Soros Money, Muslim Advocates Leader, Helped Weaken Homeland Security Policies, Investigative Project on Terrorism, John Rossomando, October 7, 2016
(Please see also, Pentagon still unsure of whether to link Islam with violent jihad. — DM)
A Muslim legal group, girded with $1.8 million in grant money from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF), has helped influence major policy changes in the war on terror, including the Department of Homeland Security’s screening of individuals with suspected terror ties and the FBI’s training program for its agents working in counterterrorism.
Internal records, made public by the hacking group DC Leaks, show OSF spent $40 million between 2008 and 2010 on programs aimed at weakening U.S. counterterrorism policy.
Muslim Advocates’ Executive Director Farhana Khera played a key role in shaping the foundations’ spending. Khera co-authored a 2007 memo that “informed” the foundations’ U.S. Programs Board’s decision to create the National Security and Human Rights Campaign (NSHRC), a Sept. 14, 2010 OSF document discussing the program’s reauthorization, shows.
The NSHRC’s goals included:
- Closing Guantanamo Bay, eliminating torture and methods such as the extraordinary rendition of prisoners, and ending the use of secret prisons;
- Ending warrantless and “unchecked” surveillance;
- Ensuring that anti-terrorism laws and law enforcement activities do not target freedom of speech, association or religious expression;
- Reducing ethnic and religious profiling of people of Muslim, Arab or South Asian extraction;
- Decreasing secrecy and increasing oversight of executive actions, and expose U.S. government or private individuals who abuse or violate the law.
Some of these policies, such as closing Guantanamo and ending enhanced interrogation techniques, already were also advocated by Obama administration. OSFclaimed its work laid the groundwork for implementing those policies. The Edward Snowden leaks cast light on the depth of the government’s warrantless surveillance activity. The other goals are more difficult to assess.
Muslim Advocates was founded in 2005 as an offshoot of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers. It often criticizes U.S. counterterrorism strategies that use sting operations and informants as discriminatory.
Papers released by the anonymous hacker group DC Leaks show that OSF budgeted $21 million for the NSHRC from 2008-2010. OSF spent an additional $1.5 million in 2010. The NSHRC also received a matching $20 million contribution from Atlantic Philanthropies, a private foundation established in 1982 by Irish-American Chuck Feeney billionaire businessman.
OSF made 105 grants totaling $20,052, 784 to 63 organizations under the NSHRC program. An Investigative Project on Terrorism tally shows Muslim Advocates received at least $1.84 million in OSF grants between 2008 and 2015.
A funders’ roundtable created by OSF in 2008 helped coordinate the grant making among several left-leaning foundations, ” in order to “dismantle the flawed ‘war on terror’ paradigm on which national security policy is now based.” At least “two dozen” foundations participated in the roundtable’s strategy sessions as of the end of 2008.
Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, called the Soros foundations’ $40 million program both hypocritical and ironic. He noted that the2011 OSF-funded Center for American Progress report “Fear, Inc.” complained thatseven conservative foundations donated $42.6 million to so-called “Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009.” The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other major Islamist groups routinely use the $42.6 million funding number to portray their opponents as being pawns of dark forces.
“It’s amazing that one foundation donated an amount that CAIR and [Muslim] Advocates say is the huge sum of money that funds the entire anti-jihad campaign,” Jasser said. “… That wasn’t from one foundation. That was an addition of [the money given to] everybody that they threw under the bus.”
By contrast, OSF and Atlantic Philanthropies spent $41.5 million in just three years. OSF dedicated another $26 million to the NSHRC program from 2011-2014.
OSF additionally funded a study by the New America Foundation equating the terror threat posed right-wing extremists with al-Qaida. An Oct. 17, 2011 memo discussing NSHRC grants notes that New America received $250,000, partly to write two reports. The first aimed at creating a “‘safe space’ in which Muslims in America feel free to hold controversial political dialogues, organize without fear of unwarranted government surveillance.” The second aimed to “correct mistaken public beliefs that Al-Qaeda’s brand of terrorism is unique to Islam and that most terrorists are Muslim.”
The paper promised “to show how adherents of each extremist ideology use different language to justify very similar political means and goals. By demonstrating parallels among militant groups, this paper will aim to separate politically focused terrorism from the religion of Islam.”
Arguments from this report continue to help frame how Democrats and their allies talk about the jihadist threat. New America’s statistics and arguments recently came up in a House hearing about the threat from homegrown Islamic terrorists.
“According to the New America Foundation, there have been more incidents of right-wing extremist attacks in the United States than violent jihadist attacks since 9/11. I’m not minimizing jihadist attacks. In that light, can you explain what your office plans to do with respect to domestic right-wing extremism?” Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., askedDepartment of Homeland Security Office of Community Partnerships Director George Selim during a House subcommittee hearing last month.
New America’s effort to conflate right-wing extremists with al-Qaida glossed over a major difference – namely al-Qaida’s reliance on mass casualty attacks and suicide bombings.
New America’s latest data shows that jihadists have killed more people since 9/11 than right-wing extremists.
“What you’ve uncovered is the fact … that the Soros foundation works to obfuscate on national security,” Jasser said. “Muslim Advocates clearly is a prime example of the sickness in Washington related to dealing with the central reforms necessary to make within the House of Islam.
“You’ll see that the Soros foundation is spending money on organizations that deny the very principles they are defenders of, which are feminism, gay rights, individual rights. Muslim Advocates’ entire bandwidth is spent on attacking the government and blocking any efforts at counterterrorism.”
Muslim Advocates also opposes discussion on reform within the Muslim community and supports those who have theocratic tendencies, Jasser said.
“You have evidence here that the Soros foundation is part and parcel of the reason for the suffocation of moderation voices – reformist voices – in Islam,” Jasser said. “Muslim Advocates really ought to change their name to Islamist Advocates, and what the Soros foundation really is doing is just advocating for Islamists.”
OSF also contributed $150,000 in 2011 and $185,000 in 2012 to a donor advised fund run by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. It used this money to pay Hattaway Communications, a consulting firm run by former Hillary Clinton adviser Doug Hattaway, to develop a messaging strategy for Muslim Advocates and similar organizations. Hattaway’s message strategy painted Muslims as victims of American national security policies.
Khera used Hattaway’s strategy to paint the New York Police Department’s mosque surveillance strategy as “discriminatory.”
“Their only ‘crime’ is that they are Muslim in America,” Khera wrote in a June 6, 2012 op-ed posted on CNN.com.
OSF funded groups, including Muslim Advocates, the ACLU, and the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed lawsuits challenging the NYPD’s surveillance program as unconstitutional. Police Commissioner William Bratton ended the policy in 2014.
The NYPD monitored almost all aspects of Muslim life ranging from mosques and student associations, to halal butcher shops and restaurants to private citizens. A federal district court dismissed the suit, but the Third Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in October 2015. New York settled the lawsuit in January, placing the NYPD under supervision of an independent observer appointed by City Hall.
Downplaying Radicalization and the Jihadist Threat
OSF accused conservative opponents of “borrowing liberally from Joe McCarthy’s guilt by association tactics.” It complained in a Sept. 14, 2010 memo to its U.S. Programs Board that the “homegrown terrorism narrative” resulted in “discriminatory” targeting of Muslims by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI.
Khera often expresses similar sentiments. She accused the FBI of engaging in “entrapment operations” to target “innocent” Muslims after former Attorney General Eric Holder called sting operations an “essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing terror attacks.”
Khera likewise characterized law enforcement training materials discussing the Islamic extremist ideology as “bigoted, false, and inflammatory” in her June 28 testimony before a Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights, Federal Courts.
She and her organization played a central role in late 2011 when Muslim groups called on the Obama administration to purge FBI training materials that they deemed offensive. FBI counterterrorism training materials about Islam contained “woefully misinformed statements about Islam and bigoted stereotypes about Muslims,” she complained in a Sept. 15, 2011 letter. She objected to describing zakat – the almsgiving tax mandate on all Muslims – as a “funding mechanism for combat.”
Yet numerous Muslim commentators describe zakat as a funding mechanism for jihad. A footnote for Surah 9:60 found in “The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an,” says that zakat can be used to help “those who are struggling and striving in Allah’s Cause by teaching or fighting or in duties assigned to them by the righteous Imam, who are thus unable to earn their ordinary living.”
The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America issued a 2011 fatwa saying zakat could be used to “support legitimate Jihad activities.”
Following Khera’s letter, then-White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan announced a review of “CVE-related instruction across all levels of government.” This review resulted in a purge of 700 pages of material from 300 presentations. Thisincluded PowerPoints and articles describing jihad as “holy war” and portraying the Muslim Brotherhood as group bent on world domination.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s bylaws describe these ultimate ambitions and imply the need for violence: “The Islamic nation must be fully prepared to fight the tyrants and the enemies of Allah as a prelude to establishing an Islamic state.”
Khera’s influence with the Obama administration
Khera enjoys close connections with the Obama White House. Visitor logs show that Khera went to the White House at least 11 times.
Khera played a central role persuading the Obama administration to purge Department of Homeland Security records related to individuals and groups with terror ties, former Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) Agent Phil Haney told the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
His superiors ordered him to “modify” 820 CPB TECS records about the Muslim Brotherhood network in America, Haney said. Irrefutable evidence from the 2008 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) Hamas financing trial proved that many of these groups and individuals assisted Hamas, Haney said.
The HLF trial substantiated deep connections between American Islamist groups such as the Islamic Society of North America, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and a Hamas-support network created by the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States.
A 2009 OSF funding document claims credit for helping persuade then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to order a review of border screening procedures. It also reveals that Muslim Advocates worked with “DHS staff to develop a revised border policy.”
The Muslim Advocates’ report recommended the “review and reform of … [Customs and Border Patrol policies and practices that target Muslim, Arab and South Asian Americans for their First Amendment protected activities, beliefs and associations; and … law enforcement and intelligence activities that impose disparate impacts on Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities.” It also asked DHS to prevent CPB agents from probing about political beliefs, religious practices, and contributions to “lawful” charitable organizations.
Muslim Advocates claimed a pivotal role in getting the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to reverse a new 2010 policy enhancing the screening on travelers from 14 countries, many of them predominately Muslim. The rule was proposed in the wake of the attempt by underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound plane weeks earlier.
Muslim Advocates and several OSF grantees met with Napolitano and other top DHS officials, and the policy was canceled three months later. Muslim Advocates claimedthat the Obama administration “made special mention” of its role in reversing the TSA policy.
“This broke into the open with the great purge of 2011 and 2012,” Haney said, recalling Brennan’s letter to Khera announcing that materials she complained about would be removed.
The purge accompanied a practice of meeting with Islamist groups as community partners, Haney said.
In addition to the purge of training material, documents related to people and groups with terrorism ties such as Canadian Muslim Brotherhood leader Jamal Badawi and the Pakistan-based Tablighi Jamaat movement also disappeared from CPB records. (Tablighi Jamaat often serves as a de facto recruiting conduit for groups such as al-Qaida and the Taliban.)
Investigators might have had a better chance of thwarting the San Bernardino and the June Orlando shootings had those Tablighi Jamaat records remained available, Haney said, because the shooters’ respective mosques appeared in the deleted 2012 Tablighi Jamaat case report.
The Obama administration’s “absolute refusal to acknowledge that individuals who are affiliated with networks operating here in the United States, and their deliberate deletion of any evidentiary pieces of information in the system, has made us blind and handcuffed,” Haney said. “The proof of it is San Bernardino and Orlando.
“They obliterated the entire [Tablighi Jamaat] case as if it never existed.”
Haney’s claims have met with some skepticism. Haney stands by his claims and says critics “made a lot of factual errors.”
Still, Muslim Advocates’ success reversing the TSA policy was among the accomplishments showing that it “has proved itself to be an effective advocate on the national stage,” an April 25, 2011 OSF document said. It recommended renewing a $440,000 grant to “support the core operating costs of Muslim Advocates.”
In doing so, the Soros-funded OSF weakened U.S. national security and potentially left it vulnerable to the jihadi attacks we have been seeing in the homeland since the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
DHS Provides the Security Islamists Need and Want, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 23, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
However, the Department of Homeland Security does not provide the security the rest of us need and want; instead, it does its level best to diminish it. Providing a reasonable level of security would contradict Obama’s view of Islam, Life, the Universe and Everything.
On September 22nd, members of the U.S. Congress made public an internal Department of Homeland Security memo in which it was acknowledged that Refugee fraud is easy to commit and much tougher to detect:
The U.S. has relaxed requirements for refugees to prove they are who they say they are, and at times may rely solely on testimony. That makes it easier for bogus applicants to conspire to get approved, according to the department memo, which was obtained by the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. [Emphasis added.]
“Refugee fraud is easy to commit, yet not easy to investigate,” the undated memo says.
The memo said there are clear instances where “bad actors … have exploited this program,” gaining a foothold in the U.S. through bogus refugee claims.
The revelation comes just a week after the administration said it was boosting the number of refugees it wants to accept next year to 110,000, up from 85,000 this year. Officials also said they’ll take more Syrians than the 12,000 they’ve accepted so far this year — and they are on pace to resettle as many as 30,000 in 2017. [Emphasis added.]
The President’s decision to increase overall refugee resettlement – and specifically that of Syrian refugees – ignores warnings from his own national security officials that Syrians cannot be adequately vetted to ensure terrorists are not admitted. Revelations about fraud, security gaps, and lack of oversight have demonstrated that the program is creating national security risks,” Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Bob Goodlatte said in a letter to Homeland Security on Thursday. [Emphasis added.]
The Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that she had never seen the internal DHS memo. Why not? Isn’t ICE in charge of enforcing “our” immigration laws?
The video provided above explains how CVE has been implemented thus far.
The head of DHS’s “countering violent extremism” program acknowledged on the same day, September 22nd, that its thus far year-long-in-the-brewing “strategic plan” for “combatting violent extremism” has not yet been completed.
George Selim, director of the Office of Community Partnerships at DHS, was repeatedly asked by members of the House Homeland Security Thursday why he could not provide a document outlining the organization’s $10 million plans for countering the spread of terrorism.
. . . .
Selim finally admitted the plan is not finished, stating that a finalized version is “nearly ready.”
He added that he didn’t want to give the impression that the organization is without any strategy after being up and running for a year, and stressed that he takes the use of taxpayer dollars seriously.
Congress appropriated $10 million in funding to the Countering Violent Extremism initiative, which can issue grants to nonprofit organizations working in local communities to prevent radicalization. [Emphasis added.]
But when asked by Rep. Barry Loudermilk R-Ga., to provide evidence that the program was not a “black hole” for taxpayers, Selim could only answer that he has seen positive changes “anecodally” and could not provide any metrics for success.
“I can’t sit hear before you today and definitively say that person was going to commit an act of terrorism with a pressure cooker bomb, but we’re developing that prevention framework in a range of cities across the country,” said Selim.
When asked whether any of the funding provided to DHS for its “countering violent extremism” was being given to terror-linked groups, Mr. Selim responded that
there is no blacklist of non-governmental organizations prohibited from applying for federal funding in the government. He did not say whether their current vetting process has ever mistakenly funded groups that jeopardize national security when questioned, but argued there is always room for improvement when a program is in its infancy. [Emphasis added.]
Mr. Selim’s reply was not responsive; there may be no Federal blacklist, but that an NGO is not on one should not authorize DHS to fund it. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is, of course, one of the principal Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist organizations upon which the “countering violent extremism” farce relies. Secretary Johnson recently delivered an address to the Islamic Society of North America, which is similarly linked. The countering violent extremism farce focuses, not on root problem of preventing Islamist terrorism, but on rooting out “Islamophobia.”
Here’s a video of Dr. Zuhid Jasser’s testimony before Congress on September 22nd
on Identifying the Enemy: Radical Islamist Terror. This hearing examines the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, the importance of identifying the threat for what it is, and ways to defeat it.
A transcript of Dr. Jasser’s testimony is available here
Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra also testified:
According to the blurb beneath the video,
Former Congressman and Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Pete Hoekstra at the Subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency of the House Homeland Security Committee of the U.S. Congress. Congress must ask the Obama administration about PSD-11, which made official the US Government’s outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. [emphasis added.]
In His efforts to push the narrative that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, Obama has (a) shared His erroneous perception of the Islamic State and (b) tried to suggest that the Islamic State is the only entity which diverges from “true” Islam. His argument as to (a)
is a strawman argument: the real question isn’t whether ISIS “represents” Islam, but whether ISIS is a byproduct of Islam. And this question can easily be answered by looking not to ISIS but Islam. One can point to Islamic doctrines that unequivocally justify ISIS behavior; one can point to the whole of Islamic history, nearly 14 centuries of ISIS precedents.
Or, if these two options are deemed too abstract, one can simply point to the fact that everyday Muslims all around the world are behaving just like ISIS. [Emphasis added.]
For example, Muslims—of all races, nationalities, languages, and socio-political and economic circumstances, in Arab, African, Central and East Asian nations—claim the lions’ share of Christian persecution; 41 of the 50 worst nations to be Christian in are Islamic. In these countries, Muslim individuals, mobs, clerics, politicians, police, soldiers, judges, even family members—none of whom are affiliated with ISIS (other than by religion)—abuse and sometimes slaughter Christians, abduct, enslave and rape their women and children, ban or bomb churches, and kill blasphemers and apostates.
. . . .
Or consider a Pew poll which found that, in 11 countries alone, at least 63 million and as many as 287 million Muslims support ISIS. Similarly, 81% of respondents to an Arabic language Al Jazeera poll supported the Islamic State. [Emphasis added.]
Do all these hundreds of millions of Muslims support the Islamic State because they’ve been suckered into its “narrative”—or even more silly, because we have—or do they support ISIS because it reflects the same supremacist Islam that they know and practice, one that preaches hate and violence for all infidels, as America’s good friends and allies, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar—not ISIS—are on record proclaiming? [Emphasis added.]
It is this phenomenon, that Muslims the world over—and not just this or that terrorist group that “has nothing to do with Islam”—are exhibiting hostility for and terrorizing non-Muslims that the Obama administration and its mainstream media allies are committed to suppressing. Otherwise the unthinkable could happen: people might connect the dots and understand that ISIS isn’t mangling Islam but rather Islam is mangling the minds of Muslims all over the world. [Emphasis added.]
Hence why White House spokesman Josh Earnest can adamantly dismiss 14 centuries of Islamic history, doctrine, and behavior that mirrors ISIS: “That is mythology. That is falsehood. That is not true.” Hence why U.S. media coverage for one dead gorilla was six times greater than media coverage for 21 Christians whose heads were carved off for refusing to recant their faith.
As to (b),
The powers-that-be prefer that the debate—the “narrative”—be restricted to ISIS, so that the group appears as an aberration to Islam. Acknowledging that untold millions of Muslims are engaged in similar behavior leads to a much more troubling narrative with vast implications. [Emphasis added.]
Obama has what one might wish were a unique world view. However, as Obama has not yet discovered, wishing that something were true does not make it true. He elucidated His world view in His recent address to the United Nations.
U.S. President Barack Obama sang his swan song this week at the United Nations, and seemed baffled by the stubborn refusal of the world to reform itself in his image and on his say-so. [Emphasis added.]
How can there still be “deep fault lines in the international order,” Obama wondered aloud, with “societies filled with uncertainty and unease and strife?”
Shouldn’t his identity as a man “made up of flesh and blood and traditions and cultures and faiths from a lot of different parts of the world” have served as a shining and irresistible example of blended global peace? How can it be that, after eight years of his visionary leadership, peoples everywhere aren’t marching to his tune of self-declared superior “moral imagination”? [Emphasis added.]
It is indeed a “paradox,” Obama declared.
In his preachy, philosophical and snooty address to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, Obama expressed deep disappointment with the world. Alas, it seems peoples and nations are just not sophisticated enough to comprehend his sage sermonizing, smart enough to follow his enlightened example, or deep enough to understand his perfect policies. [Emphasis added.]
Why does the world not snap to order as he imperiously wishes and drool in his presence?
. . . .
The words “enemy, “threat” or “adversary” do not appear even once in Obama’s 5,600-word address. They are not part of his lexicon, nor are concepts like “victory” for the West or “beating” the bad guys. He won’t even names foes, such as “radical Islam” or “Islamist terror.”
All this high-minded intellectualizing, self-doubt and equivocation leave the U.S. with little ability to actually drive towards a more ordered world and provide a modicum of global security.
Instead, we have only Obama’s “belief” that Russia’s imperialist moves in Ukraine and Syria, China’s power grabs in Asia, and Iran’s hegemonic trouble-making in the Middle East (and by inference, Israel’s settlement policies in Judea and Samaria) will “ultimately backfire.”
Obama has many such unsubstantiated and illusory “beliefs.” It is very important for him to tell us what he “believes,” and he does so repeatedly. Clearly, he believes in the overwhelming potency of his own beliefs, despite the global security collapse. In fact, the U.N. speech reads like chapter one of the expected Obama memoirs, which surely will be filled with more inane “beliefs” and other ostentation. [Emphasis added.]
Fortunately, Obama will soon leave the presidency.
It falls to Congress and the next president to redirect U.S. policy and hopefully base it less on whimsical, wayward beliefs and more on a hard-nosed, forceful reassertion of Western interests.
Unfortunately, Hillary shares many of not most of Obama’s delusions.
Fortunately, Trump does not and seems to have a pretty good chance of becoming our President.
Homeland Security Head Praises Islamic Supremacists, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 5, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, addressed the Islamist Islamic Society of North America on September 3d. He told the assembled “American Patriots” — and reminded the rest of us — of the glories of Islam and how greatly it influences and therefore benefits Obama’s America. He did not suggest that only by the further recognition of Islamic supremacy and the further Islamisation of America will they achieve their goals. Today is Labor Day; the rest of us have much work to do to prevent it.
Here is the text of Secretary Johnson’s speech, with indented comments by ignorant Islamophobes Robert Spencer (RS) and your’s truly (DM).
[I]t’s a great privilege for me to be present in person here today, to speak to this full convention of the Islamic Society of North America. I’m told I am the highest ranking U.S. government official and the first sitting cabinet officer to ever speak in person before this convention. I welcome that, as you have welcomed me. I am proud to have broken that glass ceiling, and to have created the expectation, in the future, that government officials of my rank will attend your annual convention.
President Obama has made it a priority for his administration to build bridges to American Muslim communities.
DM: Obama has “built bridges” to “moderate” Islamist organizations such as the
IslamistIslamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas-affiliated organizations. He has rejected organizations such as The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), which seek the reformation of Islam to respect and adhere to American values. AIFD and similar organizations are considered “Islamophobic” by CAIR, et al, who consider Islam perfect as it became when Mohammad left Mecca.In 33 months as your Secretary of Homeland Security, I have personally visited American Muslim communities in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, rural Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Detroit, Dearborn, Chicago, Columbus, Houston, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. I have come to know many of you, and I hope you know me.
DM: Indeed. They know him very well and like him. He and Obama have made great strides in furthering their notions of Islamic supremacy.
You have heard President Obama and me call out the discrimination and vilification you face in this current climate.
You have heard us say that the self-proclaimed Islamic State is neither Islam nor a state; that it is a group of terrorist[s] attempting to hijack your religion.
You have heard us, before multiple audiences of different political stripes, refuse to bend to the political pressure to call terrorism “Islamic” extremism. We know that ISIL, though it claims the banner of Islam, occupies no part of your religion, which is founded on peace.
DM: Do Secretary Johnson and Obama consider The Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of Islamic terrorism, not to be Islamic? They should spend a bit of time reading the post-Mecca parts of the Quran, the Hadith and other Islamist texts. Indeed, they should watch this video which explains them:
After I am gone as Secretary, I hope you will always regard us as your Department of Homeland Security, aligned in interest with you for peace, the safety of your family, and the protection of your homeland. I hope you will always regard our new Office of Community Partnerships as your partner. [Emphasis added.]
DM: for that to happen, Hillary Clinton must become our next President and Donald Trump must not. Mr. Johnson despises Trump’s views on Islamist terrorists and on keeping them out of the country. Johnson seeks to have our elections considered critical infrastructure for DHS to “monitor.”
Tonight, in this last and biggest opportunity I will have as your Secretary of Homeland Security to address an audience of some 10,000 Muslim Americans all at once, I want to take our conversation to a new level. [Emphasis added.]
DM: Under Obama, DHS — founded shortly after the September 11, 2001 Islamist attack on America — has indeed become the Islamists’ DHS. Hopefully, that will change after the November elections.
A leader of this organization reminded me that, we spend a lot of time telling young Muslims in this country what you should not become. A more effective message is to tell you what, in this great country, you can become. We must not simply curse the darkness, but offer a candle.
Tonight I will not look at the large group of Muslims before me in this room through a homeland security lens. Tonight I will not talk to you about counterterrorism. Tonight I will simply address you as who you are, “my fellow Americans.”
Tonight I speak especially to the young people in this audience, and to your parents worried about your future.
Many of the young people in this room worry that, because of the current climate, your religion, your skin color, and your attire, you will never win full acceptance in this country.
I come before you tonight to assure you this is not true. Your struggle for full acceptance in this country is one you will win.
DM: Wouldn’t they have a better chance of being accepted as Americans by Americans if they accepted America — her Constitution and her laws, for example — and rejected Sharia Law and all that comes with it? Mr. Johnson did not suggest that.
How do I know this? Because my African American ancestors and I have traveled a similar road.
I hear your stories of discrimination, vilification, and of the efforts to tar you with the broad brush of suspicion.
I hear about the bullying and physical attacks that Muslims (and those perceived as Muslim) are experiencing nationwide.
DM: Many of those stories are fabricated by Islamists to support their notions about the pervasive nature of “Islamophic” hate crimes.
They are familiar to me. I recognize them. I look out on this room of American Muslims and I see myself. I see a similar struggle that my African American ancestors have fought to win acceptance in this country.
Realize it or not, your story is the quintessential American story.
Your story is an American story, told over and over again, generation after generation, of waves of people who struggle for, seek, and will eventually win your share of the American dream. Know the history of this country and you will know that — whether it’s Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, Mormon Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Japanese Americas, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, or Muslim Americans — this will be true.
RS: Yes, you remember when Catholic Americans, Jewish Americans, Mormon Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Japanese Americas, African Americans, Hispanic Americans flew those planes into the towers, and bombed the Boston Marathon, and murdered 13 Americans in cold blood at Fort Hood, and four in Chattanooga, 15 in San Bernardino, and 49 in Orlando, and tried to commit mass murder at Garland and so many other places. You remember those global terror organizations made up of Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Irish, etc. committing acts of violence around the world, and threatening the imminent conquest of the U.S. and the rest of the free world.
RS: The Obama administration’s solicitude is entirely one-way, toward Muslims as victims of discrimination, which is false and inaccurate in the U.S. anyway. Meanwhile, the jihad advances, as do Islamic supremacist attempts to assert Sharia norms over American norms. Johnson had nothing to say about such things, or about the unaccountable phenomenon of so many Muslims in the U.S. adhering to the version of Islam that he assures us is un-Islamic. [Emphasis added.]
DM: Please see also, The West Needs Sharia Law – Pakistani cleric.
The arc of the American story is long, it is bumpy and uncertain, but it always bends toward a more perfect union.
DM: The Obama administration has sought a “more perfect union” with Blacks by supporting Black Lives Matter. It has thereby helped to kill many Blacks.
Some of you are frustrated that you have been publicly denouncing violent extremism for years, sometimes at your own peril, and have not been recognized for it.
DM: But not Islamist terrorism.
Some of you are discouraged that you must continually point to the patriotism of American Muslims, by pointing to your military service, and to those American Muslims who have died in combat for our country….
DM: Only if Obama, as I suggested here in jest that He had just done, recognizes Sharia Law as supreme in His America, will ISNA, CAIR, as well as similar Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated Islamist groups be proud, patriotic “Americans.” It will take
a villagethe total Islamisation of America. The rest of us? We don’t want it.
Conclusions
The notion of Islamic supremacy permeates the post-Mecca Quran and other Islamist writings, as explained in Dr. Warner’s Hijrah video provided above. When non-Muslim westerners go to Muslim countries, we are expected and required to adhere to their “superior” Islamic conventions: no booze, no “immodest” garb for females, and the like. If we don’t comply, we are jailed and/or expelled. We claim no superiority for western civilization and make no effort to demand that its norms be accepted or even to require their recognition. Perhaps we should.
“Moderate” Muslims? No thank you, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 30, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
In an article posted on August 19th titled “Donald Trump and Islamists,” I stated that I do not use the term “moderate” when referring to Muslims because it is so grossly misused as to have become meaningless. Nevertheless, one commenter stated, “It’s dangerous to perpetuate the myth of moderate Islam,” which I had neither intended to do nor done. This post elaborates on the word “moderate” as it applies to Islam.
The term “moderate” Muslim is often applied to those who do not want to kill for Allah, but who want other Muslims to do it for them and for Allah. Many “moderate” Muslims also want Sharia law for themselves and others. The following video, presented by The Clarion Project, shows Obama and Hillary expressing their views on Islam as the religion of peace. It then rebuts their lies with facts.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and similar Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-affiliated Islamist organizations are viewed by the Obama administration as “moderate” Muslims. They are integral parts of the “countering violent extremism” scam perpetrated by Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.
Their goal is not to fight Islamic “extremism” but to defeat American constitutional principles by implementing Sharia law. Among their tools is their lamentation of the “Islamophobia” which Islamist terrorist activities generate. CAIR and other “moderate” Islamist groups are so intent upon combatting “Islamophobia” that when they can’t find any they solicit Muslims to engage in anti-Islamic “hate crimes” and then blame them on the “Islamophobia” of non-Muslims. Here are a few examples from Jihad Watch. The linked article provides more.
The Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), designated a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates, and other Muslims have on many occasions not hesita-ted to stoop even to fabricating “hate crimes,” including attacks on mosques. A New Jersey Muslim was found guilty of murder that he tried to portray as an “Islamophobic” attack, and in 2014 in California, a Muslim was found guilty of killing his wife, after first blaming her murder on “Islamophobia.”
This kind of thing happens quite frequently. The New York Daily News reported just last week that “a woman who told cops she was called a terrorist and slashed on her cheek in lower Manhattan on Thursday later admitted she made up the story, police said early Friday. The woman, who wore a headscarf, told authorities a blade-wielding wacko sliced open her face as she left a Manhattan cosmetology school, police sources said.”
. . . .
In today’s politically correct environment, hate crimes are political capital. They foster the impression that resistance to Islamic terrorism equals hatred of Muslims, and results in the victimization of innocent people. Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacist organizations want and need hate crimes against Muslims, because they’re the currency they use to buy power and influence in our victimhood-oriented society, and to deflect attention away from jihad terror and onto Muslims as putative victims. Want power and influence? Be a victim! [Emphasis added.]
“OKC man charged in terrorism hoax after allegedly sending letter containing white powder to a mosque,” by Kyle Schwab by Kyle Schwab, NewsOK, August 26, 2016 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
An Oklahoma City man was charged Wednesday with a felony after he allegedly sent a threatening letter to a mosque containing a white powder meant to be mistaken for anthrax.
Justin William Bouma, 32, was charged in Oklahoma County District Court with the rarely filed felony count known as the crime of terrorist hoax. Bouma also was charged with one misdemeanor count of malicious injury and destruction of property.
Prosecutors allege Bouma sent the letter to the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City on June 1. The imam at the mosque, 3815 N St. Clair Ave., contacted the FBI after opening it.
After testing the powder, the Oklahoma City Fire Department determined it was harmless. Police reported the powder was potassium perchlorate.
Bouma admitted to police on Aug. 18 he sent the “anthrax” letter to the mosque, police reported in a court affidavit.
Bouma “purchased some cheap detergent and placed it in the envelope,” according to the affidavit. Police reported threats in the letter were cut out of a magazine and a newspaper.
On Aug. 11, OK Halal Meat & Grocery, a Muslim-owned store adjacent to the mosque, had anti-Muslim sentiments spray-painted on the back.
Bouma admitted he painted the store but said the imam told him to, the affidavit states. [Emphasis added.]
The graffiti referenced the Council on American- Islamic Relations, also known as CAIR. One statement said “CAIR not welcome.” Other remarks were crude and the terrorist group ISIS was mentioned.
Bouma reportedly attended the mosque in the past. Bouma became a suspect after authorities discovered threatening emails he had sent to mosque members, police reported….
Muslim reformers
Muslims who want to reform Islam are not “moderate” Muslims; neither was Martin Luther a “moderate” Roman Catholic. Both represent small minorities seeking material changes in their religions.
Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money, proposing an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the Pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the Emperor.
The changes sought by Martin Luther were feared by the Church leaders because they would disrupt its cash flow. The changes sought by Muslim reformers are feared by CAIR, et al, because they would disrupt governmental approval and patronage and eventually their power over Muslims. Perhaps Martin Luther was, and those who now seek the reformation of Islam are, “radical” — not, however, in the sense that the term “radical” is used with reference to Islam. Martin Luther did not murder those who did not believe as he did and neither do Muslim reformers.
Mecca and Medina Islam
We sometimes refer to those who adhere to the post-Mecca teachings of Mohammad, as they evolved in Medina and elsewhere later, as “radical” Muslims. It is apparently the view of Obama and His associates that they are not “radical” Muslims because they are not really Muslims. Hence, the Islamic State “has nothing to do with Islam.” The murderous activities directed by Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims and vice versa and, of course, against non-Muslims and Muslims who express “incorrect” views of Islam, are seen as not Islamic.
Please see Donald Trump and Islamists for a discussion of the substantial differences between Mecca Islam and Medina Islam.The article provides a lengthy quotation from Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a former Muslim now intent upon the reformation of Islam to coincide with Mohammad’s views as set forth in Mecca and to reject those as set forth in Medina. The differences are quite substantial and there appear to be substantially fewer Mecca Muslims than Medina Muslims.
Sharia law
Sharia law, sometimes referred to as Islamic law, focuses on human rights — as practiced in important Islamist countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia — where homosexuals, apostates and others whose words and deeds are seen as offending Mohammad and Allah are executed, often in the most painful ways possible. The Islamic State does the same and, as noted in the By the Numbers video presented above, millions of Muslims want Sharia law. Are they “radical” or “mainstream?”
Muslim reformers in America oppose Sharia law because it is grossly inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution and is also grossly evil per se. Here are the goals of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy as set forth at the adjacent link:
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideologies of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD looks to build the future of Islam through the concepts of liberty and freedom.
AIFD’s mission is derived from a love for America and a love of our faith of Islam. Dr. Jasser and the board of AIFD believe that Muslims can better practice Islam in an environment that protects the rights of an individual to practice their faith as they choose. The theocratic “Islamic” regimes of the Middle East and some Muslim majority nations use Islam as a way to control Muslim populations, not to glorify God as they portend. The purest practice of Islam is one in which Muslims have complete freedom to accept or reject any of the tenants or laws of the faith no different than we enjoy as Americans in this Constitutional republic.
AIFD believes that the root cause of Islamist terrorism is the ideology of political Islam and a belief in the preference for and supremacy of the Islamic state. Terrorism is but a means to that end. Most Islamist terror is driven by the desire of Islamists to drive the influence of the west (the ideas of liberty) out of the Muslim consciousness and Muslim majority societies. The underlying philosophy of Islamism is what western society should fear most. With almost a quarter of the world’s population Muslim, American security will never come without an understanding and winning out of the ideas of liberty by Muslims and an understanding of the harm of political Islam by non-Muslims. [Emphasis added.]
AIFD seeks to build and establish an institution that can provide an ideological infrastructure for the ideas of liberty and freedom to Muslims and our future generations. We seek to give Muslims a powerful intellectual alternative to political Islam (Islamism) ultimately seeking the defeat of political Islam as a theo-political ideology.
Can the Muslim reform movement succeed?
Under Obama, the Muslim reform movement has not had even a ghost of a chance to succeed. Obama supports such “moderate” Islamist groups as CAIR and has made no attempt to consider the contrasting views of Islamic reformers which CAIR — and perhaps Obama — deem “Islamophobic.” Perhaps the reform movement actually is “Islamophobic,” if one deems Islamism perfect and any reform harmful to the already perfect status quo.
How many have heard of “moderate” CAIR? How many have heard of “Islamophobic” reform movements such as Dr. Jasser’s American Islamic Forum for Democracy? Substantially fewer, I suspect, than have heard of CAIR, et al. Perhaps the lack of attention afforded the Islamic reform movement is among the reasons many adhere to the view that the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim. Perceptions of the views of Muslim reformers seem likely to change for the better under President Trump.
Conclusions
Insofar as Islam is concerned, we have been living on Obama’s Islamist plantation for nearly eight long years. Blacks have been living on the Democrat Party’s racist plantation for far longer.
Trump has tried to convince Black voters to leave the racist Democrat Plantation. As he recently asked rhetorically, “what do you have to lose?”
What do we have to lose by abandoning Obama’s Islamist plantation? Nothing, but we have much to gain. When we do, our relationship with Islam won’t get worse and seems very likely to get better as Islamic reform movements get a voice in our official policy toward Islam.
Would you prefer to have Islamist organizations such as CAIR, or Muslim reform organizations, speak to and for American Muslims? One or the other will do so.
Dr. Jasser discusses the U.S. refugee policies on the Mike Siegel Show 08.24.2016, AIFDtv
(The discussion is wide-ranging, covering more topics than indicated by the title.–DM)
UK: Clerics Who Threaten Reformers and Praise Murderers, Gatestone Institute, Douglas Murray, August 22, 2016
♦ Anjem Choudary has gone to jail. He was the most visible part of the problem. But he was not the greatest or deepest problem in this area. That problem is shown when two extremist clerics with pre-medieval views come to Britain they are welcomed by an ignorant British establishment.
♦ “These people teach murder and hate. For me personally I find it sad that a country like England would allow cowards like these men in. Why are they allowing people [in] that give fuel to the fire they are fighting against?” — Shahbaz Taseer, the son of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who was murdered for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
♦ “They have got hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK,” the imam of the Madina Mosque and Islamic Centre in Oldham, Zahoor Chishti, said of the two clerics.
The conviction of radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary — the most prominent extremist in Britain — has been widely welcomed in the UK. For years his followers and he have infuriated the vast majority of the British public (including most British Muslims) with their inflammatory and hate-filled rhetoric. They have also provided a constant stream of people willing to follow through the words with actions. More people around Choudary have been convicted of terrorism offences in the UK than any other Islamist group — including al-Qaeda.
But Choudary’s conviction for encouraging people to join ISIS should not be greeted as though that is the end of a matter.
The conviction of radical Islamic preacher Anjem Choudary (centre) — the most prominent extremist in Britain — has been widely welcomed in the UK.
Last week we noted here how, after the murder of an Ahmadiyya Muslim in the UK at the hands of another Muslim, some Muslims are “more Muslim than others” and that those outside a particular theological group can be killed is not an idea held only by the murderer. It is an idea with a significant following in the UK Muslim community, as well as among Muslims worldwide. A recent test of this issue was the execution in January this year in Pakistan of Mumtaz Qadri. This was the man who murdered Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province in Pakistan. Taseer had opposed the strict blasphemy laws which operate in his country. In Qadri’s eyes, Taseer was an apostate for even thinking of watering down the blasphemy laws that jihadists and Islamists such as the Taliban wish to preserve. And so Qadri killed the governor.
Of course one would like to think that everyone could unite in condemning the actions of a man such as Mumtaz Qadri. What is striking is how many people fail to do so, and how many Muslim clerics and religious leaders — even in the West — not only fail to do so but have been open in their praise of Qadri and their condemnation of Pakistan for putting him to death. Prominent among the latter group is the imam of the largest mosque in Scotland — the Glasgow central mosque.
This past month, however, an even more significant event occurred. In July, two Pakistani clerics started a tour of the UK. Their seven-week expedition, called “Sacred Journey,” goes on until September 4, and includes appearances in Oldham, Rochdale, Rotherham and the Prime Minister’s own constituency of Maidenhead. One of the first things that Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman did when they arrived in the UK was to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop welcomed them in Lambeth Palace and claimed that the meeting would strengthen “interfaith relations,” as well as address “the narrative of extremism and terrorism.” One wonders how far the Archbishop got in this task?
If there is a “narrative of extremism and terrorism,” Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman can take some serious credit for the fact. Both men took an enthusiastic stand in Pakistan in support of Mumtaz Qadri. That is, they supported the murderer of a progressive Pakistani official. Listen here, for instance, to Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman delivering a hysterical speech in support of Mumtaz Qadri while his fellow cleric, Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman, looks on approvingly from the platform.
Here is Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman whipping up the vast crowd of mourners after the funeral of Mumtaz Qadri in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. During his speech he repeatedly refers to Qadri as ashaheed [martyr]. Tens of thousands of people attended the funeral, and afterwards rioted, chanting slogans such as “Qadri, your blood will bring the revolution” and “the punishment for a blasphemer is beheading.”
After Qadri’s execution, Haseeb ur Rehman said on social media “Every person who loves Islam and Prophet is in grief for the martyrdom of Mumtaz Qadri.”
So what are two clerics who approve of murdering reformers and mourn the death of fanatics and assassins doing touring the UK? Shahbaz Taseer, the son of the Salman Taseer, is among those who has criticised the UK authorities for allowing the two men into the country. “These people teach murder and hate,” he has said.
“For me personally I find it sad that a country like England would allow cowards like these men in. It’s countries like the UK and the US that claim they are leading the way in the war against terror [and] setting a standard. Why are they allowing people [in] that give fuel to the fire they are fighting against?”
“They have got hundreds of thousands of followers in the UK,” the imam of the Madina Mosque and Islamic Centre in Oldham, Zahoor Chishti, said of the two clerics. Chishti denied that the event was organised by his mosque and said that he was not aware of the views of the speakers. “When I found out I was upset. I think it was really upsetting and wrong. They come to the UK every year and give messages of love, so that’s why they’re booked on that basis.’
Elsewhere, the “Sacred Journey” tour has already thrown up another interesting connection. Mohammed Shafiq runs a one-man outfit called the “Ramadan Foundation” in the UK, and is regularly called upon by the British media. He appears to be viewed as a “moderate” Muslim because he has been outspoken in opposition to the mass rape of children by gangs of Muslim men. Despite this heroism, his own liberal credentials (not least as a member of the Liberal Democrat party) have often come into question. Several years ago, for instance, when the Liberal Democrat candidate and genuine anti-extremism campaigner Maajid Nawaz re-Tweeted an innocuous cartoon from the “Jesus and Mo” series, Shafiq was among those who tried to get up a lynch-mob against Nawaz. Shafiq wrote on social media that Nawaz was a “Ghustaki Rasool,” Urdu for “defamer of the prophet.” He warned that he would “notify Islamic countries.” Shafiq angrily denied that these and other messages constituted incitement against Nawaz.
But now, on the visit of two clerics to the UK who applaud and mourn Mumtaz Qadri, where is Mohammed Shafiq to be found? Why, warmly greeting the cleric who praises the murderers of reformers and glad-handing with the terrorist-apologists and blasphemy lynch-mob, of course.
Almost everyone in Britain is pleased that the loudmouth Anjem Choudary has gone to jail. Like the hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza before him, Choudary was — as a case — almost too easy. He was the most visible part of the problem. But he was not the greatest or deepest problem in this area. That problem is shown when two extremist clerics with pre-medieval views come to Britain, they are welcomed by an ignorant British establishment. The problem is shown when they tour mosques, they do so to packed houses because they have “hundreds of thousands” of followers of Pakistani origin in the UK. The problem is shown when you scratch the surface of one of the self-proclaimed “moderates” like Mohammed Shafiq and discover that he is happy to pal around with the people who threaten reformers and praise murderers.
That is the problem for British Islam in a nutshell. And that is a problem we still remain woefully unable to confront.
Of Course There Should Be an Ideological Test in Immigration, National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy, August 20, 2016
Please see also, Will National Security Finally Bring Warring Republicans Together? — DM)
Imagine an American government official, interviewing an alien seeking admission to our country from, say, Syria: U.S. official:
“Will you support the United States Constitution?”
Syrian alien: “Well, sure, except that I believe the government should be overseen by a caliph, who must be Muslim and male, and who must rule in accordance with Islamic law, which no man-made law may contradict. None of this ‘We the People’ stuff; Allah is the sovereign. Non-Muslims should not be required to convert to Islam, of course, but they must submit to the authority of Islamic law — which requires them to live in the second-class status of dhimmitude and to pay a poll tax for that privilege.”
“I also believe women must be subservient to men, and that men are permitted to beat their wives if they are disobedient — especially if they refuse sex, in which they must engage on demand. There is no such thing as marital rape, and proving non-marital rape requires testimony from four male witnesses. Outside the home, a woman should cover herself in drab from head to toe. A woman’s testimony in court should be worth only half of a man’s, and her inheritance rights similarly discounted. Men should be able to marry up to four women — women, however, are limited to marrying one man.” “
Oh, and Muslims who renounce Islam should be put to death . . . as should homosexuals . . . and blasphemers . . . and adulterers — at least the ones we don’t let off with a mere scourging. The penalty for theft should be amputation of the right hand (for highway robbery, the left foot is also amputated); and for drinking alcohol, the offender is to be scourged with 40 stripes.”
“There are a few other odds and ends — you know, jihad and whatnot. But other than that, will I support the Constitution? Sure thing.”
U.S. official: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. That’s not supporting the Constitution. That would be destroying the Constitution.”
Syrian alien: “Yeah, maybe so. But it’s my religion.” U.S. official: “Oh, your religion. Why didn’t you say so? I thought you were spouting some anti-American political ideology. But as long as you say it’s your religion, no problem. C’mon in!”
U.S. official: “Oh, your religion. Why didn’t you say so? I thought you were spouting some anti-American political ideology. But as long as you say it’s your religion, no problem. C’mon in!”
This conversation is impossible to imagine because . . . it would be honest. In the decades-long onslaught of radical Islam against the United States, honesty went out with the benighted notions that we should “know thine enemy” and, God forbid, train our national-security agents in that enemy’s ideology, methods, and objectives.
In our alternative universe, you are not supposed to remember that there is an American constitutional framework of liberty, popular sovereignty, and equality before the law.
You are not supposed to realize that aliens are expected to exhibit fidelity to this constitutional framework as a precondition to joining our society.
You are not supposed to know that there is an Islamic law, sharia, that has far more to do with governance, economics, warfare, civil rights, domestic relations, criminal prosecution, and fashion than it does with spiritual life.
And you are absolutely not supposed to grasp that sharia is antithetical to the Constitution, to the very foundational American principle that the people may make law for themselves, live as they see fit, and chart their own destiny.
You are not supposed to connect the dots and ask, “Well, how is it conceivable that any sharia-adherent alien could faithfully pledge allegiance to our Constitution?”
So, instead, we shrug our shoulders, mumble something about “freedom of religion,” and bury our heads back in the sand — as if the structure of government and the decision of which limb to smite for which larceny had anything to do with religion in a free society that rejects the establishment of any state religion and separates spiritual from political life. Sharia is not religion. Sharia is a totalitarian societal structure and
Sharia is not religion. Sharia is a totalitarian societal structure and legal corpus that anti-American radicals seek to impose. Yes, their motivation for doing so is their interpretation of their religion — the fundamentalist, literalist construction of Islam. But that does not make sharia itself a matter of “religion” in the Western sense, even if vast numbers of Arab Muslims — for whom there is no cognizable separation of mosque and state — say otherwise. If Karl Marx had said, “The workers must control the means of production because God says so,” that would not have transmogrified the tyranny of Communism into the “freedom of religion.”
Two things flow from this.
The first involves immigration. As we’ve previously demonstrated, there is no constitutional prohibition against considering religion in deciding which aliens to allow into the United States — immigration is a privilege, not a right; and our Constitution is security for Americans, not a weapon for aliens to use against Americans.
Nevertheless, even if there were a constitutional bar against “religious tests,” sharia is not religion. There are no constitutional constraints against excluding aliens on grounds of anti-American political ideology. Excluding anti-Americans from America is common sense and was regarded as such for much of our history. In a time of radical Islamic threat to our national security, Donald Trump is right to propose that aliens from sharia-supremacist areas be carefully vetted for adherence to anti-constitutional principles.
Leftists — those notorious disciples of the Framers — claim this is unconstitutional. When shown it is not, they claim that it is against our “tradition” — being, you know, big fans of American tradition. When shown that this is not the case either, when shown that our history supports ideological exclusion of anti-Americans, leftists are down to claiming, “It is not who we are” — by which they always mean it is not who they are, and who they would force the rest of us to be.
A short lesson in how we got to be who “we” are. In the last decades of the Cold War, it became progressive dogma that the Soviet Union was forever, that it was an empire we could do business with, arrive at a modus vivendi with. The real evil, the Left decided, were the anti-Communists — it was their provocations against the Soviets, not the Soviets themselves, that could trigger Armageddon. Therefore, they reckoned, we needed to do away with all this overheated nonsense about how Communists seek the violent overthrow of the United States. That, to the Left, was just a bunch of ideological mumbo-jumbo that nobody ever really took seriously (even if Bill Ayers hadn’t gotten the memo). One major consequence of this conventional wisdom was the campaign waged by leading Democrats to eliminate radical ideology as a basis for excluding aliens. They championed laws decreeing that “mere” radical ideology, in the absence of some provable connection to
One major consequence of this conventional wisdom was the campaign waged by leading Democrats to eliminate radical ideology as a basis for excluding aliens. They championed laws decreeing that “mere” radical ideology, in the absence of some provable connection to violent action, should not bar radicals from entering our country. Thus, the “principle” that America must not vet would-be immigrants for anti-Americanism is not derived from the U.S. Constitution, from our traditions, or from who “we” supposedly are. It stems from the Left’s conviction that Communist ideology was not a real threat to America. Then, about 14 months after the Soviet Union collapsed, jihadists bombed the World Trade Center. They have been attacking us ever since. See,
Then, about 14 months after the Soviet Union collapsed, jihadists bombed the World Trade Center. They have been attacking us ever since. See, however you come out on the question of whether Communists really posed a violent threat to our national security, there cannot be such a question with respect to radical Islam. The front line of that movement is the mass murderers, not the professors. With radical Islam, the threat of violence is not an abstract academic proposition. It is our reality. What’s more, we know from hard experience, and from observing Europe’s new reality, that the threat is not just the jihadists. Equally important are the sharia-supremacist ideologues who seek to forge autonomous enclaves where sharia becomes the de facto law, and where jihadist radicalization, recruitment, fundraising, and training have
What’s more, we know from hard experience, and from observing Europe’s new reality, that the threat is not just the jihadists. Equally important are the sharia-supremacist ideologues who seek to forge autonomous enclaves where sharia becomes the de facto law, and where jihadist radicalization, recruitment, fundraising, and training have safe haven. Our legitimate worries are not limited to the trained jihadist who infiltrates today; they include the sharia supremacist who will get his hooks into young Muslims and turn them into the trained jihadists of tomorrow.
The second thing to consider is Islam. As Robert R. Reilly unfolded in his essential book, The Closing of the Muslim Mind, there is an Islamic tradition of rational inquiry, deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, that has been overwhelmed for nearly a millennium by the fundamentalist tradition. The rationalists may be out-muscled, but they are not dormant. They are Muslims who embrace Western culture, reject the imposition of antiquated sharia as a system of law and governance, and challenge the premises and the aggression of the fundamentalists. They are Muslims who, I can attest, help us infiltrate terror cells and prevent attacks. They are Muslims who fight in our armed forces, work in our intelligence services, serve in our police departments, and thrive in our economy.
We do not have to exaggerate their numbers to recognize that these Muslims exist and that they are our allies — that they are part of us. To appreciate their value and their contributions to our society, we do not need to pretend that they typify Islam as it is lived in Syria, Saudi Arabia, or the no-go zones of Paris.
If we want to win the crucial ideological component of radical Islam’s war against us, we should be empowering these pro-Western Muslims rather than inviting the sharia-supremacist Muslim Brotherhood into our policy-making councils. Like protecting our nation, empowering pro-Western Muslims requires an immigration system that welcomes those who will support our Constitution, and turns away those who would sweep it aside.
Donald Trump and Islamists, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 20, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine, and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
An “Islamist” is a Muslim who seeks to impose Islamic (Sharia) law worldwide, including in America. There are Muslims in America who do not want that to happen, yet few of them seek actively to prevent it. I refer here to those who do try, not as “moderate Muslims” — an essentially badly used and hence meaningless term — but as “Muslim reformers.”
On August 15th, Donald Trump delivered an address, generally well-received in conservative circles, on the dangers of Islamist immigration and how he intends to guard against those who intend to have Sharia law imposed and/or to engage in terrorist activities.
Here’s a video of Trump’s address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIfTKOWAWt8
The text is available here.
Here’s a video about Trump’s plan:
According to an article at Breitbart titled Donald Trump’s Outreach to Moderate Muslim Leaders Highlights Clinton Failure in Egypt,
In his foreign policy speech on Monday, Donald Trump stated that he would “amplify the voice” of moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, saying, “Our Administration will be a friend to all moderate Muslim reformers in the Middle East, and will amplify their voices.”
He also said that he would work with Egypt, Jordan and Israel in combating radical Islam, saying, “As President, I will call for an international conference focused on this goal. We will work side-by-side with our friends in the Middle East, including our greatest ally, Israel. We will partner with King Abdullah of Jordan, and President Sisi of Egypt, and all others who recognize this ideology of death that must be extinguished.” [Emphasis added.]
He said that, as President, he would establish a “Commission on Radical Islam,” saying, “That is why one of my first acts as President will be to establish a Commission on Radical Islam – which will include reformist voices in the Muslim community who will hopefully work with us. We want to build bridges and erase divisions.” [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Under the Obama Administration, US policy has not been friendly towards our Muslim allies such as Egypt. Hillary Clinton recently said in a primary debate with Bernie Sanders that, in Egypt, you basically have an “army dictatorship”.
Egypt is one of the most catastrophic foreign policy failures of the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department. President Obama started his outreach to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood when he delivered his 2009 Cairo speech. The US Embassy invited 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to attend the speech, undermining US ally Mubarak – who had rejected to previous U.S. efforts to reach out to the Brotherhood. [Emphasis added.]
Islamism
Islamism is a totalitarian vision to impose Sharia law worldwide:
Unfortunately, Obama’s “countering violent extremism” farce has chosen to ignore, if not to encourage and even adopt, Sharia law and its consequences:
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is a Muslim reformer of the type Trump hopes to recruit for his efforts. A video of an interview with Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, an American Muslim of Syrian descent and a proponent of an Islamic reformation, is provided below. However, first it will be useful to understand the goals of Dr. Jasser and his His organization, American Islamic Forum for Democracy:
The American Islamic Forum for Democracy’s (AIFD) mission is to advocate for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.
AIFD is the most prominent American Muslim organization directly confronting the ideologies of political Islam and openly countering the common belief that the Muslim faith is inextricably rooted to the concept of the Islamic State (Islamism). Founded by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, AIFD looks to build the future of Islam through the concepts of liberty and freedom.
AIFD’s mission is derived from a love for America and a love of our faith of Islam. Dr. Jasser and the board of AIFD believe that Muslims can better practice Islam in an environment that protects the rights of an individual to practice their faith as they choose. The theocratic “Islamic” regimes of the Middle East and some Muslim majority nations use Islam as a way to control Muslim populations, not to glorify God as they portend. The purest practice of Islam is one in which Muslims have complete freedom to accept or reject any of the tenants or laws of the faith no different than we enjoy as Americans in this Constitutional republic.
AIFD believes that the root cause of Islamist terrorism is the ideology of political Islam and a belief in the preference for and supremacy of the Islamic state. Terrorism is but a means to that end. Most Islamist terror is driven by the desire of Islamists to drive the influence of the west (the ideas of liberty) out of the Muslim consciousness and Muslim majority societies. The underlying philosophy of Islamism is what western society should fear most. With almost a quarter of the world’s population Muslim, American security will never come without an understanding and winning out of the ideas of liberty by Muslims and an understanding of the harm of political Islam by non-Muslims.
AIFD seeks to build and establish an institution that can provide an ideological infrastructure for the ideas of liberty and freedom to Muslims and our future generations. We seek to give Muslims a powerful intellectual alternative to political Islam (Islamism) ultimately seeking the defeat of political Islam as a theo-political ideology.
Some readers will likely think that Dr. Jasser’s efforts to reform Islam would, in the unlikely event that they prove successful, create something that is not Islam. I disagree. Mohamed (and hence Islam) changed quite radically when he was driven out of Mecca and settled in Medina, where he became a warlord. In Mecca, he had been relatively peaceful and tolerant of other religions. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali states here,
In the early days of Islam, when Muhammad was going from door to door in Mecca trying to persuade the polytheists to abandon their idols of worship, he was inviting them to accept that there was no god but Allah and that he was Allah’s messenger.
After 10 years of trying this kind of persuasion, however, he and his small band of believers went to Medina, and from that moment, Muhammad’s mission took on a political dimension. Unbelievers were still invited to submit to Allah, but after Medina, they were attacked if they refused. If defeated, they were given the option to convert or to die. (Jews and Christians could retain their faith if they submitted to paying a special tax.) [Emphasis added.]
No symbol represents the soul of Islam more than the Shahada. But today there is a contest within Islam for the ownership of that symbol. Who owns the Shahada? Is it those Muslims who want to emphasize Muhammad’s years in Mecca or those who are inspired by his conquests after Medina? On this basis, I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims.
The first group is the most problematic. These are the fundamentalists who, when they say the Shahada, mean: “We must live by the strict letter of our creed.” They envision a regime based on Shariah, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version. What is more, they take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else.
I shall call them Medina Muslims, in that they see the forcible imposition of Shariah as their religious duty. They aim not just to obey Muhammad’s teaching but also to emulate his warlike conduct after his move to Medina. Even if they do not themselves engage in violence, they do not hesitate to condone it. [Emphasis added.]
It is Medina Muslims who call Jews and Christians “pigs and monkeys.” It is Medina Muslims who prescribe death for the crime of apostasy, death by stoning for adultery and hanging for homosexuality. It is Medina Muslims who put women in burqas and beat them if they leave their homes alone or if they are improperly veiled.
The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence. I call them Mecca Muslims. Like devout Christians or Jews who attend religious services every day and abide by religious rules in what they eat and wear, Mecca Muslims focus on religious observance. I was born in Somalia and raised as a Mecca Muslim. So were the majority of Muslims from Casablanca to Jakarta. [Emphasis added.]
Yet the Mecca Muslims have a problem: Their religious beliefs exist in an uneasy tension with modernity—the complex of economic, cultural and political innovations that not only reshaped the Western world but also dramatically transformed the developing world as the West exported it. The rational, secular and individualistic values of modernity are fundamentally corrosive of traditional societies, especially hierarchies based on gender, age and inherited status.
Trapped between two worlds of belief and experience, these Muslims are engaged in a daily struggle to adhere to Islam in the context of a society that challenges their values and beliefs at every turn. Many are able to resolve this tension only by withdrawing into self-enclosed (and increasingly self-governing) enclaves. This is called cocooning, a practice whereby Muslim immigrants attempt to wall off outside influences, permitting only an Islamic education for their children and disengaging from the wider non-Muslim community.
It is my hope to engage this second group of Muslims—those closer to Mecca than to Medina—in a dialogue about the meaning and practice of their faith. I recognize that these Muslims are not likely to heed a call for doctrinal reformation from someone they regard as an apostate and infidel. But they may reconsider if I can persuade them to think of me not as an apostate but as a heretic: one of a growing number of people born into Islam who have sought to think critically about the faith we were raised in. It is with this third group—only a few of whom have left Islam altogether—that I would now identify myself. [Emphasis added.]
These are the Muslim dissidents. A few of us have been forced by experience to conclude that we could not continue to be believers; yet we remain deeply engaged in the debate about Islam’s future. The majority of dissidents are reforming believers—among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.
How many Muslims belong to each group? Ed Husain of the Council on Foreign Relations estimates that only 3% of the world’s Muslims understand Islam in the militant terms I associate with Muhammad’s time in Medina. But out of well over 1.6 billion believers, or 23% of the globe’s population, that 48 million seems to be more than enough. (I would put the number significantly higher, based on survey data on attitudes toward Shariah in Muslim countries.)
In any case, regardless of the numbers, it is the Medina Muslims who have captured the world’s attention on the airwaves, over social media, in far too many mosques and, of course, on the battlefield.
The Medina Muslims pose a threat not just to non-Muslims. They also undermine the position of those Mecca Muslims attempting to lead a quiet life in their cultural cocoons throughout the Western world. But those under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself. [Emphasis added.]
For the world at large, the only viable strategy for containing the threat posed by the Medina Muslims is to side with the dissidents and reformers and to help them to do two things: first, identify and repudiate those parts of Muhammad’s legacy that summon Muslims to intolerance and war, and second, persuade the great majority of believers—the Mecca Muslims—to accept this change. [Emphasis added.]
Islam is at a crossroads. Muslims need to make a conscious decision to confront, debate and ultimately reject the violent elements within their religion. To some extent—not least because of widespread revulsion at the atrocities of Islamic State, al Qaeda and the rest—this process has already begun. But it needs leadership from the dissidents, and they in turn stand no chance without support from the West. [Emphasis added.]
Is Dr. Jasser a Mecca Muslim, who wants Islam to revert to the religion as practiced in Mecca? So it seems to me, and that is by no means what the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR) wants. It has labeled Dr. Jasser and his organization “Islamophobic:”
In 2013, CAIR published a major report, “Legislating Fear: Islamophobia and its Impact in the United States,” which identifies 37 organizations dedicated to promoting the type of anti-Islam prejudice that can lead to bias-motivated incidents targeting American Muslims. The Islamophobia report isavailable on Kindle.
Jasser was featured in that report as an enabler of anti-Muslim bigotry. The report noted that Jasser heads a group that “applauded” an amendment to Oklahoma’s state Constitution that would have implemented state-sponsored discrimination against Islam.
Jasser also narrated “The Third Jihad,” a propaganda film created by the Clarion Fund, which depicts Muslims as inherently violent and seeking world domination. Following revelations that the film was shown as part of training at the New York Police Department, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly called it “wacky” and “objectionable.”
Here is the “propaganda film” referred to by CAIR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XUub1no1qw
Finally, here is Dr. Jasser’s video about Trump’s plan to evaluate the ideological views of Muslims who attempt to enter the United States with a view to keeping out those who favor Sharia law, terrorism and the Islamisation of America. Dr. Jasser favors it and also offers good advice.
If, as seems likely, President Trump replaces the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas-linked organizations such as CAIR with non-Islamist, Muslim reform organizations such Dr. Jasser’s, the focus will shift from the Department of Homeland Security’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program of demonizing “Islamophobia” to excluding Islamists from American and preventing their domestic terror activities as well as defeating their efforts directed to the Islamisation of America and the imposition of Sharia law.
Dr. Jasser and his reformist colleagues have not been shy about how they view Islam and how they want it to change. As Hirsi Ali noted in the article quoted above,
[T]hose under the greatest threat are the dissidents and reformers within Islam, who face ostracism and rejection, who must brave all manner of insults, who must deal with the death threats—or face death itself.
I submit that it up to us, not to reject them on the notion that all Muslims are dangerous, but to accept them — as Donald Trump appears to have done — and to work with them in their efforts to change not only Islam but how it functions in America.
What’s the Number of Terrorists We’ll Accept from a U.S. Mosque Before We Start Asking Questions? Counter Jihad, Shireen Qudosi, August 19, 2016
[A]s a collective society, we need Muslim Reformer-lead conversation about Islamic philosophy, a principle tenet in Trump’s foreign policy speech
***************
In the aftermath of one of Islamism’s bloodiest summers, Western countries are stepping up efforts to filter for potential threats. Germany has held raids targeting Islamist preachers suspected of recruiting ISIS supporters. Belgium launched a police hunt for an imam’s son who walked down the street loudly praying to Allah for the annihilation of all Christians. And France recently banned the “burkini” – the Muslim adaptation of a swimsuit. At this point, it’s a bandage on a gaping wound. More aggressive and strategic measures need to be taken to target the environment where Islamic supremacism flourishes, rather than just the behavior it produces. One place is in U.S. mosques.
For the last year, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has rallied for greater U.S. mosque surveillance. He’s introduced a series of ideas that are both shocking and bold in a climate where one more serious domestic terrorist attack could very likely escalate the situation beyond our control.
Principal among them, Giuliani proposed electronic monitoring tags and bracelets for Muslims on the terror watch list. The problem with this is ensuring the right people are on that list. If that watch list is anything like the TSA no-fly list (easy to get on, impossible to get off of), we have a problem. And just like with mosque surveillance that is made public, tracking radical threats doesn’t deter their activity. Islamic extremists have a start-up mentality: they are extremely flexible and expect to adapt to the environment. In the case of next generation Muslims, that activity will shift to universities, social venues, and online. This is why announcing a surveillance program is an ill-advised move. Don’t announce it, just do it.
The fact is, 80% of U.S. mosques are known to be complicit in promoting violence. The Islamic Society of Boston is one of them. At this one mosque we find, not only inciters of violence and hatred, but the inevitable result of that incitement: actual violent jihadists who’ve drawn blood. In the case of the ISB, it was perpetrators of the Boston Marathon Massacre in 2013.
And when Islamists complain about the need for mosques, chatter among Millennial Muslims show a growing frustration for mushrooming mosques at the expense of diminishing community services for Muslims in need. In other words, Muslims themselves say the mosques aren’t necessary.
However, tracking activity within mosques is necessary given the causal relationship between extremism and mosque affiliation. For Giuliani, the imperative on tracking red-flagged Muslims with bracelets comes after a string of Western attacks by extremists who were on a terror watch list – or had at some point been detained for questioning. Though active monitoring can be implemented, there’s a greater question of resources. The reason many of these red-flagged terrorists went under the radar was because officials were simply overwhelmed with data.
The solution to curtailing America’s terror threat isn’t just one extreme solution or another; it’s a combination of extreme measures paired with creative initiatives. This starts with recognizing that mosques are a portal for Islamism and extremism. This is not to say that every mosque is hoarding ammunitions in the backroom, but rather mosques (1) aren’t challenging their own narratives of Islamic supremacy within their congregation and community, and (2) aren’t rejecting hate preachers who hold an animosity toward at West.
In addition to more sound surveillance programs that perhaps works with progressive Muslims, it would be advisable to put searing pressure on mosques, leaders, organizers and Islamic organizations that makes it clear that ambivalence, acceptance, and/or embrace of radical Islamic philosophy will not be tolerated. This means that as a collective society, we need Muslim Reformer-lead conversation about Islamic philosophy, a principle tenet in Trump’s foreign policy speech.
Alongside, the U.S. government has to recognize it’s in an ideological war, meaning that empowering counter narratives among Muslim reformers and critical thinkers – and funding initiatives and centers spearheaded by them – is no longer an option to be explored; it must be supported. This doesn’t mean additional funds for CVEor vague counter-terrorism funding. It means funds for hoisting the flag of reform and making it possible for true progressive to establish ideological lighthouses that build a movement.
But there’s a larger problem: a total lack of solidarity between party lines and across national and state agencies.
Giuliani correctly pointed out the need for continued surveillance programs, especially after the Orlando Shooting – an attack that is strongly suspected to have been triggered in part by radical imams. These programs were in place under Bloomberg but were halted under current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The New York City Police Department has also faced wavering support for its efforts to combat Islamic extremism in the city that has faced the most brutal Western assault by Islamic extremists. Though a post 9/11 era saw support for increased surveillance and controls, that support has dwindled with each changing of the guards – at a national stage from Bush to Obama, and more regionally, between NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to newcomer Bill Bratton. Bratton disbanded a critical undercover police unit assigned to look for terrorist activity in New York Mosques and social venues popular among local Muslims. Bratton also chose to shelf an instrumental 92 pages report that was heralded as groundbreaking.
And nationally, while the CIA and the FBI joined forces post 9/11 to pool resources and create efficient information networks, the FBI has largely failed in their attempt to recruit and deploy undercover agents. Caught between fruitless community relations with Islamists and a failure to put into action credible undercover assets, the FBI has faced a backlash from the Muslim community for entrapment scenarios that have actually created viable threats.
It’s clear that any plan moving forward is going to need having everyone on the same page. That starts with recognizing we’re dealing with an ideological problem that goes beyond jihadi training grounds overseas. We’re dealing with a mindset that goes beyond mosques and borders.
anneinpt
artaxes
danmillerinpanama
davidking1530
Peter Hofman
Joseph Wouk
Peter
Louisiana Steve
WarSclerotic 
Recent Comments