five Members of Congress led by Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota for Inspector General investigations of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations within the U.S. government. In it, he observed that the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs “was backed by the Muslim World League. As the Hudson Institute’s Zeyno Baran relates, the MWL was started by the Saudi government in 1962 ‘with Brotherhood members in key leadership positions.’ It has served as the principal vehicle for the propagation of Islamic supremacism by the Saudis and the Brotherhood.”
Mr. McCarthy notes that:
The five House conservatives…are asking questions that adults responsible for national security should feel obliged to ask: In light of Ms. Abedin’s family history, is she someone who ought to have a security clearance, particularly one that would give her access to top-secret information about the Brotherhood? Is she, furthermore, someone who may be sympathetic to aspects of the Brotherhood’s agenda, such that Americans ought to be concerned that she is helping shape American foreign policy?
Andrew McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman – a convicted terrorist and clerical inspiration for jihadists worldwide, whose release from federal prison at the insistence of Muslim Brother and Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi has been the subject of discussions within and enabled by Mrs. Clinton’s State Department – goes on to observe that:
The State Department is particularly wary when it comes to the category of ‘foreign influence‘ – yes, it is a significant enough concern to warrant its own extensive category in background investigations. No criminal behavior need be shown to deny a security clearance; access to classified information is not a right, and reasonable fear of “divided loyalties” is more than sufficient for a clearance to be denied. The [Department's own security] guidelines probe ties to foreign countries and organizations because hostile elements could “target United States citizens to obtain protected information” or could be “associated with a risk of terrorism.” Note: The Brotherhood checks both these boxes.
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President of the Center for Security Policy, said upon the release of the Center’s new report, Ties That Bind? The Views and Agenda of Huma Abedin’s Islamist Mother:
In the interest of informing the debate about the need to investigate Huma Abedin’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its agenda, and those of others shaping policy in the Obama administration, the Center for Security Policy offers in Ties That Bind? further cause for such an investigation. That includes, for instance, evidence of Dr. Saleha Abedin’s personal involvement with the International Islamic Committee on Woman and Child’s affiliated organization, the International Islamic Council for Da’wah and Relief (IICDR). The IICDR was banned in Israel in 2008 for its collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi‘s Union for Good in the funding of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, Hamas. In the United States, the Union for Good was designated a terrorist entity in late 2008.
This further documentation of Dr. Abedin’s positions on shariah law, her leadership of the IICWC and its affiliation with a designated terrorist entity such as the IICDR makes plain that a thorough investigation is fully justified regarding her daughter’s access to classified information and policy-influencing role. In particular, in connection with the latter, Ties That Bind powerfully reinforces the Center’s earlier warning that the IICWC is currently advocating for the repeal of Egypt’s Mubarak-era prohibitions on female genital mutilation, child marriage, and marital rape, on the grounds that such prohibitions run counter to shariah. Americans want no part of such an agenda. They should they have no reason for concern that senior officials in their government are stealthily encouraging it.
About the Center for Security Policy
The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.
Amsterdam Gets a Harsh Lesson in Islam 101
Haitham al-Haddad
By Bruce Bawer
In January 2009 a Dutch court ordered Geert Wilders to be prosecuted for offending Muslims and inciting anti-Muslim hatred. The complaint was based not on slurs, as such, but on factual statements made by Wilders, in his film Fitna and in various public venues, about Islamic beliefs and about actions inspired by those beliefs. In June 2011, after a prolonged legal ordeal that cost Wilders greatly in time, money, and emotion, and that represented a disgrace to the tradition of Dutch liberty, he was finally acquitted.
In February of this year, the Islamic Students Association at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam invited Haitham al-Haddad, a British sharia scholar, to participate in a symposium, but when some of al-Haddad’s sophisticated theological statements about Jews (the usual “pigs and dogs” business) and about other topics came to light, members of the Dutch Parliament spoke out against the invitation, a media storm erupted, and VU canceled its plans. Whereupon a venue in Amsterdam called De Balie, which sponsors debates, talks, plays, and sundry cultural and artistic events (and whose café is a good spot to grab a late-morning coffee), stepped in and offered al-Haddad their stage.
At the event that ensued, al-Haddad spelled out, and defended, many aspects of Islamic law, including the death penalty for apostates. Because of this specific statement about executing apostates, al-Haddad was reported to Dutch officials for having broken the same laws that Wilders had been put on trial for violating. The other day, however, judicial authorities announced their determination that al-Haddad had not committed any offense and would therefore not be prosecuted for his remarks. Why? Supposedly because he had placed conditions on the death penalty for apostates. I was curious to know exactly what he had said, so I searched for the debate on You Tube. Lucky me, there it was, all 76 minutes of it. I will recount it in some detail here because I think it provides a window on one or two bemusing aspects of the European mentality in our time.
As the event began, Yoeri Albrecht, director of De Balie and the evening’s host, explained that he’d decided to invite al-Haddad because it’s “important to discuss the position of Islam in the West.” He told the cleric that he was “very happy that you agreed” to come and wished him “a warm welcome.” Albrecht had invited two other men to join him and al-Haddad onstage. One was Kustaw Bessems, a journalist; the other was Tofik Dibi, a young Dutch-Moroccan Marxist, university student, and member of Parliament for the Green Left Party who has publicly protested against Wilders and who represents himself as an advocate for a modern, progressive Islam. Neither Wilders nor anyone else from his Freedom Party was asked to join the debate. Bessems noted early on that while he finds al-Haddad’s views “despicable,” it was he who had personally taken the initiative to find an alternate venue after VU’s cancellation, because he believes in free speech (as if free speech means that fanatics have an automatic right to a platform).
Dibi’s questions for al-Haddad were a tad challenging, but his manner was respectful, even deferential. The imam, for his part, didn’t beat around the bush. Dibi: “Do you have more right to speak about Islam than other Muslims?” Al-Haddad: “Yeah, of course.” Dibi: “Do you allow yourself to doubt?” Al-Haddad: “There are certain things in Islam that are clear. No one can doubt them.”
Albrecht, for his part, sounded almost astonished when, having finally grasped al-Haddad’s key point, he said: “Outside of Islam, there is no truth?” Al-Haddad: “No.” Albrecht: “Could you understand that a lot of people would be afraid of this kind of thinking?” Al-Haddad: “There is something called truth. There is right and wrong.” When al-Haddad admitted that he supported stoning for crimes like adultery and apostasy, Albrecht exclaimed: “You can’t be serious!” The host seemed to be genuinely gobsmacked. (Incidentally, the “conditions” al-Haddad had reportedly placed on the death penalty for apostates, and that had purportedly saved him from prosecution by the Dutch judiciary, were as follows: an apostate could not be executed until his case was handled in a Muslim country by a sharia judge.)
It emerged that earlier that day al-Haddad had refused to let a woman sit beside him on a TV show. Asked now about women’s rights, al-Haddad insisted that men and women, being different, have different rights; that obliging women to wear headscarves is not an act of oppression any more than parking rules in Britain are; and that “women’s rights” need to be viewed in context. A woman in the audience was given an opportunity to express her own shock at al-Haddad’s views on women: “I am really amazed at the way you think!” For a while, Albrecht gave up his seat onstage to her. “Who gives you the right,” she asked al-Haddad, “where do you get the right, to discuss women’s rights?”
I was shocked too. I was shocked that in the year 2012, these Dutch infidels – intellectual infidels – professed to be shocked, and indeed gave every indication of being sincerely shocked, when they heard a recognized Islamic authority spell out basic facts of Islamic belief. These are the same basic facts that Geert Wilders has been talking about for years. It was for daring to speak these facts – for, in effect, reporting on the same barbaric beliefs and practices that al-Haddad was now not only describing but defending – that Wilders had been hauled into court on charges of having insulted al-Haddad’s faith. Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wilders – all of them had been reviled around the world as Islamophobes for stating these same facts. But on that evening at De Balie it was almost as if none of these critics of Islam had ever opened their mouths.
Read more at Front Page
What to expect from Egypt’s Morsi
What to make of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi’s election as president of Egypt? What seems to be the most likely outcome is something analogous to the “constitutional settlements” of the early Roman Empire. That is, the military, like the Emperor Augustus in antiquity, will entrust to itself management of foreign policy, while granting Morsi (and a parliament, if new elections are allowed) – akin to the Senate in Rome – considerable autonomy with regards to the direction of domestic affairs, even as the military has assumed control over the drafting of the constitution.
Indeed, such a settlement would work well for the military, because, despite its extensive control of the economy, the burden of resolving the economic crisis would ultimately rest in Morsi’s hands. Currently, as Reuters reports, the country’s depleted foreign reserves can only cover “three months of import coverage,” while the local currency debt has increased to 600 billion Egyptian pounds ($99 billion), up from 500 billion before the unrest began in January 2011.
The International Monetary Fund has indicated that a $3.2 billion loan will only be granted if the country gets its finances in order, but the prospects of such a resolution appear to be bleak. Having Morsi take responsibility, therefore, can prove useful in directing potential civilian anger away from the military. On the other hand, the perception of a settlement between the military and the president could help to attract foreign investment.
With the military managing foreign policy, the chances of a full-blown war between Egypt and Israel are slim, despite bellicose rhetoric emanating from some quarters of the Muslim Brotherhood calling for the liberation of Jerusalem and establishment of a “United Arab States.” For one thing, Egypt lacks the means to launch and sustain a war against Israel. At the same time, however, one should not expect Egyptian firmness in dealing with rocket fire against the Jewish state or militant activity in the Sinai Peninsula.
In fact, one could well see the military adopt an approach toward militancy not dissimilar to the methods of the Pakistani security forces: that is, targeting those perceived to pose a direct threat to Egypt’s stability, while lacking resolve at best, and at worst playing a double game with other militants in order to continue receiving U.S. aid.
As for the domestic scene, it is probable that the Islamization trend that has been apparent over the past five or so decades will not only continue but could also accelerate. When the likes of Hosni Mubarak were in charge, the arrangement was such that Islamist ideology was allowed to disseminate at ground level. Now that Egypt has an elected Islamist president, it is to be expected that sentiments on the ground will only become more hard-line.
Although it is easy to dismiss outlandish claims that Morsi wants to reinstate the discriminatory jizya poll tax – essentially the equivalent of a Mafia protection racket – on Christians (the report is an uncorroborated rumor that can be traced to one obscure Arabic website), there is evidence that he would like to restrict the rights of non-Muslim minorities and women. Just under half of voters chose Ahmed Shafiq, but that will not act as a firm barrier against a gradualist approach to implementing Islamic law that many in the Brotherhood see as the ideal strategy to adopt.
In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic magazine last year, Morsi made it clear that neither he nor the Brotherhood could tolerate the idea of a Christian or woman running for the presidency of Egypt.
While much has been made of a recent announcement by an advisor to Morsi that there are plans to appoint a Copt and a woman as vice-presidents, it should be appreciated that such positions are likely to be no more than symbolic. In fact, problems of discrimination against non-Muslims and women will in all likelihood only worsen under Morsi’s presidency. Further, the spike in Salafist mob attacks on Coptic churches since the ousting of Mubarak – attacks usually sparked by the flimsiest rumors and trivialities – is unlikely to subside, and the authorities will probably continue to do nothing about it.
In the long run, chaos and instability are most likely to dominate the country’s future. Unlike Iran, which has, since the mid-1980s, implemented a major family planning program that has dramatically slowed population growth, Egypt’s population (83 million as of October 2011) continues to grow. It could reach 100 million by 2020, with more than 99 percent of the population living on an area of land around the Nile only 2.5 times the size of Israel.
Even assuming Egypt can escape from its current economic crisis, there is no sign its economy can keep up with the pace of population growth even to sustain present standards of living. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Egyptian Islamists have on past occasions denounced family planning as a Western conspiracy to keep the number of Muslims in the world in check. They have shown no intention of implementing a program to reduce the birth rate.
Egypt is unlikely to become a “Somalia on the Nile” as economist and columnist David P. Goldman has predicted, but in the long-term, internal stability is a remote possibility.
Update from June 29, 2012: Concerning Egypt’s economy and the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans, Martin Kramer summarizes the situation well:
The Muslim Brotherhood is in a bind, because it has to deliver. For the masses of people who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood, the revolution wasn’t about democracy and freedom. It was about bread and social justice.
The Brotherhood has a so-called “Renaissance” plan for the overhaul of the Egyptian economy. I won’t pretend to judge its feasibility. Could modernization of tax collection double or triple tax revenues? Can Egypt double the number of arriving tourists, even while contemplating limits on alcohol and bikinis? Can a renovation of the Suez Canal raise transit revenues from $6 billion a year to $100 billion? Can Egypt’s economy surpass the economies of Turkey and Malaysia within seven years? These are all claims made at various times by the economic thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood, who trumpet Egypt’s supposed potential for self-sufficiency.
To these big promises, one can add Morsi’s pledge to tackle congestion problems within the first 100 days of his time in office.
Western Critics of Democracy: “Accomplices to Injustice”
Why would these high-minded progressives and supposed upholders of free speech not protest the decision of the UN Human Rights Council to punish criticism of Islam, or speak out against honor killings or female genital mutilation, or protest the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights Islam, which states that Sharia law is the “only source of reference” for the protection of human rights in Islamic countries — a statement totally contrary to the UN Declaration of Human Rights?
Support for people who criticize their own Western democratic societies is now all too apparent among many Western intellectuals, academics, members of the media, international organizations, and religious groups which, while refusing to challenge cases of injustice, particularly in Muslim countries, instead criticize and condemn the state of Israel at every turn, despite the continuing physical and rhetorical aggression against it.
Intellectual support for, or acquiescence in, tyrannical regimes and unjust rulers is familiar in history. It runs from Plato supporting the tyrant of Syracuse; Seneca praising Nero; Aristotle advising Alexander the Great, and it extends to modern times with individuals such as Martin Heidegger approving, for a time, Hitler, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who, in 1947, justified the fraudulent Moscow Trials which condemned the Russian critics of Stalin.
The Dean of Canterbury in Britain for over 30 years, Hewlett Johnson, embodied a deluded, fanatical mind at work: safe in his ecclesiastical position, and suffering no penalties for his utterances and actions, Johnson was a life-long admirer of both Communism in theory, and the Soviet Union in action. He defended the Nazi-Soviet Pact of September 1939 — the prelude to Hitler’s start of World War II. Johnson’s undying admiration for Communism led him to defend both the arrest in 1949 on false charges, of Cardinal Mindzenty by the Hungarian secret police, and the Soviet invasion of Hungary — for which he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize in 1950, and the Stalin International Peace Prize in 1951,
As George Orwell, familiar with such “fellow travelers” of the Soviet Communist regime who, in their irresponsible fashion, supported or excused that regime despite its tyranny and brutality, and at no cost to themselves, wrote, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
These critics, consciously or not, are now allying with groups and states the open, ultimate, objective of whom is the destruction of the state of Israel. In fairness, people with this mindset have, in recent years, also supported worthy causes, such as sanctions against the apartheid state of South Africa and calls for its abolition. Such support, however, could hardly be considered courageous: no one had to pay any price for it; on the contrary, there were benefits, both ideological and personal, such as enlarged self-esteem or glory in success.
What is important is that the compassion shown by these individuals has not been present in the face of gratuitous attacks on democratic values, or in the face of aggression, physical and rhetorical, against the state of Israel. Nor have Western Europeans, at least, been willing to face the real problems currently exponentiating there,such as the mass immigration of people from other cultures, who have failed to be successfully integrated into Western societies, as well as the rise of Islamism. The critics of their own democratic societies rarely discuss the real difficulties, both demographically and politically, of the multicultural societies of Britain and France, or what the significance might be of over half the Muslims in Britain believing that it was actually the CIA or the Israeli Mossad which were responsible for the 9/11 attacks in New York City.
What can explain this failure by self-proclaimed high-minded people to respond not only to the physical violence against a tiny democratic ally, but also to the attacks on free speech, or the attempts to prevent criticism of some activity supposedly based on religious principles, such as Christians continually being burned alive in their churches in Nigeria by the fundamentalist goup, Boko Haram [literally: "Western Education Is Forbidden"], or the the possible judicial murder by Iran of Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani for refusing to recant his conversion to Christianity, or Iran’s illegal, ongoing threats of genocide against a fellow member of the United Nations?
Part of the explanation, at least regarding Europeans, may be due to what Walter Laqueur, in After the Fall, called a “crisis of lack of will, inertia, tiredness, self-doubt, a lack of self-confidence.” Other people, who are perhaps seeking fame, or acceptance as politically correct, or even material rewards, or who are simply ignorant of political reality, pay no price for their appeasement of the actions and language of countries and groups that are critical of, and actively threaten, democratic values.
Some Westerners may be deluded by feelings of guilt for the actions of democratic countries in the past, such as the brutal takeover of the Congo by Belgium. No one, of course, wants to be accused of “racism” or intolerance towards minority groups, or of supporting Western “imperialism.” But while these critic of democracies often express concern about abuses of power in their own countries, they are more quiescent about the much greater abuses in non-Western countries. Rarely do they protest the violations of human rights in Arab and Muslim countries, such as that women are officially worth only half of what a man is worth in inheritance or judicial disputes; or (with a straight face) that the presence of four male witnesses four male witnesses is required to testify that a woman was not the victim of a rape, not to mention their silence and staggering absence of over, for example, honor killings, religiously-sanctioned wife-beating, and female genital mutilation; or the wholesale jailing of journalists currently under way in, among other places, Turkey and the Palestinian Territories.
Read more at Gatestone Institute
Mainstream American Muslim Group Warns Muslims Against Becoming “Pleased with a Legal System That Does Not Come from Allah”
The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) cautioned American Muslims in a 22-page Arabic-language paper in 2008 against working in law enforcement in countries which do not rule by Allah’s dictates. One of their main concerns was that such work might cause Muslims to gain love and respect for secular laws:
…there are many evils which result from working in law enforcement, the greatest of which is compelling people to obey rulings which do not come from Allah. It could also cause reverence and love for these rulings to enter the heart of the police officer, and perhaps spread to the hearts of his family members and other Muslims who see him at the mosque or even Muslims in general. They could lose conviction of governance by Allah, and become pleased with a legal system that does not come from Allah. (italics added)
AMJA provided some allowances for Muslims to work in certain law enforcement professions, fearing that a lack of Muslim representation in this sector could bring negative effects for the Muslim community. They also reasoned that Muslims working as police officers might be able to use their positions to help the Muslim community, such as helping out with traffic near their mosques and protecting their mosques. Still, there was concern that some of these might be required to enforce laws contrary to the shari’a, such as “arrest[ing] a Muslim man whose wife said he ‘raped’ her.”
The AMJA paper specifically forbade Muslims from working for the FBI or in national security positions, due to their alleged arbitrary targeting of certain Muslims for “their political beliefs, charity work, or some of their convictions under the shari’a”–an apparent reference to counterterrorism investigations against Muslim suspects.
The paper also made clear that Muslims are to seek justice not in secular courts, but in Islamic courts which are compliant with their shari’a: ”It is not permissible to pursue justice in the man-made (i.e. non-Islamic) judiciary, except where there is an absence of a shari’a-compliant substitute capable of restoring one’s rights and working out one’s grievances” (see my translation of another AMJA paper on working in the judiciary here).
Throughout the paper it is made clear that the duty of Muslims is not to uphold and respect the laws of the land in which they reside, but rather to do everything in their power to make the laws of Allah–the shari’a–supreme:
[Muslims are] to seek through legal means which exist in the countries in which they reside to make it possible for themselves to seek legal recourse in their shar’ia, and (not only) for personal affairs.
The duty to make Islam supreme comes above all, even preserving one’s life:
We must remember that preserving the religion comes before preserving one’s self, mind, wealth, honor, or offspring. [...] But if saving [the individual's] life destroys Islam, then saving Islam comes first, even if it means the individual is destroyed. This is the case with jihad against the infidels, and the killing of apostates, and so forth.
It is worth stressing once again that AMJA–whose stated purpose is to “clarify the rulings of the sharia which are relevant for those who live in America”–is a mainstream American Muslim organization. Their membership list contains a large number of highly-influential American imams and Muslim leaders, including Muhammad al-Majid of the Adam Center in Virginia; Hussein Hamed Hassan, director of the financial consultancy firm which advises Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and other large American banking institutions; Zulfiqar Ali Shah, former president of Islamic Circle of North America and current executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America; and the author of this paper, Dr. Hatem al-Haj, MD, PhD, a fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics, and founder and president of “Building Blocks of Islam.”
A longer list of some of their prominent American members follows:
Read more..
Related article
- Mainstream American Muslim Jurists’ Blueprint for Undermining America’s Legal System (counterjihadreport.com)
Thoughts on “Veteran’s Day Message from Brigitte Gabrielle of ACT! for America”
Cry Freedom
December 28, 2011
This past Veteran’s Day an intellectually intriguing group of scholars and leaders gathered for ‘The Preserving Freedom Conference’. The ensuing conversations focused on Sharia Law, individual rights and freedom for future generations. These were discussed in the certain knowledge that the ideas contained within Sharia Law are antithetical to our American culture, the U.S. Constitution and Western civilization, rather than from a position of fear of Islam and Sharia Law. Most Americans, who have familiarized themselves with Sharia Law, are disturbed that anyone could adjust their intellect or apologize for Sharia Law’s tyranny and Islam’s core of fascism inherent within its fundamental strictures, fatwas and edicts. I reject those individuals so destitute of knowledge, such as Charles E. Carlson of Project Strait Gate, whose fallacious charges of intolerance and racism stem from our opposition to the introduction or implementation of even the slightest hint of Sharia Law into the United States legal infrastructure, when our plain belief is Freedom for All!
Veejay Kumar, 4th District Congressional candidate, was in attendance. He has first-hand experience with Sharia Law. Twenty-five years in the U.S. has left Mr. Kumar with a perfect colloquial Southern dialect that makes me smile, and a short conversation reveals the benevolence behind the man and a real American fighting the imposition of the yoke of Sharia on anyone…no racism…simply a man fighting to preserve freedom in America.
Dr. Wafa Sultan is a psychiatrist from Syria, the author of “A God Who Hates’ and an outspoken critic of Muslim society and “radical Islam”. Her evening speech concerned her love for America, and it was her finest moment. In part, Dr. Sultan loved that her daughter could share the details of a lunch with her boyfriend without any fear. She was thrilled to be able to engage her male neighbor in conversation without any accusations or fear of being killed. And, as her voice caught and tears formed, she said, “I love America for the American doctors who saved my daughter,” which brought the crowd to their feet in a rousing ovation, many with tears in their eyes too.
Also on Nov. 11, ‘The New York Times’ reported the death of Vita Petersen (1915-2011). Mrs. Petersen’s father was Germany’s Secretary of State in the 1920s. Her mother was a direct descendant of Moses Mendelssohn. Vita fled the Nazis in 1938, made her way to New York and continued on to become an internationally reknowned artist with exhibits at the Stable Gallery and the Betty Parsons Gallery. Such a full life lived, the world is a lesser place now that her bright light no longer shines.
Mr. Kumar, Dr. Sultan and Mrs. Petersen exemplify strength of character and will with their improved version of the American Dream that they created for themselves and anyone choosing to follow, as they arrived on America’s shore. They are American success stories, and they accomplished their goals by working within the framework of the U.S. Constitution. All immigrants, such as these, who attempt to improve the quality of life for themselves and others in a socially redeeming manner, deserve to be applauded, embraced and loved by all America.
The conference heard staggering details from barrister Paul Diamond (Cambridge & the Hague Academy of International Law), such as Christianity being described in U.K. courts as “pestilence” and entire sections of London, “Londonstan” in his words, with signs declaring “Sharia Law fully enforced here.” Unfortunately, even the Archbishop of Canterbury has called the introduction of Sharia as “inevitable”, and he has called for its acceptance, as Paul Diamond fights U.K. employers and the U.K. government for the right of Christians to wear their crosses in plain view.
Dr. Justin Akujieze revealed that the entire northern half of Nigeria had already been, in essence, conquered by the Islamists, as they have unilaterally declared Sharia Law without comment, debate or media discussion. At the same time, Muslims are committing genocide against the Christian Igbo tribes of Nigeria by burning them alive by the thousands, and these Islamofascists are now moving to control the entire country. As Dr. Justin appealed to those in the audience for their help in saving the rest of Nigeria from this Islamofascist onslaught, the emotion in his voice rang true, “Today is the last day and we must not wither. We must confront this head-on and together we will win.” Winston Churchill would have been proud!
In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s advisory staff convinced the President to enter the Serbian-Bosnian conflict basically on the side of the Muslims, due to erroneous intelligence that suggested the Serbians started the conflict. However, in reality, Muslim jihadists returning fresh off the cusp of defeating the Soviets in Afghanistan, with the aid of our CIA, convinced their brethren to start taking Serb properties; Serbian Muslims looted Christian treasures as they destroyed 107 churches and monasteries. Today Serbian Orthodox Christians still suffer extreme persecutions as they cannot openly spread their faith or build new churches in Kosovo, even though their churches and monasteries pre-date Islamic mosques and their ancestors laid all the foundations of this land.
The agents of destruction in America are represented by Muslims such as Ibrahim Hooper and Nihad Awad through groups like CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America. They preach political jihad and work to subvert the U.S. Constitution as they erect the legal framework for Sharia Law to become a parallel legal stystem or eventuall actually supplant the U.S. Constitution; they also erect mosques and Islamic schools that teach this ideology along with hatred for Americans and Israel. John Guandolo told the conference that he could take us inside any Islamic school 7th grade classroom and find literature telling these children to convert or kill Americans, Jews and infidels.
A Muslim Brotherhood Progressive syndicate has formed around this Sharia threat according to ex-FBI Special Agent John Guandolo and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Frank Gaffney. CAIR and the ISNA are tied to the largest terrorist financing scheme in U.S. history through their Holy Land Foundation, and yet they are still operating freely within the U.S. Some of their agents work in the upper levels of the U.S. government, and they have heavily influenced the last three administrations, including the Obama Administration, through Grover Norquist’s actions as an Islamist agent of influence; Norquist has mounted attacks on state level legislation and individual Americans against Sharia Law through his Center Right Coalition and an alliance with the ACLU. In the words of Guandolo, “We have an insurgency long underway in this nation.”
Brigitte Gabriel, president of Act for America, weaved a riveting story that revealed a tortured and stolen childhood of enduring extreme privation, nearly freezing and starving to death, surviving being seriously wounded and hiding from Hezbollah in a bomb-shelter for ten years during Lebanon’s civil war. Ms. Gabriel eventually escaped to the U.S. via Israel, however, after 9/11 she realized that she had not really left the terrorists thousands of miles away and decades in the past. It was like a renewed wound for her when her young daughter asked, “Mommy…why do they to kill us,” much as she had asked her own father years earlier. Ms. Gabriel gave her daughter the words of her father, “Because we are Christians and they hate us.”
America is caught in a civilizational war between Sharia Law and our U.S. Constitution, and previously mentioned problems associated with Islam will arise with increasing frequency in Our Beloved America, unless we act now to defeat violent and political jihad and the infiltration of Sharia Law. As any Muslim population grows so too does its propensity towards Sharia Law, and even all of Mustafa Ataturk’s work to ensure a secular Turkey is unraveling today, in the face of the current world-wide ascendancy of Islamofascism and Sharia doctrines. And, certainly we all recognize that slavery is still practiced in Islam, especially in North Africa. Allowing one shred of Sharia to stand parallel to any portion of our law could eventually force all Americans of all ethnicities and religions to endure harsher conditions than the black community endured during the U.S. Reconstruction era at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, because during the War to Free the Slaves there were Americans who, no matter the debate over the cotton economy or states’ rights, were willing to die for the right to own a “nigger”, or “kafir” to the Islamist; today these are the Islamofascists and their appeasers and apologists. Hundreds of thousands of other white Americans were prepared to die, because God wanted all of his children, including the black ones, to be free; today these are the Americans of all colors and creeds who oppose any Sharia Law aspirations under any set of circumstances in America. I am in love with Freedom, and I am fiercely opposed to anyone beginning to adjust to fascism simply because some success has been achieved by the Islamists and their “Arab Winter!”
The Constitution or Sharia Preserving Freedom Conference DVD set is available at the Religious Freedom Coalition for $20.00
Related articles
- Preserving Freedom Conference a Success (counterjihadreport.com)
- Davy Crockett’s Tennessee heirs now battle Islam (counterjihadreport.com)
- The Case for Banning Sharia Law in America (counterjihadreport.com)
- Reflections on the Preserving Freedom Conference (counterjihadreport.com)
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Available now – The Constitution or Sharia: Preserving Freedom DVD set! (counterjihadreport.com)
Islam: The Eighth Wonder of the World?
by Ahmad al-Baghdadi (translated and introduced by Raymond Ibrahim)
Originally published by the Stonegate Institute
March 21, 2012
Provided they can be objective, members of a civilization are often best placed to critique that civilization. Accordingly, the following article, which recently made the rounds on various Arabic websites, is a good example of honest criticism of the Islamic world, by one of its own. Written by the late Dr. Ahmad al-Baghdadi (died 2010)—one of Kuwait’s best known liberal activists and scholars (he held a PhD in the philosophy of Islamic thought and taught political science)—the article recounts how Islamic civilization is the eighth, and greatest, wonder of the world. We quickly discover this is not a compliment, as the article highlights some singularly troubling aspects of the Islamic world, from a liberal—in this sense, “rational”—point of view. For the record, Ahmad al-Baghdadi is not the first Muslim to portray Islamic culture as a fantastic anachronism that has outstayed its welcome; the prophet of Islam himself, Muhammad, made a similar prophesy in a canonical hadith: “Verily, Islam started as something strange, and it will again revert to being strange, just as it began, and it will recede between the two mosques [Mecca and Medina, birthplace of Islam] just as the serpent slithers back into its hole” (Sahih Muslim 1:271).
As we know, the wonders of the world are seven; but there is an eighth “Wonder -of-Wonders” not counted among the seven: this is the “Muslim nation [umma].” I specifically did not say the “Islamic [or Islamist] nation,” for within this Muslim nation are wondrous matters not witnessed by any other nation since Allah Almighty created Adam. Here are some of these wonders:
1. It is the only nation that believes it is in the right—in every way—while all others are wrong;
2. The only nation that exonerates or lightens the punishment of an indicted criminal if he is Muslim and has learned some Quranic verses;
3. The only nation where a cleric evades indictment for inciting murder if he describes one of his adversaries as “an apostate”;
4. The only nation that does not penalize a murderer if he kills “an apostate”;
5. The only nation that shows leniency and assuages punishments for the “honor killing” of a sister or a wife;
6. The only nation whose holy book [Quran] starts with the word “read” [iqra'] and yet it is among the least nations that reads books, if any at all;
7. The only nation that still uses the word “infidel” [kafir] against those who oppose its clerics or religious groups;
8. The only nation where the ruling of a fatwa [religious edict] upstages the ruling of the law—and yet it brags about being a nation that upholds the “rule of law”;
9. The only nation that does not contribute to the modern era—not even by producing a tooth brush—and yet brags about its extinct civilization.
10. The only nation that insults and condemns the West—yet lives as a parasite relying on the West in every way.
11. The only nation that incarcerates intellectuals for practicing freedom of expression.
12. The only nation that claims to be religious and guards its piety on both the official and the public level—yet there is nothing righteous about it.
13. The only nation that grants its students a PhD in religion [?];
14. The only nation still governed by the writings of those who died a thousand years ago;
15. The only nation where clerics serve as sycophantic toadies to the rulers, remaining silent about their transgressions, even when they goes against Sharia;
16. The only nation that does not acknowledge the International Human Rights Declaration;
17. The only nation that forbids all human arts except calligraphy;
18. The only nation that believes in one religion [Islam]—yet its various religious groups cannot agree on the exegeses and directives of that one religion;
19. The only nation where clerics blabber endlessly, only to conclude by saying, “Allah only knows” (as if people were not already aware);
20. The only nation that believes in exorcizing Jinn from humans—even if by killing the person;
21. The only nation that has armies—and yet its lands are occupied and it fears combat;
22. The only nation wherein the Almighty Creator’s description applies—”thou wouldst think they were united, but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of wisdom” [Quran 59:14];
23. The only nation still inquiring about religious matters and looking for satisfactory answers for over a thousand years;
24. The only nation that asks more about sex than about worship during its one month of fasting every year;
25. The only nation that believes anything and everything its clerics say without question or verification.
This nation—with all these unique traits—does it not deserve to be described as the “Wonder-of-Wonders”?
The FBI Training Powerpoint that Started all the Fuss
This is the “offensive” FBI training Powerpoint presentation entitled “Strategic Themes and Drivers in Islamic Law” given by William Gawthrop and published in June that started all the fuss. It has caused quite a backlash from Muslim advocacy groups calling for a revamping of all government counter terrorism training policy.
In attempting to fight an enemy that hides behind our religious freedom and discrimination laws William Gawthrop presents an approach that separates the violent political ideology from the religious aspects of Islam.
Robert Spencer believes that you cannot separate Islam into different parts by labeling the political extremists as “Islamists”. In his blog at Jihad Watch He says this:
“Islam has always been political, and the union of religion and the state has always been essential to its political program; the idea that all this can and should be separated from Islam proper is the wishful thinking of Western analysts who do not wish to face the implications of the fact that these ideas represent mainstream Islamic thinking.”
So how are we to fight this enemy that is cloaked so cleverly behind the classification as a religion? Do we need to come up with a new legal classification for Islam that defines the totalitarian theopolitical threat? So far we are losing the war of ideas miserably. The Islamophobia propaganda machine has won for now as the Obama administration is bowing to pressure and pulling all references to Islam from terror training materials. American Laws for American Courts is our best hope now for fighting the insidious encroachment of shariah into our system.
William Gawthrop will not be silenced. He spoke at the 9th annual International Counter-Terrorism Officer’s Association Conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 20th.
Related articles
- Islamists Demand Counterterrorism Training Censor Ideology (counterjihadreport.com)
- Tennessee Bureau of Investigation turns to Muslims for anti-terrorism training (counterjihadreport.com)
- White House Review Threatens Counter-Terrorism Operations (counterjihadreport.com)
- Assault on the Truth, Part 2: How the Muslim Brotherhood Censors Federal Counterterrorism Training (counterjihadreport.com)
