H/t The Jewish Press
A real Grand Unification Theory: Christianity, Islam and Paganism, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 30,2015
(I refuse to acknowledge that the views expressed in this article are or are not mine. However, they do not necessarily reflect the views of Warsclerotic or any of its (other) editors. — DM)
Einstein tried but failed to develop a Grand Unification Theory. Perhaps he should have selected a name without the acronym GUT. Hope remains, and I developed one in less than an hour. It explains life, the universe and everything.
I. posits:
1. An infinite number of universes exist, all of which have infinite numbers of galaxies.
2. Some universes and some galaxies are Christian (whatever that may mean there), some are Islamic (whatever that may mean there) and some are Pagan (whatever that may mean there). Pagan refers to all religions other than Christianity and Islam.
3. The allegedly Christian, Islamic and Pagan galaxies generally, but with exceptions, despise each other and, in some cases, themselves.
4. Each of the universes, and accordingly each of the galaxies, is controlled by a god of its own religion.
5. The multiple gods are, in reality, high-level laboratory technicians who enjoy damaging each other’s lab experiments.
II. Proofs:
1. The Islamic gods forbid alcohol, while the Christian and Pagan gods relish it.
2. Not many years ago, Haiti had developed the best rum in any universe — a fifteen year old nectar of the Christian and Pagan gods. Horrified, the Islamic gods conspired to ruin it and Haiti as well. To that end, they dispatched
a. Earthquakes,
b. Droughts,
c. United Nations peace keeping forces to spread disease, death, instability, poverty and
d. Clinton charities to take whatever Haiti still had.
e. In consequence, Haitian rum ceased to be palatable.
3. Since Dear Leader Osama Obama took office, the Islamic gods have encouraged The Islamic Republic of Iran to increase its nuclear energy weaponization program while pretending not to. By inducing Obama to ignore their efforts and to pretend that the Islamic Republic is as peaceful as He pretends the rest of Islam is, the Islamic gods inspired Him to give the Islamic Republic everything it wants and more. The Islamic gods also promised Him a great foreign policy legacy, akin to nothing ever accomplished by any former or future (if any) president.
Shaken by their defeat on alcohol, the Christian and Pagan gods abstained from interfering with the Islamic gods’ efforts. Some may even have converted to Islam, just to be on the winning side. Conversion — which no Islamic god would even consider — may have caused Christian gods little difficulty.
In the fourteenth century Pope Pius II, having given up on starting another crusade against the Islamist Turks because he could garner little support, wrote a letter to the Turkish ruler, Mehmed. It was distributed throughout Christendom. He
proposed not only to recognize Mehmed’s claim to be the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire but also to transfer to him the imperium of the West, just as six and a half centuries earlier his predecessor Leo III, by the coronation of Charlemagne, had transferred (or “translated,” to use the technical term) it from the Greeks to the Franks. All the sultan had to do was to convert to Christianity. What, after all, asked the pope in somewhat unpapal terms, were “a few drops of baptismal water” in exchange for the right to rule over the entire Roman world? It was an empty gesture, as he must have known. [Emphasis added,]
Some Christian and Pagan gods may be more amenable to conversion to Islam than Islamic gods are to Christianity.
Dedication
This otherwise incomparably short essay is dedicated to our Supreme Leader, Barack Humble Osama Obama who, by virtue of His equally incomparable empathy, insight, humility and intellect, has managed to come up even shorter.
I am not insane
If I were insane, that’s exactly what I would write. Go figure.
The Strategic Consequences of “Grexit” The Gatestone Institute, Peter Martino, June 29, 2015
Last weekend, Greece failed to reach an agreement with its three creditors, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. A bankruptcy of the Hellenic Republic is now imminent. If it materializes, a so-called Grexit will follow: Greece will be forced to leave the Eurozone — the group of 19 European Union (EU) member states that use the euro as their common currency. Leaving the Eurozone automatically means that, under the EU treaties, Greece will also have to leave the EU.
Across Greece, people have been lining up to withdraw money from cash machines, most of which have run out of money, after the government ordered banks to close for six days starting Monday. (Image source: Reuters video screenshot)
Grexit is likely to lead to economic and political turmoil in Greece, a hugely important strategic country, which borders on an increasingly unstable part of the world. Greece lies on the Mediterranean, fewer than 350 kilometers to the north of the Libyan coastal town of Derna, a stronghold of the Islamic terrorists of ISIS. It was here that, last February, ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Egyptian prisoners, and vowed to conquer Europe. The threat to Greece’s eastern borders is even greater. Greece is currently being inundated by illegal immigrants, arriving from Turkey by sea. Each day in June, human traffickers were transporting between 650 and 1,000 migrants by boat from Turkish ports to Greece. Last January, ISIS revealed that it is smuggling terrorists into Europe by hiding them among the migrants leaving Turkey.
If Greece leaves the EU, it is highly unlikely that it will try to prevent the illegal immigrants from travelling on to the rest of Europe. On the contrary, in March, Greek defense minister Panos Kammenos vowed to flood the rest of Europe with immigrants if the EU should allow Greece to go bankrupt. “If Europe leaves us in the crisis, we will flood it with immigrants, and it will be even worse for Berlin if in that wave of millions of economic immigrants there will be some jihadists of the Islamic State, too,” the Greek minister said. All the newcomers to Greece, Kammenos said, would be given papers, so they “could go straight to Berlin.” Greece is a member of NATO. The whole world could witness how the defense minister of one NATO country was threatening other NATO members with unleashing Islamic terrorists on them.
A Greek exit from the EU will not only mean a rupture with its Western European neighbors, who are all members of NATO as well, but is also likely to affect the entire Atlantic partnership. It will lead to a power vacuum in the southeastern corner of Europe, which Russia will be only too eager to fill.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was recently in Moscow to sign a gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The deal allows the Russians to build a natural gas pipeline across Greece that will carry Russian gas to Europe. The construction of the pipeline will not only create 20,000 new jobs in Greece, but Russia will also pay Greece hundreds of millions of dollars annually in transit payments. Speaking about the pipeline deal, Putin offhandedly remarked to the international media that he saw no support for the Greeks from the EU.
There are also rumors that Athens might allow Russia the use of Greek military bases. Russia is expanding militarily in the Black Sea and the eastern part of the Mediterranean. Greece could also serve as a base for the Russians to strengthen their position in the Balkans. If Greece were to turn its back on NATO, it could become a geographical link between Russia and its Balkan vassal, Serbia — a process that would link the three Christian-Orthodox nations of Russia, Serbia and Greece.
But the Russians are not the only ones closely following the events in Greece and hoping for geopolitical benefits. For some time, China’s influence in Greece has also been expanding. The Chinese state-owed Cosco Group recently bought the container terminal in Greece’s largest port, Piraeus. The port was privatized after demands from the EU. The Chinese are currently negotiating with the Greek government to acquire an even larger part of Piraeus.
Both Russia and China are eager to strengthen their position in Greece if it were to turn its back on Europe and NATO. The consequences of Grexit will not merely be economic. The strategic implications are at least as important, and far-reaching.
UK: Belfast Pastor Faces Prison for “Grossly Offending” Islam, The Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, June 28, 2015
An evangelical Christian pastor in Northern Ireland is being prosecuted for making “grossly offensive” remarks about Islam.
James McConnell, 78, is facing up to six months in prison for delivering a sermon in which he described Islam as “heathen” and “satanic.” The message was streamed live on the Internet, and a Muslim group called the police to complain.
According to Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service (PPS), McConnell violated the 2003 Communications Act by “sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive.”
Observers say that McConnell’s prosecution is one of a growing number of examples in which British authorities — who routinely ignore incendiary speech by Muslim extremists — are using hate speech laws to silence Christians.
McConnell, who turned down an offer to avoid a trial, says the issue of Christians being singled out for persecution in Britain must be confronted, and that he intends to turn his case into a milestone trial “in defense of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
Pastor James McConnell of Belfast: “I have no regrets about what I said. I do not hate Muslims, but I denounce Islam as a doctrine and I make no apologies for that. I will be pleading ‘not guilty’ when I stand in the dock in August.”
The controversy began on the evening of Sunday, May 18, 2014, when McConnell, the founding pastor of the Whitewell Metropolitan Tabernacle, an evangelical mega-church in northern Belfast, preached a sermon on a foundational verse of the Christian Bible, 1 Timothy 2:5, which states: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”
Preaching with an oratorical flourish common to traditional Protestantism, McConnell said (sermon begins at 22m, 40s):
“For there is one God. Think about that. For there is one God. But what God is [the Apostle] Paul referring to? What God is he talking about? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
“The God who we worship and serve this evening is not Allah. The Muslim God, Allah, is a heathen deity. Allah is a cruel deity. Allah is a demon deity. A deity that this foolish government of ours … pays homage to, and subscribes financial inducements to curry their favor to keep them happy….
“While in Muslim lands Christians are persecuted for their faith; their homes burned, their churches destroyed, and hundreds of them literally have given their lives for Christ in martyrdom. A lovely young [Sudanese] woman by the name of Miriam, 27 years-of-age, because she has accepted Christ as her Savior, will be flogged publicly and hanged publicly. These fanatical worshippers are worshippers of the god called Allah. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a fact and it cannot be denied and it cannot be refuted.
“I know the time will come in this land … and in this nation to say such things will be an offense to the law. It would be reckoned erroneous, unpatriotic. But I am in good company, the company of [Protestant Reformers] Luther and Knox and Calvin and Tyndale and Latimer and Cranmer and Wesley and Spurgeon and such like him.
“The Muslim religion was created many hundreds of years after Christ. Mohammed, was born in 570. But Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion, dating back to Adam, and that the biblical Patriarchs were all Muslims, including Noah and Abraham and Moses, and even our Lord Jesus Christ.
“To judge by some of what I have heard in the past few months, you would think that Islam was little more than a variation of Christianity and Judaism. Not so. Islam’s ideas about God, about humanity, about salvation are vastly different from the teachings of the Holy Scriptures. Islam is heathen. Islam is satanic. Islam is a doctrine spawned in Hell.”
McConnell’s comments about Islam comprised less than ten minutes of a 35-minute sermon that focused on Christian theology.
The blowback was as swift as it was predictable. The Belfast Islamic Center, which claims to represent all of the 4,000 Muslims thought to be living in Northern Ireland, complained to police, who dutifully launched an investigation into whether there was a “hate crime motive” behind McConnell’s remarks.
McConnell later issued a public apology, but he refused to recant. He also rejected a so-called informed warning. Such warnings are not convictions, but they are recorded on a person’s criminal record for 12 months. Anyone who refuses to accept the warning can be prosecuted, and McConnell now faces six months in prison. The first hearing of his case is set for August 6.
In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph, McConnell said he would rather go to prison than disavow his comments about Islam.
“I am 78 years of age and in ill health but jail knows no fear for me. They can lock me up with sex offenders, hoodlums and paramilitaries and I will do my time.
“I have no regrets about what I said. I do not hate Muslims, but I denounce Islam as a doctrine and I make no apologies for that. I will be pleading ‘not guilty’ when I stand in the dock in August.
McConnell said that the charges against him were symbolic of the persecution Christians are facing in Britain today:
“It is a case of back to the future. In the first century, the apostles were jailed for preaching the gospel. Early Christians were boiled in oil, burnt at the stake and devoured by wild beasts. If they faced that and kept their faith, I can easily do six months in jail.”
McConnell’s attorney, Joe Rice, vowed to fight the case “tooth and nail.” He said:
“I don’t agree with everything Pastor McConnell says but his prosecution represents a threat to freedom of speech and freedom of religion. If we’re moving into a genuinely pluralist society, these freedoms must be extended to Christians as much as they are to others.”
After public prosecutors announced that they plan to call eight witnesses in McConnell’s prosecution, Rice said:
“Rest assured we will call many, many more. This will be a landmark case with leading political, religious and academic figures giving evidence.
“The logic of the decision to prosecute Pastor McConnell means that many clerics — including Catholic priests and other evangelical pastors — could now find themselves under investigation for preaching with passion.
“My client’s remarks weren’t addressed at individual Muslims but at Islam in generic terms.”
McConnell stressed that he does not hate Muslims. “My church funds medical care for 1,200 Muslim children in Kenya and Ethiopia,” he said. “I’ve no hatred in my heart for Muslims, but I won’t be stopped from preaching against Islam.” He added:
“I apologized last year if I had unintentionally hurt anyone’s feelings. I would defend the right of any Muslim cleric to preach against me or Christianity. I most certainly don’t want any Muslim clerics prosecuted but I find it very unfair that I’m the only preacher facing prosecution.”
In an interview with the Guardian, McConnell reiterated that he is “not going to be gagged.” He said:
“The police tried to shut me up and tell me what to preach. It’s ridiculous. I believe in freedom of speech. I’m going to keep on preaching the gospel. I have nothing against Muslims, I have never hated Muslims, I have never hated anyone. But I am against what Muslims believe. They have the right to say what they believe in and I have a right to say what I believe.”
The executive director of the Belfast Islamic Center, Raied al-Wazzan, is leading the push to prosecute McConnell. “This is inflammatory language and it definitely is not acceptable,” he saidin an interview with the BBC.
Al-Wazzan is now trying to leverage the controversy over McConnell’s remarks to shame local politicians into providing him with public land, for free, to build a mega-mosque in Belfast. “We need the land from the government,” he told the BBC. “And there is a huge demand for it. The Muslim population is growing in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, but especially in south Belfast.”
In January 2015, al-Wazzan drew attention to himself when he praised the Islamic State’s rule of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where jihadists have decimated out the city’s 2,000-year-old, 60,000-strong Christian community. Speaking to the BBC, al-Wazzan said: “Since the Islamic State took over, it [Mosul] has become the most peaceful city in the world.”
After local politicians called for the government to cut public funding for the Belfast Islamic Center, al-Wazzan recanted. But the Belfast Islamic Center’s website continues to prominentlydisplay the writings of a Muslim extremist named Bilal Philips, who has been banned from entering the UK because of his preaching of violence against Jews, Christians and homosexuals, and his glorification of Islamic suicide bombers.
McConnell summed it up this way: “Islam is allowed to come to this country, Islam is allowed to worship in this country, Islam is allowed to preach in this country and they preach hate. And for years we are not allowed to give a tract out, we are not allowed in Islam, we are not allowed to preach the gospel. We are persecuted in Islam if we stand for Jesus Christ.”
Who is Responsible for the Atrocities in the Muslim World? The Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, June 27, 2015
Every time the ISIS, Boko Haram, Iran, or any terrorist group in the Muslim world is discussed, many people tend to hold the West responsible for the devastation and murders they commit. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Blaming the failures in the Muslim world on Western nations is simply bigotry and an attempt to shift the blame and to prevent us from understanding the real root cause of the problem.
When these Islamic terrorist groups abduct women to sell them as sex-slaves or “wives;” conduct mass crucifixions and forced conversions; behead innocent people en masse; try to extinguish religious minorities and demolish irreplaceable archeological sites, the idea that this is the fault of the West is ludicrous, offensive and wrong.
Western states, like many other states, try to protect the security of their citizens. What they essentially need, therefore, are peaceful states as partners with which they can have economic, commercial and diplomatic relations. They do not need genocidal terrorist groups that destroy life, peace and stability in huge swaths across the Muslim world.
Western states also have democratic and humanitarian values, which Islamic states do not. The religious and historical experiences of the Western world and the Islamic world are so enormously different that they ended up having completely different cultures and values.
The West, established on Jewish, Christian and secular values, has created a far more humanitarian, free and democratic culture. Sadly, much of the Muslim world, under Islamic sharia law, has created a misogynistic, violent and totalitarian culture.
This does not mean that the West has been perfect and sinless. The West still commits some appalling crimes: Europe is guilty of paving the way for the slaughter of six million Jews in the Holocaust, and for still not protecting its Jewish communities. Even today, many European states contort logic to recognize Hamas, which openly states that it aims to commit genocide against Jewish people.
The West, however, accepts responsibility for the failures in its own territories: for instance, not being able to protect European women from Muslim rapists. These men have moved to Europe to benefit from the opportunities and privileges there, but instead of showing gratitude to European people and government, they have raped the women there, and tried to impose Islamic sharia law.
If we want to criticize the West for what is going on in the Muslim world, we should criticize it for not doing more to stop these atrocities.
The West, and particularly the U.S., should use all of its power to stop them — especially the genocides committed against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims in the Muslim world.
We should also criticize the West — and others, such as the United Nations and its distorted Gaza War report — for supporting those who proudly commit terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, and we should criticize the West for not siding with the state of Israel in the face of genocidal Jew-hatred.
We should criticize the West for letting Islamic anti-Semitism grow in Europe, making lives unbearable for Jews day by day.
We should criticize the West for having accepted without a murmur the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus for more than 40 years.
We should also criticize the West for leaving the fate of Kurds, a persecuted and stateless people, to the tender mercies of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria — and now the Islamic State (ISIS). On June 25, ISIS carried out yet another deadly attack, killing and wounding dozens of people in the Kurdish border town of Kobani, in Syrian Kurdistan.
And we should criticize especially the current U.S. government for not being willing to take serious action to stop ISIS, Boko Haram and other extremist Islamic groups.[1]
The list could go on and on. Moreover, it would not be realistic to claim that these groups or regimes all misunderstand the teachings of their religion in exactly the same way.
It would also not be realistic to claim that the West has created all these hundreds of Islamic terror groups across the Muslim world.
The question, then, is: Who or what does create all these terrorist groups and regimes?
In almost all parts of the Muslim world, systematic discrimination, and even murder, are rampant — especially of women and non-Muslims. Extremist Islamic organizations, however, are not the only offenders. Many Muslim civilians who have no ties with any Islamist group also commit these offenses daily. Jihad (war in the service of Islam) and the subjugation of non-Muslims are deeply rooted in the scriptures and history of Islam.
Ever since the seventh century, Muslim armies have invaded and captured Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and Zoroastrian lands; for more than 1400 years since, they have continued their jihad, or Islamic raids, against other religions.
Many people seem to be justifiably shocked by the barbarism of ISIS, but Islamic jihad does not belong just to ISIS. Violent jihad is a centuries-long tradition of Islamic ideology. ISIS is just one jihadist army of Islam. There are many.
All of this is an Islamic issue. The free West has absolutely nothing to do with the creation and preservation of this un-free culture.
The West has, on the contrary, been the victim of Islamic military campaigns and imperialistic pursuits: Christian peoples of Europe have been exposed to Ottoman invasions and subjugation for centuries. The fall of Byzantine Empire marked the peak of Islamic Jihad in Christian lands. Many places in Europe — including Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, Serbia, and Cyprus, among others — were all invaded and occupied by the Ottoman armies. Other targets, including Venice, Austria, and Poland, had to fight fierce defensive wars to protect their territories.
The historical and current troubles in the Muslim world are not, therefore, problems “imported” from an outside source; they are internal cultural and political problems, which Muslim regimes and peoples have reproduced for centuries.
Some of the things that women in Saudi Arabia may not do were listed in The Week magazine: Saudi women are not allowed to “go anywhere without a male chaperone, open a bank account without their husband’s permission, drive a car, vote in elections, go for a swim, compete freely in sports, try on clothes when shopping, enter a cemetery, read an uncensored fashion magazine and buy a Barbie and so on.”
Of course, there is nothing specific in Islamic scriptures about cars, fashion magazines or Barbie Dolls. But there is enough there that indicates why all of these abuses, and more, are widespread across the Islamic world, and why the clerics, imams and muftis approve them.
The central issue is to see how the lines that the Islamic theology draws seed the soil in which this kind of discrimination systematically buds, why it is extolled and how it is advocated.
Saudi Arabia is not the only Muslim country where women are dehumanized. Throughout almost the almost the entire Muslim world — including Turkey, considered one of the most “liberal” Muslim countries — women are continually abused or killed by their husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, fathers, brothers or other males. [2]
Is it America that tells these men to treat their wives or sisters as less than fully human?
Is the West really what stops them from respecting human rights or resolving their political matters through diplomatic and peaceful ways? Are Muslims too stupid to make wise decisions, and act responsibly? Why should Americans or Europeans have evil wishes for the rest of the world?
Demonizing Western nations — even after all of their cultural, scientific and rational progress — is simply pure racism.
“The belief that the West is always guilty is among the dozen bad ideas for the 21st century,”wrote the Australian pastor, Dr. Mark Durie. “This irrational and unhelpful idea is taught in many schools today and has become embedded in the world views of many. It is essentially a silencing strategy, sabotaging critical thinking.”
Another term that prevents one from understanding the root causes of the conflicts in the Muslim world is “moral relativism” — a politically correct term that really means moral cowardice.
Defending “moral relativism” and saying that “all cultures are equal” really means saying a culture that encourages child marriages, beating women and selling girls on slave markets has a value equal to a culture that respects women and recognizes their rights, and which renounces wanton violence.
Another popular target of blame for the failures in the Muslim world is historical British colonialism.
If colonialism were the main problem, however, Muslims, too, were, and still are, colonizers — and not particularly “humanitarian” ones, at that. The Muslim colonizers do not even seem to have contributed much to the culture of the places they invaded and colonized. In fact, they have actually delayed the progress of the areas they colonized. The printing press, for instance, came to the Ottoman territories almost 200 years later than to Europe.
“Books… undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge, since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can master literacy,” wrote Professor Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites. The Ottoman sultans and religious establishment feared the creative destruction that would result. Their solution was to forbid printing.” [3]
“European Empires — the British, French and Italians — had a short-lived presence in North Africa and the Middle East compared with the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over that region for more than 500 years,” said the historian Niall Ferguson.
“The culture that exists in the greater Middle East and North Africa today bears very, very few resemblances to the culture that Europeans tried to implement there, beginning in the late 19th century and carrying on through to the mid-20th century.
“You can’t say it is the fault of imperialism and leave out the longest living empire in the Middle East, which was the Ottoman Empire, a Muslim Empire, which went back much farther than any of the European Empires mentioned in that piece.”
Muslim states continue to occupy and colonize various territories — including Kurdistan, Baluchistan and the northern part of Cyprus, an EU member state.
“One of the most tragic consequences of the 1974 Turkish invasion,” according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, “and the subsequent illegal occupation of 36.2% of the territory of the Republic of Cyprus, is the violent and systematic destruction of the cultural and religious heritage in the occupied areas.
“Hundreds of historic and religious monuments in various regions of the occupied areas have been destroyed, looted and vandalized. Illegal ‘excavations’ have been carried out and cultural treasures have been stolen from museums and private collections and were sold abroad.”
Muslim groups and regimes continue to persecute indigenous peoples such as Assyrians, Chaldeans, Mandaeans, Shabaks, Copts, Yezidis, and Bedoon, among many others.
“A substantial segment of the Bedoon population lives with the constant threat of deportation hanging over it,” according to the analyst Ben Cohen. “Around 120,000 Bedoon live without nationality and with none of the rights that flow from citizenship.”
“Its members cannot obtain birth or marriage certificates, or identity cards, or driving licenses. They are banned from access to public health and education services. Their second-class status means they have no access to the law courts in order to pursue their well-documented claims of discrimination. And on those rare occasions that they summon the will to protest publicly—as they did in 2011, when demonstrators held signs bearing slogans like, ‘I Have a Dream’—the security forces respond with extraordinary brutality, using such weapons as water cannons, concussion grenades, and tear gas with reckless abandon.”
It is not the West or Israel committing these crimes against the Bedoon community; it is Kuwait, a wealthy Islamic state, which treats defenseless people as if they are slaves.
In Qatar, another wealthy Islamic state, Nepalese migrants building a football stadium, “[h]ave died at a rate of one every two days… This figure does not include the deaths of Indian, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi workers…. The Nepalese foreign employment promotion board said that 157 of its workers in Qatar had died between January and mid-November” last year. In 2013, the figure for that period was 168.”
The family of a Nepalese migrant worker, who died in Qatar, prepares to bury him. Nepalese laborers in Qatar are forced to work in dangerous conditions, and die at the rate of one every two days. (Image source: Guardian video screenshot)
“In Libya, naturalisation is only open to a man if he is of Arab descent,” reported the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “And many Akhdam in Yemen, a small ethnic minority who may be descendants of African slaves, are reportedly unable to obtain citizenship.”
Is that not apartheid?
In Kuwait, only Muslim applicants may seek naturalization, while Libya’s nationality law allows for the withdrawal of nationality on the grounds of conversion from Islam to another religion.”
Is that not apartheid? Apartheid laws seem to reign over many places in the Muslim world.
Trying to whitewash the damage the Islamic ideology has done to the Muslim world, while putting the blame of Islamic atrocities on the West, will never help Muslims face their own failures and come up with progressive ways to resolve them.
“All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though,” wrote the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on Twitter, after which other Twitter users piled on to criticize him.
It seems that having oil reserves, per capita, that dwarf anything available to Western countries does not create leading scientific nations.
What holds Muslims back when they have unmatched advantages of underground treasures? Why did the scientific revolution not happen in the Muslim world? Why has much of Islamic history been marked by aggressive jihad?
Islamic jihad and Islamic violence; the sanctioning of sex slavery; dehumanization of women; hatred and persecution of non-Muslims and homosexuals; suppression of free speech; and forced conversions have been commonplace in the Islamic world ever since the inception of the religion.
Many teachings in the Islamic scriptures, as well as the biographies of the founder of the religion, set up the parameters where these abuses not only occur but remain protected on a gigantic scale. These are the teachings that have become the culture of the Muslim world.
Sadly, most Muslims have wasted much time, energy and resources on killing and destruction, but — with the exception of some civilization’s most dazzling artistic splendors — not on scientific and cultural advancement.
Recently, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the former Prime Minister of Qatar, said that claims that Qatar paid bribes to win the hosting rights of the 2022 World Cup were “not fair” and stemmed from the West’s Islamophobia and racism towards Arabs.
Recent events indicate that he was, at best, “misinformed.”
Deny everything and blame “the infidel” for your shortcomings. Nothing is more important than your honor, and nothing worse than your shame.
If Muslims wish to create a brighter future, nothing is stopping us but ourselves. We should learn to analyze critically our present and our past.
Human rights activists and academics in the West are lying to Muslims about their culture, and bashing and threatening America, Europe or “Zionism” for the problems of Muslims; this can never lead to any positive developments in the Muslim world. It is the Islamic culture and religious ideology that are responsible for these problems
If there is ever going to be an enlightenment, reform or renaissance in the Muslim world, only a hard look and hard questioning can be its starting point.
_________________
[1] Also the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Republic of Iran, al-Qaeda, Al-Badr, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, Islamic Jihad, al-Nusra Front, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al Ghurabaa, Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, Al-Mourabitoun, Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar, Jamaat Ul-Furquan, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, Jamiat al-Islah al-Idzhtimai, Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front, Al-Shabaab, Abu Sayyaf, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, Supreme Military Majlis ul-Shura of the United Mujahideen Forces of Caucasus, to name just a few.
[2] See: “Gender Equality Gap Greatest in Islamic Countries, Survey Shows“, by Patrick Goodenough, October 29, 2014; “The Treatment of Women In Islam,” by Rachel Molschky, October 7, 2013; “Women Suffer at the Hands of Radical Islam“, by Raymond Ibrahim, January 9, 2014; “As Muslim women suffer, feminists avert their gaze“, by Robert Fulford, National Post; Ayse Onal, a leading Turkish journalist, says in her book, Honour Killing: Stories of Men Who Killed, that in Turkey alone honour killings average about one a day — 1,806 were reported in the period between 2000 and 2005.
[3] Daron, Acemoglu & Robinson, James (2012), Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Crown Publishing Group.
Where’s the Pope’s Encyclical on Christian Persecution? Front Page Magazine,
(Please see also, The Scorpion, The Frog and The Pope. How about an encyclical on Islamic persecution of Christians and Jews? Others as well.– DM)
Where is Pope Francis’ encyclical concerning the rampant persecution that Christians—including many Catholics—are experiencing around the world in general, the Islamic world in particular?
****************
Pope Francis recently released a new encyclical. Portions of it deal with environmentalism, global warming, and climate change. Naturally, this has prompted controversy.
It’s noteworthy that Francis didn’t merely opine on global warming during this or that sermon, but that he issued a papal encyclical on the matter. Encyclicals are much more formal and significant that passing comments made during mass. They are letters written by a pope and sent to bishops all around the world. In turn, the bishops are meant to disseminate the encyclical’s ideas to all the priests and churches in their jurisdiction, so that the pope’s teaching reaches every church-attending Catholic.
All this leads to the following question: Where is Pope Francis’ encyclical concerning the rampant persecution that Christians—including many Catholics—are experiencing around the world in general, the Islamic world in particular?
To be sure, the pope has acknowledged it. On April 21, during mass held at Casa Santa Marta, Francis said that today’s church is a “church of martyrs.” He even referenced several of the recent attacks on Christians by Muslims (without of course mentioned the latter’s religious identity).
Said Pope Francis:
In these days how many Stephens [early Christian martyred in Book of Acts] there are in the world! Let us think of our brothers whose throats were slit on the beach in Libya [by the Islamic State]; let’s think of the young boy who was burnt alive by his [Pakistani Muslim] companions because he was a Christian; let us think of those migrants thrown from their boat into the open sea by other [African Muslim] migrants because they were Christians; let us think – just the day before yesterday – of those Ethiopians assassinated because they were Christians… and of many others. Many others of whom we do not even know and who are suffering in jails because they are Christians… The Church today is a Church of martyrs: they suffer, they give their lives and we receive the blessing of God for their witness. [Note: words not uttered by the Pope are in brackets. –DM)
The pope is obviously well acquainted with the reality of Christian persecution around the world. So why isn’t he issuing an encyclical about it? Such an encyclical would be very useful.
The pope could instruct bishops to acknowledge the truth about Christian persecution and to have this news spread to every Catholic church. Perhaps a weekly prayer for the persecuted church could be institutionalized—keeping the plight of those hapless Christians in the spotlight, so Western Catholics and others always remember them, talk about them, and, perhaps most importantly, understand why they are being persecuted.
Once enough people are acquainted with the reality of Christian persecution, they could influence U.S. policymakers—at least to drop those policies that directly exacerbate the sufferings of Christian minorities in the Middle East.
Whatever the effects of such an encyclical—and one can only surmise positive ones—at the very least, the pope would be addressing a topic entrusted to his care and requiring his attention.
In 1958, Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical that addressed the persecution of Christians. A portion follows:
We are aware—to the great sorrow of Our fatherly heart—that the Catholic Church, in both its Latin and Oriental rites, is beset in many lands by such persecutions that the clergy and faithful … are confronted with this dilemma: to give up public profession and propagation of their faith, or to suffer penalties, even very serious ones.
[…]
Missionaries who have left their homes and dear native lands and suffered many serious discomforts in order to bring the light and the strength of the gospel to others, have been driven from many regions as menaces and evil-doers…
Note that Pius does not mention the burning and bombing of churches, or the abduction, rape, enslavement, and slaughter of Christians. The reason is that Christians living outside the West in 1958 rarely experienced such persecution. In other words, today’s global persecution of Christians is exponentially worse than in 1958. Pius complained about how Christianity was being contained, not allowed to spread and win over converts.
Today, indigenous Christians who’ve been in the Middle East before Islam was conceived are being slaughtered, their churches burned to the ground, their women and children, enslaved, raped, and forced to convert. “ISIS” is the tip of the iceberg.
Even in the West, statistics indicate that Islam is set to supersede Christianity,at least in numbers.
Yet no encyclical from Pope Francis on any of this. Instead, Francis deems it more fit to issue a proclamation addressing the environment and climate change.
Whatever position one holds concerning these topics, it is telling that the pope—the one man in the world best placed and most expected to speak up for millions of persecuted Christians and Catholics around the world—is more interested in speaking up for “the world” itself.
Bear in mind, the Christian worldview is not about “saving the earth”—“where moth and rust do corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal”—but in saving souls, both in the now and hereafter. The Lord questioned Saul of Tarsus as to why he was persecuting his flock, not about the environment.
Yet here we are: if even the Catholic Pope does not deem the ongoing, systematic assault on Christianity and Christians a priority issue in need of its own encyclical, what can be expected from the average secular/atheistic politician in the West?
The answer is before us: brutal persecution and slaughter of Christians on the one hand, and absolute indifference from the West on the other.
Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 26, 2015
(But Obama can make everything right by restraining carbon dioxide emissions but not The Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear weaponization. Right? DM)
Toward the end of September 2012, Barack Obama finally came to New York City after skipping it during the 9/11 anniversary. He had made it out to the city the previous week for a celebrity fundraiser and an appearance on Letterman[1] and then back again for a taping of The View while turning down a meeting with Netanyahu who did not have a talk show or an envelope filled with money.[2]
The next day, while at least one of the Americans killed in Benghazi had yet to be buried,[3] he declared at the UN General Assembly, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”[4]
That statement also encompassed the agenda of the Benghazi killers, the terrorists who would attack Charlie Hebdo and the “Draw the Prophet” contest in Texas along with all the murderous censors of Mohammed determined that the future should not belong to those who slander their holy warlord.
It was Obama’s only mention of “Islam” in a speech addressing the brutal murder of four Americans by Islamic terrorists in a terror campaign targeting American diplomatic facilities on the anniversary of the original 9/11 attacks in Benghazi. The 9/11 attacks, like so many others, had begun with a cry of “Allahu Akbar.”[5]
When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.
Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.
Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”[8]
The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]
The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.
At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.
It took the administration years to make its first arrest of a Benghazi perpetrator,[13] but only days to urge Google to take down the Innocence of Muslims video[14] and weeks to arrest the man behind it.
In a little over a week, there was already a State Department apology video airing in Pakistan.[15] It took until the next month for the United States to even get access to the Benghazi compound.[16] Instead of going on the offensive against the attackers, Obama went on the offensive against critics of Islam.
His administration not only blamed a YouTube video to distract from its failures in Benghazi, but to exploit the crisis in order to suppress the truth about Islamic terrorism.
Obama had illegally fought a war to aid Islamic terrorists and was covering up his role in the Islamization of Libya by the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda[17] and eventually even ISIS.[18] He exploited a terrorist attack against Americans caused by his Islamization of Libya to advance the Islamization of America.
The new Islamized Libya, where Christians were beheaded and churches were bombed,[19] was what a nation that denied the future to those who did not accept the prophet of Islam really looked like.
Obama’s Islamist regime change had denied the Christians and non-Muslims of Libya a future. Among those non-Muslims who lost their future in Libya were four murdered Americans.
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20] [21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]
Some persecuted Christians could flee to America, but where would they flee to when Obama began denying a future to those who did not accept the moral and religious authority of the prophet of Islam?
Benghazi was not the first Islamic terror attack against Americans, but it was the first time that our government responded in the Islamic fashion by locking up a Christian for blaspheming against Islam.
Blaming the video turned a public relations disaster into a policy win. The blame was shifted from Obama’s backing for Islamist regime change in Libya to critics of Islam. Not only was the cause of the attack covered up, but Obama’s ideological agenda was advanced by an attack he had helped cause.
Stand With the Muslims
Our current conflict with Islamic terrorists is not caused by joblessness, poverty, the climate, dictators or any of the other familiar excuses. Instead it’s caused by the unholy alliance between Islam and the left.
Obama embodied that unholy alliance as no other occupant of the Oval Office since Carter had.
When discussing Muslim complaints about FBI counterterrorism operations, Obama believed that they needed assurances that, “I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”[23] Counterterrorism with its emphasis on exposing plots and potential terrorists singled out Muslims. His preferred form of counterterrorism empowered Islamists while shifting the blame to Americans.
Muslims did not need to change who they were to reject terrorism. Americans instead had to Islamize. The source of tension was not Muslim terrorism, but American ignorance and prejudice toward Islam.
Obama insisted that Americans needed to educate themselves on Islam because their country was “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” Not only was his claim false,[24] but it implied that America needed to be defined by Islam and that Americans needed to integrate Islam into their own identity.
As he put it in Cairo, “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.”[25]
The Obama model did not require that Americans become Muslims, but that they make Islam a part of their culture so that, like him, they would be able to quote the Koran or recite the Islamic call to prayer.
Obama rejected the secular common ground championed by European republics. Secularism had been used in America to limit the presence of Christianity and Judaism in public life, but the left did not accept its logic of neutral spaces when it came to Islam. Islam was treated as a culture rather than a religion. Excluding Christianity excluded a belief. Excluding Islam, unacceptably excluded a culture and a race. The new diverse American identity being constructed by the left would not be truly diverse without Islam.
If France insisted on being a secular republic, America would at least partially become a Muslim country.
After the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Obama’s failure to attend the Unity March put Islamist feelings ahead of freedom of speech. Instead his administration tried to shift attention to a Countering Violent Extremism summit stacked with Islamists[26] [27] as its preferred response to Islamic terrorism.
The White House had previously been critical of Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons.[28] While it still paid lip service to freedom of speech, in Paris, Benghazi and Garland[29] Islam came ahead of universal freedoms.
During the Cairo speech, Obama had explicitly rejected the French secular formula, stating, “It is important for Western countries to avoid impeding Muslim citizens from practicing religion as they see fit — for instance, by dictating what clothes a Muslim woman should wear.”
“Likewise, we can’t disguise hostility towards any religion behind the pretense of liberalism,” he added.[30]
Christians, whose ability to practice their religion has been unprecedentedly attacked under his administration, might have found that statement disingenuous, but it was an exemption exclusively extended to Muslims. His administration might repress Christianity, but never Islam. While it accused Christians of discrimination, it fought for the Islamic right to discriminate against women.
Obama did not acknowledge the Islamic violence and repression against women that was the true basis for France’s Burqa ban. One survey had found that 77 percent of girls in France who wore the Hijab did so because of threats from Islamist groups.[31] He also ignored the growing problem of Muslim honor killings[32] and female genital mutilation (FGM) in the United States. The half-million girls and women in this country at risk for FGM[33]mattered less than enforcing Islamist standards for covering up women.
While his administration vigorously targeted any employer or school that interfered with the wearing of the Hijab,[34] [35] it showed no similar dedication in any campaign against FGM or honor killings of women.
Like the Saudi religious police who wanted to let teenage girls burn rather than allow them to escape without proper Islamic covering,[36] Obama placed the Hijab above the lives of Muslim women and girls.
The administration had made the decision to protect Islamic sexism, rather than Muslim women.
While the administration cracked down on nuns, it was suing towns over zoning ordinances that interfered with building mega-mosques.[37] [38] [39]Even though the regulations did not single out mosques or Islam, the administration stepped in specifically when Islamists wanted to bully Americans.
If the French still clung to the idea of a secular republic, Obama had chosen to Islamize America. Those who resisted were faced with huge fines and even prison. America might not be one of the world’s biggest Muslim countries, but under Obama it was beginning to act more like Saudi Arabia or Iran.
In Cairo, Obama had declared that, “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”[40]
He had committed to waging a constant campaign against those who spoke out against Islam.
By the time that the Benghazi attacks took place, the pattern of promoting Islam, denying Islamic terrorism and silencing critics had become the administration’s twisted version of counterterrorism.
This brand of counterterrorism insisted that the biggest threat was not the terrorists, but the truth. Identifying Islamic terrorists as such would increase Muslim alienation and terrorist recruitment. There was nothing violent about Islam and yet videos and cartoons offensive to Islam could not be tolerated because they would lead to violence; a violence whose Islamic nature would be fervently denied.
Muslim terrorist groups, from ISIS on down, were deemed un-Islamic. Lone wolf attackers were characterized as ignorant of Islam. To disagree was to aid the terrorists, as Obama’s aides suggested.[41] Counterterrorism came to mean lying about Islam. Anyone who defined the problem could, like the “Draw the Prophet” cartoonists in Texas or Mark Basseley Youssef, be accused of having caused it.
The lie could not be challenged or the bombs would go off. Tell the truth and the terrorists win.
Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), the administration’s alternative to European integration, outsourced domestic counterterrorism policy to the Muslim Brotherhood’s front groups and transformed pandering to them into the core of our domestic counterterrorism strategy.[42]
Violent extremism was a vague and undefined term. Countering it was an even more vague and undefined policy that had far less to do with phoning tips to the FBI, an act that CAIR, a leading administration Muslim Brotherhood ally, had come out against,[43] than with promoting Islam.
Since Islamic terrorism was un-Islamic, promoting Islam was the best means of fighting Islamic radicalization. The terrorists had “perverted” Islam and had to be countered with authentic Islam.[44] Radicalization was caused by Muslim alienation and the only cure for it was Islamizing America.
CVE could Islamize unlikely agencies of the United States government by redirecting their priorities. When Obama told the NASA Administrator that one of his top priorities had to be making Muslims “feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering” that was CVE in action.[45]
A CVE conference held the day after Benghazi promoted touring Muslim rappers associated with a Muslim Brotherhood front group who were sponsored by the State Department.[46] [47] [48] [49] Money that should have been used to secure Americans at risk in Benghazi was wasted on Islamist self-promotion.
It was speculated that possibly hundreds of millions of dollars were being thrown at CVE activities.[50] And CVE had not only failed in its mission, but invariably mainstreamed the worst elements in Islam.
By the post-Hebdo CVE conference, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications had been turned over[51] to Rashad Hussain, a Muslim Brotherhood linked official,[52] and before long its “Think Again Turn Away” Twitter account was promoting everything from anti-Semitism to Al Qaeda.[53] [54] [55]
Meanwhile, echoing Obama’s mandate to “educate ourselves more effectively on Islam,”[56] the educational system was being bent to promote the practice of Islam to American children.[57]
Parents across the country discovered that schools were taking their children to mosques where they were being taught to participate in Islamic worship.[58] After American soldiers had fought to liberate Afghan women, American girls in this country were being dressed in burqas.[59]
Obama had told a Cairo audience, which included the Muslim Brotherhood, that he was rejecting the French model of protecting women from Islamic coercion. Instead the United States had adopted the Brotherhood’s model of urging American women to adopt Islamist practices.
His idea of standing with the Muslims was transforming counterterrorism into a tool of Islamization.
The Brotherhood Administration
In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]
A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61] [62]
Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.
Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.
What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.
The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.
By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]
Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]
That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”
Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66] was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69]
The only Muslim Brotherhood leader who hasn’t been described as a moderate is Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted by the ICC for genocide and crimes against humanity.[70]
But if the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t a moderate organization, if it is indeed violent and bigoted, why did Obama alienate Egyptians and others across the region by supporting it? The angry Egyptians in the street had an explanation, but they had failed to understand how deeply the infiltration truly went.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s front groups, such as the MSA and CAIR, had become so entangled with the left that it was impossible for the latter to wash its hands of the former. Not only the administration, but its political allies on the left, such as the Center for American Progress[71] and the ACLU[72], had been infiltrated by Islamists. The administration’s infiltration was a symptom of the problem, not its cause.
Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.
Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.
Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.
The left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes.
The Arab Spring disaster, from the Muslim Brotherhood brutality in Egypt and Tunisia, the bloody civil war in Libya to the rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, was the fruit of this tainted red-green alliance.
The four Americans murdered in Benghazi, the American hostages beheaded by ISIS along with the countless Christians, Yazidis and others butchered, raped and enslaved had fallen victim to the left’s support for the Brotherhood’s political ambitions, tyrannies and holy wars.
The Brotherhood Spring
“What we are witnessing these days of consecutive revolutions is a great and glorious event, and it is most probable, according to reality and history, that it will encompass the majority of the Islamic world with the will of Allah, and thanks to Allah things are strongly heading towards the exit of Muslims from being under the control of America,” Osama bin Laden wrote of the Arab Spring.[75]
“The fall of the remaining tyrants in the region became a must with the will of Allah, and it was the beginning of a new era for the whole nation,” he added.[76]
What was happening though had less to do with the will of Allah and more to do with the will of Obama.
Allah had not come down to Cairo to cut Arab allies loose, nor did he reserve seats for the Muslim Brotherhood or force regime change.[77] Osama credited Allah, but he really should have thanked Obama.
Both Obama and Osama agreed on the need to remove the current leaders of allied Arab governments and both men saw the Arab Spring as a vindication of their visions for the future. But the wave of new Islamist governments friendly to terrorists that swept across the region vindicated Osama, not Obama.
In Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, Sheikh Rashid al-Ghannouchi , the leader of the Islamist Ennahda party, who had once declared that “Crusader America” was the “enemy of Islam”[78] had come into his own. In the past he had been denied a visa to enter the United States,[79] but in the age of Obama he was feted at an event attended by, among others, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.[80]
Only a few years earlier, he had stated that the Arab Spring would “threaten the extinction of Israel.”[81]
“The Arab region will get rid of the bacillus of Israel. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader of Hamas, said that Israel will disappear by the year 2027. I say that this date may be too far away, and Israel may disappear before this. “[82]
The Sheikh had already called for the mass murder of Jews, stating that, “There are no civilians in Israel. The population—males, females and children—are the army reserve soldiers, and thus can be killed.”[83]
Once in power, Ennahda chose to turn a blind eye to Islamist violence.[84] On September 11, 2012, as the Jihadist attacks on American embassies and diplomatic missions swept around the Muslim world, the embassy in Tunis came under attack. And help didn’t come from the Ennahda government.
Instead Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was forced to place an urgent phone call to the secular president, a ceremonial position in Tunisia, who dispatched his own presidential guard to protect the embassy.[85] An ungrateful Hillary then delivered a speech praising the Islamists and thanking the Islamist government, rather than the president, who had risked his own safety to protect the embassy.[86]
The attack and the response by Tunisia’s Islamist government should have been anticipated.
In the past, Sheikh Rashid al-Ghannouchi had urged, “We must wage unceasing war against the Americans until they leave the land of Islam, or we will burn and destroy all their interests across the entire Islamic world.”[87]
That was exactly what the Jihadists had attempted to do on September 11, 2012 in Tunis and across the region with the complicity of the new Arab Spring governments Obama had helped bring to power.
A similar pattern of complicity emerged in Egypt where the attackers were allowed to scale the walls of the American Embassy in Cairo.[88] While the worst attack of that day took place in Benghazi, where Jihadists were in control of the city, in Tunis and Cairo a different breed of Jihadists had become the government and they had little interest in defending American lives or property.
While much of the controversy over the murder of four Americans in Benghazi has centered around the failure by the State Department to secure the diplomatic mission, that attack and many of the others came out of a volatile environment created by the empowerment of Islamists through the Arab Spring.
Nowhere was there more at stake for Obama’s “New Beginning” with the Islamists than in Cairo, but by reaching out to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, he was coming dangerously close to Al Qaeda.
The State Department’s 2008 strategic assessment stated that, “Although Usama bin Ladin remained the group’s ideological figurehead, Zawahiri has emerged as AQ’s strategic and operational planner.”[89] Even Osama bin Laden had been a Muslim Brotherhood member,[90] but after his death the organization’s leadership would become a more purely Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood affair.
Saif al Adel, the interim Emir of Al Qaeda, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the current Al Qaeda leader, were products of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The brother of the Al Qaeda chief, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, helped organize the attack on the American embassy in Cairo[91] and allegedly engaged in discussions with Mohammed Morsi over an alliance with Al Qaeda.[92]
The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group which merged with Al Qaeda, later reemerged under different leadership as the Islamic Party while the terrorist group Gamaa Islamiya or the Islamic Group formed the Building and Development Party and allied with Morsi.
Morsi pardoned Mostafa Hamza[93] who had ordered Gamaa Islamiya’s Luxor Massacre in which terrorists mutilated and disemboweled European and Japanese visitors. The massacre was reportedly arranged by Ayman al-Zawahiri and funded by Osama bin Laden.[94] Morsi’s alliance with the terror group even led him to attempt to appoint a Gamaa Islamiya member as Governor of Luxor.[95]
Even though Gamaa Islamiya was still listed as a terrorist group, one of its lawmakers, Hani Nour Eldin, received a visa to enter the United States and met with senior Obama administration officials including then Deputy National Security Adviser and current White House Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough.[96]
The terrorist asked McDonough about releasing Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the infamous Blind Sheikh who was the leader of Gamaa Islamiya, serving a life sentence for plotting attacks across New York City, after his followers bombed the World Trade Center.[97] Shortly thereafter, Morsi told a cheering crowd that he would work to free Rahman. The State Department was reportedly considering the deal.[98]
The thin firewall between the supposed extremists and moderates, between the political Islamists and the terrorists, between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, had worn so thin that it barely existed. Instead members of terrorist groups were running Egypt and openly petitioning the United States to free the figure most closely associated with the World Trade Center bombing in the minds of Americans.
And yet despite the Muslim Brotherhood’s torture and killing of protesters, its alignment with its fellow Hamas terrorists in Gaza and its flirtation with Al Qaeda and Iran, Obama continued to support it.
After videos surfaced of Morsi calling for the destruction of Israel and urging hatred of Jews as a form of worship of Allah, Secretary of State John Kerry defended the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to his regime.
“Not everything lends itself to a simple classification, black or white,” Kerry said. “We have critical interests with Egypt.“[99]
Statements like “Resistance is the correct and only way to free the land from the filth of the Jews”[100] should have been easy to classify, but instead the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-Semitism became a matter of ambiguity and nuance for an administration determined to continue aiding the terror group.
“President Morsi has issued two statements,” Kerry said, “to clarify those comments and we had a group of senators who met with him the other day who spent a good part of the conversation in relatively heated discussion with him about it.”[101]
Kerry neglected to mention that during the “heated discussion,” Morsi had suggested that the criticism was only taking place because the American media was under the control of the Jews.[102]
While Kerry had insisted at the time that the weapons transfers were necessary to safeguard American interests in Egypt and even help Israel, when another popular uprising toppled Morsi and replaced him with a new non-Islamist government, delivery of the jets was put on hold.[103] [104] This move made it clear that Obama and Kerry had not sought to supply the jets to Egypt, but to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Arab Spring had been intended as a vehicle for bringing the Muslim Brotherhood and its allied Islamists to power, not only in Tunisia and Egypt, but across the region.
Backing for Gaddafi’s overthrow had been bought by the shift of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group from Al Qaeda to the Muslim Brotherhood under the auspices of the Brotherhood’s Sheikh Qaradawi.[105] [106] When the mission in Benghazi needed protection, the task was handed to the Brotherhood’s February 17 Martyrs Brigade[107] [108] which had been employed by the National Transitional Council.[109]
Closely interrelated with Ansar Al-Sharia,[110] the Jihadists that launched the attack against the mission in Benghazi, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade has been accused of complicity in their attack.[111]
The NTC had been Obama’s choice for regime change[112] and its draft constitution stated that Sharia law would be Libya’s law.[113] The Benghazi attack was an early warning of a larger conflict that would see the Muslim Brotherhood and its Jihadist allies take control of Libya’s capital.[114] It was a battle in a larger war.
Across the Middle East, the Brotherhood reaped the political harvest of the Arab Spring.
In Morocco, the Arab Spring brought the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Justice and Development Party (PJD) to power.[115] Abdelilah Benkirane, its Head of Government, was a former member of Chabiba Islamia; an Islamist group working to create an Islamic State, some of whose members would go on to join the Al Qaeda interlinked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
Like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Tunisia’s Ennahda, PJD was depicted as a moderate Islamist group. Little mention was made of its close ties to Hamas.[116] Benkirane had described Israel as a “hostile state”, praised Hamas and stated that Moroccans want to wage Jihad alongside the genocidal terrorists.[117]
The PJD’s 2007 platform had called for imposing Islamic law on Morocco and the destruction of Israel.[118] Even after coming to power, PJD continued to maintain close ties with Hamas. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal attended its first conference[119] and met with Benkirane.[120]
Such relationships between Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood governments were natural and inevitable. Hamas was a fellow Muslim Brotherhood embryonic government. By aiding the rise of Muslim Brotherhood governments, Obama was creating state supporters for the anti-Semitic terror group.
In Yemen, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was ousted from power. Elections made the Brotherhood’s Al-Islah into the country’s second largest party.[121] A key figure in Al-Islah was Sheikh Zindani, an Osama bin Laden mentor listed by the US as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” who had played a role in the terrorist attack on the USS Cole and Yemen’s local September 11, 2012 attack on the US embassy. [122] [123]
The Arab Spring led to Muslim Brotherhood political victories putting the group’s various arms on a path to controlling much of the Middle East. However, they fared poorly when the political conflicts grew violent, losing to popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, to the Houthis in Yemen and to ISIS in Syria.
These conflicts often flared up when the Muslim Brotherhood showed its true colors. The Brotherhood, despite its violent rhetoric and roots, produced better manipulators than warriors. It was adept at convincing American officials, the leftist opposition, tribal leaders and freelance Jihadists to follow its agenda, but sooner or later its partners realized that it sought absolute power and could not be trusted.
Obama never realized that about the Muslim Brotherhood or perhaps he chose not to realize it.
American Guilt
Beyond the Muslim Brotherhood, Obama sought to cultivate ties with the worst elements in the region.
The common element that attracted him to the Muslim Brotherhood and the mullahs of Iran, despite their being on opposite sides of the Syrian Civil War, was their mutual enmity toward America.
While the foreign policy of the right attempts to secure national interests, the foreign policy of the left seeks to atone for national crimes. It was not strategy that drove his outreach to enemies of our country, but guilt. To the left, both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran were victims of our foreign policy.
The Muslim Brotherhood had suffered because of our backing for Sadat and Mubarak. Iran’s clerical tyrants resented us because of our support for the Shah.
Obama had taken up the Muslim Brotherhood’s cause as far back as the 2002 anti-war speech in which he had demanded that Bush stop Mubarak from “suppressing dissent.”[124] He told his Iran negotiators to understand that the Islamic terrorist state feels “vulnerable” because of the way that America “meddled in first their democracy and then in supporting the Shah and then in supporting Iraq and Saddam during that extremely brutal war.”[125] Iran and the Brotherhood were not our enemies; they were our victims.
Any Islamic enemy of America could count on the left’s sympathy and support for its victimhood.
President Bush’s denunciation of the Axis of Evil had drawn Democrats to rally around Axis members. House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi visited Bashar Assad at a time when the Bush administration was seeking to pressure the Syrian dictator to shut down the flow of Al Qaeda suicide bombers murdering American soldiers.[126] And John Kerry became even more notorious for his serial pandering to Assad.[127]
But the left’s best efforts were reserved for the worst Islamic member of the Axis of Evil.
The Tehran Trio of three key administration foreign policy figures, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Sec-retary Chuck Hagel had become notorious for their pro-Iran advocacy before joining the admin-istration.[128] [129] The Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated the White House, but so had the Iran Lobby in the form of the American-Iranian Council.
Animated by American guilt, the left’s foreign policy demanded a constant search for enemies to empower. This disastrous policy was less pro-Muslim than it was anti-American. The alliances that it made did not follow the consistent line of Islamic theology, but the inconsistent line of appeasement.
Every enemy of America, no matter how evil, had a part to play in dismantling our national security.
Out of Gitmo
In his first election, Obama had many endorsements, but in his second election only one name counted.
During the second presidential debate, he was asked what he had done about rising prices. Obama replied that, “Osama bin Laden is dead.” When challenged on Benghazi, he again brought up bin Laden. During the first debate, he brought out bin Laden in response to a question about partisan gridlock.[130]
By the third debate, he was so drunk on secondhand heroism that he boasted that, “I said, if I got bin Laden in our sights, I would take that shot.”[131] Obama was all but starring in his own imaginary action movie. Voters were left with the impression that he had ordered the execution of the terrorist leader.
But Obama’s real plans for Osama had actually been very different. He had not intended to use him to dismantle Al Qaeda, but to dismantle Guantanamo Bay and the military commission trials of terrorists.
If Obama’s plan had succeeded, Osama’s capture would have dealt a death blow to the War on Terror.
Despite playing patriot at the debate, Obama had told the liberal readers of Vanity Fair the real story. According to the journalist who interviewed him, “Obama saw an opportunity to resurrect the idea of a criminal trial, which Attorney General Eric Holder had planned for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.”[132]
Trying a top terrorist in a civilian court had been too controversial, but capturing Osama bin Laden would have been a public relations coup that would have drowned out the protests and the criticism.
Instead of killing Osama, the goal was to bring him back and “put him on trial in a federal court.”
“I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda,” Obama boasted.[133]
If Osama bin Laden had been tried in a civilian court, it would have become impossible to argue that any lesser terrorist should be kept in the Article III system. And that would have dismantled a fundamental distinction between terrorists and criminals that defined the War on Terror and infuriated Obama.
The real target of Operation Neptune Spear wasn’t bin Laden; it was Guantanamo Bay.
When the SEALs killed the Al Qaeda leader, they sabotaged Obama’s plan to try him in a civilian court and shut down military commissions trials. But Obama recovered from that setback by exploiting bin Laden’s death to secure a second term and provide political cover for his disastrous foreign policy.
Most importantly, it diverted attention from the real target, the terrorists of Guantanamo Bay.
Gitmo had been Obama’s priority from the start. During his first days in office, three out of his first five executive orders involved the Islamic terrorists locked up at Gitmo.[134] His third executive order outlawed enhanced interrogations of terrorists “to promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in United States custody.”[135] His fourth and fifth sought to close the prison and free its terrorists.[136] [137]
It took Obama a month to set up the Economic Recovery Advisory Board. It took him two days to set up a Special Interagency Task Force on Detainee Disposition to free Gitmo terrorists. His priority was not the economy, or even gay rights, amnesty and abortion; it was aiding Islamic terrorists.
The departure of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made it clear just how much of a priority freeing Gitmo terrorists was for Obama. The former senator, an anti-war politician, shared Obama’s views on Iraq and Iran. But he was unwilling to free dangerous terrorists at the rapid rate that Obama wanted.
White House officials complained that “his concerns about the security risks posed by the release of detainees” had “thwarted” Obama’s plans for closing Guantanamo Bay. National Security Advisor Susan Rice was reportedly angry because Hagel had not wanted to rush through releases.[138] Hagel admitted to CNN that the White House had indeed pressured him to speed up terrorist releases.[139]
The White House had fought hard for Hagel, but when he tried to slow down the release of dangerous terrorists, he was shown the door. Obama’s highest priority for his Secretary of Defense did not involve freeing Afghans and Iraqis from the Taliban and ISIS, but freeing their Islamic terrorist allies from Gitmo.
The five Taliban commanders freed by Obama in exchange for a deserter made headlines because of the splashy White House photo op, but the administration had been quietly releasing even more dangerous men. These included Mohammed Zahir, the Secretary General of the Taliban’s Intelligence Directorate, who had been caught with nuclear materials while reportedly preparing to build an atom bomb.[140]
Even while America was trying to stop ISIS from taking over Syria and Iraq, terrorists from the Syrian Group, which had been run by the uncle of the former leader of ISIS back when it was known as Al Qaeda in Iraq, were being released. The freed terrorists had received training in everything from suicide bombing to forging documents. Some had links to terrorist attacks against Americans and America.[141]
Among those freed was Mohammed Abis Ourgy, a bomb maker who may have known ahead of time about September 11.[142]
At least two of the terrorists released by Obama had threatened to assassinate President Bush.
Adel Al-Hakeemy, a military advisor to Osama bin Laden, had threatened revenge against America and stated that he would kill President Bush if given the chance. Muhammed Ali Husayn had dispatched letters to Congress and the White House warning that they would “be destroyed, suffer and lose.”[143]
Obama was forcing the release of terrorists rated as high risk who had made specific threats against the United States. He even insisted on freeing terrorists from conflict zones such as Yemen and Syria.
His administration had freed five Yemeni terrorists, releasing four of them to neighboring Oman, which had been used as a gateway by the Charlie Hebdo attackers operating under orders from Al Qaeda in Yemen.[144] The four included an Al Qaeda veteran of the Yemeni military who was suspected of serving as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden[145] and an Al Qaeda terrorist who had received IED training.[146]
No responsible government would have released such terrorists in the vicinity of an active war zone.
But Obama had made freeing the Jihadists of Gitmo into his highest priority. He executed his plans at the expense of our national security, our allies and the members of his own administration.
Even his greatest unintended triumph against Al Qaeda, the death of Osama bin Laden, had never been anything other than a warped attempt at freeing more Islamic terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.
A Stolen Future
Every president is the custodian of a nation and its future.
When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word.
With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.
Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.
And by doing so, he has aided the foreign and domestic enemies of this country.
The president is more than the sum of his office. He is the man who believes most strongly in the promise of an American future. His speeches reflect the faith that we have in ourselves.
Obama is the first occupant of the White House to openly deny American Exceptionalism. Every president before him has chosen an American future. Obama chose an Islamic future instead.
It remains up to Americans to reclaim their future by exposing and breaking Obama’s unholy alliance.
Notes:
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-W38
[2] http://swampland.time.com/2012/09/24/obama-comes-to-new-york-for-barbara-walters-and-sorta-the-united-nations/
[3] http://www.kcra.com/news/local-news/news-sierra/Slain-U-S-Ambassador-Chris-Stevens-buried-in-Grass-Valley/17556470
[4] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/remarks-president-un-general-assembly
[5] http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/saudi-official-western-politicians-and-media-linked-islam-to-911-thereby-driving-muslims-to-become-terrorists
[6] http://tinyurl.com/ka9jj7q
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/opinion/06kristof.html
[8] http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/oct/25/picket-audio-father-killed-navy-seal-hillary-told-/
[9] http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/aclu%E2%80%99s-islamist-friends
[10]https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/state_department_letter_on_innocence_of_muslims.pdf
[11] http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/11/why-the-us-should-oppose-defamation-of-religions-resolutions-at-the-united-nations
[12] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/25/remarks-president-un-general-assembly
[13] http://fox40.com/2014/06/17/captured-key-benghazi-suspect-will-face-u-s-criminal-courts/
[14] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/14/white-house-asks-youtube-to-review-anti-islam-film/
[15] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/20/state-department-spending-70g-on-pakistan-ads-denouncing-anti-islam-film/
[16] http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/FBI-Benghazi-investigation/2012/10/04/id/458761/
[17] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/23/jihadists-now-control-secretive-u-s-base-in-libya.html
[18] http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/18/world/isis-libya/
[19] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/raymond-ibrahim/libyas-unleashed-hatred-for-christianity/
[20] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/obama-attends-prayer-breakfast-with-sudanese-official-accused-of-genocide/
[21] http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2012/10/27/how-will-the-muslim-brotherhood-govern-egypt-look-to-sudan
[22] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/05/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast
[23] The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. New York: Crown Publishers, 2006
[24] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/06/us_is_one_of_the_largest_musli.html
[25] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09
[26] http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/islamists-featured-countering-violent-extremism-summit
[27] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414064/find-countering-violent-extremism-summit-intersection-islamists-and-leftists-andrew-c
[28] http://washington.cbslocal.com/2015/01/07/white-house-questioned-french-magazines-judgment-in-2012-for-publishing-naked-muhammad-cartoon/
[29] http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Pamela-Geller-Draw-the-Prophet-ISIS-threat-FBI/2015/05/07/id/643160/
[30] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09
[31] http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2010/03/02/opinion-why-france-is-right-about-the-burqa/
[32] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-29-honor-killings-in-the-US_N.htm
[33] http://www.newsweek.com/fgm-rates-have-doubled-us-2004-304773
[34] http://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/May/04_crt_343.htm
[35] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/abercrombie-fitch-supreme-court-hijab-wearing-job-applicant-115498.html
[36]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/1387874/15-girls-die-as-zealots-drive-them-into-blaze.html
[37] http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/07/justice-department-sues-on-behalf-of-murfreesboro-mega-mosque-federal-judge-orders-it-to-open
[38] http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/cry-islamophobia-and-win
[39] http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/obama-doj-forces-city-to-pay-muslims-7-75-million/
[40] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09
[41] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/us/politics/faulted-for-avoiding-islamic-labels-white-house-cites-a-strategic-logic.html
[42] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414064/find-countering-violent-extremism-summit-intersection-islamists-and-leftists-andrew-c
[43] http://www.investigativeproject.org/2515/cair-deceptive-spin-on-fbi-support
[44] https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/18/remarks-president-closing-summit-countering-violent-extremism
[45] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html
[46] http://www.wired.com/2012/10/cve/
[47] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/obamas-national-security-priority-moderate-muslim-rappers/
[48] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Deen#cite_note-rap-1
[49] http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6705
[50] http://www.wired.com/2012/10/cve/
[51] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/obama-appoints-terrorist-supporter-to-head-up-counterterrorism-messaging/
[52] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ryan-mauro/rashad-hussains-troubling-ties/
[53] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/is-the-state-depts-new-muslim-run-office-promoting-anti-semitism/
[54] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/obamas-counterterrorism-messaging-promotes-islamic-takeover-of-uk/
[55] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/state-department-counters-violent-extremism-by-supporting-al-qaeda/
[56] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/06/us_is_one_of_the_largest_musli.html
[57]http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/allah_in_our_schools.html#.VKAAL7AwpNk.twitter
[58] http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/09/17/school-apologizes-students-pray-allah-field-trip-mosque/
[59] http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/students-made-to-wear-burqas-in-u-s-state/
[60] http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/03/egyptian-newspapers-explosive-allegation-president-obama-is-a-secret-muslim-brotherhood-member
[61] http://www.investigativeproject.org/3869/egyptian-magazine-muslim-brotherhood-infiltrates
[62] http://www.investigativeproject.org/3868/a-man-and-6-of-the-brotherhood-in-the-white-house
[63] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/15/which-countries-dont-like-america-and-which-do/
[64] http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/poll-egyptian-publics-views-toward-united-states-are-much-improved/
[65] http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/24/obama.words/
[66]http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/164282#.VSXffl1g8rk
[67] http://www.clarionproject.org/news/what-isna-doesnt-publicize-about-its-convention-speakers
[68] http://www.meforum.org/700/arab-liberals-prosecute-clerics-who-promote-murder
[69] http://www.investigativeproject.org/2315/moderate-qaradawi-defends-hitler-and-nuclear
[70] http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/situations%20and%20cases/situations/situation%20icc%200205/related%20cases/icc02050109/Pages/icc02050109.aspx
[71] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-center-for-american-progress-and-islamist-influences-over-the-white-house/
[72] http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/aclu%E2%80%99s-islamist-friends
[73] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/nancy-pelosi-hires-former-terrorist-fundraiser/
[74] http://content.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1861305,00.html
[75] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0512/75873_Page3.html
[76] https://archive.org/stream/354027-how-bin-laden-planned-to-capitalize-on-the-arab/354027-how-bin-laden-planned-to-capitalize-on-the-arab_djvu.txt
[77] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/-brotherhood-invited-to-obama-speech-by-us/18693/
[78] http://freebeacon.com/national-security/yale-to-host-radical-terror-sheikh-who-advocated-killing-of-u-s-soldiers/
[79] http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/a-u-s-visa-for-rachid-ghannouchi/
[80] http://www.globalmbwatch.com/2014/03/21/officials-dine-tunisian-muslim-brotherhood-leader-event-honor/
[81] http://www.investigativeproject.org/3262/media-whitewash-ghannouchi-radical-islamist-views#
[82] Ibid.
[83] http://www.meforum.org/700/arab-liberals-prosecute-clerics-who-promote-murder
[84] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-tunisia-rights-islamistsbre89e138-20121015,0,5425588.story
[85] http://world.time.com/2012/09/16/political-battles-in-tunisia-shade-attacks-on-u-s-embassy/
[86]http://www.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2012/10/199102.htm
[87] http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/reader/archives/a-u-s-visa-for-rachid-ghannouchi/
[88] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/the-hosts-responsibilities/2012/09/12/4eb1edf2-fd1b-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_blog.html
[89] http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/crt/2007/103704.htm
[90] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/09/27/Bin-Laden-was-once-in-Muslim-Brotherhood/UPI-15591348771820/
[91] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2012/10/al_qaeda-linked_jiha.php
[92] http://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2014/02/04/exposed-muslim-brotherhood-al-qaeda-connection.aspx
[93] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/muslim-brotherhood-pres-frees-monster-in-brutal-luxor-massacre/
[94] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/343207.stm
[95] http://www.clarionproject.org/news/morsi-appoints-luxor-terror-group-member-gov-luxor
[96] http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/22/us/egypt-lawmaker-visa/
[97] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/21/member-of-egyptian-terror-group-goes-to-washington.html
[98] http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2012/09/28/egypts-morsi-i-will-do-everything-in-my-power-to-secure-freedom-for-the-blind-sheikh/
[99] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/kerry-defends-tank-and-jet-giveaway-to-muslim-brotherhood-terror-regime-video/
[100] http://haam.org/2013/01/29/morsi-obama-and-bibi-which-of-these-is-not-like-the-others/
[101] Ibid.
[102] http://www.timesofisrael.com/morsi-jewish-controlled-media-distorted-apes-and-pigs-remark/
[103] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-f-16s-to-muslim-brotherhood-yes-f-16s-to-egyptian-military-no/
[104] http://tinyurl.com/lwqvn27
[105] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/04/libyan-islamist-fighters-reject-violence
[106]http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/5/02%20libya%20ashour/omar%20ashour%20policy%20briefing%20english.pd
[107] http://cnsnews.com/news/article/testimony-elements-militia-state-dept-hired-station-members-inside-benghazi-compound
[108] http://jcpa.org/article/the-libyan-quagmire/
[109] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/30/ozatp-libya-idAFJOE76T02P20110730
[110] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/benghazi-power-libya-militia-eyed-attack
[111] http://cnsnews.com/news/article/testimony-elements-militia-state-dept-hired-station-members-inside-benghazi-compound
[112] http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/19/libya-rebels-will-receive-25-million-from-us/?page=all
[113] http://tinyurl.com/nuuzwrw
[114] http://english.alarabiya.net/en/perspective/alarabiya-studies/2014/08/25/Libyan-Dawn-Map-of-allies-and-enemies.html
[115] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/morocco-pm-claims-he-isnt-muslim-brotherhood-muslim-brotherhood-says-he-is/
[116] http://cables.mrkva.eu/cable.php?id=71622
[117] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Moroccan-wolf-in-sheeps-clothing
[118] http://www.memri.org/report/en/print2368.htm
[119] http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/07/14/226341.html
[120] http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/42-48638884/moroccos-pm-benkirane-and-hamas-leader-meshaal
[121]https://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/04/07/muslim-brotherhood-involvement-complicates-yemen-conflict/
[122] http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4057#.VVVwIPyrRhF
[123] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/world/middleeast/mideast-turmoil-spreads-to-us-embassy-in-yemen.html?ref=middleeast
[124] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469
[125] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/obama-blames-america-for-iran-feeling-defensive-and-vulnerable/
[126] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415443/why-pelosis-syria-visit-remains-indefensible-tom-rogan
[127] http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/kerry-frequent-visitor-syrian-dictator-bashar-al-assad_690885.html
[128] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/obamas-treason-is-the-new-patriotism/
[129] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/25/AR2008082502337.html
[130] http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/17/barack-obamas-awkward-debate-references-to-osama-bin-laden/
[131] http://www.npr.org/2012/10/22/163436694/transcript-3rd-obama-romney-presidential-debate
[132] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/10/obama-put-osama-bin-laden-on-trial
[133] Ibid.
[134] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/does-obama-love-america-or-islam/
[135] https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2009/01/27/E9-1885/ensuring-lawful-interrogations
[136] http://tinyurl.com/kkh7wug
[137] https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2009/01/27/E9-1895/review-of-detention-policy-options
[138] http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/hagel-said-to-be-stepping-down-as-defense-chief-under-pressure.html?referrer=
[139] http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/30/politics/hagel-guantanamo-bay-transfers-white-house-friction/
[140] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-frees-a-nuclear-terrorist/
[141] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obamas-christmas-gift-to-isis-and-al-qaeda/
[142] Ibid.
[143] http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/is-obama-trying-to-kill-president-bush/
[144] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/16/obama-takes-heat-for-terror-approach-as-threat-spreads/
[145] http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/34-al-khadr-abdallah-muhammed-al-yafi
[146] http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/689-mohammed-ahmed-salam
Hajj Amin Husseini’s Anti-Semitic Legacy, The Middle East Quarterly, Boris Havel, Summer 2015
(Islamic hatred of Jews goes back at least to the sixth century A.D. The pamphlet reproduced below, Islam and Judaism, was written by The Jerusalem Mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, apparently in the 1940s. A fascinating book by Anthony Pagden titled Worlds at War, The 2,500-year struggle between East and West, provides a scholarly account of rivalries and wars and includes highlights of the rise of Islam.
Jew hatred is now most visible in the Islamic Republic of Iran, soon to be welcomed into the “community of nations” by P5+1 “negotiators” under Obama’s guidance. — DM)
The Jerusalem mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini (left), meets with SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, April 1943.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been a bestseller for years in predominantly Muslim countries, including the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.
***********************
The Jerusalem mufti, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, leader of the Palestinian Arabs from the early 1920s to the late 1940s, is widely known for his close collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. Aspects of the collaboration remain to be more thoroughly scrutinized.[1]However, and without discounting his culpability for the collapse and dispersal of Palestinian Arab society (or al-Nakba, the catastophe, as it is called by Palestinians and Arabs), Hajj Amin’s role in shaping Muslim perceptions of Jews might be a far more important and lasting legacy than his political activism in Palestine, Germany, or elsewhere.[2] An important source supporting this fact is a booklet he authored for Muslim soldiers enlisted in the Nazi SS division in Bosnia.
During the mufti’s stay in Berlin in 1941-45, he befriended Hitler’s right-hand man, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler’s fascination with Islam and the mufti’s zealous support for the Nazi cause resulted in several common enterprises, notably the establishment of a volunteer Waffen-SS division in Bosnia, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims, later named the Handzar division. Most books about the division display photographs of its soldiers—distinguishable by its insignia on uniform lapels and fez headgear—reading a booklet titled Islam und Judentum—most certainly the German version of the mufti’s Croatian or Bosnian pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism).
In whatever language the pamphlet was originally written, the intended readers were Muslims (Bosnian or otherwise) and not Germans. This author has been unable to locate a German copy of the pamphlet, but it is reasonable to regard the text written in the language of the Bosnian Muslims (at the time called Croatian) as the most relevant. A translation of the booklet is presented below, followed by an analysis of its significance and far reaching implications.[3]
_________________
For us Muslims, it is unworthy to utter the word Islam in the same breath with Judaism since Islam stands high over its perfidious adversary. Therefore, it would be wrong to carry out comparison of those two generally different counterpoints.
Unfortunately, it is insufficiently known that animosity between Islam and Judaism is not of a recent date. It reaches long back in history, all the way to the time of the Prophet Muhammad. This short historical overview will demonstrate the importance and perfidiousness of Jewry and its animosity toward the founder of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad.
Jews are known in history only as a subjugated people. Their vulgar[4] nature
and insufferable stance toward the nations that offered them hospitality, and toward their neighboring nations, are the reason that those same nations had to resort to [certain] measures in order to suppress a Jew’s efforts to obtain his[5] desire by force.
The history of antiquity shows us that the pharaohs were already forced to use all means against Jewish usury and Jewish immorality. Ancient Egyptians finally expelled the Jews from their land. Led by Moses, the Jews then arrived in the Sinai desert.
Arab theologian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari [839-923 C.E.] narrates that the Jews even wanted to kill their leader and savior Moses when he came back from Mount Sinai. Because of that, God punished them, and they had to meander in the wilderness for forty years. It should have brought them to their senses, and the new generation should have been cleansed from the low esteem of their fathers.
Following that, the Jews spread like locust all over the Arab peninsula. They came to Mecca, to Medina, to Iraq, and to Palestine, which is the land of milk and honey. The group of the Jews that came to Syria and Palestine was now under Roman rule. The Romans, however, soon discerned the peril that threatened the land from the Jews, and so they introduced harsh measures against them. Besides that, a serious, contagious illness of plague erupted, which was by common opinion brought into the land by Jews. When even medical doctors stated that the Jews were indeed the source of the infection—and their opinion was obviously correct—there arose among the people such upheaval against the Jews that many Jews were killed. In addition, that event is the reason why the Jews have been called “microbes” in Arabia to this very day.
The mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hajj Amin Husseini, visits the volunteer Nazi Waffen-SS division in Bosnia, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims. The mufti was instrumental in the division’s formation.
The Arabs have a particular understanding for introducing forceful measures against Jews in Germany and for their expulsion from the country. After the [First] World War, England and America enabled the Jews to settle in Palestine and to establish a Jewish state there. Jewish excrement from all countries assembled there, rascally striving to seize the land from Arabs. And indeed, they succeeded in buying land from the poorest of the poor and from unscrupulous landlords. By doing so, they took poor widows’ bread and stole food from children to fatten themselves.[6] When the Arabs opposed the Jewish settlement, the Jews did not shun bloody murders. So they robbed many families of their livelihood and threw the families into misery and troubles. (God will punish them for those disgraceful deeds).
The Jewish struggle against Arabs is nothing new for us, except that as time passed, the location of the battlefield changed. Jews hate Muhammad and Islam, and they hate any man who wishes to advance the prosperity of his people and to fight against Jewish lust for possessions and Jewish corruption.
Struggle between Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled Mecca to Medina where he created the base for the development of Islam. At that time, Jews were merchants, already permeated with guile, and they understood that Muhammad’s influence, in both the spiritual and business spheres, could turn into a danger for them. Thus they were possessed by a deep hatred toward Islam; hatred that intensified as Islam was growing more solid and powerful. The Jews breached the agreement they had concluded with Muhammad in Khaibar, of which we shall speak later. Moreover, their rage grew immensely when the Qur’an revealed the deepest inclinations of their soul, their heartlessness, and unscrupulousness by which their ancestors had been commonly known. At that time, the Jewish methods were already the same as they are today. Their weapon has been, as always, slander and quarrel, and so they attempted to humiliate Muhammad in the eyes of his followers. They claimed that he was a deceiver, an enchanter, and a liar. When they did not succeed in this, they attempted to undermine Muhammad’s honor by spreading a rumor that his wife Aisha committed adultery. The purpose of spreading such a rumor was to sow doubt in the hearts of Muhammad’s followers.
When that failed, they tried to show Muhammad’s teaching in a bad light. With that purpose, several Jews converted to Islam; only a few days later, they returned to the Jewish faith. When asked why they changed their mind so suddenly, they replied that they were very willing to settle in Islam but found that all of it is nothing but a lie. The following Qur’anic verse alludes to that:
Many of those knowledgeable in the Scriptures attempt to somehow render you infidels again by converting to our religion. It was, though, nothing but their souls’ envy, when they comprehended truth.[7]
When the Jews understood that they would not reach their goal by the means used until then, they started to ask Muhammad various meaningless and unsolvable questions. Thus, they wanted to convince others that Muhammad was poor in knowledge and wisdom. However, that method achieved no success. As they were thus persuaded that Islam was deeply rooted in the hearts of the Muslims, they commenced with the attempts to destroy the Muslims. Pursuant to that goal, they paid some non-Muslim tribes to fight against Muhammad. The almighty God, however, wanted it differently. With iron fist, Muhammad defeated the rebellious tribes and conquered their city. The Jews could not bear such a defeat, and so they decided to destroy Muhammad in every way. They hired men to murder him.
The Medina Jews lived in the city district of Banu Nadir. When Muhammad came to Medina, he concluded a contract with them. One day he set out to that city district, accompanied by only ten companions, to talk to the Jews and to try to convert them to Islam. Muhammad explained the principles of Islam to the Jews, and they seemed very interested and open-minded. Yet as Muhammad was talking in a friendly way with some of the Jews, another group prepared an attempt on his life. They persuaded a man to throw a piece of rock on Muhammad’s head. Surely Muhammad would have been killed were it not for God, who warned him. An inner voice advised him to leave that place, and so the treacherous Jews could not carry out their design. Consequently Muhammad sent a companion to deliver his message to the Jews to leave the city within ten days. They had breached the contract they concluded with him by trying to take his life. Any Jew found in the city after those ten days would be punished by death.
However, some of the Jews, who outwardly accepted Islam but in their innermost remained Jewish, persuaded other Jews not to leave the city. When the ten days passed, Muhammad was forced to expel the Jews from the city by armed force. Part of the Jews fled to Khaibar and part to Syria.
The Jews who fled to Khaibar, however, would not concede defeat and decided to avenge themselves on Muhammad. For that purpose, they turned to other Khaibar Jews and to the Jews of Taima and of Wadi Qura. Together they plotted a conspiracy: With large sums of money, they agitated non-Muslim Arab tribes to attack Medina. When Muhammad discovered their plan he quickly armed his men and set out toward the plotters’ base in Khaibar. Muhammad’s companions captured Khaibar and expelled most Jews from the site. With the remaining Jews, Muhammad concluded a contract by which peace was guaranteed.
Only after that devastating defeat [of the Jews] could an Islamic Empire peacefully develop. But when one takes into account the Jewish significance, it was not to be wondered that Jews, in spite of the agreements made, did not abandon their plans and continued to try to destroy Muhammad by all available means. They invited him to a feast, and he accepted the invitation suspecting no evil. In front of him was placed a roasted lamb prepared by the Jewess Zainab, wife of Sallam ibn Mishkam.[8] The [topic of] conversation around the table was the contract and a peaceful life in mutual agreement in which they now lived. Muhammad had not the slightest suspicion about treason. The Prophet and his faithful companion Bashr ibn Bara each took a piece of lamb meat. Muhammad, however, did not swallow his bite because its taste made him suspicious.
“The bone tells me that the lamb was poisoned,” he said and called the Jewess Zainab to ask whether the meat had been poisoned. She answered, “You know I am highly esteemed by the Jews, and I acknowledge that I have poisoned the lamb. In so doing, I thought that if you were a king, I would only kill a king, but if you were indeed a prophet, you would know that the meat had been poisoned.”
Muhammad’s companion soon succumbed to the poison’s effect, whereas Muhammad, despite spitting the poisonous bite, later suffered various health disorders, and the impact of the poison had always been evident. Some historians even believe that Muhammad’s death was a consequence of that poisoning. In this matter, they refer to a hadith by Abu Huraira, whereby the Prophet said shortly before his death, “The effect of Khaibar’s feast will manifest in me until I die!”[9]
Many books about the Waffen-SS division in Bosnia display photographs of its soldiers reading a booklet titled Islam und Judentum—most certainly the German version of the mufti’s Croatian or Bosnian pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism). The booklet offers a stark illustration of the lengths taken by the mufti to demonize Jews and Judaism and clearly was produced for propaganda and incitement purposes.
Now, the Jews were persuaded that Muhammad was immune to their attacks. Therefore, they made a decision to spread discord among the Arab tribes, so as to break the power of Islam. When Muhammad went back to Medina, he succeeded in reconciling the Arab tribes of Kawsha and Karasha,[10] which had been fighting each other ceaselessly for 120 years. In doing so, he significantly strengthened Islam’s position. Members of those two [formerly] hostile tribes became brethren in Islam, and peace entered the city. In this regard, the Jews tried to undermine the Islamic empire.
A revengeful old man by the name of Shas ibn Qais one day walked with his friends and came across an assembly of the reconciled tribes held in city square. He could not bear to see how [the members of] those two tribes, formerly at war with each other, now communicated nicely, and so devised a hellish plan. He sent to their assembly a friend of his, knowledgeable in war poems, and persuaded him to recite some of his old poems that were full of hatred. That Jew, an outstanding orator, came indeed to the assembly and started to recite old war poems of both tribes. By doing so, he managed to find in each tribe a man in whom old hatred flared up. Those two men started to fight each other and then urged their fellow-tribesmen to take up arms. An immense tragedy would have ensued were it not for Muhammad, who learned about the fight amongst brethren and hurried up to the battlefield.
“Oh my God, are the old times returning even while I am still amongst you!” he shouted. “When I gave you Islam as religion, the old fratricidal discord was buried, and you became brothers in your hearts. Do you wish to slip into infidelity again?”
Both tribes understood that disturbances among them were sown by the Jews alone. They threw away their weapons and asked God for forgiveness, and then they hugged each other and concluded a new brotherly alliance. Regarding Shas ibn Qais the Jew, it is said in the Qur’an,
Oh, you scribes,[11] why do you prevent the believer from walking on God’s path when you are witnesses yourselves? But God is not blind for what you do.[12]
Regarding the tribes of Kawsha and Karasha, the Qur’an said,
Oh, you who believe, would you listen to those who received the Scripture, so that they would turn you into unbelievers again, after you have received faith! How can you be infidels when God’s words were read to you, and his apostle is among you? He who holds unto God has already been introduced to a straight path.[13]
Notwithstanding their attempts, the Jews never succeeded in spreading division among Muhammad’s followers and in dragging them back into infidelity. However, even after all these events should have taught them the futility of their efforts, they persistently continued to carry out their devilish plans. Once, they tried by deceit to even bring down Muhammad himself.
There was a quarrel between two Jewish tribes, and the side that was wrong held an assembly and sent its leaders to Muhammad. Those Jewish leaders said to Muhammad, “You know that we are influential people. If you support us in our dispute with our opponents, we will apply all our influence to make all Jews convert to Islam.” Muhammad, of course, dismissed them. There is a verse in the Qur’an about this event:
Be careful to make decisions according to what God has revealed and not to consider their desires. Keep your guard toward them so that they would not even partially shift you from what God has revealed to you. If they rebel, know that God will surely punish them for a part of their sins. There are, indeed, many men who are evildoers.[14]
Another example of Jewish subversive action was recorded by Ibn Abbas. At the time when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina, prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. However, it lasted only for seventeen months. Then Muhammad received God’s revelation that the direction of prayers should be Mecca, and ever since, prayers are uttered with faces turned to Mecca. The Qur’an says about this:
We see how you turn your face toward heaven, and we would like to give it a direction which you will like: Turn your face toward the holy place of prayer; wherever you find yourselves, turn your face in that direction. Don’t you see that even those who had received the Scripture know that it is the truth before their Lord? And God is never heedless of what they do.[15]
When the Jews found out about this Qur’anic verse, they were angered and asked Muhammad to return to the previous direction of prayer, which was Jerusalem. Were he to do so, they promised, all Jews would accept Islam. Muhammad, however, did not allow himself to be led astray by such a proposal and to transgress against God’s command. We find the following in the Qur’an about that:
The direction to which you used to turn in prayer until now we have changed only for the purpose of distinguishing those who follow apostles from those who turn on their heel. That was surely difficult but not for those led by God. And God does not want to destroy your faith because God is full of goodness and compassionate to men.[16]
Here is another example how the Jews did not hesitate to stab Muhammad in the back at the time of his utmost distress. When Muhammad won the Battle of Badr, he sent a messenger on his own camel, because that camel was the fastest, to carry the news about his victory to Medina. The Jews, however, tried to bring confusion into the Muslims’ ranks by spreading false rumors that Muhammad had been killed in the battle. As evidence, they pointed out that Muhammad’s camel returned to the city with another rider.
When even that design failed, the Jews turned to Mecca to incite Muhammad’s enemies against him. Moreover, they declared their readiness to support the Meccans in their fight against Muhammad with an army of theirs. When the pagans of Mecca asked the Jews—since the Jews had received the Holy Scripture even before Muhammad—whether or not Muhammad’s religion was good, the Jews answered, “You know that we are men of letters. Believe us, therefore, when we tell you that your religion is much better.” The following verse is in the Qur’an about this:
Don’t you see those who received the Scriptures? They believe in Jibt and Taghut [superstition and idolatry], but they nevertheless say about pagans that their way is better than believers’ way. Those are the ones whom God has cursed, and he who was cursed by God cannot be helped.[17]
As we see, that curse came true. Without a homeland, the Jews are scattered throughout the whole world, and nowhere do they find true help and support. Another Qur’anic verse reads:
You will certainly find out that the greatest animosity toward the believers foster the Jews and the pagans.[18]
That idea has been even better expressed by words of Muhammad: “It will never be possible for you to see a Muslim and a Jew together without secret intention in the [heart of the] Jew to destroy the Muslim.”[19] Abu Huraira passed to us the following hadith:
Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims completely destroy the Jews, and when every tree with a Jew hidden behind will say to the Muslim, “There is a Jew behind me, kill him!” Only the gharqad tree, which is a small bush with many thorns growing around Jerusalem, will not participate in it because it is a Jewish tree! [Bukhari-Muslim VIII, p. 188].
The booklet Islam and Judaism offers a stark illustration of the lengths taken by the mufti to demonize Jews and Judaism. Qur’anic passages are freely paraphrased without reference to sura and verse while apparent quotations (like those about Jews converting insincerely to Islam in order to drag Muslims away from their faith) are nowhere to be found in the Qur’an, certainly not in the translation by Muhammed Pandža and Džemaluddin Čaušević[20] used by Yugoslav Muslims since 1937. Indicating the pamphlet’s clear propaganda and incitement purpose, this sloppiness reflected both Hajj Amin’s poor religious credentials and his apparent conviction that the pamphlet would not be subjected to critical scrutiny or even read by believers well-versed in the Qur’an. For, though bestowed with the title of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine’s highest religious authority, it was common knowledge at the time that Hajj Amin did not possess the necessary religious credentials for such a lofty post. Indeed, he even failed to make the final short-list for the mufti’s post having received only nine of the electors’ sixty-four votes; but the Husseinis and their British champions forced one of the final three candidates to step down in his favor, paving the road to his appointment.[21]
Some of the pamphlet’s assertions indicate the mufti’s deficient familiarity with Islamic history and theology. Nor was Hajj Amin averse to introducing novelties and fabrications for the purpose of defaming Jews. His text contains details with an unconventional interpretation of Qur’anic accounts, some of them erroneous. He accuses the Jews of having “attempted to undermine Muhammad’s honor by spreading a rumor that Muhammad’s wife Aisha committed adultery.” But renowned Islamic scholars, including Tabari, to whom the mufti refers in the booklet, do not mention the Jews at all in the context of this event: Aisha’s accusers were all Arabs. Some came from the tribe of Kharzaj; at least one was from the Quraish, Muhammad’s tribe, and another was the sister of Muhammad’s wife. Their names are listed in both Ibn Ishak’s and Tabari’s accounts of the event. After God revealed Aisha’s innocence to Muhammad, some of the accusers were punished by flogging.[22]
Furthermore, the mufti claimed that Muhammad attacked Khaibar because its Jews bribed Arab tribes to attack Medina. The sources, however, do not mention any such activity by the Khaibar Jews. Khaibar was in alliance with the Arab tribe of Ghatafan—which at this point seemed to be rather defensive—with the Quraish, and with the Persians. Muhammad’s attack occurred shortly after he concluded the peace of Hudaibiya (March 628) with the Meccans. It is hard to envisage that Muhammad’s enemies would plot an attack from the north without Meccan support. On the contrary, it seems that he concluded the peace of Hudaibiya to secure his southern front so as to be able to attack the Khaibar Jews, whose Persian allies had just been defeated by the Byzantine army.[23]
There remains a deep connection between Islamism and Nazism based on the common characteristics of racism, nationalism, religious bigotry, and intolerance. Hitler’s Mein Kampf has been a bestseller for years in predominantly Muslim countries, including the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.
There was, however, an event reminiscent of the mufti’s story that occurred a year earlier. The Jews of Medina had invited the Quraish and Ghatafan tribes to attack Muhammad. It was at this point, after the Battle of Badr, that the Quraish asked the Jews whose religion was better, theirs or Muhammad’s. Encouraged by the Jews, the two tribes marched on Medina, and their subsequent abortive attack came to be known as the Battle of the Ditch. After their retreat, Muhammad attacked Medina’s Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza.[24] It seems likely that the mufti—unless he intentionally invented stories, a possibility that cannot be ruled out—confused the episode of the Banu Quraiza with that of Muhammad’s war on Khaibar.
Far more important than these technical details and idiosyncratic interpretations are the novelties the pamphlet introduces in Islamic political discourse regarding the Jews. By combining the Islamic canon with pre-Christian and Christian anti-Judaism, it attributes strengths and powers to Jews that cannot be found in Islamic tradition by portraying them as far more cunning and successful in their vicious designs than previous mainstream Islamic thought had recognized or permitted.
A simpler example of this anti-Jewish eclecticism can be found in the mufti’s accusation that Jews brought plague to Arabia. This statement evokes medieval European myths with similar themes. More significant is the notion that Muhammad’s death might have been a result of poison given to him by a Khaibar Jewess.
To be sure, Ibn Ishak and Tabari do mention how during the illness that led to his death Muhammad spoke to Umm Bashr, mother of his poisoned companion, and complained about his pain, caused by poisonous meat he had tasted three years earlier.[25] However, in classic Islamic thought, this tradition was not interpreted as proof that the Jewess had succeeded in her attempt on the Prophet’s life but as a desire to attribute to the Prophet the highest of virtues: martyrdom. In Ibn Ishak’s words, “The Muslims considered that the apostle died as a martyr in addition to the prophetic office with which God had honored him.”[26] Tabari repeats this explanation, as does Ibn Kathir (1300-73), who referred to eight different hadiths asserting that Muhammad had been warned by God about the poison: proof of his being a genuine prophet. Conversely, Ibn Kathir states that “the Messenger of God died a martyr.”[27]
The core theme of all these traditions is the Prophet’s martyrdom and not the Jews’ lethal craft; the reader is left with the clear impression that the two phenomena were unrelated. In contrast, the mufti’s pamphlet establishes the link and changes the emphasis from the Prophet’s virtue to the Jews’ mendacity. Apparently, his intention was to draw parallels with Christian traditions regarding Christ’s killing by the Jews. This accusation was intended to provoke more anger among Muslims, but it also violated Islamic tradition and theology.
The implications of the mufti’s claim that the Jews were successful in killing Muhammad despite God’s warning imply that Jews possess the power to defy God’s will. Such a blasphemous thought would be worse than Christian accusation of deicide. Jesus overcame death, and by his suffering, death and resurrection brought salvation to his community of believers; however, Muhammad not only remained dead but also failed to appoint his successor due to the rapid progression of his illness and his sudden, untimely demise. Consequently, the umma was split by different claimants to authority, and the dispute eventually led to the fiercest internecine strife in the history of early Islam, known as the fitna.
While the mufti’s Palestinian successors would not tire of reiterating this story (as late as November 2013, Palestinian Authority minister of religious affairs Mahmoud Habbash claimed that Yasser Arafat was poisoned by the Jews just as they had poisoned the Prophet Muhammad to death),[28]most contemporary Islamic scholars have a different understanding of this hazardous theology; inasmuch, the accusation that the Jews killed the Prophet has largely faded as a theological theme with mainstream Islamic commentary viewing the Jews, along the Qur’anic derision, as “adh-dhilla wa-l-maskan,” translated by Yehoshafat Harkabi as “humiliation and wretchedness.”[29] Bernard Lewis further explained:
The outstanding characteristic, therefore, of the Jews as seen and as treated in the classical Islamic world is their unimportance. … For Muslims, he might be hostile, cunning, and vindictive, but he was weak and ineffectual—an object of ridicule, not fear. This image of weakness and insignificance could only be confirmed by the subsequent history of Jewish life in Muslim lands.[30]
Departing from this conventional view, the mufti did not interpret contemporary events as a new historical phenomenon to which Muslims should respond in a new, ad hoc manner. Instead, he traced Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the alleged Jewish power and ambitions, to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent, later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel’s stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of “wiping out the Islamic caliphate” by starting World War I and of starting the French and the communist revolutions, establishing “clandestine organizations” and financial power so as to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries.[31] Likewise, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy.[32] Attributing such gargantuan accomplishments to the Jews, many of them at the expense of Muslims, presents a theological innovation with an immediate political consequence. Linking early Islamic with medieval Christian depictions of Jews results in their portrayal as “a demonic entity,” thus making their “extermination legitimate.”[33]
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[1] Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine, trans. Krista Smith (New York: Enigma Books in Association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010), p. viii.
[2] Boris Havel, “Haj Amin al-Husseini: Herald of Religious Anti-Judaism in the Contemporary Islamic World,”The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 3 (2014): 221-43.
[3] The following text has been translated from the original pamphlet: Veliki Muftija Jeruzalemski Hadži Emin el-Huseini, Islam I Židovstvo (Zagreb: Hrvatski tiskarski zavod, 1943). I wish to thank the staff of the National and University Library in Zagreb for tracing the booklet. The Qur’anic verses and hadith are translated as they appear in the original text.
[4] The word “prostačkoj” can also be translated as: obscene, dirty, or indecent.
[5] This word was written in singular in the original text and introduces the notion that the average Jew was such; by referring to “a Jew,” the author refers to the whole people.
[6] The mufti fails to note that prominent members of his own family, including his father, were among the “unscrupulous landlords” selling plots of land to the Jews. See Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 15-19.
[7] Sura 2:109.-Ed.
[8] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s “Sirat Rasul Allah” by A. Guillaume(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004; repr., 1967), p. 516; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari [Ta’rikh al-Rusul Wa–l-Muluk] (New York: State University of New York Press, 1987-97), vol. VIII, pp. 123-4.- Ed.
[9] Bukhari’s Hadith, 4.394.-Ed.
[10] The author probably refers to the Arab tribes of Aws and Kharzaj though the transliteration (Kauša i Karaša) barely resembles those names.
[11] The word “pismenjaci” refers to the “People of the Book” (sljedbenici knjige in Čaušević-Pandža).
[12] Sura 3:99.-Ed.
[13] Sura 3:99-101.-Ed.
[14] Sura 5:41-5.-Ed.
[15] Sura 2:144-9.-Ed.
[16] Sura 2:142-3.-Ed.
[17] Sura 4:51-5.-Ed.
[18] Sura 5:82.-Ed.
[19] There is no Qur’anic verse with this message. The mufti perhaps refers to a non-canonical hadith or obscure tradition.
[20] Muhammed Pandža and Džemaluddin Čaušević (eds.), Kur‘an, Sedmo Izdanje (South Birmingham: Islamic Relief, 1937-89). Though the Qur’an condemns those who falsely feigned Islamic belief (e.g., sura 2:8-9, or sura 63), this condemnation does not specifically apply to the Jews but rather to the wider category of “hypocrites.”
[21] Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, p. 17; David Dalin and John Rothmann, Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam (New York: Random House, 2008), p. 252.
[22] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 492-9; Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. VIII, pp. 57-67; Qur’an: sura 24:11-26.
[23] Michael Lecker, “The Hudaybiyya-Treaty and the Expedition against Khaybar,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 5 (1984), pp. 1-12.
[24] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, pp. 450-69.
[25] Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol VIII, p. 124.
[26] Ibn-Ishak, The Life of Muhammad, p. 516.
[27] Ibn-Kathir, The Life of the Prophet Muhammad (al-Sira al-Nabawiyya), trans. Trevor Le Gassick (Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2000-06), vol. 3, pp. 283-7.
[28] Palestinian Authority TV, Nov. 8, 2013; “PA: Arafat was poisoned by Jews like Islam’s Prophet Muhammad,” trans. Palestinian Media Watch, Nov. 12, 2013.
[29] Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1972), p. 220.
[30] Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (London: Phoenix, 1997), pp. 117-39.
[31] See, for example, “Hamas Covenant 1988,” Yale Law School Avalon Project, accessed Mar. 14, 2015.
[32] CNN, Oct. 16, 2003.
[33] Moshe Sharon, Jihad: Islam against Israel and the West (Jerusalem: Moshe Sharon, 2007), pp. 77-8.
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