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Clinton VP Pick Tim Kaine’s Islamist Ties

July 23, 2016

Clinton VP Pick Tim Kaine’s Islamist Ties, Clarion Project, Ryan Mauro, July 23, 2016

VP islamistPresumptive Democratic candidate for president Hillary Clinton with her choice for vice-president Tim Kaine.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s newly-announced running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, has a history of embracing Islamists. He appointed a Hamas supporter to a state immigration commission; spoke at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect and received donations from well-known Islamist groups.

 

Appointing a Muslim Brotherhood Front Leader Who Supports Hamas

In 2007, Kaine was the Governor of Virginia and, of all people chose Muslim American Society (MAS) President Esam Omeish to the state’s Immigration Commission. A Muslim organization against Islamism criticized the appointment and reckless lack of vetting.

Federal prosecutors said in a 2008 court filing that MAS was “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” A Chicago Tribune investigation in 2004 confirmed this, as well as MAS’ crafty use of deceptive semantics to appear moderate. Convicted terrorist and admitted U.S. Muslim Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Alamoudi testified in 2012, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Read our fully-documented profile of MAS here.

According to Omeish’s website, he was also president of the National Muslim Students Association (click there to read our profile about its Muslim Brotherhood origins) and served for two years on the national board of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which the Justice Department also labeled as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-financing trial.

His website says he was the vice president of Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a radical mosque known for its history of terror ties, including having future Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki as its imam and being frequented by two of the 9/11 hijackers and Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood shooting. Omeish’s website says he remains a board member.

Omeish’s website also says he was chairman of the board of Islamic American University, which had Hamas financier and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef Al-Qaradawi chairman of its board until at least 2006.

Omeish was also chairman of the board for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, a New Jersey mosque with heavy terrorist ties and an imam that the Department of Homeland Security wants to deport for having links to Hamas.

Omeish directly expressed extremism before Kaine appointed him. He claimed the Brotherhood is “moderate” and admitted that he and MAS are influenced by the Islamist movement.

In 2004, Omeish praised the Hamas spiritual leader as “our belovedSheikh Ahmed Yassin.” Videotape from 2000 also surfaced where Omeish pledged to help Palestinians who understand “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land” (he denied this was an endorsement of violence).

When a state delegate wrote a letter to then-Governor Kaine warning him that the MAS has “questionable origins,” a Kaine spokesperson said the charge was bigotry.

Kaine obviously failed to do any kind of basic background checking in Omeish.

Omeish resigned under heavy pressure, and Kaine acknowledged that his statements “concerned” him. But, apparently, they didn’t concern him enough to actually learn about the Muslim Brotherhood network in his state and to take greater precautions in the future.

Speaking at a Dinner Honoring Muslim Brotherhood Terror Suspect

In September 2011, Kaine spoke at a “Candidates Night” dinner organized by the New Dominion PAC that presented a Lifetime Achievement Award for Jamal Barzinji, who the Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch describes as a “founding father of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”

He first came on to the FBI’s radar in 1987-1988 when an informant inside the Brotherhood identified Barzinji and his associated groups as being part of a network of Brotherhood fronts to “institute the Islamic Revolution in the United States.” The source said Barzinji and his colleagues were “organizing political support which involves influencing both public opinion in the United States as well as the United States Government” using “political action front groups with no traceable ties.”

Barzinji had his home searched as part of a terrorism investigation in 2003. U.S. Customs Service Senior Special Agent David Kane said in a sworn affidavit that Barzinji and the network of entities he led were investigated because he “is not only closed associated with PIJ [Palestinian Islamic Jihad]…but also with Hamas.”  Counter-terrorism reporter Patrick Poole broke the story that Barzinji was nearly prosecuted but the Obama Justice Department dropped plans for indictment.

Barzinji played a major role in nearly every Brotherhood front in the U.S. and was vice president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), which came under terrorism investigation also. Barzinji’s group was so close to Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Sami Al-Arian that IIIT’s President considered his group and Al-Arian’s to be essentially one entity.

The indictment of Al-Arian and his colleagues says that they “would and did seek to obtain support from influential individuals, in the United States under the guise of promoting and protecting Arab rights (emphasis mine).”

The quotes about Brotherhood operative Barzinji’s aspirations to use civil rights advocacy as a means to influence politicians are especially relevant when you consider that video from the event honoring Barzinji shows Kaine saying that it was his fourth time at the annual dinner and thanked his “friends” that organized it for helping him in his campaign for lieutenant-governor and governor and asked them to help his Senate campaign.

Islamist Financial Support

Barzinji’s organization, IIIT, donated $10,000 in 2011 to the New Dominion PAC, the organization that held the event honoring Barzinji that Kaine spoke at. The Barzinji-tied New Dominion PAC donated $43,050 to Kaine’s gubernatorial campaign between 2003 and 2005. That figure doesn’t even include other political recipients that assisted Kaine’s campaign.

The PAC has very strong ties to the Democratic Party in Virginia, with the Virginia Public Access Project tallying almost $257,000 in donations. This likely explains why Barzinji’s grandson served in Governor McAuliffe’s administration and then became the Obama Administration’s liaison to the Muslim-American community.

The Middle East Forum’s Islamist Money in Politics database shows another $4,300 donated to Kaine’s Senate campaign in 2011-2012 by officials from U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Another $3,500 came from Hisham Al-Talib, a leader from Barzinji’s IIIT organization.

It’s worth noting that Barzinji’s IIIT donated $3,500 to Esam Omeish’s 2009 campaign delegate campaign, tying together the cadre of Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders who got into Kaine’s orbit.

Conclusion

Kaine has no excuse. If he has an Internet connection, then he and his staff should have known about their backgrounds. They were either extremely careless (something Kaine would have in common with the top of the ticket) or knew and looked the other way in the hopes of earning donations and votes.

Clinton’s choice of Kaine is widely seen as a way of strengthening her campaign’s national security credentials. Yet, Clinton is asking us to trust a candidate on national security who appoints a Hamas supporter to an immigration commission and speaks at a dinner honoring a Muslim Brotherhood terror suspect.

And she is asking us to trust her, who chose such a candidate.

Categories: 2016 elections, Hamas, Hillary Clinton and Islam, Hillary Clinton's VP pick, Islamist moral values, Islamist organizations, Islamists in America, Muslim Brotherhood, Senator Tim Kaine
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Germany: The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters

July 22, 2016

Germany: The Terrifying Power of Muslim Interpreters, Gatestone Institute, Stefan Frank, July 22, 2016

♦ “Everything I told you then is true. … But the interpreter there told me that a faithful woman must not use words like sex and rape. Words like that would dishonor my husband and our family. She also said that I was a blasphemer, because I went to the police. No woman should report her own husband. The husband must be honored.” — “Sali,” in an apparent suicide note to her lawyer, Alexander Stevens.

♦ “I am aware of statements in which interpreters have pressed and supposedly said to Christians on the way to the police or beforehand: If you complain, you can forget your application for asylum. I often noticed that statements were retracted because Christians were threatened.” — Paulus Kurt, Central Committee of Eastern Christians in Germany (ZOCD).

♦ “The interpreters are neither employed by the Federal Agency, nor are they in any way sworn in to the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ultimately, examination of the asylum application is left solely to these interpreters… In our view, a decision-making process such as this, which is practiced on a massive scale, is not in keeping with due process.” — Open letter from employees of Germany’s Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees.

 

Alexander Stevens is a lawyer at a Munich law firm specializing in sexual offenses. In his recent book, Sex in Court, he describes some of his strangest and most shocking cases. One such case raises the question: What do you do when interpreters working for the police and courts lie and manipulate? As no one monitors translators, it is likely that in many instances, the dishonesty of interpreters goes undetected — Stevens’ book chronicles the devastating effects one dishonest interpreter had on a case.

The parents of a Syrian girl, “Sali,” had promised their daughter to a man named Hassan, who, at the time, was still living in Syria. The arrangement was seen as mutually beneficial: Sali’s parents would receive money and Hassan would be allowed to enter Germany. Sali would never willingly have married a man 34 years her senior, but the family’s honor required it. However, Sali did not receive any benefits from this arrangement. Hassan’s interest in Sali was apparently confined to her body. He forced Sali to perform all kinds of sexual practices several times a day, and brutally abused the girl in the process.

Sali was unable to hide the fact that she took no pleasure in these rapes and she became ill, so Hassan reproached her and “openly threatened to demand a large compensation payment from her family, for the cost of the wedding reception and lost pleasures of love.” Sali sought help from a women’s shelter, where an employee took her to a lawyer: Stevens. At the shelter, Sali described her misfortune, but was careful repeatedly to come to her husband’s defense. She was more worried about her family’s honor, should Hassan decided to divorce her, than about herself.

“After two hours of painstaking depictions of sexual abuse, corporal punishment, and mental humiliation,” Stevens writes, “I had no doubt that everything had actually happened as she said.”

The next day, Stevens tried to get an appointment for questioning with the police and an interpreter. But he was surprised when he got to the shelter. Sali was like a different person. Suddenly, she wanted nothing to do with him or the women’s shelter employee.

Sometime later, an employee of the women’s shelter sent him a letter that Sali had left behind for him. It read:

Dear Mr. Stevens,

I am very sorry to have caused you so much inconvenience. Please believe me when I say I did not want to. Everything I told you then is true. I also wanted to make a statement to the police regarding what I told you. But the interpreter there told me that a faithful woman must not use words like sex and rape. Words like that would dishonor my husband and our family. She also said that I was a blasphemer, because I went to the police. No woman should report her own husband. The husband must be honored. I did not know what to do, Mr. Stevens. Because I think she is right. I should never have disgraced my husband and my family. Therefore, I would ask you not to tell anyone. I do not want to create any more trouble for my family and my husband’s family. Please forgive me. You were very good to me.

Sali

By this time, Sali was already dead. According to the employee from the women’s shelter, the police suspected suicide.

Interpreters Decide on Asylum

Non-Muslim refugees, in particular, complain of the pressure exerted on them by Muslim interpreters. As Gatestone Institute has already reported, Christians and other non-Muslims are beaten, threatened, and harassed in German refugee homes. One of the reasons that German authorities do not intervene has to do with the Muslim interpreters, says Paulus Kurt, head of the work groups for the Central Committee of Eastern Christians in Germany (ZOCD):

“Interpreters belonging to the Islamic religion often stick with the defendants. I am aware of statements in which interpreters have pressured and supposedly said to Christians, on the way to the police or beforehand: ‘If you complain, you can forget your application for asylum.’ I often noticed that statements were retracted because Christians were threatened.”

The effects of these abuses of power are devastating: interpreters in Germany have great influence on who is granted asylum. In a November 2015 open letter to Frank-Jürgen Weise, the head of their agency, employees of the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), pointed out the potential problems of this system within their agency:

“A Syrian is someone who identifies himself as a Syrian in writing (checks the proper box on the questionnaire), and the interpreter (usually not sworn in, or from Syria) confirms it. The interpreters are neither employed by the Federal Agency, nor are they in any way sworn in to the legal system of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ultimately, examination of the asylum application is left solely to these interpreters — insofar as it involves the verification of nationality and, therefore, the country of persecution. In our view, a decision-making process such as this, which is practiced on a massive scale, is not in keeping with due process.”

Television Reports

In May 2016, the German public television station Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast a report on Muslim interpreters who lie. The report, entitled “Treason in the Refugee Home: When Translators Mistranslate,” exposed several instances of the same issue:

Moderator: With the growing number of refugees, the demand for interpreters has also rapidly increased. Ultimately, translators play a central role in the asylum procedures, for example. Since there is an overall shortage of qualified and sworn interpreters, the Federal Agency for Migration and Refugees has recently been advertising for translators with this flyer [title: “We are Looking for Interpreters”]. Inside, it says: “You take on great responsibility in your work, and we expect you to be neutral and reliable.” But there is often a gaping hole between expectations and reality.

Reporter: Bullied and threatened by other refugees. A nightmare, what this Iraqi refugee is telling us. He asks one of the translators for help, but he [the translator] takes the side of the attacker.

Hassan: “They wanted to beat us; they insulted us. And the interpreter thought about everything while translating, and alleged that none of it had happened.”

Reporter: Hassan, as we call the young man, belongs to a small religious community of Yezidis. Radical Sunni Muslims despise Yezidis, even in Germany. Instead of conveying the message, the translator cheated him.

Hassan: “The interpreter translated that we merely had a dispute on the street.”

Reporter: That was a conscious mistranslation. Not an isolated incident, says Gian Aldonani. She fled to Germany as a young Yezidi girl. As a student in Cologne, she got involved in working with refugees. In the process, it became apparent to her again and again:

Gian Aldonani: “It is purposefully mistranslated. At first, we thought these were isolated cases out of Cologne and the surrounding area. But in documenting all of the cases, we recognized that translators all over Germany were very purposefully mistranslating. […] The social workers are reliant on the translators. The translators take advantage of this situation. These people are doing the same thing here that they do with minorities in their countries of origin.”

1706Hasan (left), a Yezidi refugee in Germany who was threatened by Muslims, speaks to a reporter from German public television about how a government-employed translator deliberately mistranslated his complaint and took the side of his attackers. (Image source: Bayerischer Rundfunk video screenshot)

More “Isolated Cases”

Similar cases — always labelled “isolated cases” — are found in German and Austrian newspapers again and again.

In Austria, in June 2016, the Salzburg regional court sentenced a jihadist to two years in prison. He had fought for the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. Incidentally, it became known that: “The 29-year-old came to Salzburg as a refugee in October 2015 and helped at the Freilassing border crossing as an interpreter.”

Regarding “interpreter and cultural mediator Besnik S.,” the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper wrote:

“Besnik S. also interpreted for the young refugees — until one of his colleagues became suspicious of him. Besnik S. was consistently translating incorrectly. Instead of facilitating communication for the young men, he allegedly tried to bring them closer to his ideology. “

Particularly grotesque is the March 2016 case of a Chechen interpreter, who worked as a court translator in Graz, Austria:

“The interpreter had already interpreted several people’s statements. As another witness was supposed be questioned at that point, the woman [interpreter] explained that the witness in question was her husband. But she claimed that he could not come that day, and sent his apologies, because he was in Russia at the moment and had already informed the court of that. The man was accused in another proceeding of a similar type. … Observers had already noticed that, during recesses in the proceedings, the interpreter had talked with about 20 Chechens among the courtroom spectators.”

Alexander Stevens, the Munich lawyer, often gets the impression that there is a “fraternal solidarity” between interpreters and criminal defendants, he tells Gatestone. From his own experience and from conversations with judges, prosecutors, and fellow attorneys, he knows that Muslim interpreters in particular often violate their duty of neutrality:

“My personal feeling is that not only the defendants [but also the interpreters] of Islamic society are cunning, sly, and sometimes crafty. In this room, organized crime, gang violence, theft, and fraud are frequently dealt with. They are often very smart, and there is an incredible cohesion within the respective cultural and religious community, particularly among Albanians, Turks, Syrians and Moroccans. The common denominator is possibly Islamist conditioning. They are very close, almost like family, but without being related by blood.”

Negligence on the Part of the Authorities

This problem is well known among judges and defense lawyers, says Stevens: “It starts as soon as the judge asks: ‘What is your name?'” Instead of simply translating those three words, the interpreter often talks “forever.”

“Conversely, the interpreter then only says one sentence where you expect a lengthy testimony. Often, you are not really sure what the interpreter and the defendant are discussing.”

Stevens cites negligence on the part of German authorities as exacerbating this problem. While there are strict admission requirements for court interpreters in languages such as English or Spanish, this is not the case in Germany for many other languages. He points out that the German state of Bavaria’s Court Interpreters Act clearly states: “The recognition of foreign degrees falls under the responsibility of the Bavarian Ministry of Education” — meaning that even applicants with flimsy degrees can be hired if the Ministry feels that there is a shortage of interpreters in a particular language.

Stevens criticizes the naïveté of the Germans:

“The swearing-in process goes like this: The judge reads aloud to him from the Judiciary Act, proclaiming that he [the interpreter] will translate faithfully and diligently. That’s it! With that, he is sworn in, and according to German law, he is absolutely credible.”

Stevens points out that although this problem has existed for a long time, it has become even more harmful since the start of “the refugee problem, which involves a whole potpourri of crime, including sexual assault.”

Human Rights Activists: “No Trust for Muslim Translators”

Karl Hafen, the former longtime Executive Chairman of the German section of the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR), is concerned about the situation faced by non-Muslims in German refugee housing, where interpreters seem complicit. He told Gatestone that

“Most of what is reported to us about translators involves threats that they will not translate if the affected victims blame Muslims for their misfortune, or that interpreters try to point out that what happened is mandated by the Koran.”

Many refugees are already intimidated by the mere presence of a Muslim interpreter.

“Some victims complain that they can no longer speak openly when an interpreter reveals she is Muslim by wearing a headscarf. Others tell us that they are afraid to go to the doctor with a Muslim interpreter, because based on what was done to them, they cannot trust her.”

Hafen does not want to label those interpreters as Islamists — they are normal, conservative Muslims:

“Again, there is a strong return to Islamic rules, a kind of de-integration. It also depends on how the interpreters themselves live, whether alone or in a family that practices Islam. The Muslim interpreters refuse to believe that what happened actually took place as described. And among other things, this practice is encouraged, because part of our media — but especially politicians and bishops — downplay the brutalities and simply refuse to recognize that the people who have become victims, or who have had to witness crimes with their own eyes, no longer trust Muslims.”

We cannot allow translators to continue misrepresenting and manipulating an already vulnerable refugee population. The German authorities need to reform the system for employing translators for courts, police and government agencies, so that all refugees receive the due process they deserve.

Categories: Germany, Islamic integration, Islamic perversions, Islamic refugees, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist interpreters, Islamist moral values
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Critics of “Gays for Trump” Party Miss the Point

July 21, 2016

Critics of “Gays for Trump” Party Miss the Point, Clarion Project, Elliot Friedland, July 21, 2016

Trump-Milo-Geller-640-320The advert for the “WAKE UP” event, featuring Donald J. Trump as a superhero with Milo Yiannopoulus and Pamela Geller as sidekicks. (Photo: Screenshot from Twitter)

Rather than mocking and dismissing this event, those who oppose such rhetoric would do well to start addressing the issue at hand in a serious and committed way, beginning with naming it — Islamist extremism — and ending with destroying it.

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Gay rights activists have not traditionally found a political home on the right. Yet gay activist and alternative-right icon Milo Yiannopoulus wants to change that, arguing that while the Republican party may not love homosexuality, Islam wants gays dead, and therefore gay people should support Trump (who Milo calls “Daddy”).

This was the theme of “WAKE UP,” billed as “the most fab party at the RNC,” which brought Milo together with controversial activist Pamela Geller who has gained notoriety for her “Draw Mohammed”cartoon competition as well as billboards in New York which read: “In the war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The event was panned by media outlets such as Salon in a piece which shrugged off the event as a “virulently anti-Islam party at the RNC” and The Nation, which slammed it as “Islamophobes, White Supremacists, and Gays for Trump—the Alt-Right Arrives at the RNC.”

Teen Vogue said the event “perpetuates Islamophobia.” The Nation’s piece revealed the alarmingly open presence of white nationalists at the event and the seemingly small numbers of gay people who showed up.

Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who spoke at the event, referred to Europe as “Eurabia” and said, “Islam is the problem.”

But critics who were aghast at this flagrantly un-PC stance, completely missed why sections of the LGBT community are turning to Trump.

If they would have looked to France, they would have seen that gay support for the far right has already happened there. In 2015 a national scandal occurred when it emerged that the winner of France’s largest gay magazine’s beauty contest was an outspoken supporter of France’s right wing Front Nationale.

As early as 2012, 26% of the gay community in Paris supported the Front Nationale, as opposed to 16% of straight people.

The rationale is startlingly simple. Milo’s cult status as an online provocateur has been generated by making controversial statements and pushing the accepted boundaries of discussion. He has been able to tap into the large and growing alt-right movement — a disparate collection of mostly young white males who support socially liberal policies but who hold the left in contempt for their perceived abandonment of liberal values when it comes to human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam.

Because of this, Milo and others make the argument that only the right will stand up to defend gay people against Islamist extremism.

The movement also partially consists of white nationalists and racists, who are able to maintain their foothold because they have consistently spoken out against radical Islam (and indeed Islam in general.)

Put simply, people would rather be racist than dead.

“If you’re like us, the massacre in Orlando last month was a giant wake-up call,” the flier for the event read. “As gay Americans, we could no longer stay silent about a barbaric ideology that wants us dead and that actively threatens the freedoms of all Americans.”

So far, so good.

However the ideology in question is not Islam, as Geert Wilders would argue, but is Islamism, the theocratic political project which seeks to impose the religion of Islam over everyone in the world and implement sharia governance, complete with hudud punishments. This ideology does threaten the freedoms of all Americans.

Tarring all Muslims with the same brush is not only morally wrong, but also facilitates the very thinking propagated by the Islamic State and other Islamist groups –- by dividing the world into two camps, Muslims and non-Muslims.

However, the refusal of the elites around the world — with a few notable exceptions such as the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron — to correctly name and challenge the issue has created a vacuum.

People know there is a problem and know that it needs to be tackled.

When the Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) object to billboards calling on Muslims to talk to the FBI if they become suspicious of terrorism, when President Obama and Hillary Clinton point blank refuse to name the ideology at fault, people will start to draw their own conclusions about who is to blame and take action accordingly.

Therefore in the absence of leaders who are not afraid to name the problem as one of Islamist extremism,  people will be drawn to someone with a clear message offering simple solutions, like Trump’s proposed ban of Muslims entering the country, which was praised at the “WAKE UP” event.

“After what happened in Orlando, I can’t imagine not being for Donald Trump right now,” the founder of the LGBT group “Twinks4Trump” which was involved in the event said. “This election will not be about bathrooms or who’s going to bake our wedding cakes.”

Milo took to the stage wearing a T-shirt saying, “We shoot back” with a submachine gun in rainbow colors emblazoned on its front. This powerful image will be a sweet and soothing balm to a section of the LGBT community which is looking for answers.

The way in which the argument was put forward at “WAKE UP” was a simplistic misunderstanding, blaming the entire faith of Islam for the actions of a subset of its practitioners.

Rather than mocking and dismissing this event, those who oppose such rhetoric would do well to start addressing the issue at hand in a serious and committed way, beginning with naming it — Islamist extremism — and ending with destroying it.

Because in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Categories: 2016 elections, CAIR, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Homosexuals, Islam and homosexuals, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Islamists vs Islam, Media and Islam, Obama and Islam
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Bad Ideas Created Benghazi

July 5, 2016

Bad Ideas Created Benghazi, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, July 5, 2016

Witch of Benghazi

The House Select Committee on Benghazi report confirms what we pretty much already knew. The Obama administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completely politicized this country’s foreign policy in order to ensure the reelection of Obama and to serve the future presidential ambitions of Hillary Clinton. Along the way Obama, Clinton et al. made dangerous decisions, such as establishing the consular outpost in Benghazi, and ignoring the consul’s pleas for more security. They also ignored the many warning signs of incipient attacks, bungled the response to the attack on September 11, 2012, and then obfuscated, spun, and outright lied in the aftermath. The House report adds new details that flesh out the story, but enough had already been leaked to confirm Clinton’s despicable sacrifice of American lives on the altar of her obsessive ambition.

Toxic ambition, sheer incompetence, and the self-serving politics of the individuals involved mean they bear the primary responsibility for this disaster. But Benghazi illustrates as well the climate of bad ideas that make such decisions possible. Bad politicians eventually go away, but malignant ideas and received wisdom are deeply rooted in our institutions, transcending individuals. The Benghazi fiasco illustrates two particularly tenacious ones.

The military intervention in Libya, the origin of the Benghazi tragedy, was another act of Western wishful thinking about “democratizing” and “reforming” the Muslim world. Despite the failure of George W. Bush’s efforts to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan, the so-called “Arab Spring” revolutions encouraged the Wilsonian “freedom and democracy” promoters in 2011 to make Libya yet another poster-child for this doomed project. Moreover, intervention seemingly could be done on the cheap. No troops need be deployed, since jets and missiles could topple the psychotic Muammar Gaddafi––an autocrat straight out of central casting, whose genocidal bluster gave the West a pretext for intervention.

For Hillary and Obama, this was the perfect opportunity to show those neocon militarists what “smart power” was all about, and strike a contrast with the “cowboy” Bush’s “unilateralist” bumbling in Iraq. A UN resolution was secured, and a NATO-led coalition of 19 states assembled for enforcing a no-fly zone. The mission soon escalated into bringing about regime change and the death of Gaddafi.

For a while, this was a perfect, low-cost, quick little war that would illustrate the various shibboleths of moralizing internationalism: international diplomatic approval for the use of force, multilateral coalition building, a reliance on air power that minimized casualties among participating militaries, and a smaller role for the US, which would be “leading from behind,” as an Obama advisor said. This last idea reflected Obama’s belief that the US needed to diminish its role in world affairs and avoid the arrogant overreach that stained its history abroad, most recently in Iraq. This notion of America’s global sins is another bad idea reflecting ideology, not historical fact.

For Secretary of State Clinton, the Libya intervention would be the showcase of her tenure at State and proof of her superior foreign policy skills and presidential potential. Of course, we all know that the toppling of Gaddafi has been a disastrous mistake. Gaddafi was a brutal creep, but he kept in check the jihadists from Libya eager to kill Americans in Iraq and foment terror throughout the region. His departure created a vacuum that has been filled with legions of jihadist outfits across North Africa, including ISIS franchises. They are armed in part with weapons plundered from Gaddafi’s arsenals such as surface-to-air missiles, assault rifles, machine guns, mines, grenades, antitank missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades. Yet eager to protect her defining foreign policy achievement, Hillary kept open the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi even as other nations pulled out their personnel because of the increasing danger caused by the new Libyan government’s inability to control and secure its territory.

Four dead Americans were the cost of political ambition and adherence to the bankrupt idea that liberal democracy can be created on the cheap in a culture lacking all of the philosophical and institutional infrastructure necessary for its success: inalienable rights, equality under the law, transparent government, accountability to the people, separation of church and state, fair and honest elections, and the freedom of speech and assembly. The folly of expecting democracy in a culture alien to it became clear in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s downfall, when the Libyan National Transitional Council’s Draft Constitutional Charter proclaimed, “Islam is the religion of the state, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).” The idea of exporting democracy, however, still has a tight hold on many in the West both on the left and the right, which means we have not seen the last of its bloody and costly failures.

Equally bipartisan has been the next bad idea: that al Qaeda, ISIS, et al. are fringe “extremists” who have “hijacked” Islam, and that the vast majority of Muslims are “moderates” grieved by this tarnishing of their noble faith. It was George W. Bush who said in his first address after 9/11 that Islam’s “teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah,” establishing the model for his administration’s policy of “outreach” to Muslims. Obama has taken this delusion to surreal extremes, refusing in the face of mountains of evidence to link the numerous ISIS attacks of the last few years to Islam, and proscribing “jihad” and “radical Islamist” from the government’s communications and training manuals.

It was this imperative to sever Islamic terrorism from its roots in traditional Islamic doctrine that in part accounted for the lies that Hillary, Obama, and their minions like National Security Advisor Susan Rice told in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks. They peddled the narrative that a spontaneous protest against an obscure Internet video insulting Mohammed had morphed into a violent attack. This lie traded in the delusional belief that despite its 14-century-long record of invasion, murder, slaving, colonization, and occupation­­––all in fulfillment of the divine commands “to slay the idolaters wherever you find them” and “to fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah” –– Islamic doctrine could not possibly justify the actions of modern terrorists. So powerful was the need to protect this belief and, of course, her political future that Clinton lied to the faces of the parents of the four dead Americans, promising to “get” the hapless filmmaker, even as she knew on the very night of the attacks that there was no protest against the video near the consular outpost.

Nor are the various pretexts for this evasion of historical fact convincing. The worst is that making explicit the link between jihadism and Islam will endanger innocent Muslims and stoke “Islamophobia.” There is no evidence that this is the case, and hate crimes against Jews still vastly outnumber those against Muslims. Not much better is the notion that pious Muslims, supposedly offended by “blasphemers” like al Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS, will not cooperate with police and the FBI if we state simple facts about their faith and its history.

This idea is psychologically preposterous. It assumes that Muslim pique at infidel statements about their religion trumps their assumed desire to stop the violent “distorters” of their beloved faith. It also assumes that to Muslims, such insults justify keeping quiet about the planned murders of innocents––a damning indictment of the very people whom the “nothing to do with Islam” crowd are so anxious to mollify. Worse, it confirms the unique triumphalism of Islam, whose adherents expect from non-believers deference to their faith, even as Muslims across the globe are slaughtering and torturing people simply because they are non-believers. Such careful monitoring of our discourse about Islam, at the same time Muslim intellectuals routinely attack the West for its alleged historical sins against Islam, is a sign of weakness and fear that encourages our enemies to hit us again.

We’ve been operating by this double standard for decades, and terrorist groups have expanded across the globe, while jihadist violence has murdered Americans in Boston, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and Orlando, to name just the deadliest attacks. It’s safe to say that the tactic of flattering Muslims and confirming their sense of superiority to infidels has failed to keep us safe.

But if we really want to be honest, we won’t just rely on the weasel-word “Islamist,” which still suggests that the beliefs of the jihadists are somehow a doctrinal aberration. Those of both parties who continually talk about “moderate Muslims” and use the word “Islamist” to distinguish them from jihadists should heed Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan: “The term ‘Moderate Islam’ is ugly and offensive; there is no moderate Islam; Islam is Islam.” Using “Islamic” rather than “Islamist” will recognize the continuity of modern jihadism with traditional Islamic doctrines. Whitewashing that fact has done nothing to stop jihadist violence, and it is an enabler of those ordinary Muslims who refuse to acknowledge Islam’s illiberal and violent doctrines.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton deserve the opprobrium history will inflict on them for sacrificing our security and interests to their personal ambition and ideological obsessions. But bad ideas had a hand in the killing of four Americans in Benghazi, and those bad ideas will continue to cripple us until we discard them and start facing reality.

Categories: Benghazi, Department of State, Foreign policy establishment, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Islam, Islamic jihad, Islamist moral values, Moderate Muslims, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's leadership
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Anger, Honor and Freedom: What European Muslims’ Attack On Speech Is Really About

June 30, 2016

Anger, Honor and Freedom: What European Muslims’ Attack On Speech Is Really About, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Abigail R. Esman, June 30, 2016

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Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this: intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like “I hate Muslims” and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by words and restored through violence and terror.

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“Clash of civilizations,” some say. Others call it the “failure of multiculturalism.” Either way, the cultural conflicts between some Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide continue to play out as Western countries struggle to reconcile their own cultures with the demands of a growing Muslim population.

But herein lies the problem: in many ways, the two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable. There is no middle ground. And hence, the conflicts and the tugs-of-war continue.

Over the past two months, the events surrounding controversial Dutch columnist Ebru Umar have encapsulated that “clash” at its core, a salient metaphor for the tensions, particularly in Europe, between the West’s Muslim populations and its own. More, they illuminate the enormity of the problems we still face.

Umar is no stranger to the spotlight, or to the wrath of Dutch Muslims who read her many columns, most of them published in the free newspaper, Metro. For years, the Dutch-born daughter of secular Turkish immigrants has raged against the failure of other Dutch-born children of immigrants, mostly Moroccan, to assimilate into the culture of their birth. She loudly condemns Dutch-Moroccan families for the shockingly high rates of criminality and violence among Dutch-Moroccan boys – as much as 22 times the rate of Dutch native youth – a phenomenon she ascribes to their Islamic upbringing and their parents’ refusal to allow their children to mingle among the Dutch.

But her critiques have earned her no converts. Instead, Dutch-Moroccan youth, whom she calls “Mocros,” have regularly taunted her, both online and in the street.

This past April, however, Umar added a new team of enemies to her portfolio: when, in response to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erodogan’s demand that a German satirist be prosecuted for insulting him on TV, Umar tweeted “f***erdogan,” Dutch Turks turned on her in fury. “How dare you insult our president!” cried these Dutch-born subjects of Holland’s King Willem-Alexander. And while Umar took a brief holiday on the Turkish coast, one such Dutch-Turk turned her in to the police. She was arrested at her vacation home in Kusadasi, and though released the following day, was forbidden to leave the country. The charge: Insulting the Turkish president. It took 17 days before discussions between Holland’s prime minister and Turkish authorities enabled her to return to the Netherlands.

But she could not return home. In her absence, Umar’s home had been burgled and vandalized, the word “whore” scrawled on a stairway wall. Death threats followed her both in Turkey and on her return. When it became clear she could not ever return to the apartment she had lived in for nearly 20 years, she announced on Twitter (Ebru Umar posts constantly on Twitter) that she would be moving out.

Meantime, in Metro and elsewhere, she continued her criticism of Moroccans and, as she herself notes, of Islam overall.

And so it was that on the day Ebru Umar moved out of her apartment in Amsterdam, a group of Dutch-Moroccans in their twenties came to see her off, taunting her with chants: Ebru has to mo-o-ve, nyah nyah.” Though furious, she ignored them – until one of them began to film her loading her belongings into her car. For Umar, being taunted by the very people whose threats had forced her from her home in the first place was bad enough: but this violation of what little privacy remained for her was more than she could take. She grabbed her iPhone and began filming them right back. “Go ahead,” she challenged. “Say it for the camera.”

Scuffles ensued, and soon one of the Moroccans had her iPhone in his hand. The others laughed. Then they ran away. Umar filed a police report and, still smarting, took to Twitter once again: “C**t Moroccans, I hate you,” she posted. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and I hate your Muslim brothers and sisters, too. F**k you all.” (It is important to note that, however offensive, the expression “c**t Moroccans” is a common epithet in the Netherlands.)

But, hey – she was angry. Her phone had been snatched from her hand in a brutal, aggressive gesture that left her feeling violated and, vulnerable. She had just been forced to leave her home. She had endured prison, a criminal inquiry, and death threats, all at the hands of the same group on whom she now spewed her fury.

Her words may have been harsh or inappropriate, but they were words. She had not struck her tormenters as they filmed her. She did not call for their demise, or strap a bomb around her waist and visit the local mosques.

She took to Twitter and said: I hate you.

“But hate,” she tells me later in an e-mail, “is just an emotion.” And in a column penned more than two years ago, she observed, “Hate me till you’re purple, but keep your claws off me.”

Here is where Ebru Umar’s story becomes the story of the Western world. In response to her words (“I hate you. F*** you”), several Muslims – Moroccans and others – filed charges against her for hate speech. (Though ironically, “I hate you” does not legally qualify as “hate speech.”) Such words are an attack upon their honor, a humiliation: and if there is one thing experts on Arab and Muslim culture will agree on, it is the significance of humiliation and honor in governing their lives. For this, Dutch Moroccan youth threaten Umar on the streets, and have done so, she says, for years: after all, she insults them.

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But in truth, it isn’t just the youth. The broader Muslim community stands by, silent: they do not condemn the youth who taunt her, who rip her telephone from her hands, or post things on the Internet like “We hate you, too – can you please kill yourself?” or “Oh, how I hope she ends up like Theo van Gogh.”

Theo van Gogh, also a controversial columnist, was shot and stabbed to death in 2014 by a radical Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.The commenter wishing her the same fate used the name “IzzedinAlQassam,” the founder of modern Palestinian jihad, and an icon of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

For people like this, it doesn’t matter that Umar – or van Gogh – inflicted no violence, any more than it mattered that the editors of Charlie Hebdo were not violent. It was the insult, the humiliation – to them, to Islam, to Mohammed – that mattered: and an insult, a humiliation, deserves a violent response.

Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this: intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like “I hate Muslims” and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by words and restored through violence and terror.

When Umar says “I hate you,” what she hates, really, isn’t the Moroccans who attacked her or their “Muslim brothers and sisters.” What she hates is this – this effort, this battle over honor and speech and freedom, and this clash between violence and expression, guns and conversation.

“I don’t want Muslims to leave,” she tells me, again by e-mail. “I want them to embrace the Enlightenment, Western society, the Netherlands.” And in turn, she calls on the Dutch to “set rules: no violence in any sense. And stop using culture or religion as an excuse for behavior.”

Ebru Umar’s words. More of us should listen.

Categories: Cultural correctness, Erdogan, Europe, Freedom of speech, Hate speech, Holland, Islam - submission, Islamic culture, Islamic honor, Islamic integration, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamist moral values, Multiculturalism, Netherlands, Turkey
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When Hate is Promoted by Religious Leaders, Why Blame the Followers?

June 27, 2016

When Hate is Promoted by Religious Leaders, Why Blame the Followers? Gatestone Institute, Raheel Raza, June 27, 2016

♦ Imam Abdullah Hakim Quick then goes on to connect being gay with Zionism — his anti-Semitic sentiments at their best. All this while standing at a pulpit. If this is not a crime of hate, then what is? Does this imam have nothing positive to speak about in his sermon, besides spreading the Islamist agenda of hate and bigotry?

♦ For years we have warned of the messages of hate emanating from the pulpit. We have spoken of the two different messages being given — one to the public and one in private.

♦ Why then do we act surprised when the Omar Mateens of the world take up arms and ruthlessly gun down an entire group of gays? This is what they are being taught by the likes of Imam Quick. They are acting out the hate that has been instilled in their minds and hearts.

♦ In the aftermath of the bloodbath created by Omar Mateen at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, a plethora of opinions, ideas and causes have been spoken about. At the same time, a very disturbing picture about a specific aspect of this hateful ideology of Islamists has emerged. In my opinion, there is no doubt that Mateen was an Islamist influenced by the jihadist agenda of fanatic hate for the gay communities.

For those of us reform-minded Muslims who have been battling the rise in radical Islamist agendas for the past decade, this development is no surprise. In our declaration, we say right at the top:

“We reject bigotry, oppression and violence against all people based on any prejudice, including ethnicity, gender, language, belief, religion, sexual orientation and gender expression.”

Why did we include this line in our message? Because we know of the hate that is directed towards the LGBTQ communities in Muslim lands. In Iran, thousands of gays have been executed; in Afghanistan, the Taliban bury them alive; in Saudi Arabia they are liable for death, and in other Muslim countries they are persecuted and abused if they admit to the preference.

One can always say that this is happening out there someplace else. We in North American pride ourselves on freedom of expression and tolerance towards those following a different lifestyle. We would never expect hate against others to be promoted in a liberal democracy.

However, not everyone in Canada thinks as we do. In our own hometown of pluralistic Toronto, hate against the LQBTQ community is alive and well.

Abdullah Hakim Quick is a Toronto imam who writes on his website:

“I have always stood against racism and ethnocentrism. I have been a lifelong advocate of women’s rights and for decades have encouraged the empowerment of young people. I pioneered the first social service agency for Muslims in Toronto, Canada (I.S.S.R.A.) whose doors were open to all — rich and poor, Muslim and non-Muslim, gay or straight. As a counselor I learned first-hand of the terrible violence inflicted upon gay people by bullies and I publicly spoke out against it….”

Yet in a YouTube video, the same Imam Quick says:

“… they said ‘What is the position of Islam on homosexuality?’ — they asked me this. This is a newspaper, right. So I said ‘Put my name in the paper. The position is death.’ And we cannot change Islam.”

Furthermore, Quick goes on openly to ridicule the Toronto gay community known as Salaam Canada. Many of them are my friends and I respect them. They have suffered at the hands of Islamists and felt they were safe in a city like Toronto. Not so anymore, and my heart goes out to them.

1668Abdullah Hakim Quick, a Toronto imam, makes a speech where he gives his answer to the position of Islam on homosexuality: “The position is death.” (Image source: TIFRIB video screenshot)

Mr. Quick then goes on to connect being gay with Zionism — his anti-Semitic sentiments at their best. All this while standing at a pulpit. If this is not a crime of hate, then what is? Does this imam have nothing positive to speak about in his sermon?

The point is that not only is he lying on his website, but he is spreading the Islamist agenda of hate and bigotry. He is also spouting an opinion that is not in the Quran. While the Quran (like other Abrahamic scriptures) does not condone homosexuality, there is no injunction to kill gays. However, because he is an imam and an imam is supposed to be knowledgeable, no one challenges him. Therefore, his opinion on gays (derived from sharia and concocted hadeeth perhaps) is that death is the solution for gays.

He’s not the only one. Not long ago, Florida religious scholar Shaykh Farrokh said gently but with conviction in a speech “death is the sentence. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Death is the sentence.” He goes on to explain that killing gays is an act of compassion.

Why then do we act surprised when the Omar Mateens of the world take up arms and ruthlessly gun down an entire group of gays? This is what they are being taught by the likes of Imam Abdullah Hakim Quick. They are acting out the hate that has been instilled in their minds and hearts.

For years, we have warned of the messages of hate emanating from the pulpit. We have spoken of the two different messages being given — one to the public and one in private. Well, we live in a world where the two are meshed and the culprits need to be exposed. It is time Muslims knew what their religious leaders are saying and promoting from the pulpit.

Is this what we want our youth to hear? If not, what are we doing about it?

Categories: Islam and homosexuality, Islam and human rights, Islamic reformation, Islamist moral values, Islamists vs Islam, Orlando massacre, Political Islam, Zionists
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Why Speaking the Truth About Islamic Terrorism Matters

June 17, 2016

Why Speaking the Truth About Islamic Terrorism Matters, PJ Media, Roger Kimball, June 15, 2016

Obama on IslamBarack Obama Lectures the Nation About Islam

Barack Obama has consistently failed to deal with the “Islamic” part of the reality of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, his administration has prevented the military, law enforcement, and intelligence services from engaging forthrightly with the threat of Islamic terrorism. They have insisted, for example, that briefing materials be purged of any reference to the real source of the terrorist animus: the passion for jihad fired by allegiance to the fundamental law of Islam, sharia.

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I had planned to weigh in on the slaughter in Orlando right after it happened, but a sense of nausea intervened.

There was plenty of nausea to go around. You might think that the chief catalyst would be the scene of slaughter itself: the nearly fifty revelers at a gay nightclub dead, and scores more wounded by a single jihadist.

In a normal world, the spectacle of that carnage would have been the focus of revulsion. I confess, however, that the repetition of such acts of theocratic barbarism these past few decades has left me somewhat anesthetized.

The long, long list of “Islamist terrorist attacks” that Wikipedia maintains comes with this mournful advisory:

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.

Indeed, and alas. Take a look at that list: one thing you will note — apart from the fact that the terrorist attacks are correctly denominated as “Islamist” terrorist attacks — is that most years include more attacks than the years before.

There were some 35 in 2014. I stopped counting at 100 for 2015.

So my initial reaction to the news from Orlando was a mixture of anger, outrage — and weariness. “Here,” I said to myself, “we go again.”

First came the casualty figures. Twenty dead. No, make that 30. Wait, it’s 40, no, 50 dead and scores wounded, many gravely. And the murderer? The world held its breath and the media prayed: Please, please, please make him a white Christian NRA member, or at least a crazed white teenager.

No such luck. Omar Mateen was the 29-year-old scion of Afghan immigrants. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Right off the bat his father assured the world that he was “saddened” by the massacre (wasn’t that nice?) and that Omar was “a good son.” Religion, he said, had “nothing to do with” his son’s rampage. He was just “angry” at gay people. So he suited up and headed down to the Pulse nightclub where he methodically shot some 100 people. Oh, and Mateen père has supported the Taliban, and claims to be running for the presidency of Afghanistan. (Cue the theme music from The Twilight Zone?)

It did not take long before the media realized that none of its preferred narratives was operative.

There was a flicker of hope that Mateen might at least be a gay-hating nearly white male (shades of George Zimmerman, the “white Hispanic“). But, no, although Mateen himself might, according to his ex-wife and others, have been gay, he had pledged himself to ISIS. He had also, in fact, attracted the interest of the FBI. It had interviewed him twice but decided that there was nothing to see here, move along please.

In most respects, this act of Islamic slaughter was a matter of déjà-vu all over again. There was the wrinkle that the Pulse, unlike the nightclub in Bali or the concert hall in Paris, was patronized mostly by gays. But homosexuals are only one of many groups that Islamists wish to exterminate. (Hence the Arab slogan “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people,” which can be seen and heard through the Middle East. First we’ll get rid of the Jews, then the Christians.)

And this brings me to the chief source of my nausea in response to the massacre in Orlando: the rancid, untruthful, politically correct nonsense emitted by the MSM and their chief pet, Barack Obama.

Obama’s speech in response to the massacre was especially emetic. Who or what was to blame for the slaughter? The internet, for one thing:

[T]he killer took in extremist information and propaganda over the Internet. … He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized.

Remember when Obama dismissed ISIS (or, as he likes to say, “ISIL”) as a “jay-vee” threat? That was right before those jihadists really got to work beheading people, burning them alive, and fomenting murder and mayhem in the West. Part of Obama’s speech was devoted to listing all the Islamic murderers his administration had killed or deprived of funds:

ISIL continues to lose ground in Iraq. ISIL continues to lose ground in Syria as well. ISIL’s ranks are shrinking as well. Their morale is sinking.

Feeling better?

Obama also reserved a few swats for guns:

We have to make it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on weapons of war that let them kill dozens of innocents.

But what if a few patrons of the Pulse had been packing heat and had had the good sense to hone their skills as marksmen? The same thing that would have happened at Virginia Tech, or Newtown, or the Paris concert, or the offices of Charlie Hebdo. Some enterprising citizen might have taken the madman, or madmen, out, thus materially diminishing or even eliminating the body count.

But Obama’s main concern focused on a linguistic matter, the phrase “radical Islam”:

[T]he main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this administration and me for not using the phrase “radical Islam.” That’s the key, they tell us. We can’t beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.

This is not true. No one has said that the word “Islam” or its cognates is the key to anything. What they — and I — have repeatedly said is that you can never deal with a problem unless you are willing to recognize it for what it really is. And part of that recognition involves calling things by their real names:

Since before I was president, I’ve been clear about how extremist groups have perverted Islam to justify terrorism. As president, I have called on our Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world to work with us to reject this twisted interpretation of one of the world’s great religions.

Two points: first, extremist groups have not so much perverted Islam as they have enforced some of its central teachings.

As Andrew McCarthy put it: “Killing Homosexuals Is Not ISIS Law, It Is Muslim Law.”

Andy cites chapter and verse to show how the interdiction against homosexuality is rooted in Sharia, i.e., in Islamic law. I’ll just quote one passage, from the “moderate” Ayatollah al-Sistani. When asked “What is [Islam’s] judgment on sodomy and lesbianism?”, he replied:

Forbidden. Those involved in the act should be punished. In fact, sodomites should be killed in the worst manner possible.

Got that?

Which brings me to my second point: Obama’s “Muslim friends and allies at home and around the world.” That would include that ally of allies, Saudi Arabia, one of at least ten Muslim countries where homosexuality is punishable by death (and which, incidentally, is reportedly responsible for at least 20% of the funds for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign).

Obama took time out to castigate “politicians who tweet,” i.e., Donald Trump. You may think, as I do, that some of Trump’s proposals about how to deal with the reality of Islamic terrorism (among other things) are extravagant.

But at least he is able to call Islamic terrorism “Islamic terrorism.”

Obama angrily insisted:

Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.

But this is no merely linguistic nicety. Barack Obama has consistently failed to deal with the “Islamic” part of the reality of Islamic terrorism. Indeed, his administration has prevented the military, law enforcement, and intelligence services from engaging forthrightly with the threat of Islamic terrorism. They have insisted, for example, that briefing materials be purged of any reference to the real source of the terrorist animus: the passion for jihad fired by allegiance to the fundamental law of Islam, sharia.

In his almost eight years in office, Obama has left this country, and indeed the world, poorer, more chaotic, more vulnerable. Perhaps it was all part of his promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” It is worth remembering what an important role his mendacious refusal to call things by their real names has played in this sorry, nauseating tale.

“What’s in a name?” Juliet asked Romeo. She found to her sorrow that the answer was “quite a lot.” Obama, if he has the wit to acknowledge it, will discover that as well.

Categories: Homeland Security, Islam and homosexuals, Islam in America, Islamic nations, Islamic terror groups, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Orlando massacre, Political Islam
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Muslim DHS Advisor Called Israel A ‘Suspect’ In September 11 Attacks

June 16, 2016

Muslim DHS Advisor Called Israel A ‘Suspect’ In September 11 Attacks, Daily Caller, Peter Hasson, June 16, 2016

A current adviser to the Department of Homeland Security is a Muslim leader who has accused America of doing Israel’s “dirty work,” named Israel as a “suspect” in the September 11 terror attacks and has been criticized as an apologist for terrorists.

Salam Al-Marayati is the president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. He currently serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Committee’s (HSAC) Foreign Fighter Task Force, as well as the HSAC Subcommittee on Faith Based Security and Communications. (Note: this is not the Muslim DHS advisor The Daily Caller wrote about on Monday.)

In 2001, Al-Marayati suggested that Israel — not Islamic extremists — was ultimately behind the September 11 terror attacks.

“If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies,” he said.

In 2013, Judicial Watch noted that Al-Marayati told attendees at a 2005 conference for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) that “Counter-terrorism and counter-violence should be defined by us. We should define how an effective counter-terrorism policy should be pursued in this country. So, number one, we reject any effort, notion, suggestion that Muslims should start spying on one another.”

In 2012, in a debate on RT, Al-Marayati accused the United States of doing Israel’s “dirty work” for them.

“The other point here, which is very important historically, the United States has done a lot of dirty work that has served the interests of Israel,” he said. “It destroyed Iraq. It supported the destruction and crippling of Egypt. It has crippled the Gulf.”

In 2015, the Obama administration was sharply criticized for inviting Al-Marayati to a three-day summit on fighting extremism — a fact the White House initially tried to conceal from reporters.

Investor’s Business Daily took an editorial stand against the invite, arguing that: “Al-Marayati has a long record of defending terrorists and justifying violence against non-Muslims — an easy one for the White House to vet for extremism.”

According to White House visitor records, Al-Marayati has visited the White House 11 times since 2009.

The IBD editors went on to note that “In a 1999 PBS interview, moreover, he called Hezbollah terrorist attacks ‘legitimate resistance,’ doubling down on his months-earlier claim that Hezbollah’s 1983 suicide bombing of more than 240 Marines in Lebanon was not terrorism but a ‘military operation — exactly the kind of attack that Americans might have lauded had it been directed against Washington’s enemies.’”

Kyle Shideler, the director of the Center for Security Policy’s Threat Information Office, told The Daily Caller that “Al-Marayati’s association with the HSAC underlines what an unfortunate farce the entire [Combatting Violent Extremism] program is. Al-Marayati’s only notable counter-terrorism contribution is having suggested Israel be included as a suspect on 9/11.”

“His very organization, MPAC has historically co-sponsored events in support of the very kinds of extremists he’s been appointed to help oppose, which is no surprise given that the organizations roots lay with men who literally studied at the foot of Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan Al-Banna,” Shideler said.

“As long as the Obama Administration is more concerned with keeping groups like Al-Marayati’s happy with them instead of investigating actually terrorism, we will never have a sane counter-terror policy.”

The Daily Caller previously reported on Monday that a current sitting member on the HSAC Subcommittee on Countering Violent Extremism, Laila Alawa, is a 25-year-old immigrant of Syrian heritage who said that the 9/11 attacks “changed the world for good” and has consistently disparaged America, free speech, and white people on social media.

The Department of Homeland Security has not replied to multiple requests for comment regarding Alawa and Al-Marayati’s advising roles.

 

Categories: 9/11, Countering violent extremism, Islam and Israel, Islam and Jews, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Law enforcement, Obama and Islam, Obama and Islamic terrorism
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Humor |Phrases about Islamist Terrorism that won’t Offend Anyone Important

June 15, 2016

Phrases about Islamist Terrorism that won’t Offend Anyone Important, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 15, 2016

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

Obama, His Department of Homeland Security, CAIR and His many other collaborators colleagues have tried really hard not to offend Islamists when talking about Islamist terror. Ditto the lamebrain mainstream media. They need more variety, so here are just a few politically correct suggestions for appropriate phrases guaranteed not to offend anyone important.

Church violence — for use when Islamists burn or otherwise attack a church.

Synagogue violence — as above, but when they burn or otherwise attack a synagogue.

Christian violence – broader than church violence, but otherwise about the same.

Jewish violence — Broader than synagogue violence, but otherwise about the same.

Homosexual violence — for use when Islamists kill homosexuals.

Gun violence — for use when Muslims use guns to attack homosexuals, Christians, Jews or other non-Muslims.

Knife violence — same as for gun violence, except it applies only when knives are used.

Violent rhetoric — applies only to whatever Donald Trump says.

Hate speech — applies to anything linking the Quran, the Hadith, Sharia Law, other Islamic texts, CAIR or other Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups to violence.

Great speech! –applies to anything about Islamism said by Obama,  Hillary or a CAIR spokesperson.

Peaceful Muslims — applies to all Muslims who haven’t yet behaved violently toward non-Muslims personally.

Racist incitement — Any derogatory remarks about Islamists, even though Islam is not a race.

Racism — see Racist incitement.

Men of God — Imams.

Not Islamic — applies to any violent, criminal or otherwise antisocial act committed by a Muslim.

That’s just a sample. Any sane person could suggest more.

Now, for your further entertainment, here’s a beautiful vocal rendition by the Muslim Brotherhood Trio:

Categories: CAIR, Christians, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hate speech, Hillary Clinton, Humor, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Jews, Media, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama and Islamic terrorism, Obama's America, Political correctness, U.S. politics
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Orlando Shooting: Pickled in Hatred

June 13, 2016

Orlando Shooting: Pickled in Hatred, Gatestone Institute, Shoshana Bryen, June 13, 2016

♦ The terrorists are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view.

♦ The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

♦ America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember, we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.”

♦ But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

It is a lot to process. Omar Mateen, the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub Sunday. The first surprise is that it was not a surprise, especially to the FBI. Mateen was the subject of investigations in 2013 and 2014. “He was a known quantity,” a source said. “He has been on the radar before.” But Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper told reporters, “Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going.”

Omar Mateen’s father probably wasn’t terribly surprised. He told NBC News “that his son became angry after seeing two men kissing a few months ago in Miami.” He speculated that could have triggered his decision to kill. “This has nothing to do with religion,” his father added.

President Obama was not exactly surprised, given, he said, the number of guns in America. He called again for gun control and said there was, “no definitive judgment on the precise motivations” of the terrorist.

Oh really?

President Obama’s response might have been a surprise to local police, who, according to CNN, received a 911 call from Mateen pledging his allegiance to ISIS just before the attack. Whether he was actually with ISIS or not, the Islamic State wasted no time blessing him as one of their own.

1647Omar Mateen (left), the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on May 12, 2016. Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State just before the attack.

So where do Americans go with this?

First, pray for the victims and their families, and thank the first responders.

Second, do not bother trying to “explain” terrorists, or figure out their “motivation.” They are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view. There is no other way to explain Shalhevet Pass, a six-month old baby shot in her stroller by a sniper, or Malki Roth murdered while eating pizza, or the Fogel children murdered in their beds. There is also no other way to explain shootings at Max Brenner in Tel Aviv or stabbings in Jerusalem; Hamas rockets fired indiscriminately into Israeli towns; gay men thrown off buildings by ISIS in Iraq or dragged behind motorcycles in Gaza; barrel bombs and chlorine gas dropped on civilians by Assad’s Syrian forces; the kidnapping and forcible conversion to Islam of girls by Boko Haram; the sale of Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves by ISIS; and the skinning alive of prisoners by the Taliban. They are all of a piece.

Third, recognize that the same hatreds exist in our country. We imported them — already pickled — and we pickled some of them here. What Mateen’s father said was that seeing what he found unacceptable — men kissing — was enough to make his son kill. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, what do we need to do about people willing to kill us under those circumstances?

The Heritage Foundation maintains an extremely useful timeline of terrorist plots in the US. It includes the “shoe bomber” (2002), the “underwear bomber” (2010), the Times Square bomber (2010), the Boston Marathon bombers (2013), and the San Bernardino shooters (2015). But there’s more. Here is sampling from a Jewish Policy Center analysis:

[T]here were also plots against U.S. landmarks and institutions including the NY Subway system (2005 & 09), Sears Tower (2006), the Brooklyn Bridge (2003), the Long Island Railroad (2009), DC Metro (2010), the Federal Reserve in Manhattan (2012), the Capitol (2011, 12 & 15), World Bank Headquarters (2005), JFK airport (2009), the NY Stock Exchange (2004), and the GOP convention (2004).There were plots against American service personnel, including military hit lists (2010 & 15); Ft. Hood (2009); Ft. Riley (2015); Ft. Dix (2007) and Ft. Myers (2011); recruiting stations in Arkansas (2009), Maryland (2011) and Washington (2011); the Pentagon (2011); Quantico Marine Base (2009); National Guard facilities (2005, 08 & 09); U.S. Marshals (2013); and the NYPD (2015). There were plots against the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia (2011) and Pakistan (2004), and the Israeli Embassy (2011).

There were assassination plots against Presidents Bush (2003) and Obama (2011).

There were regional attacks planned for a Chicago Bar (2012), NY and Chicago-area synagogues (2009 & 10), an Oregon Christmas tree ceremony (2010), the Wichita Airport (2014), a Canada-NY train (2013), a Dallas skyscraper (2009), a Wyoming refinery (2006), the Florida Keys (2015), shopping centers in Ohio (2003) and Illinois (2007), and the University of North Carolina (2006). The Lackawanna (PA) Six (2002), the Lodi (CA) jihad training camp (2005), and the VA Jihad Network (2003) operated along with smaller-scale plots in support of al Qaeda (2002, 09 & 10).

The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember that we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.” America’s glory is men and women who run into danger while everyone else is running out — without regard for the particulars of who they are saving. It was true on 9-11 and it was true this weekend in Orlando. But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

Categories: Clash of civilizations, Democracy, Islam and Christianity, Islam and homosexuals, Islam and Jews, Islam and sex, Islam and women, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic radicalization, Islamic refugees, Islamist moral values, Islamists in America, Orlando massacre, Political Islam
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