The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for called for a Justice Department civil rights investigation against a small-town Washington teacher for “racism.” Her offense? According to Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! For America, “during a class on bullying, she referred to Hamas and the Taliban as examples of organizations that use violence to bully people.”
In a statement, the teacher said:
I explained to [the students] that I was not talking about Muslims and Arabs in general, but groups that chose to impose their will by training people to intimidate and kill other people. … It is related to a state mandate that public schools teach students about bullying and not allow it.
CAIR’s attack against the teacher is specifically aimed at the education system, threatening to constrict the capacity of our youth to comprehend the world. The implications of an education system dominated by the Islamist group are dire and in direct conflict with the American way of life.
Hamas Deliberately Targets Children. In 2011, the terror group launched an anti-tank missile directly at a yellow school bus. A 16-year-old boy, the only passenger on the bus, was critically wounded. The driver had just dropped off 30 other students. The New York Daily News called the attack “subhuman.”
The Taliban Regularly Stone Women to Death. In 2010, ABC News reported on a video showing a woman stoned to death by the Taliban. Below is an unedited, graphic video of the horrific crime.
The Islamist Group CAIR Has Penetrated Deep Into America.
CAIR has penetrated areas far from traditional Muslim population centers such as Dearborn, MI and Northern New Jersey. CAIR’s latest assault is against a teacher in Concrete, WA (A pin), an isolated town 100 miles from Seattle.
A rally in support of the teacher will take place Tuesday, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the Concrete Assembly of God, Concrete, WA.
Achieving the seemingly impossible, “interfaith activist” and Trinity College (Dublin) Ph.D. candidate Craig Considine has reached new heights in modern Islamophile naïveté. Considine has stiff competition in this regard, given Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s February 10, 2011 assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood as “largely secular” and as a movement that “has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam” and has “pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt.” Yet those who thought that uncritical glorification of the Religion of Peace could not get any worse should consider Considine’s latest Huffington Post (HP) article, “An Unlikely Connection Between the Prophet Muhammad and George Washington.”
Considine begins his analysis discussing a “Prophet Muhammad” in seventh-century Arabia who “had a vision to create a new religious and social order.” Citing various verses from the Quran and hadith, Considine seeks to show that Muhammad “told his band of followers to behave wisely and civilly.” Considine in turn sees “Muhammad’s wisdom … echoed again” in the behavioral rules encompassed in Rules of Civility, a book first written by the United States’ Founding Father George Washington as a 13-year-old boy. According to Considine, both the “Holy Quran, the Islamic Scripture which documents God’s revelations to Muhammad,” and Rules of Civility “offer guidance toward achieving a more peaceful and noble life.”
Although Considine finds an “unlikely connection” between Muhammad and Washington, he determines that:
… in fact they share strikingly similar biographies. Muhammad and Washington were students of history, restorers of justice and fierce warriors who led their respective nations through successful revolutions. Both men united a large swath of political territory and served as the founding father for two unprecedented social movements-Islam and the United States of America-whose universal ideals would both spread throughout the world respectively.
Considine cites the famous eulogy of Washington’s fellow Founding Father, Richard Henry Lee, who called Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Considine also notes that even Britain’s King George III attributed to his colonial rebel the “greatest character of the age.” Considine, meanwhile, notes without any further analysis that “Muslims worldwide see Muhammad as the perfect human being,” an Islamic doctrine stipulated in verse 33:21 of the Quran (consistently called “Holy” by Considine). Considine furthermore cites Mahatma Gandhi calling Muhammad “a treasure of wisdom not only for Muslims but for all mankind.”
Citing respective passages of the Quran and Rules of Civility, Considine draws several parallels between Muhammad and Washington. He concludes, for example, that both men opposed “foul language” and “taught their peers to improve relations with others by using kindness and positive words.” This would “avoid misunderstandings and create a more harmonious society.”
Common to both Muhammad and Washington was also a concern for “modest and clean appearance” as an “indication of healthy inner feelings and humble attitudes.” Considine in this respect cites verse 24:31 of the Quran with its injunction that women “not display the charms of their bodies beyond what may be apparent thereof; hence, let them draw their head-coverings over their bosoms.” Considine neglects, however, to explain just how far-reaching such Islamic norms of modesty for women can be, encompassing even burqas and niqabs.
Considine additionally discerns “humility” in both Muhammad and Washington, a trait that “was crucial to the early success of their fledgling nations.” He speculates that the “direction of the Arab and American society could have had a much different history if Muhammad and Washington were egotistical and presumptuous leaders.” Considine thereby does not analyze whether Muhammad’s prophetic claims, if invalid, would qualify him as “presumptuous,” nor does he indicate any tangible improvement of Arab society through Muhammad’s attributed humility.
“Respect, especially for one’s parents,” is yet another commonality between Muhammad and Washington apparent to Considine. “Both men realized,” he elaborates, “that the key to a strong society is for people, especially families, to treat each other how they wished to be treated.” Even “good hygiene” and a “clean, well-presented physical appearance” were a common concern for Muhammad and Washington. For both men, “good hygiene was a projection of a positive body image, which, in turn, reflected a healthy mind.” Considine concludes that “Muhammad and Washington were gentlemen of the highest degree.” Thus, Considine suggests that “Muslims worldwide and American could forge better relations if each group adhered to the advice Muhammad and Washington provided.”
Many commentators in the numerous comments upon Considine’s article and elsewhere have had a field day with his rose-colored, hagiographic analysis of Muhammad and the Quran. Citing numerous Quran verses and hadith attributed to Muhammad, they have pointed to less savory aspects of Islam. Longstanding Islam critic Pamela Geller interlineated Considine’s article with numerous such canonical Islamic sources at her website, Atlas Shrugs. Geller concluded: “It’s to vomit. Muhammad and George Washington are polar opposites. A man of honor who respected human life and refused the title of king and a bloody warlord who preached conquest, subjugation and slavery.”
Geller’s longtime comrade, Robert Spencer, linked to Geller’s analysis on his website, Jihadwatch, and confessed that he “had to laugh.” “You remember,” Spencer mocked, with allusions to key controversies in canonical accounts of Muhammad’s life, “when George Washington made the British line up beside a trench and beheaded 900 of them, don’t you? And when he consummated his marriage with John Adams’ nine-year-old daughter?”
These commentators also call into question Muhammad’s global legacy, not being enamored with one of history’s greatest campaigns of conquest. Such an empirical record is far less appealing than Considine’s benign descriptions of Muhammad as being one of the “restorers of justice” who “united a large swath of political territory” (which, in Muhammad’s case, actually later broke apart during numerous internal conflicts) in one of two “unprecedented social movements.” The Muslim societies existing throughout history and present today in places like the Islamic Republics of Iran, Pakistan, and Sudan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with Muslim movements like the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood (including Hamas), the Taliban, and Hezb’allah, also seem to manifest to objective observers not Considine’s claimed “universal ideals,” but rather specifically sectarian, often brutal policies of sharia. A “more harmonious society” as well as “kindness and positive words” seem to be sadly lacking in the Muslim world today.
Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is admitted to the Virginia State Bar. He has published various pieces concerning an Islamic supremacist agenda at the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project, American Thinker, and Faith Freedom International
Congresswoman retires after boldly sounding alarm about Islamist infiltration
WASHINGTON – Just hours before a group of U.S. lawmakers were scheduled to hold a press conference to blow the whistle on a secret plan by the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations to infiltrate sensitive committees dealing with homeland security on Capitol Hill, lawyers for CAIR contacted the group’s leader and tried to intimidate her into canceling the news conference.
CAIR’s threatening tactics, which had worked on countless other officials, did not work this time, however.
The leader of the group, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., co-founder of the bipartisan House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence, went ahead with the event, showing again an intrepid spirit that has marked the retiring congresswoman’s 18-year career in Washington.
At the 2009 press conference, Myrick revealed an internal CAIR memo written in 2007 that called for infiltrating the “judiciary, intelligence and homeland security committees” by, among other things, “placing Muslim interns” in those offices.
At the time, the Washington-based group was under federal investigation for terrorist activities. In court testimony, the FBI identified CAIR as a front group for Hamas, and the Justice Department named it an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist finance case in U.S. history.
“Groups like CAIR, ISNA (the Islamic Society of North America) and others have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States,” Myrick said. “There was a lot of evidence presented at the Holy Land Foundation trial which exposed CAIR, ISNA and others as front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood here in the United States.”
Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood.
The revelation was alarming. Myrick exposed that Congress does not have a formal vetting process for screening radical Muslims invited to work or pray or speak at the Capitol. As a result, CAIR was able to not only place a number of employees within the Capitol, but also known terrorists and terrorist suspects.
One of them, al-Qaida terrorist Anwar Awlaki, was invited to speak and pray at the Capitol by CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, who also helped get Awlaki into the Pentagon – outrageously, within months of Awlaki assisting the 9/11 hijackers in their plot to fly a jumbo jet into the Pentagon, as Catherine Herridge later revealed in her book “The Next Wave.”
“There is not a formal vetting process,” Myrick said. “Back in the 1990s, Siraj Wahhaj became the first Muslim chaplain to give the opening prayer to Congress. Siraj Wahhaj was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.”
Wahhaj also happens to be a CAIR board member and one of its largest fundraisers.
By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The leaders of an independent panel that blamed systematic State Department management and leadership failures for gross security lapses in the deadly Sept. 11 attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya will explain their findings to Congress on Wednesday.
The two most senior members of the Accountability Review Board are set to testify behind closed doors before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees on the classified findings of their harshly critical report.
An unclassified version released late Tuesday said serious bureaucratic mismanagement was responsible for the inadequate security at the mission in Benghazi where the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.
“Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the panel said.
Despite those deficiencies, the board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.
Wednesday’s classified testimony from the review board _ retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen _ will set the stage for open hearings the next day with Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, who is in charge of policy, and Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Nides, who is in charge of management.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was to have appeared at Thursday’s hearing but canceled after fainting and sustaining a concussion last week while recovering from a stomach virus that dehydrated her. Clinton is under doctors’ orders to rest.
In a letter that accompanied the transmission of the report to Capitol Hill, Clinton thanked the board for its “clear-eyed, serious look at serious systemic challenges” and said she accepted all of its 29 recommendations to improve security at high-threat embassies and consulates.
She said the department had already begun to implement some of the recommendations. They include increasing by several hundred the number of Marine guards stationed at diplomatic missions throughout the world; relying less on local security forces for protection at embassies, consulates and other offices; and increasing hiring and deployment of highly trained Diplomatic Security agents at at-risk posts.
Clinton agreed with the panel’s finding that Congress must fully fund the State Department’s security initiatives. The panel found that budget constraints in the past had led some management officials to emphasize savings over security, including rejecting numerous requests from the Benghazi mission and the embassy in Tripoli for enhanced protection.
It singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.
But it appeared to break little new ground about the timeline of the Benghazi attack during which Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens, information specialist Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods _ who were contractors working for the CIA _ were killed. Stevens’ slaying was the first of a U.S. ambassador since 1988.
The board determined that there had been no immediate, specific tactical warning of a potential attack on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. However, the report said there had been several worrisome incidents in the run-up to the attack that should have set off warning bells.
It did confirm, though, that contrary to initial accounts, there was no protest outside the consulate. It said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, administration officials linked the attack to the spreading protests that had begun in Cairo earlier that day over an American-made, anti-Islamic film. Those comments came after evidence already pointed to a distinct militant attack.
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on numerous TV talk shows the Sunday after the attack and used the administration talking points linking it to the film. An ensuing brouhaha in the heat of the presidential campaign eventually led her to withdraw her name from consideration to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state in President Barack Obama’s second term.
While criticizing State Department management in Washington along with the local militia force and contract guards that the mission depended on for protection, the report said U.S. personnel on the ground in Benghazi “performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues in a near-impossible situation.”
It said the response by Diplomatic Security agents on the scene and CIA operatives at a nearby compound that later came under attack itself had been “timely and appropriate” and absolved the military from any blame. “There was simply not enough time for armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference,” it said.
The report also discounted speculation that officials in Washington had refused appeals for additional help after the attack had begun.
“The Board found no evidence of any undue delays in decision making or denial of support from Washington or from the military combatant commanders,” it said. To the contrary, the report said the evacuation of the dead and wounded 12 hours after the initial attack was due to “exceptional U.S. government coordination and military response” that helped save the lives of two seriously wounded Americans.
Allen West is a man with whom I would gladly share a foxhole. He’s been in many of them over the years – both as a decorated combat veteran and more recently as a Member of Congress from Florida. And when the going gets tough, he is usually the very first of the tough to get going, inspiring and leading others to do the same.
In addition to his natural leadership abilities, Rep. West has an extraordinary grasp of history, its lessons and the importance of not repeating our predecessors’ mistakes. His ability to communicate these insights is similarly exceptional. Last year, in honoring House Armed Services Chairman Howard ‘Buck’ McKeon, we at the Center for Security Policy could find no one better than Allen West to deliver a sterling, improvised benediction. That brief speech—encapsulating two centuries of American military history—is a monument of the power of forthrightness in advocating for peace through strength in the Reagan tradition.
Perhaps most importantly, Allen West has a well-calibrated and utterly dependable moral compass. Most notably, he has addressed with a clarity and integrity virtually unknown these days in official Washington about the threat posed by shariah – the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic ideology that animates and justifies jihad – and by its adherents. He has taken to task those in positions of power who, by their passivity or active support, are enabling the steady advance of such enemies, both abroad and here. This year, Rep. West rated as a ‘Champion of National Security’ in our Center for Security Policy Congressional Scorecard with a rating of 100 percent.
For all these reasons, Allen West has millions of devoted followers around the country. But he also has powerful enemies. And defeating him in this year’s election was a top priority of Democratic operatives and Islamists alike.
Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington
Dr. Essam Abdallah, an Egyptian liberal intellectual, in an article published last October in the leading liberal pan-Arab journal Elaph, refers to certain reports coming out of Washington:
These reports reveal the depth of the below-the-surface coordination between the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Libya and Jordan. This bloc of regimes and organizations is now becoming the greatest Islamist radical lobby ever to penetrate and infiltrate the White House, Congress, the State Department and the main decision making centers of the US government. All of this is happening at a time when the US government is going through its most strategically dangerous period in modern times because of its need to confront the Iranian Mullahs regime, which is expanding in the Middle East, as well as penetrating the United States, via powerful and influential allies.
Abdallah alleged that “the popular revolts in the Arab world — and the Obama Administration’s position towards them — were determined by political battles between various pressure groups in Washington.”
He followed up with another article this month in which he asks:
[W]hy isn’t the West in general and the United States Administration in particular clearly and forcefully supporting our civil societies and particularly the secular democrats of the region? Why were the bureaucracies in Washington and in Brussels partnering with Islamists in the region and not with their natural allies the democracy promoting political forces?
Steve Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism said of this article: “This is one of the most important articles I have read in years.” He then made allegations of his own:
It was just revealed two days ago that FBI Director Mueller secretly met on February 8 at FBI headquarters with a coalition of groups including various Islamist and militant Arabic groups who in the past have defended Hamas and Hizballah and have also issued blatantly anti-Semitic statements. At this meeting, the FBI revealed that it had removed more than 1000 presentations and curricula on Islam from FBI offices around the country that was deemed “offensive.” The FBI did not reveal what criteria was used to determine why material was considered “offensive” but knowledgeable law enforcement sources have told the IPT that it was these radical groups who made that determination. Moreover, numerous FBI agents have confirmed that from now on, FBI headquarters has banned all FBI offices from inviting any counter-terrorist specialists who are considered “anti-Islam” by Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
This comes as no surprise to me. In August of 2011, after making the case, I wrote, “To my mind, the alliance between the Obama administration and the Muslim Brotherhood is the cornerstone of Obama’s New Middle East policy.”
In an effort to understand and placate Syrian opposition groups, Secretary Clinton invited them to a meeting in Washington. Most of those invited, however, have links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Missing from the invitations are Kurdish leaders, Sunni liberals, Assyrians and Christian spokesmen. According to various reports the State Department made a deal with Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood representatives either to share power with Assad to stabilize the government, or replace him if this effort fails. One organization, the Syrian Democracy Council (SDC), an opposition group composed of diverse ethnic and religious organizations, including Alawis, Aramaic Christians, Druze and Assyrians was conspicuously — and no coincidentally — omitted from the invitation list.
What these observers fail to recognize is that Erdogan’s interests in a post-Assad Syria have little in common with US interests. Erdogan will seek to ensure the continued disenfranchisement of Syria’s Kurdish minority. And he will work towards the Islamification of Syria through the Muslim Brotherhood.
This week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a private meeting with these brave democrats. Why didn’t she hold a public meeting? Why hasn’t Obama welcomed them to the White House?”
Today there is a coalition of Syrian opposition figures that include all ethnic groups in Syria. Their representatives have been banging the doors of the corridors of power in Washington and beyond. Yet the same Western leaders who were so eager to recognize the Libyan opposition despite the presence of al Qaeda terrorists in the opposition tent have refused to publicly embrace Syrian regime opponents that seek a democratic, federal Syria that will live at peace with Israel and embrace liberal policies.
By refusing to embrace liberal, multi-ethnic regime opponents, the administration is all but ensuring the success of the Turkish bid to install the Muslim Brotherhood in power if Assad is overthrown.
The Syrian Democratic Coalition (SDC), above mentioned, is self-described thus:
The Syrian Democratic Coalition (SDC) is an emerging coalition of diverse Syrian organizations coming together to help bring an end to the Assad regime and promote the transformation of Syria into a secular democracy based in liberty. The coalition is founded upon a belief in the separation of religion from state and is dedicated to establishing a new constitution and transparent federal republic in Syria, based in reason that equally protects minority rights, promotes gender equality, and embraces the rights and liberties of every individual as enumerated in the United Nations Declaration for Human Rights. This growing coalition crosses all ethnic, religious and tribal lines to represent all Syrians. It currently includes members of Save Syria Now!, the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, the Union of Syrian Arab Tribes and the Syrian Christian Democratic Movement.
Sherkoh Abbas is secretary general of the Syria Democracy Council and president of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria. I first met him when he invited me to be a director of the American Kurdish Friendship League some five years ago.
Recently, he confided in me that in all his dealings with the State Department over the last two years, no interest was shown in his coalition, and instead, he was continually pressed to support the Syrian National Council (SNC), made up of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists and Arabists. He believes that the U.S. is working with Salafi groups, and the Turkish government, to create an opposition in Syria that is strictly Islamist. Such an opposition would serve Turkish economic interests in Syria and keep the Kurdish issue dormant in Turkey as well as in Syria.
According to Sherkoh Abbas, one faction of the SDC had family connections in various Gulf States at the highest level and went to them for financial support. They were turned down, as Obama had instructed them to give money only to the SNC.
Nevertheless, the SDC is gaining traction amongst the Kurds, Druze, Sunnis, Christians, and even the Alawites. This is so because these various minorities are beginning to think of a post-Assad Syria, and they all want a region of their own. They have expressed their willingness to be secular, democratic, and a friend of Israel and will be asked to commit to this in writing. They don’t want Islamism or Arabism. They prefer peace, freedom, and prosperity. So why isn’t Obama embracing them?
The Obama administration is totally in sync with the Muslim Brotherhood. At the renowned Herzlia Conference this year, I met Salman Shalkh, one of the speakers from Qatar. We had a long conversation in which he kept pushing for the Saudi Plan to be embraced by Israel. This is the plan that Obama is committed to — i.e., ’67 borders with mutually agreed-upon swaps.
Shalkh argued that Israel should talk to Hamas, and I countered, “What’s the point? We have nothing to offer to them.” Shalkh was also an apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood. These arguments should be expected from someone from Qatar. Unfortunately, the same arguments are being made by the White House. It is instructive to note that Shalkh is director of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, the Arab offshoot of the Brookings Institute that has so much influence with the State Department. He told me that he was one of the people who drafted the Roadmap on behalf of the State Department. I told him that it didn’t surprise me and suggested that he probably drafted the Saudi Peace Plan for them as well.
What is going on now in American foreign policy is not so much a product of the Islamist lobby fueled by both the Muslim Brotherhood and the gulf states as it is a product of a strategic alliance that has existed between the U.S. and the gulf states led by Saudi Arabia since before Israel declared her independence. Unfortunately, President Obama, with his overt outreach to Islam, Muslims, and the Muslim Brotherhood, has taken it to another level.
It would appear that the ideas expressed by Mearsheimer and Walt in their book, The Israel Lobby, are being embraced by both the State Department and the White House. These include the idea that the Israel lobby is too strong for America’s good and that Israel is a liability to America.
Somehow, though, I can’t shake the idea that the Israel lobby, no matter how powerful, isn’t all it is cracked up to be, particularly where it concerns the Bush administrations past and present. Indeed, when I think of pernicious foreign lobbies with disproportionate sway over American politics, I can’t see past Saudi Arabia and its royal house, led by King Abdullah.
This article is a classic and should be read in full.
Obama has decidedly moved from an alliance with Israel to an alliance with the Islamists.
MK Aryeh Eldad, in a speech given in the fall in the U.S., when Israel was intending to act against Iran militarily, said word came down from the White House that “if you act alone, you will remain alone.” Because Israel is so dependent on the U.S. for resupply of weapons and munitions in a prolonged war, this threat changed the calculus immediately. It is true that when Mahmoud Abbas was threatening to go to the U.N. for recognition, the Obama administration lobbied around the world for negative votes. But at the same time, Obama threatened Netanyahu that Obama would withhold his veto if Israel took punitive action against the PA by annexing some of the territories or by withholding funds. Finally, he used the same threat to get Israel to instruct AIPAC to lobby Congress not to punish the PA by withholding U.S. funds.
Over the last six months, Israel has been warned by a succession of senior military and administration officials not to attack Iran, at this time, all in the name of giving sanctions a chance. But who believes that sanctions will stop Iran? And who believes that that the U.S. will in the end attack Iran to stop them?
So while Obama is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, he is keeping Israel under his thumb.
Isi Leibler takes exception to all this and reminds everyone:
[T]his organization [The Muslim Brotherhood] represents one of the most fanatical and dangerous of the radical Islamist groups in the region, with a dark record of violence and terrorism imbedded in its DNA. It is rabidly anti-Western, anti-Christian, antisemitic, committed to imposing sharia law and a global Caliphate – and willing to employ any means to further its objectives.
Many would argue that Obama is also “anti-Western, anti-Christian[, and] antisemitic.” Judging by his policies, they would be right.
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which bills itself as “the largest Islamic umbrella organization in North America,” is meeting in Washington, D.C., this weekend for its annual conference. One former ISNA speaker won’t be in attendance this year — al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA drone strike in Yemen on September 30, 2011.
On September 1, 2001, just days before the 9/11 attacks, Awlaki gave an infamous lecture on “tolerance” at the 2001 ISNA convention, just as some of his disciples were preparing to launch the largest terrorist attack in American history.
One of his co-panelists in 2001, Hamza Yusuf, is one of this year’s keynote speakers. At the 1995 ISNA convention, Yusuf told the crowd that Judaism “is a most racist religion.”
Video of Awlaki’s lecture has never before been viewed by the public. PJ Media has obtained a video — watch it above in its entirety.
At the time of the speech, Awlaki was a media darling. The New York Timeshailed him as part of “a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West.” NPR contrasted Awlaki with Osama bin Laden, describing Awlaki as one of the “moderates who want to solve the problems without violence” and someone who could “build bridges between Islam and the West.” Awlaki was even featured in a November 2001 Washington PostRamadan online chat.
The recognition of Awlaki wasn’t exclusive to the media. He was also leading prayers for congressional Muslim staffers on Capitol Hill. Post-9/11, he was lecturing on Islaminside the executive dining room of the Pentagon, still scarred from the al-Qaeda hijackers that had crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into it.
Despite those media and government accolades and recognition, the assessment that Anwar al-Awlaki was a bridge of moderation between Islam, buttressed by his lectures on “tolerance,” was a facade. The belief that he was a peaceful moderate is part of what terrorism researcher J.M. Berger has dubbed “the myth of Anwar al-Awlaki.” In fact, Awlaki’s extremism — notwithstanding his lectures on “tolerance” — was more than evident prior to 9/11 and his speech at ISNA.
A week after he gave that speech and just two days before 9/11, Awlaki was speaking at UC Irvine – with many of the same leaders speaking at the ISNA convention this weekend — at a fundraiser for cop-killer and ISNA shura council member Jamil al-Amin. Awlaki flew back to Washington, D.C., on the same morning that his three disciples boarded American Airlines Flight 77.
Two days after 9/11, Awlaki described the terrorist attack as an “accident” while talking to a local television station in front of the gates of his Falls Church, Virginia mosque, Dar al-Hijrah (whose extensive terror ties I have noted previously).
In his Washington Postonline chat on Ramadan just weeks after the attacks, he defended the Taliban, as he did in an interview with National Geographic.
And prior to his February 2002 lecture on Islam in the executive dining room of the Pentagon, he had been interviewed by the FBI on four separate occasions for his assistance of and secret meetings with three of the hijackers, who had followed Awlaki from San Diego to Northern Virginia. Just days after that Pentagon event, Awlaki quietly slipped out of the country and moved to the UK.
Not long after he left the U.S., Awlaki was part of the congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks. The head of that inquiry, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), has publicly said: “There was a high probability that they (the hijackers) had shared with Awlaki what they were planning to do.”
I was invited by the Center for Security Policy to give a speech at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday. The topic was our government’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and why concerns about Brotherhood infiltration, raised by five conservative House members, are very real. The speech ran nearly an hour, and there was a little over a half-hour of Q&A afterwards. The event was carried by CSPAN, and for those interested, the link is here.
Below is the prepared text of my speech:
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario.
A candidate for a high position in an executive branch agency — a position that entails a great deal of influence over public policy, a position that requires access to highly classified national security information — comes in for an interview by the FBI.
This is a routine background investigation. Even people being considered for low-level positions in the executive branch are subjected to them. It is not because we question their patriotism or suspect that they are bad people. It is just common sense — in addition to being the subject of a good deal of statutory law and federal regulation.
Naturally, as government positions get higher, more important, and more sensitive, the background investigations get more detailed — probing not only a candidate’s background, experiences, finances and associations, but those of the candidate’s close family members.
One matter that is of particular importance is connections to foreign countries, organizations, persons and movements. There’s an entire section devoted to these concerns in Form 86, the form that all candidates for national security positions in the federal government are required to complete.
Let’s assume that our candidate truthfully completes the form. What do you suppose our FBI agent is thinking as he flips through the form, asks some follow up questions, and gets the following story from the candidate:
“I’ve worked the last dozen years at an institute that was founded by a wealthy, influential Saudi who is intimately involved in the financing of terrorism.”
“Are you just speculating about that?” the candidate is asked.
“Speculating? Oh, no, no, I’m not speculating. You see, this Saudi guy actually started an ostensible ‘charity’ that the United States government has designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It is a designated terrorist because it lavishly funded al Qaeda — you know, the jihadist network that we’re at war with. As a matter of fact, one of the men this Saudi guy brought in to help him run the specially designated terrorist organization, was so close to Osama bin Laden, that he actually helped bin Laden start al Qaeda.”
The agent figures, “You’ve got to be kidding me. I guess you didn’t know this Saudi guy who was funding al Qaeda, right?”
“Well,” our candidate responds, “as a matter of fact, we overlapped for seven years at that institute I worked at. Remember I told you that he’s the one who started it and I eventually worked there for twelve years? Well, turns out he stayed involved in it for decades — it was his baby … he gave the institution its mission and its vision. He was still there advising it and shaping it for my first seven years there. Then they took him off the masthead … right around the time he became a defendant in the civil lawsuit filed by the victims of the 9/11 attacks.”
The agent is stunned. All he can think to ask is: “Why did you leave the institute?”
“Oh,” our candidate replies, “I got offered a full-time job at the State Department, helping the secretary of State make U.S. foreign policy.”
I really wish that was a farfetched story.
Now let me back up for a moment. First, thank you all for coming here today.
I came to Washington at the suggestion of my friends at the Center for Security Policy. They asked me to address the controversy stirred by five conservative members of the House of Representatives who’ve raised concerns about Islamist influence on American policy — specifically, the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist governments, organizations and affiliates with which it works.
I guess I was asked, in part, because I’ve been writing about this subject: I’ve been writing about the Muslim Brotherhood for a number of years. And for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been writing about the specific topic that we’re here to talk about this morning: the Brotherhood’s influence on our government, and the slings and arrows these five House members have been catching for having the temerity to notice it.
I was also asked to come here, I believe, because I worked in the Justice Department for about 25 years — first at the U.S. Marshals Service, where I worked as a deputy marshal in the Witness Protection Program; then as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. I was a prosecutor for almost 20 years, and during that time I handled or supervised a number of cases involving national security — meaning terrorism cases, all of which involved attacks plotted by violent jihadists. I was also involved in many other investigations of national and international organized crime groups, many of which were violent in nature.
Based on that experience, I have to confess that the controversy here baffles me. I don’t understand why more people in Washington, from both parties, have not rallied to the support of Congresswoman Bachmann and Congressmen Gohmert, Franks, Westmoreland and Rooney.
At a time when government policy is being radically harmonized with the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood — meaning, policy has shifted in the direction of avowed enemies of the United States — what ought to shock people is that there is any controversy over a commonsense request. The five House members are simply asking that the inspectors general in pertinent government agencies conduct internal inquiries and report back to Congress about potential Islamist influences at those agencies.
Now, let me be clear about what I said and what I didn’t say. I said Islamist influences, I did not say Muslims.
I don’t know how many Muslims work in the U.S. government, but I feel pretty safe saying there are thousands. As a federal prosecutor on terrorism cases, I had the privilege of working with several of them. These were patriotic American Muslims, and a number of Muslims who may not be Americans but who have embraced America and the West. Without them, we could not have infiltrated jihadist cells in New York and stopped terrorists from killing thousands of people.
Without them, we could not have translated, understood and processed our evidence so it could be presented to a jury as a compelling narrative. Pro-American Muslims serve honorably in government, in our military, in our intelligence services, and in our major institutions.
We are lucky to have them because they have embraced the culture of individual liberty that is the beating heart of Western civilization. They have accepted the premise of our society that everyone has a right to freedom of conscience and equality before the law. They have accepted our foundational principle that free people are at liberty to make law for themselves, irrespective of the rules of any belief system or ideology. They construe Islam’s spiritual elements and its laws as a matter of private conscience, not as a mandatory framework for society.
Those Muslims are not Islamists.
When we talk about the influence of Islamists, we are referring to Muslims who are beholden to Islamic supremacism. Islamic supremacism is an ideology, not a religion. It is a totalitarian social system that would govern every aspect of life down to the granular level — economic, financial, social, political, military, familial, dietary, issues of crime-and-punishment, even matters of hygiene.
That is the sharia system. As interpreted by many of Islam’s most influential thinkers — including organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and academics like the faculty of ancient al-Azhar University in Cairo — classical sharia rejects basic principles of American constitutional democracy.
In fact, it rejects first and foremost our foundational premise that people are free to determine their own destiny and their own laws — regardless of what sharia holds. Classical sharia rejects freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, economic liberty, equality between men and women, equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, and Western notions of personal liberty and privacy.
It is the goal of all Islamists to impose sharia. That is why there is no such thing as a “moderate Islamist.” If you want to replace the American Constitution with sharia, and Western civilization with the Islam of the Middle East, you are not a moderate — however grateful we may be that you’re not looking to blow up a bridge in order to impose your desires.
Whether they are violent or non-violent, whether they work incrementally toward their goal or work at warp speed, the mission of Islamists is always and everywhere to impose sharia. In Islamist ideology, the implementation of the sharia system is the necessary precondition for turning non-Islamic societies into Islamic societies. And that is what Islamists believe they are under a divine injunction to do.
When I talk about Islamists and Islamist influences, that is what I mean.
It is essential to understand that Islamic supremacism is not a fringe ideology. And with due respect to the trendy, bipartisan diagnosis of it that has become so popular here in Washington, Islamic supremacism — and the extreme forms of behavior it inspires — are not a psychiatric problem.
We like to portray the lethal threat against us as “violent extremism.” But “violent extremism” does not combust spontaneously. It is caused by Islamic supremacist ideology. Violent extremism, as well as non-violent extremism, are effects — they are not causes. They are not irrational and wanton, there is a logic to them … I should say, an ideologic.
This ideology is based on a classical interpretation of Islam that has a rich history. We sound really ignorant to the people we’re trying to persuade when we pretend that this is not the case.
Islamic supremacism has been developed over the centuries by many of Islam’s most respected thinkers — thinkers who are better understood as “jurists” than “clerics.” Their specialty is sharia, which is a societal system, not a mere set of religious principles.
Islamic supremacism is the dynamic ideology of the Middle East at this moment in history. There have been times when it has been dormant, and when its worst tendencies have been cabined or suppressed by force, by law, or by cultural pressures. But at this historic moment, it is once again in its ascendancy.
That is a big problem for us. Islamic supremacists mean us grave harm. We are understandably preoccupied with the fact that violent jihadists are taking aim at our lives. But we should not let the immediacy and horror of that threat obscure the fact that the Islamist movement is taking aim at our way of life.
The movement’s intellectual leader is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is not a “largely secular” umbrella organization. It is not “moderate.” It is the vanguard of a ground-up, revolutionary, ideological mass movement. It is sophisticated, patient, and determined. It has spent almost 90 years building its reserves and biding its time.
Increasingly over the last half-century, its efforts have been opulently underwritten by oil wealth, especially from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis follow a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, called Wahhabism. That is a close cousin of the Brotherhood’s interpretation, which is called Salafism. For our purposes, the two streams merge into the supremacist ideology that threatens us today.
The threat is very real, very aggressive, and much broader than terrorism. That is because the underlying threat is not terrorism but the rationale for terrorism: which is the gradual imposition of classical sharia — by both violence and non-violence.
We hear a lot of chatter trying to separate the two — violent and non-violent jihad. But they are never mutually exclusive. The non-violent jihad is called dawa, the aggressive proselytism of Islam. Dawa is leveraged by the threat of violence. The atmosphere of intimidation is what makes non-violent jihad so effective. It is what allows Islamist organizations to exercise such outsize influence on our policymakers even though Muslims barely register one percent of our population.
Not long ago, I wrote a book called The Grand Jihad. The title is not something I came up with. It was drawn out of an internal Muslim Brotherhood document seized by the FBI from a top Brotherhood operative in Virginia. It was dated 1991 and called the “explanatory memorandum.” In it, leading Brothers stationed in the United States explained to their global leadership how the Brothers saw their mission. “Civilization jihad,” they called it. Then they elaborated:
The Ikhwan [i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.
See, when Islamists speak among themselves, especially when they don’t expect that we’ll ever hear or see what they say, they are very clear about what they are trying to do. They are also very clear about whom they are doing it with. The explanatory memo actually listed 29 different organizations — many of the most influential Islamist groups in America. The Brotherhood identified those groups as the accomplices in their grand jihad.
And now that the Brotherhood is in the midst of a gradual triumph in Egypt and much of the Middle East, leading Brothers have become bolder in their public pronouncements.
For example, in October 2010, on the cusp of the revolt, the Brotherhood’s “supreme guide” in Egypt, a man named Mohammed Badi, gave a speech in which he expressly called for violent jihad against the United States.
Specifically, Badi urged his fellow Muslims to remember “Allah’s commandment to wage jihad for his sake with [their] money and lives, so that Allah’s word will reign supreme.”
Applying this injunction, Badi proclaimed that jihad “is the only solution” against what he called “the Zio-American arrogance and tyranny.” Not negotiation — jihad. Badi also took delight in noting that the United States had been badly wounded by jihadists in Iraq and Afghanistan. From that, he predicted that America “is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.”
So, contrary to what increasingly seems to be popular belief here in Washington, Islamist influences are not benign. They are not something to yawn over. They are something we need to defend against.
We are talking about a very determined movement that pulls no punches in braying that it means to destroy our country. The most important sharia authority in the world, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi — the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist — proclaims that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” And by the way, you’ll want to remember Sheikh Qaradawi’s name — we’ll be coming back to him shortly.
Islamists not only tell us that they intend to destroy us. They tell us, straight out, how they intend to do it: Not only by the intimidating, constant potential of violence, but by “sabotage” — their word, not mine. The will, they say, “destroy” us “from within.” They intend to insinuate themselves into our major institutions, including into the policy-making bodies of our government. They intend to compromise us from the inside, as well as from the outside.
Where I come from, when serious, competent, threatening people tell you what they are going to do to you and how they indend to do it, that is not something to be ignored. It is something to be taken very seriously.
The main way to take it very seriously when it comes to our government is to police our agencies so they are not penetrated by pernicious influences. That is what these five members of Congress have tried to do. What is shocking and demoralizing, what ought to outrage the American people, is that the five of them are standing alone.
(Jan 15, 2010) Bill Whittle goes to Washington, DC to investigate radical Islam’s influence over our government and access to our national security secrets. Two whistleblowers have the chilling details. http://www.PJTV.com.
In part two of Bill Whittle’s investigation of radical Islam’s influence over our government, a former FBI special agent discusses how our government has looked the other way as an Islamic insurrection mounts within our borders.
Erick Stakelbeck: In June 2010, my exclusive report on the radical materials being sold at Halalco–the Washington, D.C. area’s largest Islamic supermarket–first aired on CBN. I recounted my investigation into Halalco, which is located in Falls Church, Va., just minutes from the nation’s capital, in Chapter 5 of my book, The Terrorist Next Door.
In addition to tons of hate-filled books by leading Muslim Brotherhood ideologues like Yusuf al-Qaradawi and convicted terrorists such as “The Hook,” Abu Hamza al-Masri, Halalco also featured notorious anti-Semitic tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not to mention a large library of CD’s and DVD’s by Khalid Yasin and other assorted radical Islamist mouthpieces.
In short, Halalco sells the kind of materials that have served to radicalize many young American Muslims. But the coup de grace and focus of my report was my discovery that Halalco was featuring a large display of CD’s and DVD’s by the not-so-dearly-departed Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awalaki—just one day after Awlaki had released a videotape calling for the killing of American civilians. I confronted the owner of Halalco about it on camera (click on the viewer below to watch the report) and the Awlaki display—magically—disappeared.
But being caught red-handed peddling the works of one of the world’s most wanted terrorists apparently had little effect on Halalco’s choice in inventory. Intrepid journalist Patrick Poole, a good friend of the Stakelbeck on Terror show, recently paid a visit to Halalco and came up with a very interesting find. Here’s more, from Poole, courtesy of PJMedia:
A book by a senior Indian Islamic scholar that recently prompted international outrage for directing Muslim husbands on how to properly beat and control their wives is on sale at the largest Islamic bookstore in the Washington D.C. area, just a twenty minute drive from the White House, all while the Obama campaign proclaims that Republicans are waging a “war on women”continues to attack Ann Romney for her decision to stay at home and raise her five sons. by promoting pro-life, pro-family policies, and as DCCC media strategist Hilary Rosen.
Congresswoman retires after boldly sounding alarm about Islamist infiltration
