Posted tagged ‘Education’

Why should Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen operate charter schools on U.S. Military bases?

March 31, 2016

Why should Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen operate charter schools on U.S. Military bases? The Hill, Robert R. Amsterdam, March 31, 2016

(Mr. Gulen professes an interesting Islamic doctrine. According to Wikipedia,

Muhammed Fethullah Gülen (born 27 April 1941) is a Turkish preacher,[5]former imam,[5][6]writer,[7] and political figure.[8] He is the founder of the Gülen movement (known as Hizmet meaning service in Turkish). . . .

Gülen teaches an Anatolian (sort of Hanafi) version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursî‘s teachings.

. . . .

Gülen does not advocate a new theology but refers to classical authorities of theology, taking up their line of argument.[50]His understanding of Islam tends to be moderate and mainstream.[51][52] Though he has never been a member of a Sufitarekat and does not see tarekat membership as a necessity for Muslims, he teaches that “Sufism is the inner dimension of Islam” and “the inner and outer dimensions must never be separated.”[53]

Sufism:

Sufis strive for ihsan (perfection of worship) as detailed in a hadith: “Ihsan is to worship Allah as if you see Him; if you can’t see Him, surely He sees you.”[4] Jalaluddin Rumi stated: “The Sufi is hanging on to Muhammad, like Abu Bakr.”[5] Sufis regard Prophet Muhammad as Al-Insān al-Kāmil, which is a concept that describes Muhammad as the primary perfect man who exemplifies the morality of God.[6] Sufis regard Prophet Muhammad as their leader and prime spiritual guide.

— DM)

A secretive Islamic movement is trying to infiltrate the U.S. military by establishing and operating publicly-funded charter schools targeted toward children of American service personnel.

That charge may sound like a conspiracy theory from the lunatic fringe, but it is real and it is happening right now.  The most immediate threat is in Nevada, where Coral Academy of Science Las Vegas (CASLV) is currently negotiating with the United States Air Force to locate a charter school at Nellis Air Force Base, with classes starting this fall.  What is not widely known is that CASLV is part of a nationwide organization of charter schools and other businesses headed by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, a reclusive but influential Imam living under self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania to avoid criminal prosecution in his native Turkey.

Our law firm has been engaged by the Republic of Turkey – a key NATO ally in a hotbed region – to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into the operations and geopolitical influence of the Gülen organization, which is behind the Coral Academy of Science and over 140 other public charter schools scattered across 26 American states.  Our investigation, still in its early stages, reveals that the Gülen organization uses charter schools and affiliated businesses in the U.S. to misappropriate and launder state and federal education dollars, which the organization then uses for its own benefit to develop political power in this country and globally.

Aside from defrauding American taxpayers, the Gülen organization has an even more ominous objective in the United States.  The organization is one of the country’s largest recipients of H1-B “specialty occupation” visas, which it uses to import Turkish teachers into its charter schools, supposedly because local U.S. talent is not available to fill math and science teaching positions in its charter schools.  The Gülen organization illegally threatens to revoke these visas unless the Turkish teachers agree to kick back part of their salary to the organization.

More importantly, the Turkish teachers in Gülen organization charter schools are evaluated not on the basis of their teaching skills, but rather on whether they achieve monthly goals in a secret point system designed to instill Turkish culture and Gülenist ideology in our American students. The goal, we are told, is to develop a Gülenist following of high achievers, incubated in our local community schools across the country.

The Gülen organization has been able to grow in the U.S. largely because it conceals both its identity and its motives.  The first line of defense for Gülenist charter schools and companies has been to deny any affiliation with Fethullah Gülen (their officers and directors claim that they are merely “inspired by” Gülen’s religious teachings), as if the simple creation of business entities in which Fethullah Gülen himself holds no ownership interest could alter his ultimate control over the organization.  In reality, the governing boards of the Gülen charter schools are populated disproportionately by loyal Turkish men answering to a handful of Imams who rule over defined regions across the U.S., reporting ultimately to Gülen in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.

In Nevada, CASLV is a three-campus school operating under a charter held by tax-exempt Coral Education Corp., headquartered in Reno.  Three of Coral’s board members are Turkish, one of whom was formerly the Principal at two other Gülen organization charter schools, the Sonoran Science Academy at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona and the Bay Area Technology School in California.

Unfortunately, Nellis Air Force Base is not the Gülen organization’s first stab at a U.S. military base.  The organization successfully opened a school on Davis-Monthan AFB in 2009, and it tried but failed to gain access to Marine Corps Base Hawaii and Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois.  In California, Magnolia Public Schools applied for a charter in Oceanside, where Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton is located, although it temporarily withdrew its application after our law firm pointed out Magnolia’s connection to the Gülen organization earlier this year.

Lest there be any doubt about the objectives in the United States, the strategy of subtly indoctrinating school children into the Gülen movement is a familiar one overseas, and there is great peril in allowing it to flourish in this country.  In his native Turkey, Gülen created a network of hundreds of schools that have produced – over the past three decades – a vast cadre of followers now prepared to perform his bidding from official positions in government, law enforcement, the judiciary and the media.  Although precise numbers are impossible to verify, some have estimated that he currently controls more than half of the entire Turkish police force. The Economist newspaper compared Gülen’s influence in Turkey to the Freemason infiltration of law enforcement and judicial elites in Europe during the last century. Numerous documented cases in Turkey involving planted evidence, tainted prosecutions and illegal incarceration of Gülen critics underscore that he is quite willing to abuse his power and influence.

The same game plan is playing out, at last count, in 101 countries on every habitable continent.  With an estimated six million followers globally and assets in the range of $20-$50 billion, the Gülen organization has managed to conceal a great deal about its doctrine, mission or objectives.  Whether Gülen’s followers are classified as a religious sect, a commercial enterprise, a political movement or – as Dutch legislators concluded – a cult, it should be a matter of significant concern for our security and regulatory authorities.

In light of Gülen’s modus operandi elsewhere, the Department of Homeland Security should be asking itself why such a non-transparent, religion-based organization would seek to establish itself on our military bases, teaching the children of our service men and women.

UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism”

March 30, 2016

UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism” Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, March 29, 2016

“We need to fight to reject this notion of British values.” The alternative is cultural and national suicide, but few seem to care in Britain, and those who do are being closely watched by authorities, lest they get out of line. As a free society, Britain is finished.

EDUCATION Leaders 084154

 

“Teaching children fundamental British values is act of ‘cultural supremacism,’” by Javier Espinoza,Telegraph, March 28, 2016:

Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism”, teachers have said, as members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) vote to replace the concept with one that includes “international rights”.

A legal duty on teachers to promote so-called British values was passed two years ago after the “Trojan Horse” controversy.

However, teachers argue “fundamental British values” set an “inherent cultural supremacism, particularly in the context of multicultural schools and the wider picture of migration”.

The motion, which was passed at the NUT’s annual conference in Brighton, also calls for a campaign to promote “policies that welcome migrants and refugees into Britain” and called on members to “gather and collate materials on migrants and refugees” to be used in schools.

Following the motion, teachers were accused of looking to play “the role of fifth columnists” and that they risked making children feel guilty about being British.

The motion said migrants make a “huge economic, political and social contribution to the country” and condemned the Prime Minister for “racial stereotyping”.

Michel Holland, a teacher from Lambeth, said: “I am the grandson of Irish refugees. We’re all refugees in this country.” He added: “Refugees are welcome here.”

Christopher Denson, a teacher from Coventry, said he had reservations about using the term “fundamental British values” in schools because many of his students had ancestry in countries which had been at the mercy British colonialism.

He said: “The inherent cultural supremacism in that term is both unnecessary and unacceptable. And seen with the Prevent agenda, it belies the most thinly veiled racism and a conscious effort to divide communities.”

He added: “It’s our duty to push a real anti-racist work in all schools. And that doesn’t mean talk of tolerating other’s views, but genuine, inclusive anti-racist work.”

He said every year his school discussed topics such as apartheid and the rise of Islamaphobia. He added: “This year we focussed on the migrant crisis in Calais, the Mediterranean and beyond.

“We organised a politics day for Year 8s in the week before Easter. They had a day to form a political party in their tutor groups to come up with a manifesto, film a broadcast, and make banners and take part in a debate.

“Apart from the quality of the work, the other thing that really made my proud was that every single tutor group had as a policy, ‘refugees welcome, open the borders’.”

He said: “We need to be pushing at every level for anti-racism to be in the core curriculum for every child. We need to continue to gather, collate and publicise such materials and we need to fight to reject this notion of British values, to fight for notions of human values and human rights.

“We have to stand together across communities to bring down barriers, bring down borders, to say no to Islamaphobia, no to anti-Semitism, no to facism and any form of racism. As my Year 8s said, refugees welcome, open the borders.”

Their motion was met with fierce criticism. Chris McGovern of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Teachers should not be playing the role of fifth columnists in the ideological war currently being fought over our national identity and our national sovereignty.

“Teaching children that British values are part of “cultural supremacism” will, at best, make them feel guilty about being British and, at worst, radicalise them in order to ‘make up’ for the sins of their fathers.

“If one wishes to destroy a nation and build a ‘brave new world’ you begin by indoctrinating and brainwashing the children. This process of ‘re-education’ has started some years ago in our schools and we are, now, seeing its consequences in the suppression of free speech on our university campuses.”

Separately, teachers rejected the Government’s anti-radicalisation strategy over concerns it is silencing conversation in the classroom and damaging community cohesion.

The union called on the Government to withdraw the Prevent strategy regarding schools, which since summer 2015, has obliged teachers to refer to police pupils they suspect of engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or radical behaviour…. (Bold face type in original. — DM)

Emory To Hunt Down Those Who Chalked Support For Trump On Sidewalks and Walls

March 24, 2016

Emory To Hunt Down Those Who Chalked Support For Trump On Sidewalks and Walls, Jonathan Turley Blog, Jonathan Turley, March 24, 2016

(Please see also, American Fascists. — DM)

495px-donald_trump_by_gage_skidmore

We have been discussing how colleges and universities are expanding the range of micro aggressions and hostile or hate speech to troubling levels in terms of free speech and associational rights. Now the expression of political views in the presidential election has been added to speech that students have declared threatening. Someone at Emory chalked the name of Republican candidate Donald Trump around campus. Nothing unusual about that. Students often chalk up statements on sidewalks for causes or candidates. It would not be seen as in any way unusual and the next rain brings a clean slate. However, the statement of support for Trump has led to a protest calling for the supporter to be punished or expelled and for the President to express condemnation of such political affiliations. The students want a statement of support for Trump to be treated as the same as the writing of a swastika. The students have said that they feel threatened in the wake of the statements of political support for Trump.

Students organized immediately after seeing the statements of support and had a meeting with Emory President James W. Wagner to demand action. Students demanded to know “Why did the swastikas [on the AEPi house in Fall 2014] receive a quick response while these chalkings did not?” They were not happy when Wagner reportedly responded that that was a case of an outside threat. The questions reportedly became more pointed like “What do we have to do for you to listen to us?” One student demanded that Emory send out a University-wide email to “decry the support for this fascist, racist candidate.” To his credit, Wagner refused to denounce a presidential candidate. The students then demanded diversity hires into the “higher positions” of the University, including the Board of Trustees and the faculty in general.

What was particularly chilling is the demand for action on faculty members who have not publicly denounced Trump or his views under the view that “[Faculty] are supporting this rhetoric by not ending it.” This failure, the students insisted, have created a threatening environment and that “people of color are struggling academically because they are so focused on trying to have a safe community and focus on these issues [related to having safe spaces on campus].”

Wagner is reportedly preparing an email and has launched an investigation to find the culprit. University police are looking at security cameras. What will they do if they find some student with the incriminating chalk? Will she or he be expelled or disciplined or publicly denounced?

I have some obvious concerns about such action. My primary concern is whether this is the truly the first time in the history of Emory University that students or faculty made political statements on sidewalks. I doubt it. Would the same effort to hunt down the writers occur if the writing referred to Sanders or Black Lives Matter or Greenpeace? If not, this would seem a content-based effort that raises serious issues of free speech. Moreover, the expectation of some of these students that faculty should be pushed to denounce Trump like some Pol Pot reeducation camp is chilling.

I have written previously how free speech is under attack in the West and we appear to be raising one of the most anti-free speech generations in the history of our country. In the name of “tolerance,” we are treating free speech as the scourge of society and a right that must be carefully controlled to “protect” others. These students believe that political views are now within the gambit of threatening speech. We have come full circle from the sixties where baby boomers discovered political and social activism on campuses — a time of great upheaval but also great exploration. However now that students and staff are embracing a conservative, the desire is to have official condemnations and investigations. Trump has clearly generated both great support and great opposition. His views, however, (particularly on immigration) are shared by millions of citizens. Indeed, those same views are prevailing in part of Europe. This is a wonderful opportunity to have a passionate and substantive debate. Why not let all political flowers bloom on campuses? Rather than immediately seek to silence those with countervailing views, the first inclination should be to engage in the debate and value the exchange of ideas.

Before Wagner takes action, the faculty should at a minimum ask for the university to address how it has previously addressed chalk art and political statements. If all chalking is now going to be treated as an offense, will the university be distinguishing art but not political art? The problem with chalk crimes is, forgive the pun, drawing lines on what is prohibited or permitted speech.

What do you think?

American Fascists

March 24, 2016

American Fascists, Bill Whittle Channel via You Tube, March 23, 2016

(What will America be like in a few years? It’s unpleasant to contemplate. — DM)

 

Palestinians: Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation

February 22, 2016

Palestinians: Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, February 22, 2016

♦ “intifada” is simply a further phase in a larger plan to destroy Israel. When the plan began officially, with the establishment of the PLO in 1964, there were no “settlements” — not until after the June 1967 War — so what exactly were the Palestinians planning to “liberate”?

♦ The current conflict is not about “defending” any mosque from being contaminated by the “filthy feet” of Jews: it is about seeing Israel forced to its knees. Abbas and others seek to reap delicious political fruits from this “intifada.”

♦ Here is a novel idea: Kerry could put pressure on the Palestinian and Jordanian leadership to cease anti-Israeli incitement and indoctrination. Now that would be pressure well applied.

♦ Abbas is expected to become a partner in the fight against ISIS and radical Islamist groups. All well and good. Why then is he not expected to stop cheering on and glorifying young Palestinians who attack Jewish Israelis?

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is back in town. This time he is meeting with Jordanian and Palestinian leaders about “ongoing security issues in the region and continued tensions between Israel and the Palestinians.”

For those not involved in political newspeak, here is a translation:

“Ongoing security issues” = the Islamic State terror group (ISIS).

“Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians” = the ongoing wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks that began in October 2015.

Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA) fighting ISIS? Now that’s an idea! Jordanian King Abdullah and PA President Mahmoud Abbas ending “tensions” between Israel and the Palestinians? Let’s think about that.

Kerry comes back, but never calls a spade a spade. The “tensions” to which he deceptively alludes are knifings and car-rammings. And what is the biggest spade that Kerry avoids calling by its name? The new generation of Palestinians brainwashed to believe that Israel can be defeated with knives and car-attacks.

This “intifada” is simply a further phase in a larger plan to humiliate and destroy Israel. This plan began officially, with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in May 1964. At that time there were no “settlements” — not until after the June 1967 War — so what exactly were the Palestinians planning to “liberate”?

The plan continued in 1974, at the twelfth session of the Palestinian National Council in Cairo, with the 10-point “Phased Plan” (see Appendix below for full text of the Phased Plan). Article 2 called for “armed struggle” (terrorism) to establish “an independent combatant national authority” that is “liberated” from Israeli rule.

Contrary to Palestinian leaders’ pap, the current conflict is not about “defending” any mosque from being contaminated by the “filthy feet” of Jews: it is about seeing Israel forced to its knees. Abbas and others seek to reap delicious political fruits from this “intifada.”

That is why, in his meeting with Kerry, Abbas made it clear that he intends to pursue unilateral moves to impose a solution on Israel, with the help of the international community.

Abbas also told Kerry that he intends to continue with his efforts to seek a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel over “settlement construction.”

Never mind that on Palestinian maps, all of Israel is regarded as one big “settlement.”

1271Palestinian Authority leaders, official television, schools and media outlets often display maps showing Palestine stretching from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The maps do not show the existence of Israel.

But back to Kerry. His “tensions” imply two sides engaged in some kind of a dispute that has aggravated a situation and strained relations between them, instead of what it really is: Palestinians openly trying to supplant Israelis — the entire state.

So the game of obfuscation continues. No doubt, we will witness more pressure on Israel to make concessions that will supposedly ease the “tensions.”

Kerry and his friends either do not “get it” or do not want to “get it.” Palestinians are waging an out-and-out war against Israel with the goal of making Israelis suffer to a point at which they will beg their leaders to capitulate. In the Palestinian view, such behavior pays off royally.

It is a Palestinian commonplace that the two previous uprisings — in 1987 and 2000 — brought major achievements to the Palestinians.

The first “intifada” led to Israel’s recognition of the PLO as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians” — a move that was followed by the signing of the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority.

The second “intifada,” the Palestinians argue, led to Israel’s full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005.

And so we arrive at the newest wave of attacks. As the saying goes: Step-by-step.

Kerry would like to see an end to the Palestinian attacks on Israeli Jews. The only problem is that his vacuous rhetoric prevents him from having a snowball’s chance in a Middle Eastern summer from attaining that goal.

Let us also not underestimate Palestinian Authority rejectionism. On the eve of the Kerry-Abbas meeting, Palestinian Authority officials were quoted as saying that they did not expect anything positive to come out of the talks “because the U.S. remains biased in favor of Israel.”

As always, the Palestinian stance is, “My way or the highway.”

Moreover, Kerry is dreaming if he thinks that President Mahmoud Abbas or King Abdullah are able to stop the attacks on Israelis. Neither has the mandate or the credibility to do so. In any case, they and their media outlets are too busy with their anti-Israeli ranting to do much on that score.

Thus far, not a word has been uttered by either of the two Arab leaders that could be even vaguely interpreted by their people as “stop killing Israelis.” In the Palestinian Looking Glass, it is Israel that is responsible for the deadly attacks. After all, claims that are untrue about Israelis “storming and desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other Islamic holy sites” are provocative, to say the least.

Here is a novel idea: Kerry could put pressure on the Palestinian and Jordanian leadership to cease anti-Israeli incitement and indoctrination. Now that would be pressure well applied. And it does not even require funding.

President Abbas is expected to become a partner in the fight against ISIS and radical Islamist groups. All well and good. Why then is he not expected to stop cheering on and glorifying young Palestinians who attack Jewish Israelis?

When Kerry and his crew finally wake up to the fact that it is precisely this incitement that is driving Palestinians into the open arms of ISIS, Hamas and other terror groups, perhaps, finally, we will be able to hope for “easing tensions in the region.”

Meanwhile, Kerry is back blathering about peace in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he seems incapable of calling a spade a spade — especially when that spade’s name is Palestinian prevarication.

British Universities have Gone Crazy too

December 27, 2015

British Universities have Gone Crazy too. Why? Power Line, John Hinderaker, December 27, 2015

Italian journalist Giulio Menotti documents the madness that has overtaken British universities–a madness that is eerily familiar:

“Rhodes Must Fall” cry the students and professors outside Oxford, many of whom are themselves part of the Rhodes Scholarship group, the program built by the “racist” tycoon to allow foreign students to study at Oxford.

It’s exactly like students at Amherst and Harvard denouncing Jeffrey Amherst and Isaac Royall.

Meanwhile, across the UK, a general air of hostility is spreading against opinions that could cause even only a hint of distress in students, forcing theFinancial Times to publish an editorial: “It is in the interest of universities to maintain a free and fertile academic environment.”

Ditto in the U.S.

Iranian dissident Maryam Lamaze … was attacked and prevented from speaking at many UK colleges, like Goldsmiths and Warwick. Her hymn against religion and for Western free speech “offended” British students of Islamic faith.

At University College in London, a former student, Macer Gifford, was prevented from telling his experience in the ranks of Kurdish fighters committed to battle against the Islamic State. The reason? “In every conflict there are two sides and our college does not want to take sides.”

Should we be anti-ISIS? That’s too close a question for universities in Britain, as in the U.S., to call.

The University of East Anglia has just banned the use of the sombrero, because it is considered hateful towards Hispanic students.

Just like the recent fiasco at Yale. It’s odd, though. Doesn’t every kind of hat originate with one culture or another, and mustn’t all hats therefore be banned? And why stop with hats?

Oxford has canceled a debate on abortion, because women’s organizations had complained about the presence, among the speakers, of “a person without a uterus.” Don’t laugh, it is really happening at the university founded in 1096.

Don’t laugh, because feminists don’t have a sense of humor, either here or in the U.K.

The University of Cardiff has tried to remove the feminist Germaine Greer, “guilty” of not considering women and transsexuals as equals.

Transsexuals, slightly more common than unicorns, have opened up whole new horizons of insanity.

Meanwhile, these British “safe spaces” are used by apologists for Islamist cutthroats who gather support and are affiliated with these universities (“Jihadi John”, the late Isis executioner, was a brilliant student of Westminster).

I hadn’t realized that. Apparently “brilliant” students aren’t what they used to be.

Some days ago, the Telegraph published an article entitled: “The ideology of the ISIS dominates British universities.”

Why are so many students and professors attracted to evil? It was true in the 1930s, too, when German students and professors were among the most enthusiastic supporters of National Socialism, and when Nazis were weirdly popular–as it seems today–on many American campuses.

The same universities that are uncomfortable accommodating heterodox feminists and Islamic dissidents, such as the Queen Mary University of London, allow events under the banner of Islam where women sit separated from men, in accordance with the Sharia or Islamic law, as if they were in Riyadh or Tehran.

Because that’s diversity.

Muslim activist for women’s rights, Maryam Namazie, has been driven away by fanatic Islamists with the approval of the stupid gay militants. In British colleges it was Namazie who needed a “safe space” to deliver her speech, protected by bodyguards….

Much like the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Michelle Malkin here in the United States. And finally:

Meanwhile, British professors, writers, musicians, intellectuals and professionals are busy promoting initiatives to boycott the Jewish State and its professors.

All of this is nauseatingly familiar. My question is: why? Why have British universities gone off the rails in precisely the same ways as American universities? Steve has referred to the “spreading virus” of madness on American campuses, but the virus has apparently replicated itself in England. Why?

I mean the question seriously. Have British students and professors taken inspiration from their American cousins? Or vice versa? Is it because Leftism is an international movement? Do left-wing British professors and students, like their American counterparts, hate the society that sustains them, and does their hatred produce eerily similar symptoms? I don’t know the answer to these questions. But a contagion is loose that transcends, apparently, international boundaries.

The Salafis’ Daddy Warbucks: Saudi Arabia

December 17, 2015

The Salafis’ Daddy Warbucks: Saudi Arabia, Front Page MagazineRachel Ehrenfeld, December 17, 2015

(Please see also, Germany: Salafist “Aid Workers” Recruiting Refugees. — DM)

ks

[T]he most important obstacle is the West’s decades-long willful blindness to name and shame Saudi Arabia as the biggest terror financier, as well as the Saudis’ role in the development and spread of opaque Sharia finance institutions and Islamic charities.

The spread of Salafist radical groups, such as the global Hizb utTahrir,Tablighi Jamaat, and ISIS proves the effectiveness of the decades-long, $2 trillion’s worth of Saudi funding to indoctrinate Muslims everywhere, creating a large base of followers ready for further radicalization of what the West has erroneously labeled “self-radicalization.”

***********************

The first-ever global meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) network of some 200 jurisdictions over the weekend in Paris “to discuss actions…to combat the financing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) …and to combat the financing of terrorism ” will probably make the participants feel good, but will do little to cut-off state sponsorship of the fast growing radical Islamist movement.

The development of new technologies and encryption of online communications, financial transactions and other non-traditional methods to transfer money present serious obstacles to monitoring funding of large number of terrorists and their supporters.  But the most important obstacle is the West’s decades-long willful blindness to name and shame Saudi Arabia as the biggest terror financier, as well as the Saudis’ role in the development and spread of opaque Sharia finance institutions and Islamic charities.

Thus, Germany’s Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel‘s recent condemnation of Saudi Arabia’s ongoing funding of the spread of radical Islam in the West was surprising. “Wahhabi mosques all over the world are financed by Saudi Arabia. Many Islamists who are a threat to public safety come from these communities,” he told Bild am Sonntag, the largest-selling German Sunday paper. Even more unexpected was his statement: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over.”

The Saudi role in fostering Islamic terrorism is no secret. Before it came under some criticism after the al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Saudi Kingdom used to openly brag about its large donations to build, maintain and supply mosques, Islamic centers and madrassas, stocking them with Wahhabi Imams and ulemas (religious teachers) and covering expenses such as salaries, pensions, and “terrorcare” that included hospitals and other public services.

Directed by Muslim Brotherhood advisors who championed the oxymoron ‘Political Islam’ to deceive the infidels, the Kingdom funded Western tax exempt Islamic organizations engaged in dawah (proselytization for Islam). Among them were networks of charitable organizations that provide financial aid to prisoners (including non-Muslims to lure them to Islam) in Western jails, lavishly funded academic chairs in Middle East Studies in universities around the world, student-exchange programs and spending many millions of dollars to increase Saudi political influence in the West — even contributing $100 million to coordinate and assist the United Nations international counterterrorism efforts.

Saudi efforts to bring Wahhabi Islam to global dominance began in earnest in 1962, with the establishment of the first international Saudi charity, the Muslim World League (MWL). Influenced by exiled Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members, then-Crown Prince Faisal bin Abdul Aziz used growing oil revenues to fund MWL, which in turn established many other Islamic charities and nonprofits that helped directly and indirectly create the global jihadist movement. Successive Saudi kings have created additional “charitable” organizations to fund the worldwide spread of Wahhabism and have on occasion organized several national campaigns encouraging their subjects to support Sunni terror organizations outside the country, including the PLO, Hamas and al Qaeda. Thus it would be wrong to distinguish between contributions to radical Sunni organizations by the Saudi theocratic monarchy, its government and its wealthy subjects.

But Saudi support for terrorism extends much beyond direct deposits to openly radical elements. Direct financing of terrorist activities is but one of several means to further their agenda.

Indeed, little has changed since then-Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee in 2008 that Saudi Arabia is “serious about fighting Al Qaeda in the kingdom[but] the seriousness of purpose with respect to the money going out of the kingdom is not as high” (emphasis added).

The spread of Salafist radical groups, such as the global Hizb utTahrir, Tablighi Jamaat, and ISIS proves the effectiveness of the decades-long, $2 trillion’s worth of Saudi funding to indoctrinate Muslims everywhere, creating a large base of followers ready for further radicalization of what the West has erroneously labeled “self-radicalization.”

Saudi Arabia’s role in initiating and fomenting worldwide Muslim riots to curtail Western free speech has been mostly ignored. However, Muslims riots following the October 2005 publication of the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark’s largest daily, Jyllands-Posten, began only after Saudi Arabia recalled its ambassador to Denmark; after Sheikh Osama Khayyat, imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, praised on national Saudi television the Saudi government for its action; and after Sheikh Ali Al-Hudaify, imam of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, called “upon governments, organizations and scholars in the Islamic world to extend support for campaigns protesting the sacrilegious attacks on the Prophet.” The Saudi-controlled Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) initiated and coordinated Muslim rioting worldwide after the Danish Muhammad cartoon publications.

Moreover, to wield more control over Muslim communities worldwide, better orchestrate “spontaneous demonstrations,” and better allocate funds for them, the Saudi-backed OIC established the clerical International Commission for Zakat (ICZ) on 30 April 2007. Previously, there were more than 20,000 organizations that collected zakat. Now, however, the Islamic clerics’ centralized “expert committee” based in Malaysia also supervises and distributes zakat funds globally. Yet, President Obama and his former Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, describe Malaysia as a “moderate Muslim country” and Saudi Arabia as an ally.

The public outrage and rejection of Saudi King Salman’s offer to fund 200 new mosques for more than 800,000 new Muslim refugees in Germany, and the Vice Chancellor’s statement: “We have to make clear to the Saudis that the time of looking away is over” point in the right direction. But don’t hold your breath. Germany, the United States and the rest of the West have been turning a blind eye to Saudi funding of thousands of mosques, madrassas and Islamic centers that have propagated radical Islamic ideology for decades and are unlikely to face reality anytime soon.

Virginia HS Students Pen Allegiance to Allah – Through Calligraphy

December 17, 2015

Virginia HS Students Pen Allegiance to Allah – Through Calligraphy, The Clarion Project, December 17, 2015

(Please see also, Islamist Terror vs. the More Deadly Cancer of Islamisation. Please watch the video at the end of the article.– DM)

Shahadah-HPThe shahada, Islamic creed of faith

Outraged parents from Virginia met with school district officials to discuss their children’s assignments that included writing out the Muslim creed of faith and inviting girls to don a hijab, or Islamic headscarf.

As part of a world geography class in Riverheads High School in Augusta County, Virginia, students were asked to copy the Arabic “calligraphy” that stated that “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”

The phase is known as the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith. Conversion to Islam is accomplished by saying this statement three times in front of witnesses. At the time, the children were unaware of what they were writing, according to district officials.

One of the parents also asked why the students were given copies of the Quran, but not the Bible, to which the teacher explained that all of the students had already seen or read the Bible.

As for the hijab, district officials said, “Modest dress adopted by many in the Islamic faith and were invited to try on a scarf as a part of an interactive lesson about the Islamic concept of modest dress.”

Officials said the school’s curriculum also covers others other world religions.

Controversy over the way public schools are presenting Islam has been making headlines in many school districts around the U.S. and worldwide:

  • In Tennessee, a bill was introduced to prevent schools from teaching classes on “religious doctrine” before the 10th grade. The bill is in reaction to objections by parents to a three-week curriculum under the topic of world religion for middle-school students that covers the “Five Pillars of Islam” that obligated children to write assignments about Islamic principles of faith, such as “Allah is the only God.” Parents particularly objected because no other religion was taught at the same time and the amount of time spent on Islam was considerably more than that spent on any other religion.
  • In Maryland, parents objected to the way Islam was taught in the school’s “World History” class, presenting Islam in an historically untrue way and listing all the “benefits” of Islam.
  • After being threatened with a lawsuit, an Ohio school district agreed to remove a video about Islam from a seventh grade world-history curriculum that was challenged as falling under the category of proselytizing and favoring one religion over another (a violation of the Constitution’s Establishment Clause). The video, titled 30 Days: Muslim and America, features a young Christian man who agrees to totally immerse himself in Islam for a month by living with a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan.  It was shown to students as part of a course that requires students to “describe achievements by the Islamic civilization and how these achievements were introduced into Western Europe in the time period between 750 BC – 1600AD.”
  • In Massachusetts, the Wellesley Middle School, another public school was caught in a controversy when a video (see below) of a student trip to the Roxbury megamosque was released. On the trip, students were taught propaganda – among other things, that Muslim women got the vote before women in the West – by the mosque staff. The boys can be seen prostrating themselves to Allah alongside Muslim men. The video was covered extensively on Boston TV and radio.
  • In Massachusetts, the Newton public school system became enmeshed in a similar controversy about deceptive and anti-Semitic lessons concerning Muslim women being taught to their students. Even though the curriculum was removed, school administrators refused to tell the children the information was inaccurate (as was the case above with the Wellesley Middle School).
  • In the UK, regulators placed five Muslim-dominated public schools in the city of Birmingham under “special measures” after inspectors found pupils were systematically exposed to radical Islamic propaganda. The move followed emergency inspections of 21 primary and secondary public schools after a document surfaced that outlined a plot—dubbed Operation Trojan Horse—by Muslim fundamentalists to Islamize public schools in England and Wales.
  • In Germany, at least 25 primary and secondary schools across Hamburg are believed to have been infiltrated by Salafists and other fundamentalist who engaged in an organized strategy of intimidation and influence.

 

Germany’s Appeasement of Radical Islam

September 10, 2015

Germany’s Appeasement of Radical Islam, Gatestone Institute, Vijeta Uniyal, September 10, 2015

  • German, and possibly European, demographics are being set to change forever.
  • “No one knows exactly what actually happens in Islamic classes in German primary schools.” — Abdel-Hakim Ourghi, head of the Faculty for Islamic Theology and Religious Studies at the Freiburg University of Education.
  • In Ourghi’s assessment, conservative Islam, the one dominant in Germany, is incapable of thinking critically about its past.
  • According to the report, the textbooks fail to “confront the problematic verses of Koran.” The curriculum also fails in its most important purpose — integrating Muslims into the German society — as it fails to reconcile the “Islamic faith of the students with the reality of the western society” they are living in.
  • By legitimizing extremist groups such as DITIB within German Muslim society as the sole legitimate representatives of Islam, the German government has marginalized genuine voices of reform and dissent within its Muslim population.
  • These courageous dissident Muslim men and women are left to face threats and intimidation on their own, while the government is busy appeasing the self-proclaimed leaders of the faith.

As Muslim migration is being set to change German, and possibly European, demographics forever, Germany is gearing up for the new challenge — not by integrating and assimilating young Muslims in a free and democratic Western society, but by handing over the religious education of the next generation of German Muslims to Islamist radicals.

Worse yet, German authorities see no problem in doing that.

With Germany predicted to receive 800,000 migrants — mostly Muslims — this year alone, and millions more waiting to cross Europe’s unguarded borders, the Muslim population in Germany is seeing a historic rise from the current figure of nearly 6 million. Several German states including Bavaria, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia have introduced Islamic Studies in their public schools. The state of Hesse has become the first in Germany to offer Islamic education in public schools, with religious instruction starting as early as the first grade.

Giving young children religious and moral instruction might sound like a good idea, if not for the content of the newly written Islamic curriculum and the influence of Islamist elements over the recruitment of teachers.

The writing of textbooks is being overseen by the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB). In an agreement reached between the State of Hesse and DITIB, the organization will play a key role in setting the curriculum, selecting the teachers and monitoring the Islamic religious instruction. The organization is apparently assuming a similar role in several other key German states.

DITIB is the largest Muslim organization in Germany and controls several prominent mosques. The group depends heavily on the Turkish government for its funding, and maintains close ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist party, the AKP.

The newly compiled Islamic curriculum for public schools in Hesse has come under great scrutiny. An independent report conducted by Abdel-Hakim Ourghi, who heads of the Faculty for Islamic Theology and Religious Studies at the Freiburg University of Education, has sharply criticized the curriculum.

According to an article in Die Welt, Ourghi, a prominent Muslim scholar, has been raising concern about the activities of DITIB and other conservative Muslim organizations operating in Germany. “No one knows exactly what actually happens in Islamic classes in German primary schools,” he says. In his assessment, conservative Islam, the one dominant in Germany, is incapable of thinking critically about its past.

According to Ourghi’s report, the textbooks fail to “confront the problematic verses of Koran.” The report also says that the curriculum fails in its most important purpose — integrating Muslims into the German society — as it fails to reconcile the “Islamic faith of the students with the reality of the western society” they are living in.

Confronted with the damning report, Hesse’s Minister of Education and Culture, Alexander Lorz,dismissed the allegations and called the Hesse’s Islamic education a “success.”

Meanwhile, despite Lorz’s stance, young German Muslims from his state keep heading to Syria and Iraq to join the ranks of the Islamic State (ISIS). And despite DITIB’s regular lip service to denouncing the terrorist organization, the Islamic State receives a continuous flow of freshrecruits from DITIB-run mosques.

According to a recent investigative report by the German news magazine, Focus, a DITIB-run Mosque in Cologne is a key base in Germany for Turkey’s intelligence agency, the MIT. The intelligence team not only gathers information on Turkish President Erdogan’s opponents in Germany, but also maintains a local “thug squad” to mete out “tough punishments” to Turkish dissidents in Germany.

1241The Cologne Central Mosque is used as a key base in German for Turkey’s intelligence agency, where they run a local “thug squad” to mete out “tough punishments” to Turkish dissidents in Germany. (Image source: © Raimond Spekking/CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

By legitimizing extremist groups such as DITIB as the sole legitimate representatives of Islam within German Muslim society, the German government has marginalized genuine voices of reform and dissent within its Muslim population.

These courageous dissident Muslim men and women are left to face threats and intimidation on their own, while the government is busy appeasing the self-proclaimed leaders of the faith.

The fruits of liberty enjoyed by Germans today are not Germany’s to squander in the first place. Every bit of this precious freedom was paid for in blood — from the beaches of Normandy to the pavements of the Warsaw Ghetto — often meter-by-meter with bare knuckles and bloody fists.

As if history has come full circle, in the span of less than a century, Germany’s state institutions are folding again at the mere sight of an organized band of fascists.

“Death to America” Falling on Obama’s Deaf Ears

August 10, 2015

“Death to America” Falling on Obama’s Deaf Ears, American ThinkerEileen F. Toplansky, August 10, 2015

(Please see also, It’s Not Just Iran’s Hardliners Saying ‘Death to America.’  — DM)

The Iranian curriculum is based on an Iranian-style Islam called the New Islamic Civilization (NIC).  The battle between good and evil, which is to be waged on a global scale, “is the responsibility of each Iranian citizen,” and “it begins with defense.”  America is seen as “arrogant,” and “any kind of freedom of speech, political debate or appreciation of Iranian culture or values other than those espoused by the regime are intolerable[.]”

[T]reating Iran as a normal country instead of one that inculcates acts of aggression is extraordinarily dangerous.

**********************

We are well past the point where we can ever believe Obama the man because, as those prescient about Obama’s background instinctively understood, whatever was taught  Obama the child is what is now being reflected in his dangerous anti-American actions.

Thus, the 17th-century Jesuit-inspired quotation of “give me the child, and I will mold the man” remains true.

This is why the idea that one can trust the Iranians is not only naive, but extraordinarily dangerous, given the education of their children.  In the May 2015 Special Interim Report entitled “Imperial Dreams: The Paradox of Iranian Education” by Eldad J. Pardo, the incessant propagandizing and intimidation of Iranian students is proof positive that they are being primed to attack those whom their leaders deem the enemy.  The first page of the report shows the map of a “New Dreams of World Power” with Iran at the center.  Underneath this map is a picture of “Iranian children preparing for martyrdom.”

Lest one think this is unthinkable, recall the fact that Iran and its proxies regularly send their children as suicidal bombers.  Thus, as Pardo recounts, the Iranian education curriculum includes “the ambition to impose Iranian hegemony on the world; a culture of militarism and jihad; blind obedience and martyrdom; and hostility and paranoia toward foreigners.”

In fact, “jihad war is unending,” and “the frenzied rush toward the end-of-time’s ‘horrifying battle'” is the lifeblood of continuous jihad.

The backdrop to all this education is the idea that Iran is committed to “total struggle for the creation of a just world order” and that such a “condition will remain until the coming of the Mahdi, the Shiite Messiah[.]”  The messianic ideal here is quite different from what most Westerners believe; that it is ignored will be a fatal mistake.  And Obama knows this, which is why Americans must stomach, yet again, his “compendium of demagoguery, historical revisionism and outright lying.”

Iranian students understand that “possible martyrdom on a massive scale and for which they practice from the first grade – could be launched as part of an Iranian ‘attack on countries ruled by oppressive governments.'”  Moreover, Iranian students study about “dissimulation” (taqiyya) and “misleading the enemy.”  They learn that “in time of need, dissimulation and  temporary pacts – even with ‘un-Godly, idolatrous governments’ – are proper (but only until such time as the balance of power should change).”  The idea of sacrifice is “constantly instilled in them,” as evidenced by the Teacher’s Guide for Persian, Grade 3 text.  Never is there any concern with the “human wave assault,” which includes many sacrificed schoolchildren.  Instead, enthusiasm for military participation is promoted in the first grade, for six-year-olds.

Surely Obama’s many Muslim Brotherhood advisers would have informed him of taqiyya, and since Obama early on learned the tenets of Islam, this is part of his worldview.  Whether one believes he is a pathological liar or not, the fact remains that Obama defends the Iranian deal with falsehoods and slurs.  Moreover, he recently exploited American college students at American University, much as his Iranian counterparts abuse their own children with incessant misinformation and propaganda.

The Iranian educational curriculum makes much of the Aryan-Shiite basis of Iranian identity wherein the Allies, and not Nazi Germany, are vilified, and, of course, the Holocaust is completely avoided.  Hence, the unremitting cries of “Death to Israel” fall on ears already primed to hate the Jew.  Furthermore, in echoes of Nazism, “children are instructed not to obey their parents in matters regarding martyrdom,” and pictures of soldiers are amply sprinkled in the textbooks.

This is of little concern to Obama, who has been surrounded by anti-Semites for many years.  The anti-Jewish hatred does not disturb him, nor does it deter him.  While Caroline Glick asserts that Obama maintains that “an anti-Semite is someone who refuses to recognize the 3,000-year connection between the Jews and the Land of Israel,” and “an anti-Semite is also someone who refuses to recognize the long history of persecution that the Jewish people suffered in the Diaspora,” this is hardly a ringing endorsement of ensuring that no harm will come to the Jewish people.  Acknowledging a connection to a piece of land is not the same as making certain that that land is not blown to smithereens.

The Iranian curriculum is based on an Iranian-style Islam called the New Islamic Civilization (NIC).  The battle between good and evil, which is to be waged on a global scale, “is the responsibility of each Iranian citizen,” and “it begins with defense.”  America is seen as “arrogant,” and “any kind of freedom of speech, political debate or appreciation of Iranian culture or values other than those espoused by the regime are intolerable[.]”

In essence, the “school textbooks prepare the entire Iranian population for a constant state of emergency, requiring Iranians to foment revolutions throughout the world, particularly across the Middle East, while evil arrogant enemies – who hate Iran and Islam – scheme against them.”  In fact, texts emphasize the martyrdom of women as well as cyber warfare tactics.  Most importantly, “students learn that no checks are needed on the Supreme Leader’s authority, including his right to sanctify new weapons” (italics mine).  Blind obedience to the Supreme Leader is mandatory.

In a Grade 11 Iranian text, students are enjoined to understand that jihad “covers a range of meanings including killing, massacring, murdering and fighting,” and jihad “permits its use against anyone, anywhere.”  There is “defensive jihad,” which refers to an “enemy transgressing the border or city of the Muslims, or defense of one’s own or other’s life, honor and property.”  Thus, as Muslims gain in number in American cities, it is clear that defensive jihad can be used, especially since defensive jihad is seen as a warfare that is “gradual” and that can be “military and sometimes cultural,” since it “sometimes aims at conquering a land or part of it and sometimes aims at political-economic control.”

Then there is “internal jihad,” which “represents a war with outlawed people who implement rebellion and disobedience as well as armed uprisings.”  Western ideas of freedom will be relegated to the dustbin of history, and those who desire it will be annihilated.

Finally there is “elementary jihad,” which at first glance sounds familiar to Western ears.  It is “defined as an attack on countries ruled by oppressive governments that do not allow free religious activities or freedom to listen to the call of religion.”  But there is no freedom of religion in Iran.  It can be only Islam.  There is no room for any other ideas.  And, in fact, “non-Islamic moral constraints” have no impact as Hezb’allah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, or any other Islamic-inspired group engages in jihad.

Thus, as Jeffrey Herf writes, treating Iran as a normal country instead of one that inculcates acts of aggression is extraordinarily dangerous.  This is a war of ideas – whose will remain supreme?  In essence, Obama is painting a bull’s-eye on America, and not on Iran, who continues the “Death to America” chant on a regular basis.  And while Mona Charen claims that “Obama doesn’t take the Iranian chant seriously,” I, for one, beg to disagree.