Posted tagged ‘Islamic indoctrination of children’

UK: Judge allows two Muslim teachers who fed students “diet of Islam” at state school back in classrooms

October 14, 2016

UK: Judge allows two Muslim teachers who fed students “diet of Islam” at state school back in classrooms, Jihad Watch

Please see also On the Road to a Sharia State – Investigating the UK’s Sharia Courts. The decision referenced in the current article was rendered, not by a Sharia court, but by one of Her Majesty’s courts. –DM)

The judge, in making this decision, are signaling that they accept the teaching of Islam as truth in state schools. They are paving the way for the total capitulation of free Britain, and its complete Islamization.

Britain is finished.

inamulhaq-anwar

“Two teachers in ‘Trojan horse’ school who fed pupils a ‘diet of Islam’, segregated assemblies and ignored sex education are allowed BACK into classrooms by a High Court judge,” by Jenny Awford, MailOnline, October 13, 2016:

Two teachers who were struck off for feeding pupils a ‘diet of Islam’ at a school linked to the ‘Trojan horse’ scandal are being allowed back into the classroom.

Inam Anwar and Akeel Ahmed, who taught at Park View in Birmingham and were part of WhatsApp group ‘Park View Brotherhood’, were banned in February.

But a High Court judge found the teachers were treated ‘unfairly’ and he overturned the ban today.

They claimed they were targeted after the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter was published in 2013 – which detailed a plot to introduce hardline Muslim teaching into schools.

Both men were struck off this year after a National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) panel found they exercised ‘undue religious influence’ on pupils.

The panel heard the pupils at the 600-strong secondary school were never taught about safe sex, relationships or contraception.

Anwar, the head of modern languages, and Ahmed, in charge of religious studies, were accused of changing the curriculum so sex education was not taught.

NCTL officials also said Ahmed organised religious assemblies where boys were segregated from girls.

He was also said to have encouraged prayer during the school day through posters and a call to prayer on the school’s loudspeaker system.

Both men were also accused of taking part in a WhatsApp chat that discussed the murder of soldier Lee Rigby and the Boston Marathon bombings.

They were cleared of distributing or using leaflets, promoting the view that a married man has an ‘entitlement’ to have sex with his wife.

The NCTL said their misconduct was serious and Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, agreed that they should be banned from teaching in England indefinitely.

But Mr Justice Phillips today ruled at London’s High Court that the men’s treatment had been ‘unjust’.

He accepted that important evidence had not been disclosed to the pair and there had been ‘serious procedural impropriety’ in the NCTL’s fact-finding process.

Upholding the pair’s judicial review challenge, he ruled their treatment had been ‘unfair’ and they were reinstated back into the profession….

Hugh Fitzgerald: Teaching About Islam In Tennessee

October 2, 2016

Hugh Fitzgerald: Teaching About Islam In Tennessee, Jihad Watch, October 2, 2016

A Bangladeshi Muslim student reads the holy Quran at an Islamic school during Ramadan in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, June 29, 2016. Muslims throughout the world are marking the holy month of Ramadan, during which they fast from dawn till dusk. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)

A Bangladeshi Muslim student reads the holy Quran at an Islamic school during Ramadan in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Wednesday, June 29, 2016. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)

For nearly a year some Tennessee parents have been up arms about the teaching of Islam to seventh graders in their public schools. They are disturbed that more attention has been given to “studying” Islam than to Christianity or Judaism. And they especially were upset that the students were asked to recite and write out the Shehada, in a unit on the Five Pillars of Islam: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” Some called it “indoctrination.” And the Tennessee State Board of Education, in response, has decided to omit the section “Islamic World, 400 AD/CE-1500s” from the seventh-grade social studies curriculum. Instead, the schools will, in a “streamlined” form, still teach 7th graders about Islam, but now in a history section titled “Southwest Asia and North Africa: 400-1500s,” and omitting subjects previously taught, such as “the origins of Islam” and “the life of its founder Muhammad.”

It is easy to imagine how this played out in the mainstream press. Tennessee, the buckle on the Bible Belt, where less than a century ago a certain Mr. Scopes was put on trial for teaching evolution, is at it again. A bunch of narrow-minded parents in Maury County, rubes right out of central casting, pitchforks at the ready, have managed to show just what prejudice and Islamophobia can do, and have forced an end to seventh-graders in Tennessee from learning all about the “religion of 1.6 [sic] billion people.” One of the photographs accompanying an article about the parents’ protest shows the hand of a student pointing to a page in an open Qur’an; the caption underneath readsParents fear their kids will know too much about this book.

But was this really a victory for the Know-Nothings, the haters of diversity, the right-wing Christian fundamentalists who don’t want their children to learn anything about the faith of more than a billion people? Or did those parents have a point? And if they had a point, might there be another way of making it?

The teaching of Islam, if done rightly, would not eliminate but, rather, reinforce, any sensible Infidel’s deep doubts about the “religion of peace.” What the students were taught was comically superficial, but they no doubt came away thinking that they had learned something about Islam, and discovered there was nothing to worry about. After all, these are 7th graders.

They learned that Muslims are monotheists, just like Christians and Jews. A comforting thought. But they did not learn that Muslims are taught to regard those fellow monotheists as the “vilest of creatures,”and Muslims as the “best of peoples.” They did not learn that Islam divides the world uncompromisingly between Muslims and non-Muslims, and that a permanent state of war exists between them, and will continue to exist, until Islam everywhere dominates, and Muslims rule, everywhere. They learned that, as one of the fill-in-the-blank questions given to them asked, “the Muslim word for God is Allah.” But they did not learn that the Muslim God is different in almost every respect from the Christian one. They did not learn that the expression “Allahu akbar” does not mean that “God is great,” but that “Our Muslim God is greater than yours,” and that it is a war-cry.

They did learn to write down the Five Pillars of Islam: Shehada, Salat, Zakat, Sawm, Hajj, but what did they find out about what those words mean?

They not only wrote out but recited the Shehada, the declaration of the Oneness of God: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.” They learned that the Shehada is what non-Muslims recite in order to become Muslims, to join the faith, the community, the umma of Islam. But they were not told that once you become a Muslim, you can’t get out, that the punishment in Islam for apostasy is death. So these American kids recite and write out the Shehada in class, you can imagine with what naïve solemnity (or on the playground, as they talk about it later, hilarity), and begin to think that “Wow, I could be a Muslim now if I wanted” or at home, reciting it to annoy their parents, “See Ma, I said it and nothing happened. I didn’t turn into a terrorist, I didn’t start throwing bombs. Chillax.” The parents are annoyed, of course, but do not think to ask their children if they realize why anyone can become a Muslim merely by reciting the Shehada, when to become a Christian or a Jew requires extensive study. The reason, they could tell their children if they knew it themselves, is that Muslims want to make it easy for non-Muslims to convert, for these converts are seen not so much as individuals learning about, and wrestling with, theological matters of moment, but regarded more like recruits to an army – just recite here — the Army of Islam.

When the students were taught about the Second Pillar of Islam, Salat, they learned that it is the ritual prayer said five times a day by all Muslims. They may have been impressed with how devoted Muslims must be. But they did not learn the contents of those prayers. How many Americans know that every Muslim, in saying his daily prayers, is denouncing the Kuffar – Christians and Jews — seventeen times a day? Do you think the teachers in Tennessee knew this? Do you think, if they learned it, they would dare to mention it to their classes? Wouldn’t that get them in trouble with a cheerfully denying local member of CAIR (“who told you this nonsense”?), or with some self-righteous journalist who insists that this cannot possibly be true, it’s one more Islamophobic canard? Of course it would.

Of what conceivable value is memorizing the word “Salat” and learning “Muslims pray five times a day” unless students find out what those prayers contain, and especially what they say about Infidels? As with the Shehada, something very important has been left out.

Robert Spencer explains what is in the five canonical prayers:

In the course of praying the requisite five prayers a day, an observant Muslim will recite the Fatihah, the first surah of the Qur’an and the most common prayer in Islam, seventeen times. The final two verses of the Fatihah ask Allah: “Show us the straight path, the path of those whom Thou hast favoured; not the (path) of those who earn Thine anger nor of those who go astray.” The traditional Islamic understanding of this is that the “straight path” is Islam — cf. Islamic apologist John Esposito’s bookIslam: The Straight Path. The path of those who have earned Allah’s anger are the Jews, and those who have gone astray are the Christians.

This is not my interpretation; it comes from the classic Islamic commentaries on the Qur’an. The renowned Qur’anic commentator Ibn Kathir explains that “the two paths He described here are both misguided,” and that those “two paths are the paths of the Christians and Jews, a fact that the believer should beware of so that he avoids them.The path of the believers is knowledge of the truth and abiding by it. In comparison, the Jews abandoned practicing the religion, while the Christians lost the true knowledge. This is why ‘anger’ descended upon the Jews, while being described as ‘led astray’ is more appropriate of the Christians.”

Students learn that Zakat is the charitable giving required of Muslims. Admirable, they think, good for Muslims. But what is not said is that in the giving of Zakat, the recipients of that charity are only other Muslims. It would make no sense for Muslims to support those who have not accepted Islam. As Quran 8:55 puts it: “Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve” And the Quran (28:86) adds: “Never be a helper to the unbelievers.” The Quran (48:29) also says: “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. And those with him are hard (ruthless) against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves.”

How many of those students in Tennessee do you think were told that “Zakat” can only go to fellow Muslims? Or, even more unlikely, how many might have had that practice explained to them by reference to 8:55 and 28:86 and 48:29? Why none, of course. The students will learn, and their teachers too may well think, that Muslims are unusually generous because one of Islam’s Pillars is this required giving of alms. But the alms are only intended to support and promote Muslims, not to help humanity.

The last two pillars – Sawn and Hajj — are in themselves inoffensive. But piquant details connected to their observance could have been added.

Sawm is the dawn-to-dusk fasting, during the month of Ramadan. Some liken it to Lent, though it requires refraining, during the day, from food altogether, and not, as for Christians at Lent, giving up this or that pleasurable practice (e.g., drinking wine, smoking, eating a particular food). Do you think the students knew that Ramadan is associated with an upsurge in violence by Muslims? Or learned that Muslims have been known to attack, and even kill, Infidels for eating during Ramadan?

Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam. Muslims are required to make, at least once in their lives, the pilgrimage to Mecca, to circumambulate the Ka’aba seven times widdershins, and perform certain other rituals, such as the flinging of pebbles at the Devil, represented by three pillars in Mina. Muslims of every race and sect, make the hajj. But beneath the outward display of unity, sectarian strife continues, even in regard to the hajj. The Iranian government, for example, this year did not permit its own citizens to make the hajj, as a way of expressing displeasure with the Saudis. And the Saudis have always forbidden Ahmadis, whom they regard as not real Muslims, from making the hajj. Was any of this mentioned?

The objection to the teaching about Islam should not have been that students learn too much about Islam, but that they learn too little. The recital of the Shehada, as we noted above, is a quick and easy way to swell Muslim ranks. But having these American students recite the Shehada, and merely pretend to “be Muslims,” is not without consequences. They may have imprinted on their young brains an impression of a harmless Islam that later will be hard to dislodge. Some people think, for example, that Obama’s memories of being a child in Indonesia, where he was taken with the muezzin’s call to prayer (“the call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset”) may partly explain his consistently sympathetic – and wildly inaccurate – descriptions of Islam.

But what else has been left out? Why, in what is effectively an “Introduction to Islam” unit, was the duty of Jihad apparently not mentioned? Shouldn’t Islam be described properly as a “fighting faith”? How did Islam spread, so rapidly, across North Africa, and through the Middle East? What happened to the many non-Muslim peoples subjugated by conquering Muslims? And if Jihad was mentioned after all, was the word glossed as “an internal struggle to be a better Muslim” or as what it is, a real war for territory, to enlarge Dar al-Islam, and to subdue the Infidel? Of course not.

We are told that the “life of Muhammad” was taught to students in Tennessee. But what about his life was taught? That he raided camel caravans, and received messages from Allah through the angel Gabriel? Do you think the students were also told that he took part in dozens of military campaigns? That he observed with pleasure the decapitation of several hundred bound prisoners? That he led a raid, for women and loot, on the inoffensive Jewish farmers of the Khaybar Oasis? That he consummated his marriage to little Aisha when she was nine years old? That he was delighted when his followers killed Asma bint Marwan and Abu ‘Afak for mocking him? That – despite or because of this record — Muhammad is considered the Model of Conduct (“uswa hasana”) and Perfect Man (“al-insan al-kamil”) for all Muslims, and for all time? Parents should demand not that the life of Muhammad be omitted from the curriculum, but that it be taught in greater detail.

If you are not Muslim, what would you most want to know about Islam? Surely you would want to find out what is said about non-Muslims in the Qur’an and Hadith. Students should not be shielded from the many passages in the Qur’an that denounce the Unbelievers; they have a right to know, and teachers a duty to teach, this aspect of Islam, rather than have it remain unremarked, or deliberately hidden. It is not too late for the parents to draw up their own syllabus, one that they should make public, in order to force discussion of all of these unpleasant but indispensable matters. Instead of allowing themselves to be caricatured as the “parents who fear their kids will know too much about this book”— the Qur’an — the parents in Tennessee might consider demanding a fuller study of Islam in the schools, “because we want our children to be able to answer such questions as these”: Why is it so easy to convert to Islam by reciting the Shehada? And why is it so hard – and so dangerous — to leave Islam? Why is Zakat limited only to other Muslims? Why, in the five required daily prayers, is an imprecation against Jews and Christians repeated seventeen times? Why does Islam still permit slavery? Who are the “vilest of creatures”? Who are the “best of peoples”? Who was Aisha? Who was Asma bint Marwan? What is “Jihad”? What is a “dhimmi”? What is “jizyah”?

That’s a start.

What can CAIR and its willing collaborators respond?

Video: UK Islamic School Teaches Muslims to Kill Those Who Reject Islam

October 1, 2016

Video: UK Islamic School Teaches Muslims to Kill Those Who Reject Islam, Creeping Sharia, October 1, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMwwvDcR-VE

This shocking video shows Islamic scholars teaching young British children in a Muslim faith school in the UK.

The woman first illustrates what happens when a person decides to leave Islam.“What are we going to do?” asks the woman in broken English. “We kill him. Kill.”

“The ones who reject Islam?” a British student asks.

“Yeah,” the teacher says. “Kill him. You have to kill him. Do you understand? We’re talking about Islam.”

The video jumps to the woman outlining the punishment for adultery.

“The judgment for adultery,” she asks. “What is the law?”
“Stone him,” a student replies.

“Until he dies,” the woman elaborates. “And the one who is not married?”

“Lash him, lash him,” says a chorus of students.

“Yes,” the woman says. “With 100 lashes.”

She then describes with disturbing coldness what the intended punishment is for gays.

“Throw them from the highest place,” she says. “We’re not going to live like animals.”

A student replies with a passage from her Islamic textbook. “’The punishment for homosexuals is throw them from the highest point and then stone them. Then you reduced him to the lowest of the low. So if you throw someone off a mountain you are reducing them to the lowest of the low because they are falling off the highest place’.”

The Islamic teacher further explains the nature of Allah to her students.

“It is not enough that you worship Allah,” she says. “We have to also in our heart hate what displeases Allah and love what Allah loves. You have to hate what displeases Allah, especially when living in this country, with that non-Muslim.”

Another British student reads a passage from her textbook:

“’Verily are free from you and whatever you worship beside Allah. We have rejected you and there has appeared between us and you hostility and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone.”

“Islam is keeping you away from disbelief and from the disbelievers,” says the teacher. “Any questions?”

A student then asks if being friends with non-believers is allowed.

“No. You understand?” says the teacher. “You don’t have to be friends with them. That is not allowed. Because loyalty is only to the Muslim, not to the kafir.”

The word ‘kafir’ is a derogatory term used in the Muslim world to describe unbelievers.

Canadian Red Cross Outsources Guide for Refugees to CAIR

September 28, 2016

Canadian Red Cross Outsources Guide for Refugees to CAIR, Clarion Project, John Goddard, September 28, 2016

canada-red-cross-booklet-hpPhoto: images from the teacher’s guide

The Canadian Red Cross has funded a teachers’ guide depicting Canadian society as practicing a “terrorist ideology of hate” against Muslims.

The guide, written ostensibly to coach teachers on how to help Syrian refugee children adapt, suggests that “hate,” “discrimination” and “Islamophobia” amount to a terrorist ideology, and that non-Muslim Canadians are its perpetrators. The solution is Islam, the guide says.

“The core values and central tenants of Islam are immutable,” it says, “and are the best counter-narrative to the terrorist ideology of hate.”

The Red Cross is expressing vague misgivings about the publication.

“The original intention… was to provide educators with a resource to help children deal with cultural transition and possible trauma due to war and significant cultural change,” the charity’s spokesperson said in an interview. “In our view, the majority of the publication achieves its intended purpose, but there are specific areas that we don’t feel fit with its original intention.”

To produce the booklet, the Red Cross gave $3,000 from its “Syrian refugee resettlement fund” to the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), formerly CAIR-Canada. The group changed its name three years ago after its parent organization, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was repeatedly shown to have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Canada has accepted 31,000 Syrian refugees in the past year, but the guide shows less concern for refugee children than for “Canadian Muslim youth.” The word “refugees” does not even appear in the title, “A Guide for Educators: Helping Students Deal with Trauma Related to Geopolitical Violence & Islamophobia.”

The 16-page booklet portrays Muslim youth as under attack not from Islamic State terrorists or President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian forces, but from non-Muslim Canadians.

“To constantly feel under attack, to have to defend one’s faith, and to be continuously called upon to condemn the actions of criminals and terrorists is emotionally traumatic,” the booklet says.

The word “trauma” appears often, mostly referring to Muslim life in Canada. “Trauma can be related to historical events such as the history of colonization,” the guide says. And: “Being marginalized and categorized as ‘the other’… can be traumatic.”

The guide includes specific tips for teachers. One is to examine oneself for anti-Muslim bias — “recognize your own judgments and biases.” Another is to let Muslims proselytize in schools — “provide space for Muslim students to speak to their peers about their faith.”

In italics, the tip sheet says: “Care should be taken by teachers on the language and tone they take when discussing world events and the Islamic faith.”

TV commentator Ezra Levant put the last point in plainer language. “This is an instruction to anybody working in the school system to shut-up about Islam — it is a favored religion,” he said last week on his online news channel, The Rebel.

The self-described conservative channel sent the Red Cross more than $25,000 this summer to help with forest-fire relief in Fort McMurray, Alberta, but will never donate to the Red Cross again, Levant told viewers of The Ezra Levant Show.

“I think the Red Cross should withdraw its support [for the booklet] and apologize to Canadians,” he said.

Two years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police abruptly cut its collaboration with the NCCM on a “United Against Terrorism” guide. The police force “could not support the adversarial tone” of the booklet, they said.

The Red Cross said its specific objections to the teachers’ booklet include three reprinted op-ed pieces. One is by the head of the Winnipeg-based Islamic Social Services Association, a partner on the booklet, comparing the circumstances of Canadian Muslims to that of Japanese-Canadians interned during World War Two.

“We are in discussions with the organization that produced the publication,” the Red Cross spokesperson said. “I’m not sure what the end result will be.”

Another collaborator on the guidebook was the Canadian Human Rights Commission, an ostensibly neutral federal government body, which “translated the booklet into French to reach a broader audience,” a spokesperson said.

Two years ago, the NCCM sued then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his press secretary for libel when the press secretary referred to NCCM as “an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas.” The case is still before the courts.

New Study: Extremist Literature Common in Canadian Mosques

August 24, 2016

New Study: Extremist Literature Common in Canadian Mosques, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, August 24, 2016

Islamic-State-Fighter-1-HP_1Illustrative picture. (Photo: © Screenshot from video)

Extremist literature is widely available in mosques and Islamic schools in Canada, according to a new study, reported by the National Post.

The study was conducted by Thomas Quiggin a former intelligence analyst with the Privy Council Office and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Saied Shoaaib, a journalist originally from Egypt.

The study found that not only was the material available, but in some places it was the majority of the literature available.

The co-authors argued that politicians have reacted insufficiently to the threat, and that extremists were gaining the upper hand ideologically.

“Further research is required to determine the depth and breadth of this problem,” the study concluded.

The findings are especially troubling in the light of another study, published earlier in August, which interviewed Canadian citizens who had travelled to Syria or Iraq to fight for jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL), as reported by Macleans.

In this study, titled Talking to Foreign Fighters: Socio-Economic Push versus Existential Pull Factors, researchers questioned 40 foreign fighters, 60 family members, friends and associates, and 30 online supporters from December 2015 to February 2016.

They have so far they have published findings from an initial sample of 20 jihadists. Their findings indicate that ideology was a primary motivating factor in the radicalization journeys by of those to whom they spoke.

“None of our sample indicated coming from familial situations of poverty or marginality,” they said. “On the contrary, many indicated they had fairly happy and privileged, or at least comfortable, childhoods. In general, there was almost no discussion of the economic situation of their families.”

Those interviewed “run the gamut from troubled youth with personal problems to accomplished young men and women from stable backgrounds,” the authors wrote.

“Anger and frustration have their role to play in the process, but it is the positive investment in an alternate world-saving role that matters most, no matter how strange it may appear to outsiders.”

They also saw that many seemed to radicalize and travel in “clusters,” as opposed to lone wolves.

Furthermore, they added that mentoring from someone seen as a religious figure was necessary for many to complete the process of radicalization. “In most cases, we would say the help and encouragement of some other outside mentors is required to complete the process of radicalization, to turn wannabe terrorists into deployable agents or independent martyrs for the cause. The process of self-radicalization needs to be legitimated to be complete.”

With the presence of extremist literature available in mosques, the ability of Canadians to be drawn into such an ideology seems clear.

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists?

July 18, 2016

Why is Virginia a Haven for Would-be Jihadists? Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, July 18, 2016

1709

What is it about Virginia?

Already this year, six men from the “Cavalier State” have been arrested on terror-related charges – two of them in July alone. Another man has joined the Islamic State in Syria. Two of those charged were stopped from making a similar trip.

These most recent arrests, one on July 3, the other on July 8, were based on charges of planning to provide material support to ISIS. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former member of the National Guard who was arrested July 3, allegedly discussed planning an attack against U.S. military in the homeland inspired by fellow Virginian Nidal Hasan’s 2009 shooting at Fort Hood. According to court documents, Jalloh quit the Guard and later attempted to obtain funds and weapons for a domestic attack after being inspired by Anwar al Awlaki’s videos on YouTube.

Five days later, Virginia law enforcement arrested Haris Qamar, following an extended FBI sting operation. According to an FBI affidavit, Qamar made statements to an informant such as, “By-bye, DC, stupid a— kufar [infidels], kill ’em all,” and posted to his Twitter account a prayer for “strength to the mujahedeen to slaughter every single US military officer.”

Earlier arrests this year – two in June and one in January – involved men planning to join the jihad in Syria, rather than waging domestic battles. In one case, Mohamad Jamal Khweis, who had already joined the Islamic State, surrendered to Kurdish forces in Iraq in an apparent effort to escape the hell of life in the new caliphate. Now awaiting sentencing in the United States, he faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Why does this keep happening in Virginia? What makes its young Muslims more susceptible to the radical messages from Awlaki and ISIS social media?

Virginia has proved to be an active center for radical Islamist activity over the years and has bred more than its share of terrorists since 9/11. It was at the Hamas-linked Dar al Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, for instance, that terrorist icon Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American whom counter-terrorism officials say inspired hundreds of other Muslims to take arms in violent jihad, once served as imam. Among his disciples: Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, convicted in 2005 of collaborating with al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush; and several of the 9/11 hijackers.

And it was in Virginia that, in the still fragile and bewildered aftermath of 9/11, “Beltway snipers” John Allen Mohammed and Lee Boyd Malvo shot and killed more than 12 people, including an FBI analyst, in October 2002.

While internet and social media remain powerful weapons in the terrorist recruitment arsenal, personal connections remain the most potent tool. Honor student Ali Shukri Amin, charged with soliciting donations for ISIS, is also suspected of helping another Virginian, Reza Niknejad, travel to Syria.

While none of the recent cases implicate specific mosques, the influence of Dar al Hijrah and some of its imams appears to have been widespread.

To some extent, this could be thanks to its current imam, Shaker Elsayed. In 2002, hetold a conference hosted by the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle for North America that deciding whether suicide bombers were martyrs was “an in house business” for Muslims.

In a dramatic speech available online since 2013, Elsayed rants against the West and calls for “the power of faith” and “the power of armament.” In the post-9/11 world, he observes, even world leaders have “bowed down” to the Western pressure. “We the Muslim masses should never bow down except to Allah!” he says, “and this will give us our dignity back.”

But other Virginia religious leaders have gone further. Ali al-Timimi, a cancer researcher, was the “spiritual leader” of a group of 11 men convicted of terrorism in 2003 and 2004, Al-Timimi is now serving a life sentence for recruiting Muslims to travel to Pakistan and train for holy war.

Shortly after 9/11, according to the New York Times’ coverage of his trial, al-Timimi invited a group of young Muslim men to dinner, where he told them they had a religious duty to fight with the Taliban against American forces. Prosecutors described that statement as “treason,” calling al-Timimi a “purveyor of hate and war.”

More than 10 years after his conviction, al-Timimi remains a figurehead among radical groups in Virginia and the Capitol district. The Peace and Justice Foundation, which defended al-Timimi and his followers, refers in online documents to a government conspiracy, while numerous web sites offer recordings of al-Timimi’s lectures. In addition, a Facebook page devoted to his appeal with more than 2,000 “likes,” has built a community in his support. (Followers even raised $12,000 for his mother’s medical care.)

The Saudi-sponsored Islamic Saudi Academy, which shut down abruptly last month,faced criticism for its textbooks that promote Wahhabism, an extreme version of Islam practiced by the Saudis. The textbooks contained passages “that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one’s enemies, and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was ‘justified,'” the Washington Post reported. Those passages were found in school textbooks two years after U.S. officials, shocked by the texts in use in 2006, ordered they be revised. Pre-revision books included statements like, “It is said: the apes are the people of the Sabbath, the Jews. The swine are the unbelievers of Jesus’ table, the Christians.”

The school’s 1999 valedictorian, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, was convicted in 2005 for supporting al-Qaida and planning to assassinate the president. (Notably, he also taught Islamic Studies at Dar Al Hijrah.)

As Seamus Hughes of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University’s Center or Cyber & Homeland Security told Fox News, “Northern Virginia has a disproportionate number of people that are drawn to this.”

Ramy Zamzam is a poster child for this observation. He was among five young men who disappeared from their northern Virginia neighborhood in late 2009, only to be arrested by Pakistani authorities who caught them trying to cross into Afghanistan to join jihadists there.

“We are not terrorists,” he said outside a hearing. “We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism.”

Muslim groups expressed their horror over the incident and promised a program aimed at de-radicalization.

It’s not clear that any such plan ever emerged. If it did, it’s clearly not working.

“Minnesota Men” go to Trial (17)

May 26, 2016

“Minnesota Men” go to Trial (17), Power LineScott Johnson, May 26, 2016

Well, I went to the trial yesterday and a fight broke out. Waiting in the hallway to enter the courtroom at the appointed hour, The hallway was thick with those of us waiting to be admitted to the courtroom. I stood directly behind a young Somali lady wearing a hijab. As she started pushing and shoving, she repeatedly dropped the F-bomb at maximum volume within shouting distance of the jury. And here I thought I’d seen it all.

The fight, as it turns out, was between the mother of Abdirizak Warsame and her daughter, Warsame’s sister. As Warsame was about to resume testifying against the three defendants under a cooperation agreement with the prosecution, daughter took went after mother. The conflict represented their divided loyalties in the case. The Star Tribune’s Stephen Montemayor picks up on the trial’s undercard here. Warsame’s sister put up a better fight in the hall than Warsame did on the stand.

Warsame was the third and weakest of three key witnesses called by the government. He completed his testimony yesterday. The government seems to me to be ending its case on a low note. That’s generally not how you’re supposed to do it.

Without going into details, it seemed to me that defense counsel Bruce Nestor turned Warsame to use on behalf of his client, Abdirahman Daud. I may be missing something, but I’m not sure whether, on balance, Warsame was more helpful to the government or to the defense.

Warsame made me reflect on my understanding of the case against the “Minnesota men.” In a sense, they are products of the vacuous America of 2016. They have been Americanized in that sense. These young men had boundless opportunities of a conventional sort before them, yet they chose to squander them. They are talented and resourceful, yet they represent a great threat. They are seriously misguided young men. What happened?

Warsame is a graduate of the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in Inver Grove Heights. With a little help from the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the school has now been shuttered. I wore out a keyboard writing about the school before it closed. For years the school operated, illegally in my opinion, as a publicly funded Islamic charter school.

From TIZA Warsame proceeded to Heritage Academy, a mostly Somali high school in Minneapolis. This year the Minneapolis school district moved to retake control of Heritage from its board.

After high school Warsame attended a local community college and worked for several employers. Indeed, he worked for two on the tarmac at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport while he was pursuing his interest in ISIS.

Islam filled the life of Warsame and his friends. It filled the vacuum now served up by American culture to immigrants. The “Minnesota men” could have succumbed to drugs or alcohol in a pattern that has devastated the lives of so many American families. In this case, however, they fell prey to Islam. It was Islam that intoxicated them.

Judge Davis himself took up this point with Warsame yesterday. “You understood that if you committed jihad you would die,” the judge said. “What attracted you to that?”

“The reward you would get and the fact that this life is temporary,” Warsame said. “If you were to go sacrifice yourself and go fight in jihad, the reward would be bigger. You’d save your family and save yourself.”

America, what you got for that?

Exclusive: ‘I was Raised by an Islamist Terror Cult in America’

May 15, 2016

Exclusive: ‘I was Raised by an Islamist Terror Cult in America’ Clarion ProjectRyan Mauro, May 15, 2016

Silhouette-Man-Woman-Pixabay-IPIllustrative picture: Pixabay)

The Clarion Project has been in contact with a woman who grew up within Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a cultish Sufi Islamist terrorist group that now goes by the name of Muslims of the Americas.

The group is best known for establishing “Islamic villages” on U.S. soil, for example, its “Islamberg” headquarters in New York state.

She has agreed to anonymously come forward with her heartbreaking story. We have removed details for her safety. She provided photographs and specific facts that are unavailable in the public sphere that we subsequently confirmed.

The following is her testimony provided to Clarion Project national security analyst Ryan Mauro. It is one of the very few first-hand testimonies from someone who was inside Jamaat ul-Fuqra when it committed terrorism under that name:

I still know many Muslims and I know that Jamaat ul-Fuqra is nothing like them, but there are violent ones who will take issue with what I say and do. They believe you should be killed if you decide not to be Muslim or practice Islam the way they do because, to them, it’s “apostasy,” and that’s a capital offense under Islam. I do believe some of those violent Muslims may attempt to kill me.

From my point of view as a kid in Michigan, everything was great even though my mom and dad got a divorce and I was living with my mom. My first introduction to X [a Fuqra member] was when he hit me for breaking rules I knew nothing about. My name was also changed to be Islamic.

We lived at 52 Ferris Street in Highland Park, Michigan, a three-story building with six apartments on each floor. The entire building was occupied by black Muslims, some who came from Detroit. Non-Muslims were not allowed to move in. Armed guards were at the front entrance.

Living in the building was like living in a Muslim country. We didn’t go outside much because they didn’t want us to be influenced by non-Muslims. Us kids didn’t have any friends outside of the building. We were very poor and slept on the bare floor with no beds. Sometimes we didn’t have heat or hot water. We didn’t have any furniture whatsoever. We ate on the floor out of large platters with our fingers. Food was also sometimes scarce.

Once my mother was making the only food we had in the house: Beans and rice. As she was seasoning, she mistakenly poured the entire bottle of salt in it. I watched her break down crying because this was the only food she had to feed her children. Someone told her to use a potato to suck the salt out of the food so we could eat it.

The building was like a house of horrors. Some of the kids were tortured by their parents or beaten by the “brothers” in the building. There was one kid in particular I remember who was treated really badly. He would be beaten severely for little things like taking food from the refrigerator for himself. He and some others would sometimes not be allowed to stand up and forced to hop around like a bunny for days on end. They’d make him run errands throughout the building, hopping up three flights of stairs.

He was also starving and I remember him coming to our door begging for food. There was a fire set by one girl who was also known to be beaten badly and kept separate from the rest of the kids. Years later, I met the boy again and he just broke down crying. It was heart-wrenching. He wanted to know why no one helped him.

There were exercise classes in the basement. The brothers were training for whatever Muslim war they continuously told us was coming. Our schooling was irregular and not formal. There were no science classes and math was deficient. Mostly we learned to read and write English and Arabic. I learned later about the gaping holes in our education. Sometimes there was class once a week, sometimes not at all.

We were not allowed to listen to music or watch commercials. They didn’t want us to be influenced by them. There were some odd rules like the children couldn’t have cabbage patch dolls. They were called “evil.” The Smurfs were considered demonic.

This was true of my entire time with Fuqra. There was a tape recorder that I’d use to secretly record kids shows on the TV like Kids Incorporated. I only learned the pop songs from that time by hearing them sung on that show. I didn’t even hear Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” until much later in life. I’d try to memorize the songs in a closet because I couldn’t be caught listening to them.

Growing up, I thought all Muslims were like us. Later, I realized these were just the odd rules of our Muslim cult and that most Muslims did not follow most of the same rules as we did. Just like most Muslims are not terrorists and some Muslims don’t wear full coverings, every sect is different.

We would hear all kinds of fearful messages. I was told that in my lifetime the Muslims would have to fight the kafiroons (non-believers) and I would have to make sure I was on the right side of the war.

The females, including myself, wore what we called jilabias; a head-to-ankle length traditional Muslim garment. We usually made them ourselves. We sewed our own clothes when I was a kid, which was fun. We had different colored jilabias.

It was also common for men to have several wives. I was molested by one man, who I know also molested another girl. It causes feelings of shame that can affect you the rest of your life. It changes your brain chemistry.

The leader of our community was a man known as “Imam Musa.” It’s important to note that we were not Nation of Islam Muslims. In fact, we were taught that the Nation of Islam members aren’t really Muslims.

One day, there was a lot of commotion and we were told that a sheikh from Pakistan was coming to visit our little community inside the building. His name was Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani. They said he was a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. It was all anyone talked about and some said he was coming to the U.S. seeking recruits for jihad in Afghanistan.

Everyone in the building was about the sheikh. Every disagreement was deferred to the Sheikh. The Sheikh and his wife would even name his followers’ babies.

When the sheikh arrived, I met him very briefly because I had a weird dream about the Prophet Mohammed. I couldn’t really remember the details. It was supposed to be a big honor to meet the sheikh. The leaders of our community met with him and some changes were made.

One of the first things that happened is that the sheikh married one of the girls who was around 14 years old and he was probably in his 40s. The marriage was supposed to combine our community with the sheikh’s community in Pakistan. It was the kind of marriage that reminds me of ancient times where a father would marry his daughter off to someone important in order to have a treaty with that community. She left to live with him in Pakistan and her father became the new leader of the community.

The sheikh renamed our community at this point to be “Jamaat ul-Fuqra,” which means “community of the impoverished.”

His followers in America are primarily African-American converts to Islam, but I believe our community was the first, or one of the first, he visited in the United States. Several of the “brothers” from the building went to Pakistan to meet with the sheikh, and when they returned, they were even more militant and religious than before. It was as if they had been hypnotized.

We were told that they prayed a lot and had mysticism circles. I vaguely remember something about them praying and going up to see Prophet Mohammed. They carried out small “missions.” Various sources on the Internet said that Fuqra carried out various terrorist attacks in the 1980s and early 1990s across the U.S. I heard about one of them.

There are press reports about Fuqra members bombing a building that housed a cleric. I knew one of them and that he had gone to visit the sheikh in Pakistan. Somehow, during the attack, the door to the basement got locked behind them and they died in the ensuing fire. The rumor in our community was that the CIA locked the door and trapped them inside. The men who died were considered “martyrs for the cause of Allah” in our community.

When we were there, one day I overheard people saying something about the FBI watching the building in navy blue cars outside. I looked out the window and, sure enough, there was a navy blue four-door sedan sitting out there. After that day, I noticed it was out there all the time.

In the 1990s, I heard several rumors. I heard that Sheikh Gilani was barred from entering the U.S. because he was suspected of being involved in a terrorist attack involving an airplane. I heard that Sheikh Gilani lives in a luxurious compound in Pakistan and that his family is extremely wealthy. His wives have expensive jewelry and servants and even their own seamstress.

I don’t know if these rumors are true first-hand, but supposedly there is a big dichotomy between how luxurious the sheikh and his family live and how poor his followers in the United States live.

Not long after the sedan was noticed, the sheikh sent an order from Pakistan that all Muslims in the building had to disperse across the country. This was devastating for me because I couldn’t see my friends anymore. I was very lonely. The community members went to California, Washington D.C., South Carolina, Georgia, New York and maybe other places.

I knew that Fuqra had bought land in rural areas of New York and Georgia for followers to settle at where they could follow strict religious codes. A group of us went to New Orleans in Louisiana and we didn’t have to wear our jalabias because we had to be incognito.

We lived in a two room shack behind someone’s house. The leader drove a cab. We moved frequently. I suspect that when they couldn’t pay the rent, they’d get evicted and move. In between moves, we’d live with other families and that was fun because we could play with other kids. I remember seeing scary and loud fights between the women married to the leader. A knife was pulled one time and another time a pregnant woman was kicked.

We drove to Brooklyn to hear the sheikh speak in a large mosque during one of his trips to America. His wife was there in a private room and she was revered in the community. I’ll always remember the shoes she wore. They looked like shoes that a genie would wear; gold and curled at the tip.

During that visit, I saw something that left a lasting impression on me. All the females were called to the basement of the mosque. There had to be 30-40 of us in a circle on the floor. They brought a chair out and put it in the middle of us. Then they brought out Y [a Fuqra member] and she had to sit backwards in the chair with her back facing the crowd. A woman came out with a big stick and gave her 10 lashes while the crowd of women said “shame on you!” with each lash.

At first, she just winced in agony. Eventually she was crying pretty hard. The entire scene was traumatizing for me and I felt bad for the children seeing it. She didn’t immediately go back to New Orleans, but did after some time.

The leader of the New Orleans community continued to be abusive and beat kids. I remember him beating one boy for peeing standing up. I guess Muslim men are supposed to sit down when they used the restroom. It really upset me.

One time I walked into the living room and saw one of the boys getting beaten. He looked at me with pain and fear in his eyes. I immediately screamed for the leader to stop hitting him and then I started shaking with fear. No one talked back to him. He told me to leave a room and continued the beating with a belt as the boy hunched and crawled into a corner. I felt helpless. It was the catalyst for me deciding to leave.

I took some pocket change and ran away. I didn’t know where to go, so I just walked up and down random neighborhoods and ended up at an outdoor mall. Eventually, I was falling asleep and had to go back home. My mom was crying when I walked in and I told her I wanted to go live with my dad.

I ran away again only days later and was hit with a belt when I came home. This time, I fought back and began screaming for someone to call the police. It made him give up and walk away in a huff. I later ran away again and got to a pay phone where I called my dad in Michigan. He had tried to take me away when I was growing up but was stopped by guys with guns. I knew he’d rescue me.

He called a cab to bring me to the airport and I sat there and waited for hours. Then I saw my grandpa come out of the airport and he paid the taxi that had been waiting forever. We flew back to Michigan.

After I left, most of the Muslims left the New Orleans site and went to other Fuqra places. I know some did not move to other Fuqra communities and I suspect that some of them stopped being a part of Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

It was time to start my life over in Michigan but I still suffer a lot from all I experienced to this day.

“It Is My Dream to Behead Someone” — American Muslim

May 1, 2016

“It Is My Dream to Behead Someone” — American Muslim, Gatestone InstituteRaymond Ibrahim, May 1, 2016

♦ “Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth.” — Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Syria.

♦ Federal authorities arrested Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, an ISIS supporter who had planned to carry out an attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church. Abu-Rayyan allegedly had guns and a large knife, and told an undercover FBI agent that he “tried to shoot up a church one day … If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here. … It is my dream to behead someone.”

♦ n Pakistan, a disabled Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy said that he was forced into admitting to the charges in order to stop his wife from being tortured… Emmanuel and his wife were found guilty of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad in text messages to a local imam in 2013, and sentenced to death. The conviction came despite the fact that the poor Christian couple are illiterate.

As opposed to their Western counterparts, Christian leaders who live in the Middle East continued expressing their frustration at the West’s indifference and worse. Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, during an interview, asked “Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth. Why are your bishops afraid of speaking? Of course they would be criticized, but that would give them a chance to defend themselves, and to defend this truth. You must remember that silence often means consent.”

The archbishop also criticized the migration policies of Western countries: “The egoism and the interests slavishly defended by your governments will in the end kill you as well. Open your eyes, didn’t you see what happened recently in Paris?”

Similarly, in Iraq, Christian representatives invited to participate in the “Conference on the Protection of Peaceful Coexistence” — the sort of conference that would be heavily attended, praised, and cited by Christians in the West — boycotted the event on the grounds that such government-sponsored events are purely for show and nothing comes of them. “What need is there in participating in meetings like this and repeating the formulas that give the title to the conference if then one does not see initiatives and changes in concrete terms?” said Chaldean Patriarch Raphael Louis I. Other non-Muslim religious minorities, including the Yazidis and Mandaeans, also boycotted the conference.

The Chaldean Patriarch went on to launch an appeal to government authorities and political and religious leaders to denounce the continuing legal discrimination and sectarian bullying suffered by Christians: “We met with government officials, and paid a visit to some of the Islamic religious authorities to talk about what we have in common, with regards to our faiths and the life we share in this land. During these meetings, we assured our loyalty to Iraq, which is our country, and we do not seek revenge, we want to live in peace with all Iraqis. Unfortunately, none of their promises has become reality.”

January’s roundup of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Muslim Persecution of Christian Churches

USA: Federal authorities arrested a Michigan man believed to be an ISIS supporter who had planned to carry out an attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church. Khalil Abu-Rayyan, 21, of Dearborn Heights, allegedly had guns and a large knife, and told an undercover FBI agent that he “tried to shoot up a church one day.” “I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced reloading and unloading,” he said in an online conversation. Investigators did not specify which church Abu-Rayyan was eyeing, but said it has a capacity of 6,000 members. In conversations with an undercover agent, he said, “If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.” He also had armed himself with a knife and told the undercover agent, “It is my dream to behead someone.”

Bangladesh: Catholic nuns were attacked on two separate occasions. In the early morning hours of February 7, around 15 masked, armed men broke into the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and its adjacent Catechist Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary convent, in Chuadanga. They vandalized the convent’s chapel, desecrated the Eucharist, slapped a nun around, and looted over $8,000 as well as other valuables. A few days later in Tumilia, 12 men broke into St. Mary’s Catholic Mother Care Center, a hospital clinic founded in 1933, and stole some items. “They broke down the door of my room,” said Sister Mary, “and were armed. They threatened me and asked where I held the money. I had no other choice, I gave them all the cash we had.” According to Theophil Nokrek, secretary of the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace, the two recent attacks “are not isolated incidents. Some groups are trying to harm our Christian community. They are doing so with premeditated actions. The government should protect us adequately.” He added that a few days earlier in the same district a Christian micro-credit bank was also robbed.

Kosovo: Four ethnic Albanians were arrested near the Serbian Orthodox monastery, Visoki Decani, a UNESCO world heritage site. Two of the suspects wore beards and were dressed in Salafi garb. A Kalashnikov rifle with ammunition and a pistol, as well as some extremist jihadi books, were found in their car. One of the suspects was later found to have an ISIS flag in his house. More than a year earlier, in October 2014, ISIS graffiti was sprayed on buildings belonging to the monastery. Even so, Kosovo police said the four men had no intention to attack the monastery and had no links to terrorism; Albanian media accused the monastery of exaggerating the threat. One month earlier, Muslims had urinated in an Orthodox Christian church in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

Turkey: On February 18, authorities ordered four Christian congregations to vacate the church building they shared. The Christians were given until February 26 to comply—eight days. Built in the 1880s, the building, which accommodated as many as 200 people, had, since 2004, been shared by four different Christian denominations for their Sunday worship. Due to protests against the decision, on February 23 authorities withdrew the order. Discussing this incident, Turkish academic Aykan Erdemir said, “Christians do not have any legal entitlement to the building. They only have usage rights for the time being, which I think is a very precarious situation …. Members of non-majority religions have to depend on the goodwill of bureaucrats and the majority population.”

Muslim Violence Against and Slaughter of Christians

United States: Police shot and killed a Muslim man of Somali background after he attacked several people with a machete at Nazareth Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. The restaurant is owned by a pro-Israel Arab Christian. Thirty-year-old Mohamed Barry walked into the restaurant, had a conversation with an employee and then left. He returned a half hour later, went up to a man and a woman who were sitting at a booth just inside the door, and started slashing. Four people were injured. Law enforcement said the man had traveled to the Middle East in 2012 and that the incident appears to be the type of “lone wolf terrorist attacks they’re trying to stop.” Even so, Columbus police Sgt. Rich Weiner said, “right now there’s nothing that leads us to believe that this is anything but a random attack.”

Recalling the incident, a waitress said, “He looked straight at me, but he went over to the booths and just started going down the booths. It all seemed to happen in slow motion.”

Karen Bass, another eyewitness, said, “He came to each table and just started hitting them. There were tables and chairs overturned there was a man on the floor bleeding there was blood on the floor. I fell like five times. My legs felt like jelly. I just thought he was going to come behind me and slash me up.” After the attacks, Barry fled in his car but was chased by police and cornered. With a knife in one hand and a machete in the other, Barry got out of his car and lunged across the hood at the officers before he was shot dead.

1571In Columbus, Ohio, Mohamed Barry, a Muslim man of Somali background, attacked several people with a machete at Nazareth Restaurant — a business owned by a pro-Israel Arab Christian. Police later shot and killed Barry when he lunged at them with a machete and knife.

Kenya: In a pre-dawn raid on a predominantly Christian area, the Somalia-based Islamic jihadi group, Al Shabaab, killed at least four Christians, one of whom was beheaded. According to a Christian who was shot in his hand but survived, there were five or six heavily-armed assailants speaking Somali and dressed in military uniforms. They shot two Christians dead, hacked and beheaded another and killed yet another by setting his house on fire. “I could not understand them, so they shot me in my hand, but I managed to escape while a neighbor who was with me was beheaded by the other attackers…. As I fled for my life, bleeding, I could see two houses burning. Those who were attacked are Christians. I am very sure that the attackers were looking for Christians… This is the third time the area has been attacked, and we have lost several Christians.”

Egypt: Another young Coptic Christian conscript allegedly committed suicide in his unit in Menufia. According to Maj. Gen. Muhammad Mas’ud, the 20-year-old, known only as Michael, “shot a bullet from his firearm into his chest, dying instantly.” He supposedly killed himself “after receiving a phone call from his home,” said Mas’ud. Lawyer Hani Ramses remarked that “It’s new for us constantly to hear about Coptic recruits killing themselves in the military and police stations. It’s especially strange that it’s happening now, and not previously, when Egypt was often in a state of war and under constant threat… The killing of Coptic conscripts in the military has become a [new] phenomenon.” (Read here for several more accounts of Coptic Christians being killed in their military units under “mysterious circumstances,” such as supposed suicide.) The lawyer also wondered if these deaths indicate that “extremist groups” have infiltrated the Egyptian military.

Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom: No to Apostasy and Blasphemy

Italy: A report said that more than one thousand Muslim converts to Christianity currently living in Italy are hiding their conversions for fear of violent retaliation from the Muslim community.

One of them, a 55-year-old Egyptian chemical engineer who now works a waiter, said he had been a fervent Muslim who was converted to Christianity and baptized in Italy after the death of his mother three years ago. The man, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retribution from Muslims, stated that the decisive element in his conversion came from seeing Christians with “a humanity more complete than mine.” He openly expressed his frustration about having to hide his newfound faith. “I cannot openly practice my Christian faith. I am afraid that some fanatical Muslim may do harm not only to me, but especially to relatives who remained in Egypt…. How is it that Italians who convert to Islam can go on TV and talk about it, and instead I have to hide to avoid retaliation?”

Uganda: A Muslim imam known as “the malaria of Christianity” was arrested in connection with the killing of a 28-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity. Laurence Maiso’s body was found on January 27 at his own house, his head in a pool of blood. Four days earlier, Imam Kamulali Hussein had met his wife and him on a local road. According to Maiso’s wife, the imam told him, “You have refused to join us. Do you know that Allah does not want us to have a kafir [infidel] neighbor? And you should know that Allah is about to send to you the Angel of Death in your house. Please prepare to meet him at any time.” Four days after this warning, Maiso’s wife went out of the home and returned to find her husband dead on the floor. A neighbor said that on the day of the murder she saw eight men—including Imam Hussein—coming out of Maiso’s house. On several earlier occasions other Muslims had confronted Maiso and demanded that he recant his Christian faith. The killing is the latest in a series of attacks on Christians. On December 23, 2015, a pastor was hacked to death as he and other church members resisted an effort by Muslims to take over their land. And less than a week earlier, five underground Christians, including a pregnant mother, in a predominantly Muslim village, died from a pesticide put into their food after a Bible study.

Pakistan: A disabled Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy said that he was forced into admitting to the charges in order to stop his wife from being tortured: “There is no man who can stand to see his wife being tortured by police, so to save my wife, I confessed,” Shafqat Emmanuel said in his appeal. Emmanuel and his wife were found guilty of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad in text messages to a local imam in 2013, and sentenced to death. The conviction came despite the fact that the poor Christian couple are illiterate, witnesses are offering contradicting testimonies against them, and evidence that the blasphemous text messages could not have been sent by from the phone of the Christians.

Kenya: A Christian of Somali descent was last reported unable to see or eat after Muslim relatives beat him unconscious on his way to church service, Sunday, February 7, outside Nairobi. Relatives told 26-year-old Hassan that they ambushed him because they had learned that he and others were holding mid-week Christian devotional times in their home. “They hit me with a blunt object, and I fell down bleeding. Then they stepped on my stomach, and while I was struggling, another hit me on my head [with the blunt object]. I was not able to know what happened after that point. I just woke up to find my mother screaming for help.”

One of the assailants had told Hassan, “You have been deceiving us that you have been having a ‘family meeting’ – we have found out that you have been conducting Christian activities, which is against our family tradition of being a Muslim family.” Hassan declined to name the relatives, saying he feared they would kill him. Somalis generally believe all Somalis are Muslims by birth and that consequently any Somali who becomes a Christian can be charged with apostasy, but Hassan was raised Christian from childhood.

Dhimmitude

United States: The Principal of the Bruce Vento Elementary School in St. Paul, Minnesota, Scott Masini, banned the celebration of Valentine’s Day, a move that accords with Islamic teaching. As St. Valentine’s Day has its origins in the Christian religion, it is banned throughout the Muslim world. In a letter to parents, Masini said that, “my personal feeling is we need to find a way to honor and engage in holidays that are inclusive of our student population.” He went on to explain that the holiday was cancelled as it violates some students’ religious beliefs: “I have come to the difficult decision to discontinue the celebration of the dominant holidays until we can come to a better understanding of how the dominant view will suppress someone else’s view.” He added that the school would also no longer celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, as celebrating those holidays “is encroaching on the educational opportunities of others and threatening the culture of tolerance and respect for all.” Several parents were unhappy with the decision. One parent on the school’s Facebook page wrote, “Very sad. All the fun is gone.” Another wrote, “Tired of the PC. Totally ridiculous.”

Germany: All throughout asylum centers, Muslim migrants are tearing up Bibles, assaulting Christians, sexually abusing women and children, and beating up homosexuals, reported the German newspaper, Die Welt. Yazidi girls who were formerly used as sex slaves by the Islamic State are housed in secret locations in Germany, in order not to attract unwanted attention from migrants sympathetic to the Islamic State or Muslims who view them as nothing more than sexual objects. More than a thousand of these women live in various special shelters across Germany.

Malaysia: Catholic school pupils are being pressured to convert to Islam, according to Sister Rita Chew, president of the Educational Commission of the Archdiocese of Kota Kinabalu. She partially attributed this new pressure to increasingly aggressive Muslims in schools run by the Church: “Some people seem very interested in bringing forward Muslim programs in our elementary schools.” Local sources said that Islamic proselytism activities take place in all schools of the country—including Catholic and Christian institutions. Several episodes also show a widespread prejudice against non-Muslim students, noted the sister, adding “Our fear comes from the fact that conversions take place, but the government denies this fact. Some Christian parents have found that their children are taught Islamic prayers.”

Egypt: For the second time, Mervat Seifein, a Christian school teacher, was rejected by students in her school in Minya, Upper Egypt, simply for being Christian. On February 8, Seifein was promoted to school director of Beni Mazar Secondary Girls’ School. It was a routine promotion in which she replaced the previous school director, a Muslim. But students—joined by some teachers—protested and held a sit-in in the school courtyard demanding her removal. “We don’t want a Copt,” they shouted. Police were not able to disband the boys’ demonstration in the school courtyard. Seifein said “The girls who demonstrated against me don’t know me, so why the antagonism? Simply because I am Coptic [Christian]? The only explanation I can fathom is there has been fanatic incitement going on against my promotion, possibly by persons who are purely extremist or who have an interest in keeping me out of that post.” This is not the first such incident. According to Ezzat Ibrahim, a Minya activist who demanded that a prompt official investigation be conducted,

“This is flagrant religious discrimination. It brings to mind the incident in the southern province of Qena when the Islamists rose against the appointment of a Coptic governor in the past-Arab Spring weeks in 2011, and the State gave in and went back on the appointment. It is catastrophic that some 50 or 100 teenage girls or boys should impose their will on the State. And it is equally disastrous that these students were pushed to do so by a group of fanatic Islamists. The positive official response to their preposterous demands amounts to an invitation for religious discrimination. The deputy minister who did that must be dismissed.”

Separately, more than 150 Coptic Christians staged a sit-in protest at the provincial administration office in Minya, to spread awareness for the continued kidnappings of Christians across the country. The protest specifically highlighted the case of an 18-year-old Christian girl who was kidnapped a few days earlier. “Kidnappings that target Christians remain a scourge for the Coptic community in many areas of Egypt. Already several appeals have been launched by Christian organizations to Egyptian authorities, including President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to take so that adequate measures are taken to combat this phenomenon,” added the report. Several kidnappings have ended in the murder of the hostages.

Pakistan: Tahira, 21, and Reema Bibi, 20, two Christian women, were abducted last December from near their home in Sargodha (Punjab) while walking together from work. Two Muslim men apparently seized the two women, raped them and then forcibly married them. Afterwards, they kept them segregated in their Islamabad home. On February 11, Tahira managed to escape. Her Muslim “husband,” however, filed a complaint with police, who immediately arrested six members of her Christian family. The relatives were released thanks to pressure from human rights groups, but the authorities have ordered the family to return Tahira to her kidnapper-rapist-husband. According to human rights activists, these are common experiences for Christian girls and their families in Pakistan. Even if a case goes to court, the victims are always threatened and pressured by their “husbands” to declare that their conversion was voluntary. Victims are often sexually abused, forced into prostitution, and suffer domestic abuse or even wind up as victims of human trafficking. Those who try to rebel are told that they “are now Muslims and that the punishment for apostasy is death,” noted the report.

Separately, a man refused to renounce Christ, despite being tortured by Muslim co-workers who tried to convert him to Islam. Patras Hanif, a construction worker and father of five, said he was targeted because of his Christian faith. His co-workers tried to pressure him into converting, even threatening false blasphemy charges. “They very often called me ‘kafir,’ which means unfaithful [“infidel”], and they threatened me that they would resort to false accusations of blasphemy if I refused to convert to Islam. A blasphemy charge in Pakistan is very serious and usually results in the death penalty,” noted Hanif.

According to Hanif’s lawyer, “This is the suffering Christians in Pakistan go through. Islamic extremist groups would like to eliminate Christianity and other religions.”

Jordan: Official school curricula intentionally omit and distort Christian history in the region. This came out in Amman, during a conference entitled, “Toward a Complete Strategy to Combat Extremism,” hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Political Studies. Dr. Hena al-Kaldani, a Christian, said that “there is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era” and “many historical mistakes” in the school curriculums of Jordan. Al-Kaldani asserted that “there are unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum,” meaning that centuries’ worth of Christian history is bypassed or suppressed. He said that, for example, “10th grade textbooks omit any mention of any Christian or church history in the region.”

Textbooks completely ignore historic Christian figures of importance and make no mention of Jerusalem’s Christian sites, while giving detailed accounts about Islamic sites, he added. That the original inhabitants of Petra, the Nabateans, were once pagans who converted to Christianity is also omitted. Wherever Christianity is mentioned, omissions and mischaracterizations proliferate. One Arabic language textbook uses the phrase, “Man shall not live by bread alone” without attributing it to Christ or the Bible. Christianity is primarily mentioned as a Western (that is, “foreign”) source of colonization, said al-Kaldani.

About this Series

While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians by Muslims is growing. The report entitled “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some — though by no means all — of the instances of the Muslim persecution of Christians that surface each month.

It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.

It posits that such Muslim persecution is not random but rather systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities, and locations.

I Love Islam

April 22, 2016

I Love Islam, Front Page Magazine, Dr. Stephen M. Kirby, April 22, 2016

Islamic schools in US

What Muslim-American children are being taught.

What are Muslim-American children being taught in private Islamic schools?  We can learn about some of it by looking at the I Love Islam series used to teach elementary-level Muslim-American children about Islam.  This series consists of five textbooks, each with a corresponding workbook and teacher/parent guide.  It is published by the Islamic Services Foundation (ISF).  According to the introduction to the series, its purpose is to gradually introduce Muslim students “to the essentials of their faith” by bringing “to light the historic and cultural aspects of Islam.”  And according to the ISF website, the I Love Islam series “is one of the best-selling Islamic curriculums in the US and Canada.”

So what does this series teach?

It’s Palestine, not Israel

When it comes to showing the State of Israel, this series takes two approaches in depicting maps of the Middle East.

In the first approach, the geographical boundaries of the State of Israel are shown, but Israel is not named.  The first example of this is on p. B7 of I Love Islam 1.  Here states such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt are named; but there is no such mention of Israel.  An interesting addition is found when this same map is used again on p. B2 of I Love Islam 2.  On this map, the geographical boundaries of the State of Israel are now labeled “Palestine.”  On p. A24 of I Love Islam 4, there is another map titled “Map of Palestine”; it includes the geographical boundaries of the State of Israel.  This map shows the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, which is labeled “Occupied by Israel”; this is the only mention of Israel on that map.

With the second approach, Israel is mentioned on other maps used in this series.  However, these maps are noticeably different from the maps mentioned above, in that these latter maps have more details and the print can be much smaller.  The nature of these maps is so different from the ones used in the first approach that they appear to have been taken from some type of geography book.  So if one looks closely (a magnifying glass helps), the name “Israel” can be found on the following three maps: I Love Islam 2, p. D13 (a map focusing on Egypt); and I Love Islam 4, pp. F8 and F24 (maps focusing on the African continent).  But the small print and the extensive details on these maps would most likely deter the average elementary school-age student from examining them closely.

So in reality the Muslim-American children are being taught that the State of Israel does not exist.  And, correspondingly, throughout this series the location for the city of Jerusalem is repeatedly stated as being in “Palestine”.[i]

Christians are in the “lowest status”

The Muslim-American children are taught this about Christians:

Many Christians believe that God has three parts:

  1. God the father,
  2. God the son, or Jesus Christ
  3. God the Holy Spirit

In Christianity this is known as the Trinity.  It says that the one God consists of three people.  AstaghfiruAllah![[ii]] This is also a major form of shirk.  As Muslims we know that God is the only Creator of the Universe.  God or Allah does not have a father or a son and cannot be divided into two or three parts.

I Love Islam 5, p. A41

Shirk is the worst sin in Islam.  The Muslim-American children learn that those who commit Shirk fall “from a very high status to the lowest one,” and are “forbidden” to enter Heaven.[iii]  So Christians have fallen to “the lowest status” and are forbidden from entering Heaven.

The Muslim-American children learn that a person who commits Shirk is called a Mushrik.[iv]  And the plural form ofMushrik is Mushrikun, so Christians are Mushrikun.

But why does it matter if Muslim-American children are being taught that Christians are Mushrikun?  Because they are also being taught to learn and practice the teachings of the Koran.[v]  So what does the Koran say about Mushrikun?

Here are some verses dealing with Mushrikun from a popular, authoritative translation of the Koran: Interpretation of The Meanings of the Noble Qur’an:[vi]

9:5 – Muslims are commanded to kill Christians unless the Christians convert to Islam:

Then when the Sacred Months (the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 12th months of the Islamic calendar) have passed, then kill the Mushrikun wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in every ambush.  But if they repent [by rejecting Shirk (polytheism) and accept Islamic Monotheism] and perform As-Salat (the prayers), and give Zakat (obligatory charity), then leave their way free.  Verily, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.

9:28 – Christians are impure and forbidden from entering Mecca:

O you who believe (in Allah’s Oneness and in His Messenger Muhammad)!  Verily, the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah, and in the Message of Muhammad) are Najasun (impure).  So let them not come near Al-Masjid Al-Haram (at Makkah) after this year…

9:33 – Islam will be superior to Christianity, even though the Christians don’t like it.

It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it).

9:113 – Muslims are forbidden from asking Allah to forgive Christians who die as Christians:

It is not (proper) for the Prophet and those who believe to ask Allah’s forgiveness for the Mushrikun ((polytheists, idolaters, pagans, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah), even though they be of kin, after it has become clear to them that they are the dwellers of the Fire (because they died in a state of disbelief).

15:94 – Muslims are to shun Christians.

Therefore proclaim openly (Allah’s Message – Islamic Monotheism) that which you are commanded, and turn away from Al-Mushrikun (polytheists, idolaters, and disbelievers).

98:6 – Christians are among the worst of creatures (there is a double-tap here).

Verily, those who disbelieve (in the religion of Islam, the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad) from among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) and Al-Mushrikun, will abide in the fire of Hell.  They are the worst of creatures.

So the I Love Islam series ultimately teaches that Christians commit the worst sin in Islam; they are impure and forbidden from entering Mecca; Muslims are to shun them and not pray for them, but rather are to fight against them; that Christians are among the “worst of creatures”; and Islam is to be superior to Christianity.

The Example of Muhammad

Rasoolullah [Muhammad] was the best Muslim ever, and his job was to show all the Muslims the best way to do things.  If we follow him, we will have a better understanding of how to practice Islam.

I Love Islam 4, p. C19

Throughout this series Muhammad is continuously lauded as the perfect role model to be followed if one wants to become an excellent Muslim.  And it is specifically mentioned that the Sira (Seerah) of Muhammad “is there for us to learn lessons from.”[vii]  The Sira is the authoritative biography of Muhammad, titled The Life of Muhammad (Sirat Rasul Allah).[viii]  Here are some of the examples of Muhammad found in the Sira that “show all the Muslims the best way to do things”:

  1. Muhammad ordered adulterers to be stoned to death – pp. 266-267, 652, and 684.
  2. After a tribe was defeated, Muhammad would distribute some of the captured women and children among the Muslim warriors, and sell others of the captives – pp. 466, 511, and 791, n. 914.
  3. Muhammad possessed and gave away slaves – pp. 499, 511, 576, 593, and 677.
  4. Muhammad supervised the beheading of 600-900 captured Jewish males – p. 464.
  5. Muhammad said that Muslims could beat their wives, “but not with severity” – p. 651.

Children, try your best to be like the Prophet, to think and act like him. This is why it is so important for us to learn the Seerah!

I Love Islam 2, p. B46

Conclusion

Elementary school is where children really start learning about the world around them.  Beliefs and attitudes can be formed that may be difficult or impossible to later change.  This brief overview of the I Love Islam series gives us an insight into what many Muslim-American children are being taught about Israel, Christians, and proper conduct in their lives.  These “essentials” of Islam should not be comforting to non-Muslims.

____________________________


[i]               I Love Islam 1, p. D47; I Love Islam 1, Teacher/Parent Guide, p. 115; I Love Islam 2, p. D28; I Love Islam 3, p. D63; I Love Islam 3, Workbook, Unit D, Chapter 6, Exercise 2; I Love Islam 4, pp. A21 and A24; and I Love Islam 4, Teacher/Parent Guide, p. 24.

[ii]               I seek forgiveness from Allah! – An expression of shame or disapproval.

[iii]              I Love Islam 5, pp. A46 and A48.

[iv]              I Love Islam 5, p. A39.

[v]               I Love Islam 2, p. C7.

[vi]              Interpretation of the Meanings of The Noble Qur’an, trans. Muhammad Muhsin Khan and Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Darussalam, 2007).

[vii]             I Love Islam 2, Teacher/Parent Guide, p. 57.

[viii]             Muhammad Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad (Sirat Rasul Allah), trans. Alfred Guillaume (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2007).