Archive for the ‘Obama’s America’ category

The Canadian Temper: A Warning to America

January 30, 2016

The Canadian Temper: A Warning to America, American ThinkerDavid Solway, January 30, 2016

(Should America’s domestic policies be more, or less, like those of Canada? Domestic policies tend to be reflected in foreign policies. We are heading, I think, in the wrong direction. — DM)

The U.S. is clearly heading in the same direction with its national debt swelling exponentially and the inpouring of unvetted “Syrian” migrants exacerbating an already problematic Islamic infiltration. In effect, it’s the same set of cultural attributes, a big spending mentality and an open door policy, of which Canada has long been a shining exemplar. This is why the coming election is perhaps the most critical in U.S. history.

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Canadians have long thought of themselves as morally superior to the supposedly vulgar and abrasive Americans. According to the self-justifying Canadian mythos, we embody a more enlightened and humane outlook on the world. In addition to oil, maple syrup, and lumber, our most valuable export — our gift, we imagine, to our southern neighbors — is our vision of a sustainable and irenic future. Let us examine the most current incarnation of that vision.

Canada is essentially a socialist country, closer to the increasingly decrepit European welfare and statist paradigm than to the (now faltering) classic American model of individual self-reliance. Canada instituted social programs like state-funded medicine relying on major tax hikes long before it became an issue in the U.S., and gambled on multiculturalism as a viable national project, in effect, as a kind of political eschatology. There is no question that the Canadian temper has always been more politically Arcadian than the American.

The current refugee question in particular has become a pivotal and collective expression of this temper, with citizens opening their wallets, hearts, and homes to a migratory influx from the Islamic world. Our self-congratulatory generosity is amply demonstrated in the writings of celebrated Constitutional lawyer Julius Grey. Pontificating in the Montreal Gazette, Grey urges the welcoming of thousands of Syrian migrants as we proceed “to create a society which has, on the one hand, citizens of myriad origins and, on the other, no barriers between them.”

The problem that Grey refuses to confront or even identify is that immigrants and refugees from historically backward, theocratic, anti-Semitic, Sharia-dominated, and terror-sponsoring nations are precisely the ones who are creating “barriers,” such as purpose-built ghettos, no-go zones, closed neighborhoods, special privileges and spaces, an atmosphere of threat, and who have no interest in Western-style “individual autonomy and freedom” — Grey’s chosen vocabulary. Grey is the lawyer for the Muslim-friendly socialist New Democratic Party, but there is not much sunlight between the NDP and the governing Muslim-friendly Liberal Party.

Indeed, in the October 2015 Federal election the Liberals, the NDP and the splinter, reactionary-left Greens ran between them a total of 23 Muslim candidates (the leftist/sovereignist Bloc Québécois fielded two Muslim candidates, raising the combined total to 25 Muslim hopefuls), representing approximately 7 per cent of available parliamentary seats, over twice the Islamic percentage of the population. (The ousted Conservatives fielded only four Muslims.) In the end, the combined electoral seats won by the four left-leaning parties, the Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens, clocked in at 71 per cent; the center-right Conservatives polled just 29 per cent. This is the face of Canada today.

During the election campaign, Islam became a prominent issue, with Liberal PM Justin Trudeau claiming that there was no place in his Canada for the previous Conservative government’s “divisive” Islamophobia and exaggerated concern for national security. In his victory speech, Trudeau uttered the inevitable pieties à la Obama: “We beat fear with hope, we beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together.” To a Muslim woman wearing a hijab, he promised “a government that believes deeply in the diversity of this country.”

A perverse illustration of this stupefying attitude comes from the Bank of Nova Scotia (commonly known as Scotiabank), which has welcomed the migrant onslaught with its Welcome Syrians program. (The original webpage featuring large print and colorful graphics now seems to have been scrubbed.) Canada’s third largest bank is offering every Syrian a hundred dollar gift deposit, a $2000 limit unsecured credit card, a free safety deposit box for one year and a $50 unsecured overdraft. Customers who bank at the Scotia and pay monthly fees to maintain their accounts have good reason to feel resentful — unless, of course, they happen to be migrant sympathizers and soft on Islam.

These “Syrians,” not all of whom are Syrians and some of whom are almost surely ISIS jihadists, receive housing, benefits, and gifts without having contributed an iota to the nation’s economy; indeed, they will be a limitless drain on our resources.

The $1.2 billion cost of bringing in these refugees is only the beginning of our fiscal woes. Quoted by the CBC, coordinator Carl Nicholson said “many factors have made the task of housing government-assisted refugees more difficult, including the larger-than expected size of some families that have arrived.” The accompanying photo shows a couple with six toddlers. No wonder the Liberals’ shopworn immigration minister John McCallum has solicited the business community for donations in the amount of $50 million. “I would encourage all Canadians, companies, individuals, communities, to continue to support the effort because we are entering a critical phase,” he said. Darn right on the latter score.

My parents and grandparents, fleeing starving, war-torn Ukraine, worked to the bone to earn a living while contributing through taxes to the national welfare. Many Canadians share the same history, yet they are expected to receive and bankroll a large number of migrants who will take advantage of the innumerable perks that our forebears, who fled famine and civil war and who helped build this country, had never enjoyed or even considered their due.

Richard Butrick cogently argues in an important article for American Thinker that immigrants who came to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries “knew they had to work hard to survive,” at the same time contributing to the nation’s commercial, industrial, and scientific advances. “Immigrants today,” he continues, “know the U.S. is a fail-safe environment,” where they are subsidized and coddled. The so-called “re-energizing” immigration narrative has been superseded by, let’s say, a parasitical model based on muddled sentimentality and false calculations, which Canada has bought into without sober forethought. A country built on welfare migrants is not a country built on hardworking immigrants.

There are some signs that the “Syrian Covenant” is becoming more complicated than originally envisaged, as the initial euphoria for the migrants seems to be waning under an unforgiving reality. I have heard that families that have gloatingly affirmed their “Canadian values” and freely taken Syrians into their homes are petitioning their government for financial help. The City of Ottawa, Canada’s capital, has called for a pause to its hospitality for lack of housing, facilities and funds. Toronto, Vancouver, and Halifax have also asked for a hiatus. The bloom is starting to come off the rose — and the hue off the rose-colored glasses — for many of these fallow enthusiasts. But with further government subventions and the media propaganda blitz saturating what remains of the Canadian mind, the early stages of skepticism and reluctance will probably lead to nothing much.

This is how we do things in Canada. We throw out a Conservative government — itself an anomaly in our political landscape — that steered us safely through the devastating market crash of 2007/8, and objected to Islamic face coverings in citizenship swearing-in ceremonies and to the acceptance of “barbaric” practices in the cultural habits of these new citizens — and bring in a Liberal administration dedicated to increasing the national debt and gradually submerging the country in an effluvium of Muslim migrants and refugees.

The U.S. is clearly heading in the same direction with its national debt swelling exponentially and the inpouring of unvetted “Syrian” migrants exacerbating an already problematic Islamic infiltration. In effect, it’s the same set of cultural attributes, a big spending mentality and an open door policy, of which Canada has long been a shining exemplar. This is why the coming election is perhaps the most critical in U.S. history. A Democrat administration under Billary or Bernie would close the gap between our two countries dramatically. And this is why the candidacies of Donald Trump, for all his flaws, and of the Cruzio amalgam despite the media-generated flap over their eligibility, may determine whether America can return to some degree of sanity and a semblance of its former vitality — or, heaven forfend, become Canada South.

 

Islam and Islamism in America in 2015: Part II

January 29, 2016

Islam and Islamism in America in 2015: Part II – April – June 2015, Gatestone InstituteSoeren Kern, January 29, 2016

♦ More than half (51%) of Muslims in America believe they should “have the choice of being governed according to Sharia.” Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts. Nearly a quarter believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.” Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the U.S. is justified in order to make Sharia the law of the land in this country. – Poll commissioned by the Center for Security Policy, Washington, D.C.

♦ “Ramadan is a special prayer time, a time for religion. We double-park here every Friday and they [allow it], but today they gave us all tickets, almost 100 cabs. This has never happened before. I can’t help but to think they are being prejudiced. They don’t understand. We have to be here.” – Mohammad Zaman, New York City cab driver.

♦ “We have no way … to know who these people are … we don’t have databases on these individuals so we can’t properly vet them, to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose.” – Michael McCaul, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, commenting on the Obama administration plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the U.S.

♦ ISIS is operating training camps just a few miles from El Paso, Texas. – Judicial Watch, citing Mexican law enforcement and intelligence sources.

♦ Officials at Mason High School in Mason, Ohio, canceled “hijab day” after parents expressed opposition. Female students were asked to wear a headscarf, or hijab, for an entire school day, followed by a time for reflection and discussion.

The following is a chronological survey of some of the main stories about Islam and Islamism in America during the second quarter of 2015. Part 1 of this series can be found here.

1450Left: In June 2015, the New York Police Department issued parking tickets to more than 100 Muslim cab drivers parked illegally outside a mosque on the Upper West Side during Ramadan. Right: In January 2015, after complaints from Muslim students at the University of Minnesota, the university ordered that posters depicting a caricature of Mohammed be taken down. The ban was later rescinded.

APRIL 2015

April 1. Ahlam Ahmed, an 18-year-old year-old from Queens, said she wanted to become the first female Muslim firefighter in New York City. Ahmed stands five feet tall and weighs just 105 pounds. In an interview with the Village Voice, Ahmed expressed more concern over the dress code than the physical requirements for the job. “I have to be covered,” she said. “I love wearing the scarf. It’s for protection.” FDNY press officer Elisheva Zakheim said: “We try to accommodate religious practices, but safety is our first concern, be it male or female. We approach a lot of these questions on a case-by-case basis.”

April 2. A study by the Washington, DC-based Pew Research Center forecast that, if current trends continue, there will be more Muslims in North America than Jews by 2035. The study, “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050,” states that in the United States, Muslims will comprise 2.1% of the population in 2050, up from 0.9% in 2010. Jews, meanwhile, will fall to 1.4% of the U.S. population from 1.8% in 2010.

April 2. A newsletter distributed by the Republican Central Committee in Bonneville County,Idaho, included an article, “Islam in Idaho,” which warned that Muslims are “infiltrating” the state, and that Muslims have been taught to “be ready to rise up and kill” non-Muslims. The article called on readers to “demand that our lawmakers and law enforcers pay attention and ascertain whether or not there is a potential threat.”

April 7. U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at an Easter prayer breakfast at the White House, criticized “less-than-loving” Christians. His remarks came just days after he sanitized any reference to Islam after jihadists slaughtered 148 Christians at a college in Garissa, Kenya. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said Obama’s comments at the prayer breakfast were “very disturbing.” He added:

“This comes right on the heels of Muslim madmen singling out Christians, calling them out by name, knowing which ones they wanted to execute, in Kenya. We have a president who never mentions the word ‘Christians’ except when he wants to denigrate them.”

He doesn’t want to offend Muslims. But he obviously doesn’t mind offending Christians. Somehow it’s okay to speak about Christians disappointing him, because they don’t always act with love. Well, that’s true. But what a grand opportunity to make a statement about what happened last week in Kenya. And once again, he’s silent with Christians when it comes to us being the victims of genocide.”

April 7. A scheduled screening of “American Sniper” at the University of Michigan was abruptly cancelled after school officials received complaints that the film perpetuates “negative and misleading stereotypes” against Muslims. A statement said: “While our intent was to show a film, the impact of the content was harmful, and made students feel unsafe and unwelcomed at our program.” On April 16, the university reversed its decision.

April 8. Writing in a magazine called Index on Censorship, the organizers of a women’s conference at the University of South Dakota recounted attempts by Muslim groups to ban a screening of Honor Diaries, a documentary film about the worldwide problem of honor killings and other violence against women.

April 8. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) demanded that a high school teacher in Richmond, Texas, be disciplined for distributing “virulently anti-Muslim” material to students. The 8-page handout, distributed in a senior economics class at Richmond’s Foster High School, said that “Islam is more of an ideology than a religion. It is also an ideology of war.” The document also said that Muslims believe all governments except Islamic ones should be overthrown. “Only a strong response to this attempt at student indoctrination will send a message that our schools must never be incubators of hate,” said CAIR.

April 10. A HuffPost/YouGov poll found that more than half (55%) of Americans say they have unfavorable views of Islam, and six in 10 either are not interested or do not know whether they want to learn more about the faith. Just 7% said they had a very favorable view of the religion, and 14% said they saw it somewhat favorably.

April 13. Writing in Time magazine, Muslim feminist Asra Nomani described how Muslim groups pressed Duke University to cancel a speech she was invited to give to argue for a progressive, feminist interpretation of Islam in the world. The president of the Duke chapter of the Muslim Students Association sent an email to Muslim students about Nomani’s “views” and alleging that she was in a nefarious “alliance” with “Islamophobic speakers.” After she asked for evidence against her, Duke University re-invited her. Nomani wrote:

“This experience goes beyond feminism to a broader debate over how too many Muslims are responding to critical conversations on Islam with snubs, boycotts, and calls for censorship, exploiting feelings of conflict avoidance and political correctness to stifle debate. As a journalist for 30 years, I believe we must stand up for America’s principles of free speech and have critical conversations, especially if they make people feel uncomfortable.

“By standing on stage, I was standing up to the forces in our Muslim communities that are increasingly using tactics of intimidation and smears such as “Islamophobe,” “House Muslim,” “Uncle Tom,” “native informant,” “racist” and “bigot” to cancel events with which they disagree.

“These dynamics of silencing are often used against women such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born activist and author of a new book, Heretic. Brandeis University uninvited her from speaking after protests from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Students Association last year, and the Muslim Students Association at Yale University protested her speech at the university last fall.”

April 13. Nearly 300 Muslim delegates from more than 20 states met with elected officials and congressional staffers on Capitol Hill during the first-ever National Muslim Advocacy Day. The event was sponsored by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of American Muslim groups, some of which are linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Former FBI counterterrorism agent John Guandolo said the event was a “cunning bid by radical Islam to gain political power in the United States.”

April 14. Judicial Watch, citing Mexican law enforcement and intelligence sources, reported that ISIS is operating training camps just a few miles from El Paso, Texas:

“The exact location where the terrorist group has established its base is around eight miles from the U.S. border in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez. Another ISIS cell to the west of Ciudad Juárez, targets New Mexico towns for easy access to the United States.

“During the course of a joint operation last week, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

“According to these same sources, “coyotes” engaged in human smuggling — and working for Juárez Cartel — help move ISIS terrorists through the desert and across the border. These specific areas were targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces, and the relative safe-havens the areas provide for the unchecked large-scale drug smuggling that was already ongoing.

“Mexican intelligence sources report that ISIS intends to exploit the railways and airport facilities in the vicinity. The sources also say that ISIS has “spotters” to assist with terrorist border crossing operations. ISIS is conducting reconnaissance of regional universities; the White Sands Missile Range; government facilities in Alamogordo, NM; Ft. Bliss; and the electrical power facilities near Anapra and Chaparral, NM.”

April 14. Students at Union Grove High School in Wisconsin were asked to “pretend you’re a Muslim” and “give three examples of what you do daily for your religion and any struggles you face.” WISN talk radio host Vicki McKenna posted the writing assignment on Twitter. “I feel that the purpose of the assignment is to show prejudices towards Muslims in America or to invent them or exaggerate them,” said one parent.

April 14. The Justice Department said U.S. citizens and residents can now find out whether they are on the “no-fly” list and possibly receive a summary of the reasons for their placement in the secret database. Around 47,000 people are on the no-fly list, 800 of whom are Americans. They are barred from boarding a U.S. carrier, a U.S.-bound flight or entering U.S. airspace.

April 16. A legislative committee in Augusta, Maine, voted 8-2 to reject a bill that attempted to codify the state and U.S. constitutions as the law of the land. The legislation, LD 330, was modeled after a law passed in Tennessee aimed at preventing the use of Muslim Sharia law in state courts there.

April 17. Officials at Mason High School in Mason, Ohio, canceled “hijab day” after parents expressed opposition. Female students were asked to wear a headscarf, or hijab, for an entire school day, followed by a time for reflection and discussion. Principal Mindy McCarty-Stewart said the “Covered Girl Challenge,” sponsored by MHS’ Muslim Students Association, was meant to combat stereotypes Muslim women may face when wearing head coverings. Former school board candidate Sharon Poe said: “My belief is wearing these hijabs represents the oppression of women and Sharia law. I do not recall ever getting an email announcing a Christian Cross Wearing day or a booth for information about the Christian persecution from Islamic terrorists. What happened to the argument of the separation of church and state?”

April 20. The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), a coalition of groups, defendedTurkey ahead of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day on April 24. The USCMO published a statement opposing any recognition of the genocide of Armenian Christians in 1915 by the Ottoman Turks. The group claims there has not been a “proper investigation of these events by independent historians.”

April 20. Turkish media reported that U.S. President Barack Obama had agreed to accompany Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the inauguration ceremony of a $100 million mega-mosque in Lanham, Maryland.

April 22. Amir from Seattle, Washington, sought advice on his student loans from financial guru Steve Rhode:

“I recently called to ask if I could get a lower pay-off amount as the original loans were 32K and now they are up to about 64K because of deferment and interest. They said no. My conditions have changed. I was born into Islam, however, never knew much about my religion. Since 2012, I have been learning more about my faith and it is strictly forbidden in my faith to have dealings with interest. I am offering to pay off the original amount I owe. However, due to religious reasons, I would like them to recognize that my awareness and conditions have changed from the time of originally accepting the loan. Can I get the interest wiped out and close this account and case with just paying the original amount borrowed?”

April 22. Mohamed S. Abdullahi, 30, of Phoenix, Arizona, was arrested after physically and sexually assaulting a woman after their arranged marriage. Police said the victim’s parents had married her to Abdullahi without her knowledge. After she learned of the marriage, she fled the state, but returned two weeks later to finish high school. The victim’s family members reportedly took her to Abdullahi’s residence against her will on April 20. Police said Abdullahi punched, bit and strangled her before sexually assaulting her.

April 23. In a letter, U.S. Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and André Carson (D-IN) asked the Obama administration to ban Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders from visiting the United States because of his anti-Islam views: “We respectfully request that the U.S. government deny Mr. Wilders entry due to his participation in inciting anti-Muslim aggression and violence. Mr. Wilders’ policy agenda is centered on the principle that Christian culture is superior to other cultures.”

April 24. The U.S. Justice Department said it would “monitor” an Arkansas gun range that declared itself a “Muslim-free zone.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) complained about statements by Jan Morgan, the owner of Gun Cave Shooting Range in Hot Springs. In a letter addressed to Attorney General Eric Holder, CAIR said the range was “systematically banning Muslims from a place of business” and that doing so was “a violation of federal laws prohibiting racial and religious discrimination.”

April 24. The University of Maryland (UMD) postponed a screening of the film, American Sniper, after the UMD’s Muslim Students Association complained that the film “only serves to fuel hatred, promote Islamophobia, and discriminate against Muslim individuals.” One of UMD’s most famous graduates, retired American football quarterback and current sports commentator Boomer Esiason, tweeted he was “never donating another dime” to the school. “As a 9/11/01 victim I’m deeply saddened and insulted. #ChrisKyle is a hero!” Pastor Franklin Graham wrote:

“Can you believe that the University of Maryland canceled a screening of the movie American Sniper after Muslim students complained? Shame on the University of Maryland for listening to these voices! If these Muslim students can’t support the military members who do their job to protect us, let them leave America and go to a Muslim country. God bless America and our heroes!”

April 28. A middle school teacher in Georgia was fired after she criticized President Barack Obama and his supporters in front of students. Nancy Perry allegedly told students at Dublin Middle School that Obama is Muslim and Christians should not support him.

April 29. The board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) voted 9-2 to ban political and religious ads on all subways and buses in New York City. The move came a week after Manhattan federal Judge John Koeltl ordered the MTA to run an ad from the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a free speech advocacy group. The ad featured a Muslim man with his face covered and the Hamas quote: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah.”

April 29. An internal investigation found that the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota did not violate university policies on discrimination when it published a flyer depicting a caricature of Mohammed. Controversy erupted in January, when several professors organized a panel discussion about the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The panel was promoted with a flyer which recreated a Charlie Hebdo cover, with a red “CENSORED” stamp on top of it. After Muslim students complained, the university ordered that the posters be taken down, but then reversed the ban, saying it was a mistake. “There is no question in my mind that this poster was protected speech,” said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law. Professor Bruno Chaouat, who helped to organize the event, said the university’s decision to launch an investigation was part of a worrisome trend: “I think what’s going on is a global problem … of self-censorship.”

MAY 2015

May 1. The Islamic Society of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, purchased a former Lutheran church across from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union and will convert it into a mosque for a growing east side Muslim community. The Islamic Society purchased property — including a 3,150-square-foot worship space and adjacent triplex — for $700,000. In March, the Islamic Society opened a new $3 million mosque in Brookfield — a first for Waukesha County.

May 3. Elton Simpson, 30, and Nadir Hamid Soofi, 34, were killed by police after they opened fire outside the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas. ISIS claimed responsibility for the shooting, believed to have been the first ISIS-inspired attack on U.S. soil. Simpson, a convert to Islam with a long history of extremism, had been prosecuted in 2010 for lying to the FBI after he spoke of joining Al Shabaab, a terrorist group in Somalia.

May 3. A contract employee at Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, New York, was charged with making a terrorist threat after he said he would bring a gun to work and “shoot everybody.” Mohammad Salak, a 33-year-old employee of the company Envoy, hired by United Airlines to handle ground services, became the focus of an investigation after fellow employees accused Salak of saying:

“They don’t know where I’m from. I’ve been in wars. I’ve killed people and killing somebody is nothing to me. I’ll leave here and go get my mask and my gun and come and kill everybody.”

Police later determined the threats were directed at fellow employees, not travelers or members of the public passing through the airport. The Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office significantly reduced the initial charge against Salak from the felony of making a terroristic threat, to misdemeanor menacing, then to disorderly conduct.

May 4. A new instruction manual issued by the Islamic State advises its supporters in the United States and Europe on ways to disguise themselves and their motives when trying to plan and carrying out “lone wolf” attacks. The guide notes:

“Don’t make it too obvious you have become a practicing Muslim. For example: If you haven’t grown a beard, don’t grow it now, because you will bring unwanted attention onto yourself. Mujahideen in Muslim lands remove their beards for deceptive purposes.”

“When a Muslim goes out in public, he wants to fit into society to make himself look as normal as possible. Remember this isn’t because he fears his Islamic identity, but he is doing this so he is not suspected of being an outsider enemy.”

“Making yourself look more friendly and open minded to the Western public. For example: Muslims who call themselves by a Western nickname gain more acceptances by their non-Muslim colleagues.”

“People with Islamic names get less jobs than those with Islamic names. This alias might be important if you need an important position in a specific job, i.e. Mujahideen send people to work in power plants or enemy governmental positions to spy on and leak reports to the Islamic State leadership (as double agents).”

May 6. Carmen Harlan, an anchorwoman for WDIV, NBC TV’s local affiliate in Detroit, Michiganangered local Muslims with comments she made about the ISIS threat in Michigan: “Given the fact that we have the largest Arab population outside the Middle East, I guess this [a higher risk of ISIS threats] should not come as a real surprise.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) called for an apology, saying that Harlon was guilty of making “blanket generalizations about an entire group, unfairly exposing Muslim-Americans and Arab-Americans to contempt and ridicule while subjecting them to marginalization in their schools, places of employment, and other spheres of society.”

May 7. Noelle Velentzas, 27, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, both of Queens, New York, pleaded not guilty to charges of planning to build an explosive device for ISIS-inspired attacks in New York City. The two were arrested on April 2. Police searching their homes found gas tanks, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, handwritten notes on recipes for bomb making and jihadist literature. Velentzas told an informant that she could not understand why American citizens were traveling overseas to wage jihad when they could simply “make history” at home, according to court papers.

May 8. Police in San Jose, California, arrested Mohammad Khaliqi, 31, for attempting to rape a 13-year-old girl as she returned home from school. The girl told investigators that Khaliqi had forced his way through the front door of her home as she went inside. She fought him off and he fled before police arrived. The girl then locked the door after he left, hid in a closet and texted her father: “DADDY COME HOME NOW. SOME GUY TRIED TO RAPE ME.”

May 13. The planning commissioner of El Monte, a city in Los County, California, faced pressure to resign after he wrote that a ban on Islam “sounds good” on his Facebook page. Art Barrios shared a news article on Facebook with the headline “China makes major moves to ban Islam.” He added a comment: “Sounds good maybe the rest of the world should do the same.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) called for his resignation. Barrios said his Facebook post was in reference to Islamic extremists “that are going out and killing other people.” He said:

“I thought it was about time that we stop kowtowing to the Islam that’s doing the racist things and doing the things that are bad for any religion. I’m an American citizen. I have the right to think anything I want to think … I have the right to do what I want to do.”

Haroon Manjlai, the public affairs coordinator for CAIR-LA said:

“Neither the article nor Mr. Barrios’ comment on the article give any indication that he was talking about Muslim extremists. It sounded like he was talking about the religion as a whole and that is extremely insensitive and un-American.”

May 14. Lawmakers in South Carolina indefinitely postponed a vote on legislation that would prohibit the use of any foreign laws, including Islamic Sharia law, which violate the U.S. Constitution.

May 15. The New York Times published an opinion article that called for an infusion of 50,000 migrants from Syria to revitalize Detroit:

“Detroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million in 1950. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan. Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive.”

May 15. The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture, a performance center in downtown Manhattan, canceled an event featuring a new play by Neil LaBute on the grounds that it was offensive to Muslims. The event, “Playwrights for a Cause,” featuring four new short plays about censorship in the arts, was set to take place on June 14. The Sheen Center said it “will not be a forum that mocks or satirizes another faith group.” LaBute responded:

“This event was meant to shine another light on censorship and it was unexpected to have the plug pulled, quite literally, by an organization that touts the phrase ‘for thought and culture’ on their very website. Both in life and in the arts, this is not a time to hide or be afraid; recent events have begged for artists and citizens to stand and be counted.”

May 21. The Texas Senate passed a measure that would prevent any ‘international law’ from being used in Texas civil courts. The bill does not specifically mention Islamic Sharia law, but guarantees that no laws from ‘foreign courts’ will be adopted by Texas civil court judges. “It’s just to provide some belt and suspenders to make sure that, with judicial discretion, we don’t trump Texas law, American law, with a foreign law regarding family law,” said State Senator Donna Campbell. Muslim groups said the bill is a “solution looking for problem.”

May 21. The Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Michael McCaul, said that a plan by the Obama administration to resettle Syrian refugees in the U.S. is a “serious mistake” and should be stopped until safeguards are in place:

“We have no way … to know who these people are … we don’t have databases on these individuals so we can’t properly vet them, to know where they came from, to know what threat they pose, because we don’t have the data to cross-reference them with. While there are a lot of mothers and kids, there are also a lot of males of the age that could conduct terrorist operations.”

A group of Senate Democrats urged the Obama administration to allow at least 65,000 Syrian refugees to settle inside the United States.

May 26. Public school officials in Nashville, Tennessee, announced that six schools in South Nashville, home to a burgeoning Muslim community, would begin offering Arabic language classes. Each of the schools has students who speak Arabic as their primary language. Political commentator Allen West said:

“So the schools were chosen because there’s a high number of native Arabic speakers in the neighborhood. Why exactly do they need Arabic lessons? Wouldn’t English be more appropriate? And why is it the public school’s role to help keep students “connected to their native culture?” I thought that was their parents’ role. I thought the purpose of the American public school system was to keep Americans connected to their American culture.”

May 28. The governing board of the Washington, DC Metro system banned “issue-oriented” advertising on its trains and buses. The move came after the American Freedom Defense Initiative, a free speech advocacy group, sought to place ads featuring a cartoon of Mohammed. A top Metro official said:

“My view is, you put that ad up on the side of a bus, you turn that bus into a terrorism target. I think it’s a very bad outcome for everybody. But it’s a risk we don’t want to put our passengers under.”

AFDI’s president, Pamela Geller, responded:

“These cowards may claim that they are making people safer, but I submit to you the opposite. They are making it far more dangerous for Americans everywhere. Rewarding terror with submission is defeat. Absolute and complete defeat.”

Also in May, a study released by research corporation Westat, and commissioned by the US Department of Justice, estimated that 23-27 honor killings occur in the United States every year. The study, “Honor Violence Measurement Methods,” noted that 91% of victims in North America are murdered for being “too Westernized,” and in incidents involving daughters 18 years or younger, a father is almost always involved.

The report — which identified four types of honor violence: forced marriage, honor-based domestic violence, honor killing and female genital mutilation — also estimated that 1,500 forced marriages occur in the United States every year.

A separate study by the Population Reference Bureau estimated that 507,000 women and girls in the United States are at risk or have already undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), more than twice the number estimated in 2000.

JUNE 2015

June 1. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Samantha Elauf, an American Muslim woman who was denied a job at Abercrombie & Fitch because she wears a hijab headscarf. Elauf claimed the company did not offer her a job because her religious identity violates Abercrombie’s “look policy.” The company said the scarf clashed with its dress code, which calls for a “classic East Coast collegiate style.” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote: “An employer may not make an applicant’s religious practice, confirmed or otherwise, a factor in employment decisions.”

June 3. United Airlines apologized after a flight attendant’s refusal to give an unopened can of soda to a Muslim passenger led to a social media firestorm. Tahera Ahmad, 31, a Muslim chaplain at Northwestern University, was traveling from Chicago to Washington, DC, on May 29 when she said she asked for an unopened can of Diet Coke. Ahmad said the flight attendant told her she was “unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane.” Ahmad wrote on her Facebook page that she was in “tears of humiliation from discrimination.”

Other passengers on the flight later contradicted Ahmad’s account. They said she became irate after the flight attendant handed her an unopened can of Diet Coke rather than a Coke Zero, as she had requested. The flight attendant returned with a Coke Zero, but said Ahmad could not have the entire can because there was not enough to go around for other passengers. Ahmad then went into a rage: “What, do you think I will use this as a weapon? Why can’t I have the whole can? I think you are discriminating against me. I need your name.” According to passengers seated near Ahmad, she kept repeating, “I need your name. I am being discriminated against.” Ahmad then got on her phone and “started spinning this story on social media and she was never in tears.”

One observer noted:

“What’s really remarkable about this story is, near as I can tell, at no point … did any of these major media outlets try and independently verify the details of Ahmad’s story. I would like to note that what’s happened with this story is a complete and total perversion of journalism. Whether it’s simply for clicks or because folks are anxious enough to promote any account of injustice that reinforces the media’s center-left world view, it is inexcusable to turn someone’s one-sided Facebook post into a national news story without making an effort to verify the details.”

June 4. A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report found that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had failed to identify 73 airport workers with links to terrorism. The revelation came just days after an internal investigation of the TSA found security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95% of tests.

June 5. Michael Wolfe, 24, of Austin, Texas, was sentenced to almost seven years in federal prison and five years of supervised release for attempting to engage in violent jihad in Syria. According to the Justice Department, Wolfe admitted that he planned to travel to the Middle East to provide his services to ISIS. Wolfe also admitted to participating in physical fitness training, acquiring a U.S. passport, and trying to conceal his communications about foreign travel to join ISIS. Wolfe purchased plane tickets to Europe so he could meet with an undercover FBI agent, who he believed would help him travel to Syria through Turkey. Wolfe was arrested on June 17, 2014 in Houston as he attempted to board a flight to Canada.

June 7. Munther Omar Saleh, 20, a college student in Queens, New York, was arrested and charged with trying to learn how to build a pressure cooker bomb for an attack in New York City on behalf of the Islamic State.

June 9. The owners of the Empire State Building reached a confidential settlement with a Muslim family booted from the building’s observation deck because they were praying. Fahad and Amina Tirmizi, of Long Island, New York, said in their federal lawsuit that they and their two young children had begun silently reciting their evening prayers in a quiet spot on the 86th-floor deck at about 11 p.m. July 2, 2013, when two security guards “forcibly escorted” them down to the lobby and out of the of the building. The couple was seeking $5 million in damages in the suit, filed in March 2014 in Manhattan federal court.

June 9. The New York Police Department said it was working to recruit more Muslims. There currently are about 800 Muslim uniformed police officers out of about 35,000, according to the NYPD Muslim Officers Society. “The more Muslims who work in the NYPD the better,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “This is a way to break down the mistrust and create bridges in the community.”

June 12. Four Muslims who accused the FBI of putting them on a no-fly list because they refused to become informants said they would seek damages, even though the travel ban has been lifted. Plaintiff lawyer Robert Shwartz told U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams that “various FBI agents punished the men and put them on [the list] because they refused to become informants at their mosques.” As a result, they suffered the “stigma of being treated as threats to aviation security.” Shwartz added: “Money relief is really the only relief.”

June 12. Khalifa Said Derenkai, of Salt Lake City, Utah, filed a lawsuit against Pan Am International Flight Academy, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, for refusing to let him use a flight simulator. Derenkai says he was scheduled for flight simulator training, but Pan Am school manager Phil Spessard looked up his LinkedIn profile and denied him access to a flight simulator. Derenkai, originally from Eritrea, said Spessard reported him to the FBI’s Terrorism Taskforce because he “looked suspicious” because of his African origins. Derenkai said he was seeking $400,000 in compensatory damages and punitive damages for discrimination.

June 18. Samuel Rahamin Topaz, 21, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, was charged with planning to travel overseas to support the Islamic State. Topaz was arrested one day after federal prosecutors charged Fareed Mumini, 21, of Staten Island, New York, with trying to stab an FBI agent who was executing a search warrant at his home. A criminal complaint alleged that Mumini had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, and that if he failed to join the group overseas, he planned to attack law enforcement in the United States.

June 19. Justin Nojan Sullivan, 19, of Burke County, North Carolina, was arrested on charges of planning terrorist attacks in the United States on behalf of ISIS. The criminal complaint alleges that the FBI became aware of Sullivan’s plans to obtain a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, which he planned to use to kill a large number of U.S. citizens. An undercover FBI agent made contact with Sullivan beginning on or about June 6, 2015. Sullivan described himself to the agent as “a mujahid,” and as a Muslim convert living in the eastern United States. Sullivan also told the agent that “the war is here,” and gave the agent the opportunity to join what he called the Islamic State of North America, whose “doctrine is guerilla warfare in and out.”

June 23. A judge in St. Louis, Missouri, ruled that Raja Naeem, a Pakistani taxi driver, has a right to wear religious attire while working. Naeem had been battling the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission, which licenses drivers in the St. Louis area, for years regarding his clothing. The commission requires drivers to wear black pants and a white, button-down shirt. The commission said the dress code makes it easier for the public to identify licensed drivers. After a court ruling in 2013, the commission offered a compromise: a kurta, the loose-fitting clothing worn on the torso. Naeem said his freedom of religious expression was still being violated. Judge Robert Dierker ruled: “Mr Naeem’s right to express his religious beliefs by his mode of dress is directly infringed by the Commission’s dress code. The Missouri Constitution clearly prohibits such infringement.”

June 23. A poll commissioned by the Washington, DC-based Center for Security Policy found that more than half (51%) of Muslims in America believe they should “have the choice of being governed according to Sharia.” Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts. Nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.” Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make Sharia the law of the land in this country.

June 23. During an Iftar dinner to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, U.S. President Barack Obama lamented the “distorted impression” that many Americans have of Muslims: “Here in America, many people personally don’t know someone who is Muslim. They mostly hear about Muslims in the news — and that can obviously lead to a very distorted impression.”

June 26. The New York Police Department issued parking tickets to more than 100 Muslim cab drivers parked illegally outside a mosque on the Upper West Side during Ramadan. Cabby Mohammad Zaman, who was slapped with a $115 ticket for double parking, said:

“This is a special prayer time, a time for religion. We double-park here every Friday and they [allow it], but today they gave us all tickets, almost 100 cabs. This has never happened before. I can’t help but to think they are being prejudiced. They don’t understand. We have to be here.”

June 29. Walmart apologized after the bakery at a store in Slidell, Louisiana refused a man’s request for a Confederate flag cake, but accepted a design with the ISIS flag. Chuck Netzhammer said he ordered the image of the Confederate flag on a cake with the words, “Heritage Not Hate,” but the bakery said no. “I went back yesterday and managed to get an ISIS battle flag printed. ISIS happens to be somebody who we’re fighting against right now who are killing our men and boys overseas and are beheading Christians,” Netzhammer said. “That’s an ISIS battle flag cake that anybody can go buy at Walmart. But you can’t buy a Confederate flag toy, with like, say, a ‘Dukes of Hazzard’s’ car.”

The Patience of the Jihadists

January 26, 2016

The Patience of the Jihadists, Amerian ThinkerEileen F. Toplansky, January 26, 2016

The ongoing interpretations concerning natural-born citizenship may eventually become a moot point.  With the burgeoning immigration of groups of people who have little to no devotion to American ideals but who will have children born on American soil, one can easily envision that, in the not so distant-future, an American-born individual schooled in the hatred of jihad could conceivably occupy the White House.

Already the radical Muslim Brotherhood has “built the framework for a political party in America that seeks to turn Muslims into an Islamist voting bloc.”  The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) aims to elect Islamists in Washington in order to institute sharia law and dismantle the American Constitution.

The Center for Security Policy’s Star Spangled Shariah: The Rise of America’s First Muslim Brotherhood Party is part of its Civilization Jihad Reader Series (Volume 5).  The Center asserts:

[T]he Muslim Brotherhood has been actively infiltrating American government and society since shortly after the Second World War. But March 2014 marked a significant step forward for the Brotherhood in America. Some of its key leadership figures joined together to establish the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the first political activist group in this country to be openly associated with the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood. Formation of the USCMO was announced  … [in] March 2014, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building. At the podium were: Ousama Jammal, Secretary General USCMO and past President of The Mosque Foundation; Naeem Baig, President, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA); Nihad Awad, National Executive Director, Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Mazen Mokhtar, Executive Director, Muslim American Society (MAS); Imam Mahdi Bray, National Director, American Muslim Alliance (AMA)[.] The significance of this move is best understood in the context of what the Muslim Brotherhood itself calls ‘civilizational jihad,’ a term used in its 1991 strategic plan: An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal of the Group in North America. As the Explanatory Memorandum states, the Brotherhood’s mission in America is ‘destroying Western civilization from within,’ preparing the way for its replacement by the rule of Islam’s supremacist code, shariah (Islamic law). Unlike more immediately violent Brotherhood off-shoots – for example, al-Qa’eda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic State or HAMAS, the Brotherhood in the West has generally taken care to operate stealthily, under the radar, even to the point of sometimes denying its very presence in the United States.

And it has been stunningly successful.

Obama continually exhibits a preference for Islam and has, over the period of his two terms, shown a “willingness … to engage in dialogue, outreach, and collaboration with self-identified jihadis.”  In February 2015, at a White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism, Obama actually said that “the notion that the West was at war with Islam was an ‘ugly lie.'”  Furthermore,  he asserted that “when people feel marginalized, that opens a door for the terrorist ideology.”  He implied that Americans who criticize Islam are guilty of provoking Islamic terrorists.  This, coupled with the disturbing in-depth piece by Soeren Kern entitled “Islam and Islamism in America” for the period January-March 2015 wherein one learns that Representative Andre Carson (D-Indiana), a convert to Islam with extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence should make one shudder.

Obama’s appeasement toward Iran and his indifference to the jihadist danger in Europe and  America have paved the way to what the jihadists crave – Islamization of America.  Obama is the prelude to this Islamization, since his “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” has helped “advance the Brotherhood’s ‘civilization jihad agenda.'”  For example, Obama stated he was “committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they could fulfill zakat,” or charitable giving, but conveniently glossed over the fact that this charitable giving requires a fixed percentage to be donated to jihad.

The USCMO is actually the “first religious identity political party” in the history of America.  And while it projects “an image of patriotic transparency,” it is, in fact, “shrouding its actual anti-Constitutional activities and objectives.”  Its members participate in anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas, pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations and raise funds for Islamic Relief USA.  According to Ryan Mauro at the Clarion Project, “IRUSA is the American branch of Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), based in the United Kingdom.”  In 2014, the United Arab Emirates banned IRW as a terrorist group.  In fact, under the guise of philanthropy and social welfare, the organization raises funds for Hamas.  Mauro explains that IRUSA “donated to a fundraiser for the Chicago chapter of CAIR in March 2012 and the annual joint MAS-ICNA [Muslim American Society-Islamic Circle of North America] conference in December 2012.”  Yet in 2011, “an anonymous high-ranking Justice Department official was quoted as saying, ‘ten years ago we shut down the Holy Land Foundation. It was the right thing to do. Then the money started going to KindHearts. We shut them down too. Now the money is going through groups like Islamic Relief[.]'”

In 2014, the USCMO joined anti-Israel protesters in downtown Chicago.  This “Stand with Gaza” event marked USCMO’s “first public demonstration in solidarity with Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.  Recall that Hamas’ Covenant commits it to the “destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.”

USCMO financially supports U.S. representatives Keith Ellison and Andre Carson.  Their remarks made at the Muslim Brotherhood political party banquet held in June of 2014 have never been made public.  Both of these elected American politicians are committed to “mobilizing the Muslim political machine in the United States.”  Carson has stated that “America will never tap into educational innovation and ingenuity without looking at the model that we have in our madrassas, in our schools, where innovation is encouraged, where the foundation is the Quran.”  Neither Ellison nor Carson has explained why he was participating at a USCMO event in an official capacity.

Is it a coincidence that USCMO debuted in Illinois politics in 2014, considering Obama’s own roots in the windy city?

As the 2016 presidential election looms, the USCMO is attempting to “fortify Muslim citizenship rights.”  Obama is rushing to bestow citizenship on immigrants in part “by adjusting Justice Department rules so that those who want to help with the citizenship process can get their credentials quicker.”  In addition, there is a “blitz of television promotional spots” aimed at enticing legal permanent residents who have been here for a minimum of three years to take the test.

And while it has been clarified that Pine Bush High School in New York did not compel students to say, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under Allah,” this can be taken as yet one more incremental step toward softening American sensibilities – reciting the pledge in any other language still must maintain the truth of the translation, which clearly this did not do.

Daniel Greenfield explains that “[w]hat ISIS accomplishes by brute force, the Muslim Brotherhood does by setting up networks of front groups. Both ISIS and the Brotherhood control large Muslim populations. ISIS conquers populations in failed states. The Muslim Brotherhood however exercises control over populations in the cities of the West. We could bomb Raqqa, but can we bomb Dearborn, Jersey City or Irvine? This is where the Caliphate curve truly reaches its most terrifying potential.”

Moreover, “we are not at war with an organization, but with the idea that Muslims are superior to non-Muslims and are endowed by Allah with the right to rule over them, to rob them, to rape them and enslave them.  ISIS is the most naked expression of this idea.  But it’s an idea that everyone [such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the USCMO] on the Caliphate curve accepts.”

I urge everyone to obtain a copy of Star Spangled Shariah in order to comprehend the depth and breadth of the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire to install sharia law into America.  It is very evident that “the United States of America faces a clear and present danger from the Muslim Brotherhood through the United States Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) members because of their shariah compliant agenda that supports and advocates jihad.”

Sharia is a supremacist and totalitarian law that is totally and absolutely incompatible with the Constitution.  It is imperative that Americans understand this difference and demand the passage of American laws for American citizens.  Furthermore, Americans must publicly object to the conversion of churches into mosques.

Ultimately, Americans need to question candidates about their views on Islam and sharia.  The duplicity of the Muslim Brotherhood and the USCMO have to be continually exposed if the Republic is to survive.  This is, indeed, a civilizational conflict between freedom and slavery.

 

Islam and Islamism in America in 2015: Part I

January 23, 2016

Islam and Islamism in America in 2015: Part I – January through March, Gatestone Institute, Soeren Kern, January 23, 2016

♦ Representative André Carson (D-Indiana), a convert to Islam, was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Carson has extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

♦ Officials at the Rocky Heights Middle School in Littleton, Colorado, ignited controversy when they told female students to dress according to Sharia law while visiting a mosque during a field trip.

♦ Islamic politics “advocates the world’s greatest double standard: if you come to our country, we won’t let you worship the way you want, we won’t let you say what you want to say… However, we have come to your country, therefore we have the right to do whatever we want to do, including kill you if you make us mad.” — Former US President Bill Clinton.

♦ Fouad ElBayly, an Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive the death penalty for her criticism of Islam, is now a Department of Justice contractor hired to teach classes to Muslims who are in federal prison. – The Daily Caller

♦ “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under Allah….” – Arabic rendering of the Pledge of Allegiance, Pine Bush High School, New York.

♦ Breitbart News revealed the existence of what is believed to be the first official Sharia law court in the United States, in Irving, Texas. The so-called Islamic Tribunal settles civil disputes among the growing Muslim population.

The Muslim population of the United States surpassed 3.5 million in 2015, according to demographic projections compiled by the Pew Research Center. In percentage terms, Muslims currently comprise roughly 1% of the US population.

As in Europe, Islam was an ever-present topic in American newspaper headlines during 2015. Most news items involved terrorism-related issues — including many cases of lone-wolf terrorists — closely followed by articles about Muslim integration and assimilation.

JANUARY 2015

January 6. Officials at the Rocky Heights Middle School in Littleton, Colorado, ignited controversy when they told female students to dress according to Sharia law while visiting a mosque during a field trip. Peter Boyles, a radio talk show host in Denver, said: “Public schools are forbidden from holding girls to different standards than boys. They’re holding these girls to a different standard, it’s a religious reason. Islam dictates many … repressive practices against women…. That’s their belief … but don’t apply it to public school kids.”

January 7. Hashim Hanif Ibn Abdul-Rasheed, a 41-year-old Muslim armed with two knives taped to his legs, attempted to buy a plane ticket at the Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio. Abdul-Rasheed was shot after he lunged at a police officer. Police said his behavior was “consistent with someone who intended to hijack an aircraft.”

January 9. Abdalah Mohamed, a 19-year-old migrant from Kenya, was arrested after he threatened to kill the owner of a Jewish delicatessen in Portland, Oregon. Police said Mohamed entered the store asking for a single cigarette. When the owner replied that he did not sell individual cigarettes, Mohamed reportedly said: “I will blow up your store. I’m going to take care of you, you mother (redacted). I’ll call my people to take care of you to shoot you! I will blow up your store in the name of Allah, I will take care of people like you!”

January 12. ISIS sympathizers hacked the official Twitter account of the US Central Command, the Pentagon division in charge of the Middle East. One tweet sent from CENTCOM’s account stated: “American soldiers, we are coming, watch your backs.” Another tweet said: “ISIS is already here…. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now.”

January 13. Representative André Carson (D-Indiana), a convert to Islam, was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Carson, who has extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, is the first Muslim to sit on the committee.

January 14. Christopher Lee Cornell, a 20-year-old convert to Islam, was arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio, for plotting to “wage jihad” by attacking the US Capitol. Cornell and his accomplice, who was actually an FBI informant, planned to detonate pipe bombs and gun down lawmakers. Cornell, whose Muslim name is Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, had bought two M-15 rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition. He had also posted messages and videos espousing support for ISIS.

1436Left: Rep. André Carson (D-Indiana), a convert to Islam, was appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Carson has extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Right: Christopher Lee Cornell, a convert to Islam, was arrested in Cincinnati, Ohio, for plotting to “wage jihad” by attacking the US Capitol. Cornell planned to detonate pipe bombs and gun down lawmakers.

January 14. Shelton Thomas Bell, a 21-year-old convert to Islam from Jacksonville, Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for attempting to provide material support to terrorists. According to court documents, Bell “conspired to train and prepare as a combatant for overseas violent jihad, then travel from Jacksonville to the Middle East for the ultimate purpose of providing the skills to terrorists, including members of Ansar al-Sharia in Yemen.”

As part of his training, Bell conducted a late-night “jihadi training mission” that involved destroying religious statues in a multi-denominational cemetery in Jacksonville. He also uploaded training and recruiting videos onto the Internet, including one in which he makes homemade pipe bombs and another in which he burns an America flag.

January 15. Carol Swain, a prominent professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, penned an op-ed in The Tennessean titled, “Charlie Hebdo attacks prove critics were right about Islam.” She wrote:

“What horrendous attack would finally convince us that Islam is not like other religions in the United States, that it poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored better than it has been under the Obama administration?

“More and more members of the PC [politically correct] crowd now acknowledge that Islam has absolutely nothing in common with Christianity….

“It becomes clearer every day that Islam is not just another religion to be accorded the respect given to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Baha’i and other world religions. The Jan. 7 terrorist attack resulting in 12 deaths at the Paris offices ofCharlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that committed the apparently unpardonable sin of lampooning the Prophet Muhammad, once again illustrates that Islam is a dangerous set of beliefs totally incompatible with Western beliefs concerning freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association.”

Vanderbilt’s Muslim Students Association said Swain’s “hurtful, inciting comments” had caused “a great deal of emotional distress and frustration.” Swain responded: “Why are today’s university students so fragile they need counseling and affirmation whenever they hear something that makes them uncomfortable? Learning how to deal with your emotions is part of growing up.”

January 15. Former US President Bill Clinton, appearing on NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyerssaid Islamic politics “advocates the world’s greatest double standard: if you come to our country, we won’t let you worship the way you want, we won’t let you say what you want to say, we won’t let you do what you want to do. However, we have come to your country, therefore we have the right to do whatever we want to do, including kill you if you make us mad.”

January 15. Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, canceled its plan to use the gothic bell tower of its chapel for the adhan, an amplified call to prayer for Muslims. The about-face followed criticism from many corners, including from Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, who wrote:

“As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn’t submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism. I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed.”

January 17. A conference in Garland, Texas, aimed at “defeating Islamophobia,” featured several Muslim extremists who advocate the implementation of Sharia law in the United States. The conference, titled, “Stand with the Prophet in Honor and Respect,” was billed as “not an event” but the “beginning of a movement. A movement to defend Prophet Muhammad, his person, and his message.”

January 18. The New York Post reported that Muslim groups are pressing the New York Police Department to remove a report about Islamic terrorism from its website. The groundbreaking, 90-page report, titled, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” angers critics who say it promotes “religious profiling” and discrimination against Muslims. Others argue that removing the report would send the message that the NYPD is backing down on its counterterrorism effort in the name of political correctness.

January 19. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, addressing the London-based Henry Jackson Society, warned that “non-assimilationist Muslims” pose a danger to Europe and the United States. He said:

“In America we are quite happy to welcome freedom loving people, regardless of religion, who want to abide by our laws allowing for freedom of expression and a host of other democratic freedoms. But we will never allow for any sect of people to set up their own areas where they establish their own set of laws.

“For example, Sharia law is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression. We must stop pretending otherwise.

“I favor robust debate on everything: on religion, on policy, on politics, on everything. It is called freedom. But when debate stops, and when a movement decides that they no longer want to debate their ideas, but rather they want to simply subdue, silence, and kill those who disagree … that is called terrorism, barbarism, and inhuman behavior, and it cannot and must not be tolerated.”

January 20. The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Arkansas corrections officials had violated the religious liberty rights of Muslim inmates by forbidding them to grow beards. The case concerned Gregory H. Holt, also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad, who sought to grow a half-­inch beard.

January 20. Montana State Senator Janna Taylor introduced Montana Senate Bill 199, which establishes “the primacy of Montana law by prohibiting the application of foreign law when it violates a fundamental right guaranteed by the Montana or United States Constitution.” The bill is aimed at restricting the use of Islamic Sharia and other foreign law in the state.

January 21. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) complained that the movie “American Sniper” was spurring threats against American Muslims. ADC President Samer Khalaf said it did not make sense to call for a boycott of the film, given its box office success: “If we boycott it, it will only cause people to want to see it more.”

January 22. Malak Kazan, a 27-year-old Muslim woman, filed a religious discrimination lawsuit in Detroit, Michigan, accusing the Dearborn Heights Police Department of violating her First Amendment right to religious freedom when she was forced to remove her head scarf, after being arrested for driving with an expired license. Dearborn Heights Police Chief Lee Garvin said:

“Articles such as hats, caps, hijabs, can contain concealable items that could pose a threat or chance of injury to the cops or to themselves. Our procedure is to have them take the hijab off in the presence of a female. We don’t always have enough female officers present in the station. Our number one concern is security of our officers and the prisoners.”

Kazan’s lawyer, Amir Makled, disagreed:

“The main issue here is that my client’s constitutional rights, her religious liberties, can’t be stripped at the jailhouse door. She has an absolute right to maintain her faith. We hope this cause of action will bring to light a policy that is dated and needs to be amended…. We also hope to get some further diversity training for officers in the city. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for other law enforcement agencies.”

January 23. Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Muslims should not be blamed for Islamic terrorism: “The biggest error that we could make would be to blame Muslims collectively for crimes … [that] the overwhelming majority of Muslims oppose.”

January 23. A federal judge in Denver, Colorado gave a four-year prison sentence to Shannon Maureen Conley, a 19-year-old woman who admitted to wanting to become an ISIS bride and join the jihad in the Middle East. Conley is one of the first Americans to be sentenced for conspiracy to support ISIS. Prosecutors hope her sentence has a deterrent effect.

January 23. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) filed legislation to ban American citizens who fight alongside ISIS and other terror groups from returning to the United States. The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with ISIS of their US citizenship rights.

January 26. ISIS vowed to behead President Obama and “transform America into a Muslim province.”

January 28. The Natomas Pacific Pathways Prep, a public charter school in Sacramento, California, sponsored an official “Hijab Day” in cooperation with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). To concerns about why a public school would be hosting such an event, the school responded with charges that critics were motivated by “hatred” and “bigotry.”

January 28. The US State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood operatives for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to overthrow the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A few days after the meeting, the Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt.

January 29. The FBI added a former Northern Virginia taxicab driver to the Most Wanted Terrorists list. Liban Haji Mohamed, 29, a Somali-born naturalized US citizen, is accused of being a recruiter for al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization in Somalia.

January 30. The Refugee Women’s Alliance, one of the largest refugee and immigrant service providers in Seattle, Washington, was forced to close in anticipation of a protest against one of its head teachers, Deepa Bhandaru, who led a discussion about free speech and religious pluralism in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. A group of Somali immigrants demanded that Bhandaru be fired for showing some of the Hebdo cartoons in her class. Bhandaru, who has received an “excellence in teaching” award from the University of Washington, was placed on paid leave while the agency “investigates” the matter.

FEBRUARY 2015

February 2. Darlene Hider, a 32-year-old Muslim-American woman who lives in Dearborn, Michigan, said she was harassed on a Delta Airlines flight because she was wearing an Islamic headscarf: “I felt as if I wanted to defend myself but I couldn’t because of the Islamophobia going on.” Others, however, said her children were being disruptive.

The president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Samer Khalaf, said: “We encourage Delta to take immediate steps to rectify this matter.”

But Hider says she wants more than a simple apology: “I want justice for every woman who wears a scarf and who’s Muslim and doesn’t have to worry about being on a plane or in a restaurant or a mall, or walking down the street… That is what I’m standing up for and I will not be quiet.”

February 4. The Mississippi House voted 116-1 to pass House Bill 177, which bans use of foreign law. Proponents of the measure want to prevent courts in the state from referring to Sharia law when deliberating cases.

February 4. The head of the FBI’s counterterrorist division, Michael Steinbach, warned that the Islamic State is targeting and recruiting teenage Americans, including females, to carry out terrorist attacks on US soil.

February 4. A Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found that 53% of likely Republican caucus participants and 81% of likely Democratic caucus participants said they believe Islam is inherently peaceful. Only 13% of likely Democratic caucus participants said they view Islam as inherently violent, compared with 39% of likely Republican caucus participants.

February 5. US President Barack Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast inWashington, DC, attempted to downplay the dangers of Islamic terrorism by creating a false moral equivalence with the Crusades, which occurred 1,000 years ago, in response to Muslim invasions.

February 5. The Health and Human Services Committee of the South Dakota House of Representatives approved a proposal that would make it a felony to perform female genital mutilation in the state.

February 5. The Board of Education in Waterbury, Connecticut, announced that all schools in the Waterbury School District would begin honoring two of Islam’s most holy days, Eid al-Fitr andEid al-Adha, by not scheduling tests, field trips or major school events on those days. This is the first decision of its kind in the state of Connecticut.

February 6. The FBI charged six Bosnian immigrants with terrorist related crimes: Ramiz Zijad Hodzic, 40; his wife, Sedina Unkic Hodzic, 35; and Armin Harcevic, 37, all of St. Louis County,Missouri; as well as Nihad Rosic, 26, of Utica, New York; Mediha Medy Salkicevic, 34 of Schiller Park, Illinois; and Jasminka Ramic, 42, of Rockford, Illinois. All defendants were charged with conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists. Ramiz Zijad Hodzic and Nihad Rosic were also charged with conspiring to kill and maim persons in a foreign country. According to the FBI, the defendants raised money and shipped weapons and uniforms and other aid to ISIS fighters in Syria.

February 6. Army Secretary John McHugh approved awarding the Purple Heart and its civilian counterpart, the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom, to victims of the November 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people were killed and more than 30 wounded in the attack by Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist whose business card read “SoA” for “Soldier of Allah.” The Obama administration had classified the attack as “workplace violence,” but Congress redefined what should be considered an attack by a “foreign terrorist organization” for purposes of determining eligibility for the Purple Heart.

February 9. WFTV Channel 9 television in Orlando, Florida, investigated a school in Seminole County after parents complained that students were learning too much about Islam in a public classroom. One parent became concerned after he spotted a text on his son’s phone from a teacher reminding him to complete a prayer rug assignment and study an Islam packet. WFTV found that a textbook included a chapter dedicated to the “Rise of Islam,” including prayers and scriptures from the Quran. But the first 100 pages of the book, discussing Judaism and Christianity, were missing. Officials from the school district blamed a manufacturer defect in 68 books that are only a year old.

February 10. Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, murdered three college students at a condominium complex in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, allegedly over a dispute over a parking space. Muslim groups branded the triple-homicide as a hate crime because the three victims were Muslim.

February 12. Representatives of several NGOs in Olympia, Washington, called on Representative Larry Haler to apologize for saying in a House Judiciary Committee hearing that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is “basically run by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas,” with a goal “to overthrow the country.” Haler said he has already apologized twice to CAIR for his remarks: “It is unfortunate that these two instances do not satisfy their definition of apology.”

February 13. Reaz Khan, a 51-year-old Pakistani-born naturalized US citizen living in Portland, Oregon, pleaded guilty to providing $2,450 to Ali Jaleel, a terrorist who killed more than 30 people in a May 2009 suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan. Prosecutors presented an email in which Jaleel reminded Khan about their shared promise to seek martyrdom in the name of Allah.

February 14. Terrence Lavaron Thomas, 39, a convert to Islam, stabbed two people at a bus stop in Southfield, a northern suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Police say Thomas asked a group of people if they were Muslim and attacked those who responded ‘no’ with a three-inch knife. American media outlets, including the Washington Post, were accused of seeking to downplay the Muslim attack on non-Muslims by publishing misleading headlines.

February 16. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, speaking on MSNBC’s Hardball, said that the solution to defeating ISIS was “a jobs program.” She said: “We need … to go after the root cause that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs.”

At that point, Harf was interrupted by host Chris Matthews, who pointed out, “There’s always going to be poor people. There’s always going to be poor Muslims.”

Harf continued to argue that the US should help Muslim countries “build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people.” She added: “If we can help countries work at the root causes of this — what makes these 17-year-old kids pick up an AK-47 instead of trying to start a business?”

February 17. The White House launched a three-day Summit on Countering Violent Extremism but refused to use the term Islamic extremism. The summit featured Islamists known for preaching anti-Western themes.

February 17. Al-Hamzah Mohammad Jawad was arrested as he tried to fly out of Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Michigan, to Amman, Joran, on a one-way ticket. According to the FBI, Jawad, who came to the US in 2013 as a refugee from Iraq, was planning to join ISIS in Iraq.

February 18. Lawmakers in the North Dakota House of Representatives objected to a Muslim delivering the chamber’s opening prayer on Ash Wednesday because some members wanted a Christian pastor to give the invocation. The Minnesota chapter of the CAIR called on North Dakota Republican Party leaders to apologize to Dr. Nadim Koleilat. House leader Al Carson said no such apology would be forthcoming.

February 18. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said his job is to “give voice to the plight of Muslims living in this country and the discrimination that they face.” He added: “And so I personally have committed to speak out about the situation that very often people in the Muslim community in this country face. The fact that there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and the Islamic faith is one about peace and brotherhood.”

February 19. US President Barack Obama said that Americans who criticize Islam are guilty of provoking Islamic terrorists: “When people spew hatred towards others — because of their faith or because they’re immigrants — it feeds into terrorist narratives. If entire communities feel they can never become a full part of the society in which they reside, it feeds a cycle of fear and resentment and a sense of injustice upon which extremists prey.”

February 21. The Islamist group al-Shabaab released an online video in which it called for an attack on the Mall of America, a megamall in Bloomington, Minnesota.

February 23. Sohiel Omar Kabir, 37, and Ralph Deleon, 26, were sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for seeking to join al-Qaeda and training to carry out attacks on Americans in Afghanistan. Deleon is a citizen of the Philippines who lived in Ontario, California. Kabir, is an Afghanistan-born American citizen who lived in Pomona, California, and had relocated to Kabul, but was subsequently arrested by American military personnel in Afghanistan.

February 23. Abdirahman S. Mohamud, a 23-year-old Somali-born American citizen residing in Columbus, Ohio, was charged with providing “electronic devices to persons engaged in terrorism in the Middle East.”

February 24. Jean Camara, a convert to Islam, filed a lawsuit against Costco, the world’s third largest retailer, for religious discrimination. He said he was working as a cashier at a store in Brooklyn, New York, when pork came across the conveyor belt. After Camara told his manager that it is against his religious beliefs to touch either pork or alcohol, he was transferred outside to collecting the shopping carts. After he filed a human rights complaint against the company, he says he was fired for insubordinate conduct.

February 25. The FBI charged three residents of Brooklyn, New York, with conspiracy to provide material support to ISIS. Akhror Saidakhmetov, a citizen of Kazakhstan, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where he was attempting to board a flight to Istanbul, Turkey. Abdurasul Hasanovich Juraboev, a citizen of Uzbekistan, had previously purchased a plane ticket to travel from New York to Istanbul and was scheduled to leave the United States in March. Abror Habibov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, helped fund Saidakhmetov’s efforts to join ISIS. According to the FBI, Juraboev offered to kill the President of the United States if ordered to do so by ISIS, and Saidakhmetov expressed his intent to buy a machine gun and shoot police officers and FBI agents if thwarted in his plan to join ISIS in Syria.

February 25. The US Supreme Court heard the case of Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman who said the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing store illegally denied her a job because she wears a hijab in keeping with her faith.

February 26. Abdullahi Mohamud Yusuf, a Somali-American teenager, pleaded guilty in federal court in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of conspiring to support ISIS. Yusuf, 18, was stopped by FBI agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in May 2014 as he attempted to leave the US for Turkey.

February 26. An annual report delivered to the US Senate by the director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terrorism threats, after years in which they featured in similar reports.

February 27. Hundreds of Muslims attended the first ever “Muslim Day” at the Oklahoma state capitol. The event, which was organized by the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

MARCH 2015

March 2. The director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, revealed that about 180 Americans have traveled to Syria to join Islamist militants and around 40 of them have returned to the United States.

March 3. The city council of Taylor, Michigan, unanimously approved a resolution against Islamophobia. The resolution says the city will “stand against those who preach hate and incite violence.” Resident Fred Lyons said he did not feel the resolution was necessary. “I don’t see why we need a resolution to say we’re against hate. We are,” Lyons said. “Anyone who would say you are supporting hate would be asinine.” He said he feared the resolution could lead to lawsuits against the city.

March 3. The Daily Caller revealed that Fouad ElBayly — an Egyptian-born imam who in 2007 said that Somali-born activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali should receive the death penalty for her criticism of Islam — is now a Department of Justice contractor hired to teach classes to provide “leadership and guidance” to Muslims at a federal prison in Maryland.

March 4. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that public schools in the city would begin observing two Muslim holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The change is the result of nearly a decade of lobbying by Muslim groups. Muslims make up about 10% of the students in New York City public schools.

March 4. Zaytuna College based in Berkeley, California, became the first Muslim college in the United States to receive accreditation.

March 4. Minh Quang Pham, a 32-year-old Vietnamese man extradited from the United Kingdom,pleaded not guilty to supporting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, receiving military training from the terrorist organization in Yemen, and possessing a firearm intended for use in crimes of violence. Pham, formerly a graphic designer who lived in southeast London, was arrested at Heathrow International Airport when he returned in July 2011 from a six-month trip to Yemen.

March 4. Abid Naseer, a 28­-year­-old Pakistani man, was convicted in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York, of conspiring with al-Qaeda to bomb a shopping center in Manchester, England. Naseer, a graduate of Flushing High School in Queens, was indicted in the US under a law that allows the federal government to pursue terrorism cases even when they occur outside the country; he was extradited to the US in 2013.

March 6. The Associated Students of the University of New Mexico (ASUNM), the undergraduate student government for UNM, unanimously passed a resolution urging the UNM administration to “publicly state their opposition to Islamophobia.” The document, known as Resolution 6S, defines Islamophobia as a “dislike or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.”

March 10. Diego Chaar, a 24-year-old Brazilian who converted to Islam while in prison, wasarrested after stalking the Ohev Shalom synagogue in Miami Beach, Florida, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and threatening to cut off the heads of congregants exiting the synagogue.

March 12. Raees Alam Qazi, 22, and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, 32, two brothers born in Pakistan — both are naturalized US citizens who spent most of their lives in South Floridapleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges after admitting they had plotted a terrorist attack on landmarks in New York City. Later, while in custody, they assaulted two deputy US Marshals. The younger brother pleaded guilty to an additional charge of attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda.

March 16. Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 24, of Upland, California, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Arifeen David Gojali, 24, of Riverside, was sentenced to five years, for their involvement in a conspiracy to travel to Afghanistan to kill American troops.

March 16. Adam Dandach, a 21-year-old convert to Islam who also goes by the name Fadi Fadi Dandach, pleaded not guilty to charges that he provided material support and resources to ISIS. He had previously pled not guilty to lying on a passport application. Prosecutors say he obstructed justice when he allegedly asked a website administrator to delete his post history. FBI agents had prevented Dandach from boarding a Delta Airlines flight at John Wayne Airport in Orange Country, California, to Istanbul, Turkey, in July 2014.

March 16. A United Airlines jet traveling to Denver returned to Washington Dulles International Airport after passengers subdued a man who rushed toward the cockpit yelling “Jihad! Jihad!”

March 17. Tairod Nathan Webster Pugh, a 47­-year­-old American convert to Islam and Air Force veteran from New Jersey, was charged with trying to join ISIS.

March 18. An effort to mark national Foreign Language Week by reading the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States in Arabic ignited controversy at the Pine Bush High School inNew York. Students and parents were angered by the Arabic rendering: “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under Allah….”

March 18. Commissioners in Clark County, Nevada, unanimously approved the establishment of the first Islamic cemetery in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The private, nonprofit cemetery will be situated on two acres just south of McCarran International Airport.

March 19. The city council of Irving, Texas, voted to endorse a state bill that would forbid judges from using foreign law in their rulings. The move comes after Breitbart News revealed the existence of what is believed to be the first official Sharia law court in the United States. The so-called Islamic Tribunal, based in Irving, settles civil disputes among the growing Muslim population. Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne said the tribunal “bypasses American courts” andwarned that if basic rights are being violated, “I will not stand idle, and will fight with every fiber of my being against this action.”

March 19. Mohammad Yahya, 39, filed a lawsuit against the Gregg County Jail in Longview,Texas, for violating his right to observe Ramadan. Yahya, who is serving time for wire fraud, said Gregg County jailers refused to honor his right to have his meals provided before 4:45 a.m. and after 8:30 p.m. during Ramadan.

March 21. ISIS hackers called on their “brothers in America” to kill 100 US service members whose names, addresses and photographs were published online.

March 25. The US Army charged Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. Bergdahl, 28, disappeared from his outpost in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. He has been accused of leaving his patrol base intentionally before he was captured by Taliban insurgents. He spent five years as a captive of the Taliban before he was freed in a prisoner swap that also freed five Taliban leaders from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

March 26. Army National Guard Specialist Hasan Edmonds, 22, a US citizen, was arrested at Chicago Midway International Airport while attempting to fly to Cairo, Egypt, eventually to join ISIS. His cousin, Jonas Edmonds, 29, a US citizen, was arrested without incident at his home in Aurora, Illinois in connection with an alleged plot to carry out an armed attack on a US military facility in northern Illinois.

MB Apologists Arrive In U.S. For Anti-Sisi Rallies

January 22, 2016

MB Apologists Arrive In U.S. For Anti-Sisi Rallies, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, January 21, 2016

(Please see also, UK Review of Muslim Brotherhood: Top 13 Quotes. — DM)

Three Muslim Brotherhood supporters who caused a row in Egypt last year after they met with Obama administration officials and members of Congress returned to the U.S. Wednesday, according to the Facebook page of Egyptian Americans for Freedom and Justice (EAFJ).

During their 2015 trip, Brotherhood leader Gamal Heshmat, former Egyptian Judge Waleed Sharaby and Maha Azzam, head of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council (ERC) lobbied State Department and White House officials for help against the government of Egyptian President Abdel Fatal al-Sisi.

The ERC formed in 2014 with the aim of toppling Sisi and bringing the Brotherhood back to power in Egypt. Sisi took power in 2013 after the Egyptian army ousted President Mohamed Morsi, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.

Heshmat has a long history of supporting Palestinian terrorists and was photographed in June 2014 with Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal.

The State Department agreed with the delegation’s position that Sisi had not brought stability to Egypt, and that his removal would pave the way for a transition to democracy, Sharaby told Egypt’s Mekameleen TV in an interview last February. But that has not translated into concrete action to topple Sisi.

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EAFJ leaders Mahmoud El-Sharkawy, Hani Elkadi and Aber Mostafa greeted Heshmat, Sharaby and Azzam at New York’s JFK airport and posed for a picture with them displaying the Brotherhood’s four-fingered Rabaa salute which has become representative among those wanting the Brotherhood’s return to power in Egypt.

The three are scheduled to speak Friday at an event titled “Egyptian Revolution from Sacrifices to Victory” in North Bergen, N.J.

The event is timed to commemorate the Jan. 25 anniversary of dictator Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in 2011. Heshmat wrote that his group had no plans to meet with Obama administration representatives during this visit, due to their “position biased” toward Sisi’s regime. They hope to speak with some congressmen, academics and others.

El-Sharkawy is a Brotherhood member and serves as liaison with Brotherhood members exiled in Turkey, Egypt’s Al-Bawaba newspaper reported last April.

He frequently reposts Muslim Brotherhood communiqués on his Facebook page. In December, El Sharkawy encouraged “all youth and revolutionaries” to distribute the official page of Brotherhood spokesman Muhammad Muntasir.

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Elkadi seemed to self-identify as a Brotherhood member in a March 9 Facebook post showing an cartoon of a man holding a sign with the Brotherhood logo and the words which translate to, “I am [Muslim] Brotherhood and I’m not threatened.”

Last year, Elkadi, El Sharkawy and Mostafa posted graphics on their Facebook pages seeming to support violence in Egypt.

El Sharkawy and Elkadi posted a Feb. 10 communiqué from the Popular Resistance Movement (PRM) which has launched attacks against Egyptian police and other targets. It features an image of a blood-red map of Egypt with a fist superimposed over it. It claims responsibility for targeting two police cars. “God, martyrs, Revolution,” it said.

Mostafa posted the personal information of a pro-Sisi owner of an Egyptian soccer team with the word “Attaaack!” the same day.

Obama: “That’s Not Who we Are.” Part I, America and Islam

January 18, 2016

Obama: “That’s Not Who we Are” Part I, America and Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, January 18, 2016

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)

Obama keeps telling us what America is not. What does He think she is? Does He think that Obama’s America is America, or that His supporters are what America is? Does He think they make America great? Will America become acceptable to Obama, and hence “who we are,” only after He or His successor finishes her fundamental transformation?

“Benefits” of the Iran Scam

By virtue of the now-implemented Iran nuke “deal,” Iran’s possession of an atomic and/or hydrogen bomb will be delayed for a few years unless she cheats (as in the past), reneges on the “deal” or out-sources nuke development to her long term partner, North Korea.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is now reaping the benefits of more than $100 billion in immediate sanctions relief plus a settlement of Iranian claims amounting to $1.7 billion.

Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the settlement is $400 million debt and $1.3 billion in interest dating back to the Islamic revolution. That’s separate from the sanctions windfall Iran will receive.

Iran will also benefit on a long-term basis from trade with countries formerly prohibited by sanctions.

According to Tasnim News Agency,

Back in June 2015, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei had outlined the general policies of the country’s 6th quinquennial development plan.

On defense and security, the proclamation necessitated an increase in Iran’s defense capabilities at the level of a regional power in order to fulfill the national interests by allocating at least 5 percent of the national budget to boosting the defense power. [Emphasis added.]

With increased funding, Iran will be able to increase its already substantial support for Shiite terrorism throughout the Middle East; it will likely do so.

Iranians continue to experience Islamic human rights. Here’s a link to an article titled The Real War on Women in a Nightmarish Islamic State by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh. An Iranian-American political scientist and scholar, he is the president of the International American Council and serves on the board of the Harvard International Review at Harvard University.

When it comes to executions, girls are systematically more vulnerable due to the Islamist penal code of Sharia law.

Let’s take a look at the Islamist state of Iran, which creates its laws from the legal codes of Sharia and Quran. The first type of discrimination is related to age: girls are held criminally accountable at the maturity age of 9 Lunar years. (This will automatically put girls at a higher risk of execution by the court.)

Iranian ruling politicians hold the highest record when it comes to the most executions per capita in the world. Intriguingly, in the last two years that the so-called moderate, Hassan Rouhani, has been in office, there have been more than 2000 executions conducted in Iran. That is nearly 3-4 executions a day.

More importantly, Iranian leaders are also the largest executioner of women and female juveniles. Some of these executions were carried out on the mullahs’ charge of ‘Moharebeh’ (enmity with Allah), or waging war against Allah, ifsad-i Fil Arz (Sowing Corruption on Earth), or Sab-i Nabi (Insulting the Prophet). [Emphasis added.]

There are three methods of execution for women and female juveniles: 1. Stoning  2. Public hanging 3. Shooting. Some women are also beaten so severely in the prison that they die before reaching the execution. Shooting, which is the fastest method of the three for execution, has not been used since 2008. Instead, the most common method to execute women is public hanging or stoning. Some of these women are flogged right before they are hanged. Public hanging not only imposes fears in the society but also aims at dehumanizing and controlling women as second-class citizens. According to the Islamist penal code of Iran, women offenses are classified as: Hadd, Diyyih, Ta`zir, and Qisas. [Emphasis added.]

Please read the entire article. Isn’t it heartwarming that “we” are giving even more than a mere $100 billion to Iran? Perhaps some of the new money can be used to buy sharper stones and new devices for hangings. How about some new torture devices?

Islam, The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates

The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claims to represent Muslims in America. They do represent those who favor terrorism and despise human rights (in the name of which they ironically claim to act).

[T]he Council on American-Islamic Relations, is a prominent Islamic group, but which has a long history of involvement with extremist and terrorist causes. In 2009, during the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Solis concluded that, “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR… with the Islamic Association for Palestine, and with Hamas.” [Emphasis added.]

During the trial, CAIR was designated an “unindicted co-conspirator.” As a result of CAIR’s apparent links to a terrorist movement, the Justice Department in 2009 announced a ban on working with CAIR. The FBI also severed relations.

The FBI’s no-work-with-CAIR policy was commonly ignored, according to a liberally redacted Justice Department report released in 2013, and now appears to have become moribund. CAIR representatives are often invited to the Obama White House:

[F]or the past seven years, the Obama White House has opened its doors to the entire spectrum of radical Islamist groups, just like CAIR. These groups have rationalized the actions of Islamic terrorist groups that have killed Americans, warned American Muslims against cooperating with law enforcement, smeared genuine Muslim moderates like Zuhdi Jasser and Asra Nomani as traitors and accused anyone who dared to utter the term “radical Islam” as “Islamophobic.” These are the groups that the White House should have marginalized. The fact that Obama legitimized radical Islamist groups will be his real legacy. [Emphasis added.]

Returning to the previously quoted article about CAIR and whom it claims to represent,

Very few American Muslims, however, seem to feel that CAIR is a legitimate ambassador for American Islam. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, about 88% of American Muslims said that CAIR does not represent them. Muslims all over the world, in fact, apparently do not think CAIR is a moderate or legitimate Muslim group: in 2014, the United Arab Emirates, a pious Muslim state, designated CAIR a terrorist organization, along with dozens of other Muslim Brotherhood organizations.

In reality, American Muslims are extremely diverse, and no single group can claim to speak on their collective behalf. American Islam comprises dozens of different religious sects and political movements, many of which advocate distinctly different ideas. But for Islamist bodies such as CAIR, it suits their agenda if American Muslims are portrayed as a monolithic community. If American Muslims can be seen as homogenous, then a group such as CAIR has a better claim to represent their interests.

Even CAIR’s own research, however, undermines their claim to speak on behalf of American Muslims. A 2011 report reveals that a majority of American mosques are not affiliated with any American Islamic body.

Addressing a conference in 2000, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a Muslim cleric and secretary general of the Italian Muslim Assembly, explained that, “[CAIR] is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization. It works in the United States as a lobby against radio, television and print media journalists who dare to produce anything about Islam that is at variance with their fundamental agenda. CAIR opposes diversity in Islam.”

In truth, CAIR only speaks on behalf of a small extremist ideology that, as discovered by federal prosecutors, emerged across the United States during the 1990s out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Although CAIR does not represent American Muslims, it managed, before the Holy Land Foundation terror trial in 2008, to persuade a great many people that it did. Enough time has passed that CAIR seems to believe it can try this move once again.

Are CAIR and other similar Islamist organizations who claim to represent Muslims in America who we are? Not according to a bill now pending in the Congress, which would

state that Congress believes the Muslim Brotherhood fits the State Department’s criteria of a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The Secretary of State would be required to designate the Brotherhood within 60 days or to provide a detailed report explaining why it does not. Three U.S.-based Brotherhood entities named in the bill are CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). [Emphasis added.]

The House version of the bill (HR3892) was introduced by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) with Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Randy K. Weber (R-TX), Diane Black (R-TN) and Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as original cosponsors. They are now joined by Reps. Steve King (R-IA); Steven Palazzo (R-MS); Kay Granger (R-TX); Jim Jordan (R-OH); Steve Stivers (R-OH); Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA); Ilena Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Charles W. Dent (R-PA); Bill Johnson (R-OH) and David A. Trott (R-MI).

HR3892 was referred to the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security on December 4, 2015. Two cosponsors, Rep. Gohmert and Rep. Trott, sit on that subcommittee.

The Senate version of the bill (S2230) was introduced by presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and later cosponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). It was referred to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on November 3. Two of Senator Cruz’s presidential rivals, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) sit on that committee and have not taken a position on the bill.

Although the bill has yet to earn bi-partisan support at this early stage, it is supported by members of Congress from different spectrums of the Republican Party. It includes endorsers of the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and John Kasich and not only supporters of Ted Cruz.

If enacted by the Congress, Obama will almost certainly veto it. If He signs it, He will ignore or bypass it as He often does.

Britain recently declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Here are thirteen quotes from the British Government’s review and Prime Minister Cameron’s official statement:

1. “The Muslim Brotherhood’s foundational texts call for the progressive moral purification of individuals and Muslim societies and their eventual political unification in a Caliphate under Sharia law. To this day the Muslim Brotherhood characterizes Western societies and liberal Muslims as decadent and immoral. It can be seen primarily as a political project.”

2.  “Aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security.”

3.  “From its foundation the Muslim Brotherhood organized itself into a secretive ‘cell’ structure, with an elaborate induction and education program for new members…This clandestine, centralized and hierarchical structure persists to this day.”

4.  “The Hamas founding charter claims that they are the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood treat them as such. In the past ten years support for Hamas (including in particular funding) has been an important priority for the MB in Egypt and the MB international network.”

5.  “From at least the 1950s the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood also developed an international network, within and beyond the Islamic world. Europe became an important base for the growing Muslim Brotherhood global network.”

6.  “The wider international network of the Muslim Brotherhood now performs a range of functions. It promotes Muslim Brotherhood ideology (including through communications platforms), raises and invests funds, and provides a haven for members of the Brotherhood who have left their country of origin to continue promoting Brotherhood activity.”

7.  “[F]or the most part, the Muslim Brotherhood have preferred non violent incremental change on the grounds of expediency, often on the basis that political opposition will disappear when the process of Islamization is complete. But they are prepared to countenance violence—including, from time to time, terrorism—where gradualism is ineffective.”

8.  “Muslim Brotherhood organizations and associated in the UK have neither openly nor consistently refuted the literature of Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb which is known to have inspired people (including in this country) to engage in terrorism.”

9.  “[The review] concluded that it was not possible to reconcile these [MB] views with the claim made by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in their evidence to the review that ‘the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently adhered to peaceful means of opposition, renouncing all forms of violence throughout its existence.’”

10.  “In the 1990s the Muslim Brotherhood and their associates established public facing and apparently national organizations in the UK to promote their views. None were openly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood and membership of the Muslim Brotherhood remained (and still remains) a secret.”

11.  “[MB fronts] became politically active, notably in connection with Palestine and Iraq, and promoted candidates in national and local elections…sought and obtained a dialogue with Government….were active members in a security dialogue with the police.”

12.  “The Muslim Brotherhood have been publicly committed to political engagement in this country. Engagement with Government has at times been facilitated by what appeared to be a common agenda against al Qaida and (at least in the UK) militant Salafism. But this engagement did not take into account of Muslim Brotherhood support for a proscribed terrorist group and its views about terrorism which, in reality, are quite different from our own.”

13. “Senior Muslim Brotherhood figures and associated have justified attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The linked article goes on to note that

The U.S. government, without even conducting any kind of review of its own, issued a statement to the Investigative Project on Terrorism rejecting any ban or even any “de-legitimizing” of the Brotherhood at all. [Emphasis added.]

Do the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates represent Obama? Are they or Obama “what we are?” I don’t think so and hope not.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and reformation of Islam

In Heretic (which I reviewed here), Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote,

For years, we have spent trillions on waging wars against “terror” and “extremism” that would have been much better spent protecting Muslim dissidents and giving them the necessary platforms and resources to counter that vast network of Islamic centers, madrassas, and mosques which has been largely responsible for spreading the most noxious forms of Islamic fundamentalism. For years, we have treated the people financing that vast network — the Saudis, the Qataris, and the now repentant Emiratis — as our allies. In the midst of all our efforts at policing, surveillance, and even military action, we in the West have not bothered to develop an effective counternarrative because from the outset we have denied that Islamic extremism is in any way related to Islam. We persist in focusing on the violence and not on the ideas that give rise to it. [Emphasis added.]

Here is a video of which Hirsi Ali was the executive producer. It features Muslim and former-Muslim women discussing Islam and the Islam-mandated male domination of women.

Here’s Part II of Honor Diaries:

Here’s a video characterizing Hirsi Ali as an “Islamophobe.”

Along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Azeezah Kanji — the featured speaker in the above video — has been very active in disparaging Hirsi Ali and Honor Diaries. Like CAIR, she has ties to the Obama White House and was named a “Champion of Change” by the White House in 2011. What changes in Islam does Ms. Kanji champion? None, apparently, of those intrinsic to it.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the CAIR, condemned Hirsi Ali as “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide.”

On becoming a U.S. Citizen

On becoming a U.S. Citizen

Who better represents American values? Hirsi Ali, once a refugee from Somalia and a proud citizen of the United States since April 25, 2013, or President Obama? In the immediately linked Wall Street Journal article, she offers suggestions on American immigration with which I plan to deal in a subsequent post. In the meantime, here is her 2014 address at the William F. Buckley Program at Yale University on the clash of civilizations. If you have not yet watched it, please do so. If you have watched it, please do so again. I just did. Every time I watch it, there is something I had not previously considered.

Conclusions

To Obama and His acolytes, Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance; the Islamic State, its equally non-peaceful and intolerant franchisees and other comparable terrorist organizations are “not Islamic.” If “not Islamic,” what are they?

Despite Obama’s many statements and gestures, He has yet to convince any Islamic terrorist group that it is not Islamic. He has convinced them only that He is ignorant of Islam, a liar or both.  Perhaps He needs a better joke writer.

Obama’s last State of the Union Message

was very striking for the one-sidedness and disproportion of the president’s concern for religious suffering.

President Obama worried that “politicians insult Muslims, whether abroad or fellow citizens.”

But he couldn’t bring himself to worry aloud about the Christians being driven from Middle Eastern countries, the churches being burned from Nigeria to Malaysia, or the 22 Coptic Christians who were beheaded on video on a beach in Libya by Islamic supremacists.

Insulting Muslims: bad. Killing Christians: irrelevant. [Emphasis added.]

Will our next president at least make a concerted effort to un-transform Obama’s America? Will he name and fight our enemies, foreign and domestic? Or will he simply “go with the flow” and do none of the above. Much depends on who it is and on the composition of the Congress.

During the Democrat Party debate on January 17th, Hillary Clinton “linked herself to the president again and again. And again.” An Obama clone to continue Obama’s fundamental transformation of America is the opposite of what we need. Nor will merely “fixing” broken parts of the governmental apparatus with duct tape and bailing wire be satisfactory. As I wrote last September, To bring America back we need to break some stuff.

In later posts in this series, I hope to deal with immigration, race relations, the ways in which Obama is distorting the Constitution, the decline of education and Obama’s very foreign foreign policy.

You Can Count on Governments to Conceal the Truth about Islamic Crimes

January 13, 2016

You Can Count on Governments to Conceal the Truth about Islamic Crimes, National Review, David French, January 12,2016

The truth disrupts the elite’s preferred multicultural narrative, which places all faiths and cultures on equal footing — except for our despised Western civilization. The truth must therefore be suppressed. But the lies are starting to backfire. Victims can’t be ignored indefinitely, and it’s hard to hide mass-scale public assaults. Since 9/11, Western governments and mainstream media have relentlessly pounded their people with deception and wishful thinking about Islam, jihad, and the Middle East. The lies are now being exposed by the light of day. Will enough people care?

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At this point, it’s a sad joke — a form of gallows humor shared in times of trouble. When there’s a shooting, and the hours tick by without any identification of the suspect, one can presume that it’s a jihadist. When there’s a riot in Europe, and the perpetrators are described as “youths,” one can presume it’s Muslim men. When an Islamist goes on a shooting spree or stabbing spree or beheads a coworker, authorities will latch onto any explanation but the obvious.

But now even gallows humor is inappropriate. Western denial of Islamic crimes is so common, so systematic, that we can no longer have any confidence that we understand the true dimensions of the jihadist threat. Consider the following:

In Germany, police actively “tried to obfuscate” what happened on New Year’s Eve, when thousands of Muslim men systematically sexually assaulted hundreds of German women — an act that my colleague Andrew McCarthy has aptly termed a “rape jihad.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that Swedish authorities now stand accused of covering up a wave of sexual assaults at a concert last summer. A Swedish newspaper wrote today that national media refused at the time to report factual accounts from the concert assaults, claiming they were nothing but far-right “propaganda.”

Yet for sheer scale, nothing touches the infamous scandal in Rotherham, England, where gangs of Pakistani men brutalized an estimated 1,400 women and girls. Over at least 16 years, from 1997 to 2013, girls and women were trafficked, tortured, and raped while authorities turned a blind eye to the abuse. According to the Rotherham Borough Council’s belated report on the mass abuse, authorities were concerned that they might give “oxygen” to racism claims. Up to 160 British police officers now face investigation for systematically ignoring abuse complaints.

Here at home, willful blindness seems to be a deliberate strategy. The Obama administration for years called Nidal Hasan’s deadly terror attack at Fort Hood “workplace violence,” and in November, the FBI said that it may never release a report into the motivations of the Muslim man who attacked two Chattanooga recruiting stations, killing five. FBI director James Comey said that the Bureau didn’t want to “smear people.” Finally, in December — five months after the event — Comey unequivocally declared the Chattanooga shooting a “terror attack.”

But for sheer brazenness, it’s hard to top Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney. Immediately after police apprehended Edward Archer for attempting to assassinate a Philadelphia police officer, Archer started telling anyone who would listen that he did it “in the name of Islam.” But don’t tell Kenney. He broke land-speed records to get in front of the cameras and declare that the attack “has nothing to do with being a Muslim or following the Islamic faith.”

The consequences of the lies, cover-ups, and evasions are serious. American and European elites hector their respective publics over accepting increasing numbers of migrants. They belittle the public’s concerns over the terrorist threat and instead praise Islam to the heavens for its tolerance — often with full knowledge of systematic criminal acts. Even now — after Cologne and after Rotterham — those of us outside the halls of power can’t have any confidence that we know the truth about the impact of mass Muslim immigration on Europe, or that we know the true dimensions of the domestic terror threat in the United States.

When, for instance, a Muslim man beheaded his coworker in Oklahoma and attempted to behead another, was his attack “merely” the enraged action of a disgruntled worker? Or was it an act of “lone wolf” jihadist? After all, on social media, he’d made the popular hand sign of ISIS fighters, posted pictures of jihadists (including ISIS fighters and Osama bin Laden), and appeared to call for Jihad.

What about the recent stabbing spree at the University of California, Merced? Authorities say it was over a study-group dispute, but the young Muslim attacker reportedly carried an image of an ISIS flag and a handwritten manifesto that “included instructions to behead a student.”

How many Americans are aware of these incidents? How many Americans are aware that New York City police are now looking at a Muslim terror suspect as a “person of interest” in the stabbing of a nine-year-old boy? To learn that, you might have to read a British newspaper that reported on a student named Fareed Mumuni who allegedly stabbed the child in a “botched audition to join ISIS.” His long-term goal was reportedly the bombing of Times Square.

The truth disrupts the elite’s preferred multicultural narrative, which places all faiths and cultures on equal footing — except for our despised Western civilization. The truth must therefore be suppressed. But the lies are starting to backfire. Victims can’t be ignored indefinitely, and it’s hard to hide mass-scale public assaults. Since 9/11, Western governments and mainstream media have relentlessly pounded their people with deception and wishful thinking about Islam, jihad, and the Middle East. The lies are now being exposed by the light of day. Will enough people care?

Will the Nonsense Ever End?

January 13, 2016

Will the Nonsense Ever End? Power LineSteven Hayward, January 12, 2017

(When will “radical” Islam be called “fundamentalist” Islam? Isn’t that what it is? — DM)

Is it required for political leaders (except Trump and Cruz) to deny the presence of Islamic radicalism in instances of obvious Islam-inspired terrorism, such as the shooting in Philadelphia the other day? Philadelphia’s major Jim Kenney went out of his way to declare “In no way, shape or form does anybody in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam” had anything to do with the attack. Does the mayor think everyone is stupid? Just because most Philadelphia voters are?

Dorothy Rabinowitz nails it in her Wall Street Journal column today, “Denying the Obvious About Islamic Terrorism”:

The mayor’s comments, so bizarre in their determined denial of the deluge of facts delivered by top police officials standing next to him, were, nonetheless, familiar enough. Americans have learned to expect, after every Islamist terror attack, lectures instructing them that such assaults should in no way be connected to Islamic faith of any kind.

To hear the mayor of Philadelphia was to grasp, more clearly than ever, the fury that has led to Donald Trump’s success in attracting voters—the fury of citizens who know official lies when they hear them, whether about border security, immigration, or the ever-expanding requirements of multiculturalist dogma. . .

On no subject has there been more sermonizing than on Muslims and terrorism and on what the real Islam is and is not—no surprise in an administration which has from its outset tended to the apparent view that the American nation is essentially composed of yahoos whose barely controlled instincts to riot require regular monitoring and checks by their enlightened betters.

Yup. Can’t really say it any better than this.

UPDATE:

‘We Told You So,’ Eastern Europe Tells Germany

Leaders of Eastern European states opposed to Germany’s open-door refugee policy have been quick to tell Germany ‘we told you so’ after the Cologne sexual assaults.

Influential politicians across Eastern Europe have pointed to the Cologne attacks, in which men of Middle Eastern appearance allegedly sexually assaulted over a hundred women, as proof that Germany’s open-door refugee policy has been a mistake. . .

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in his weekly radio interview that it was proof of a crisis of liberalism that reporting of the sexual assaults in Cologne had been suppressed in Germany, adding that the press in Hungary is much freer than that in western Europe.

Orban added that Hungary is in the right on the refugee issue and that migration into Europe must be completely stopped.

Merkel must go.

Merkel-ruins-continent

The Muslim War on Women Comes to Germany

January 7, 2016

The Muslim War on Women Comes to Germany, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, January 7, 2015

mk

What happened is inevitable and it will go on happening. More surveillance cameras and patrols won’t stop it. Instead, as in the UK, it will go underground. Muslim men will groom and abuse troubled girls. The authorities will turn a blind eye until a decade later the story gets too big to be covered up. And by then thousands of lives will be ruined. The only way to stop it is to keep it out of Europe and America.

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The city of Cologne’s website tells tourists that spending New Year’s there is “something to write home about.” It certainly is after the German city took in 10,000 mostly Muslim refugees last year.  There are 120,000 Muslims already in the city making them more than 10% of the population. It has been estimated that Cologne will become a majority Muslim city by the last New Year’s Eve of the century.

When the anti-Islamist group Pegida came out to protest last year, the Cologne cathedral turned out its lights to condemn them while pro-migrant activists smugly held up signs reading, “Refugees welcome”.

But for this New Year’s Eve, the crowd outside the Cologne Cathedral was dominated by young Muslim men who threw fireworks at police and sexually assaulted women and girls trapped in the crowd.

In a crowd of 1,000 men, hundreds of Muslim refugees prowled, assaulting and robbing any woman they could find. A police officer described seeing crying women stumble toward him after midnight. He managed to rescue one woman whose clothes had been torn off her body from a group of her attackers, but could not save her friends because the mob had begun hurling fireworks at him.

The eight men he arrested carried asylum papers. They were among the mob of refugees welcomed by the people of Cologne.

Mayor Henriette Reker, the refugee activist whose victory had been greeted with cheerful headlines from the pro-refugee press and shouts of Allahu Akbar by the locals, was forced to declare it a crisis.

Desperate efforts were made to suppress the crimes that had been committed, but too many women had been assaulted. More than 90 complaints had been filed. There was no telling how many more women had been too ashamed to go to the police. Or how many thought that there was no point because the authorities would not be on their side, but on the side of the Muslim refugee rapists.

A man spoke of being unable to protect his wife or teenage daughter from the mob. A British tourist fought against being forced into a car. A 17-year-old girl described being brutally violated and seeing other girls in the police station in the same condition. A 22-year-old woman recalled, “When I called for help, they laughed.” Even a volunteer policewoman had been molested.

Katia remembered walking through a “tunnel” made up only of “foreign men” who assaulted her on all sides. “Although we shouted and hit them, the men didn’t stop.” Instead they insulted and taunted her.

The provost of the Cologne Cathedral had warned anti-Islamist protesters, “You’re supporting people you really don’t want to support.” But it was the provost and pro-refugee activists who had supported people they really didn’t want to support. There is no way to know whether any of the smiling young people holding, “I Love Immigration” banners had fallen victim to those refugees they loved so much.

The over 1 million migrants brought to Germany by Merkel had already inflicted trauma on many women and girls while the offenders received little more than a slap on the wrist from the authorities.

Even pro-refugee activists working in camps in Germany had warned of a “culture of rape and violence” where unaccompanied women are viewed as “fair game” and rapes and sexual assaults are routine. A 16-year-old girl was raped on September 11 near a migrant shelter. Two Iraqis refugees had raped an 18-year-old girl behind a schoolyard. Another Iraqi raped a 17-year-old girl at a festival. A 7-year-old girl was raped in a park not far from where her mother was sitting.

Some of these cases were covered up. Others were dismissed as isolated incidents.

But the mass attack on nearly 100 women and girls by hundreds of men right in the center of the New Year’s Eve celebrations was too big to suppress. And when it broke, the outrage was tremendous.

Yet the rationalizations remain the same.

The authorities claim not to know who was responsible, but are somehow able to assure the media that none of them were refugees. Feminist groups protest broadly against sexual harassment, but insist that there “should be no racism under the guise of women’s rights.” When a handful of the perpetrators are finally brought to trial, their lawyers will claim that like so many Muslim sex offenders before them they were unfamiliar with European “culture” and were “overwhelmed” by all the non-burqaed women.

And those will be lies. The horrifying scene in Cologne is commonplace in the Muslim world.

While many remember the horrifying sexual assaults of the Arab Spring in Tahrir Square, including the attack on Lara Logan, such incidents are actually commonplace in Egypt, especially around Eid Al-Fitr. It doesn’t matter how the women are dressed. A 2006 story describes mass attacks on “any and every girl in sight, whether a Niqabi, a Hijabi or uncovered. Whether Egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones.” 99% of Egyptian women report being sexually harassed. This behavior has is common in Muslim lands.

In Iraq, it’s eight out of ten women. In Afghanistan, rape and honor killings are routine. And this is the population that Germany’s mostly Muslim migrants are drawn from.

What happened is inevitable and it will go on happening. More surveillance cameras and patrols won’t stop it. Instead, as in the UK, it will go underground. Muslim men will groom and abuse troubled girls. The authorities will turn a blind eye until a decade later the story gets too big to be covered up. And by then thousands of lives will be ruined. The only way to stop it is to keep it out of Europe and America.

Islam was a declaration of war against women and non-Muslims by Mohammed and his followers. From the mob outside the Cologne cathedral to the rape rooms of the Islamic State, Mohammed’s followers continue fighting the dead warlord’s brutal and ugly war against women.

Mohammed had told his men that the majority of those condemned to hell are women (Bukhari 2:24:541), that they could rape non-Muslim women (Koran 4:24) and that women who weren’t wearing Hijabs or Burkas were fair game (Koran 33:59). This isn’t an aberration. This is Islam.

Due to Germany’s asylum laws, it’s unlikely that any of the foreign attackers will be deported for their crimes. Sexual assault isn’t “serious enough” for that. And as refugees, they probably couldn’t be deported anyway because they would face “persecution” in their homeland. The hundreds of Muslim men who assaulted women know that they have nothing to fear because nothing will happen to them.

Merkel made this mess. And the only way to undo it is to undo Germany’s asylum policies and likely its membership in the European Union. The migrant wave has fundamentally altered Germany’s demographics in a way that makes the country hostile to women. The only way for women in Europe to have a future is to fight the migration mob. Otherwise what happened outside the Cologne cathedral, what happens to the 99% of women in Egypt and what happens in the Islamic State will be their future.

A Strategy to Defeat Islamic Theo-fascism

January 7, 2016

A Strategy to Defeat Islamic Theo-fascism, American ThinkerG. Murphy Donovan, January 7, 2016

Surely, whatever passed for American foreign or military policy in the past three decades is not working. Just as clearly, in case anyone keeps score these days, the dark side of Islam is ascendant at home and abroad. What follows here is a catalogue of policy initiatives that might halt the spread of Islamic fascism and encourage religious reform in the Ummah.

Some observers believe that the Muslim problem is a matter of life and death. Be assured that the need for Islamic reform is much more important than either. The choices for Islam are the same as they are for Palestine Arabs; behave or be humbled. Europe may still have a Quisling North and a Vichy South; but Russia, China, and even America, at heart, are still grounded by national survival instincts – and Samuel Colt.

Call a spade a spade

The threat is Islam, both kinetic and passive aggressive factions. If “moderate” Islam is real, then that community needs to step up and assume responsibility for barbaric terror lunatics and immigrants/refugees alike. Neither America nor Europe has solutions to the Islamic dystopia; civic incompetence, strategic illiteracy, migrants, poverty, religious schisms, or galloping irredentism. The UN and NATO have no remedies either. Islamism is an Ummah, Arab League, OIC problem to solve. Absent moral or civic conscience, unreformed Islam deserves no better consideration than any other criminal cult.

Western Intelligence agencies must stop cooking the books too. The West is at war and the enemy is clearly the adherents of a pernicious ideology. A global war against imperial Islam might be declared, just as angry Islam has declared war on civilization.  A modus vivendi might be negotiated only after the Ummah erects a universal barrier between church and state globally. Islam, as we know it, is incompatible with democracy, civility, peace, stability, and adult beverages.

Oxymoronic “Islamic” states need to be relegated to the dustbin of history. If the Muslim world cannot or will not mend itself, Islamism, like the secular fascism of the 20th Century, must be defeated, humbled in detail. Sooner is better.

Answer the Ayatollahs

Recent allied concessions to Tehran may prove to be a bridge too far. If the Persian priests do not abide by their nuclear commitments, two red lines might be drawn around Israel. Firstly, the ayatollahs should be put on notice, publicly, that any attack against Israel would be considered an attack against America — and met with massive Yankee retaliation. Secondly, any future cooperation with NATO or America should be predicated on an immediate cessation of clerical hate speech and so-called fatwas, those arbitrary death sentences.

Clerical threats to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” and “death to America” injunctions are designed to stimulate jihad and terror globally. The only difference between a Shia ayatollah and a Sunni imam in this regard these days seems to be the torque in their head threads.

Ostracize the Puppeteers

Strategic peril does not emanate from Sunni tacticians like Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, or Abu Bakr al-Baghadadi. Nor does the real threat begin with or end with al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezb’allah, Hamas, or the Islamic State. Lethal threat comes, instead, on four winds: toxic culture, religious politics, fanatic fighters, and furtive finance, all of which originate with Muslim state sponsors. The most prominent of these are Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan.

Put aside for a moment the Saudi team that brought down the Twin Towers in New York. Consider instead, the House of Saud as the most egregious exporter of Salifism (aka Wahabbism) doctrine, clerics, imams, and mosques from which ultra-irredentist ideologies are spread. The Saudis are at once the custodians of Islam’s sacredshrines and at the same time the world’s most decadent, corrupt, and duplicitous hypocrites. Imam Baghdadi is correct about two things: the venality of elites in Washington and Riyadh. The House of Saud, an absolutist tribal monarchy, does not have the moral standing to administer “holy” sites of any description — Mecca, Medina, or Disneyland.

The cozy relationship between Europe, the European Union, and Arabia can be summarized with a few words; oil, money, arms sales, and base rights. This near-sighted blend of Mideast obscenities has reached its sell-by date. The “white man’s burden” should have expired when Edward Said vacated New York for paradise.

Jettison Turkey and Pakistan

What Saudi Arabia is to toxic ideology in North Africa, Turkey and Pakistan are to perfidy in the Levant and South Asia. Turkey and Pakistan are Islam’s most obvious and persistent grifters. Turkey supports the Islamic State and other Sunni terror groups with a black market oil racket. Pakistan supports the Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS with sanctuary and tolerance of the world’s largest opium garden. Oil and drug monies from Arabia, Turkey, and South Asia are financing the global jihad. Turkey also facilitates the migration of Muslims west to Europe while sending Islamist fighters and weapons south to Syria and Iraq.

With the advent of Erdogan and his Islamist AKP, Turkey has morphed into NATO’s Achilles Heel, potentially a fatal flaw.  Turkey needs to be drummed out of NATO until secular comity returns to Ankara. Pakistan needs to be restrained, too, with sanctions until it ceases to provide refuge for terrorists. Pakistani troops harassing India could be more prudently redeployed to exterminate jihadists.

Sanctions against Russia and Israel are a study in moral and political fatuity whilst Arabs and Muslims are appeased midst a cultural sewer of geo-political crime and human rights abuses. If NATO’s eastern flank needs to be anchored in trust and dependability, Russia, Kurdistan, or both, would make better allies than Turkey. Ignoring Turkish perfidy to protect ephemeral base rights confuses tactical necessity with strategic sufficiency.

Recognize Kurdistan

Aside from Israel, Kurdistan might be the most enlightened culture in the Mideast. The Kurds are also the largest ethnic group in the world not recognized as a state. While largely Muslim, the Kurds, unlike most of the Ummah, appreciate the virtues of religious diversity and women’s rights. Indeed, Kurdish women fight alongside their men against Turkish chauvinism and Sunni misogyny with equal aplomb. For too long, the Kurds have been patronized by Brussels and Washington.

While Kurdish fighters engage ISIS and attempt to control the Turkish oil black market, Ankara uses American manufactured NATO F-16s to bomb Kurds in Turkey and Syria. Turkish ground forces now occupy parts of Iraq too. In eastern Turkey, Ergdogan’s NATO legions use ISIS as an excuse for bookend genocide, a cleansing of Kurds that might rival the Armenian Christian genocide (1915-1917).

195876_5_Kurdish angel of death

All the while, American strategic amateurs argue for a “no-fly” zone in contested areas south of Turkey. Creating a no-fly zone is the kind of operational vacuity we have come to expect from American politicians and generals. Such a stratagem would foil Kurdish efforts to flank ISIS and allow the Erdogan jihad, arms, and oil rackets to flourish. A no-fly zone is a dangerous ploy designed to provoke Russia, not protect Muslim “moderates.”

Putin, Lavrov, and the Russians have it right this time; Turkish and Erdogan family subterfuges are lethal liabilities, not assets.

Washington and European allies have been redrawing the map in Eastern Europe, North Africa, South Asia, and the Mideast since the end of WWII. The time has come to put Kurdistan on the map too. Kurdistan is a unique and exemplary case of reformed or enlightened Islam; indeed, a nation that could serve as a model for the Muslim world.  If base rights are a consideration, Kurdistan would be an infinitely more dependable ally than Turkey or any corrupt tribal autocracy in Arabia. America has a little in common with desert dictators — and fewer genuine friends there either. Indeed, at the moment America is allied with the worst of Islam.

Create New Alliances

NATO, like the European Union, has become a parody of itself. Absent a threat like the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact, Brussels has taken to justifying itself by meddling in East Europe and resuscitating a Cold War with the Kremlin. Indeed, having divided Yugoslavia, NATO now expands to the new Russian border with reckless abandon; in fact, fanning anti-Russian flames now with neo-Nazi cohorts in former Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine.

NATO support for the Muslims of one-time Yugoslavia is of a piece with support for Islamic troublemakers in Chechnya and China too. Throughout, we are led to believe that jihad Uighurs and caliphate Chechens are freedom fighters. Beslan, Boston, Paris, and now San Bernardino put the lie to any notion that Islamists are “victims” (or heroes). Indeed, the Boston Marathon bombing might have been prevented had Washington a better relationship with Moscow.

Truth is, America has more in common with Russia and China these days than we do with any number of traditional European Quislings. Indeed, it seems that Europe and America can’t take yes for an answer.

The Cold War ideological or philosophical argument has been won. Moscow and Beijing have succumbed to market capitalism. Islamism, in stark contrast, is now a menace to Russian, Chinese, and American secular polities alike. The logic of a cooperative or unified approach to a common enemy seems self-evident. America, China, and Russia, at least on issues like toxic Islam, is a match made in Mecca.

The late great contest with Marxist Russia and China was indeed a revolution without guns. Now the parties to that epic Cold War struggle may have to join forces to suppress a theo-fascist movement that, like its Nazi predecessor, will not be defeated without guns. The West is at war again, albeit in slow motion. Withal, questions of war are not rhetorical. Saying that you are not at war does not make it so. Once declared, by one party or the other, the only relevant question about war is who wins and who loses. Losers do not make the future.

If America and Europe were as committed to Judeo/Christian secular values as Islamists are committed to a sick religious culture, then the war against pernicious Islam would have been won decades ago. Or as Jack Kennedy once put it: “Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Trump Footnote

Donald Trump made several policy suggestions on the Islamism issue, one on immigration, the other on Mideast oil. On the former, he suggests a hiatus on Muslim immigration until America develops a plan or reliable programs to vet migrants. On Arab oil, he suggests, given the lives and treasure spent liberating Kuwait and Iraqi oil fields, America should have held those resources in trust and use oil revenues to finance the war against jihad, however long that takes. The problem with both Trump ideas is that they come perilously close to common sense, an American instinct in short supply these days.