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Trump’s Jewish nominee for Civil Rights Office smeared by Arab groups

November 10, 2017

Trump’s Jewish nominee for Civil Rights Office smeared by Arab groups, Israel National News, Dr. Richard L. Cravatts, November 9, 2017

(Please see also, Trump’s Latest Education Nominee Steps into the Maelstrom. – DM)

No sooner had President Trump nominated Kenneth Marcus, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, to be Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, then extremist anti-Israel groups began to mount an aggressive campaign to derail the appointment.

This is a remarkable affront to a civil rights lawyer who has spent his career fighting for the rights of women, the disabled, and members of many minority groups: African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, as well as Sikhs, Arabs, and Muslim Americans. Marcus’s prior tenure at the federal Office for Civil Rights was widely lauded for effective leadership and support for the rights of all students. For this reason, most civil rights groups have thus far refrained from subjecting Marcus to the vituperation that other recent Trump nominees have faced. 

Some extremist anti-Israel groups have broken ranks, however, attacking the administration’s Jewish civil rights nominee with reckless and malicious falsehoods.

One of these groups, Palestine Legal, whose mission is to bolster the anti-Israel movement by challenging efforts to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism, immediately issued a letter smearing Mr. Marcus as an “Anti-Palestinian Crusader” and opposing his nomination in terms of the so-called Livingstone Formulation. Under that formulation, as identified by British sociologist David Hirsch, anti-Semites accuse Jews of fabricating anti-Semitism claims in order to silence decent people who are concerned about Israel’s supposed human rights violations.

In this way, Palestine Legal’s director, Dima Khalidi, levels the spurious charge that “Marcus is the architect of a strategy to abuse civil rights law to suppress campus criticism of Israel.” In other words, she contends that Marcus’ campaign to ameliorate campus anti-Semitism is not based on a virtuous desire to end bigotry but is a disingenuous attempt at “shielding Israel from scrutiny,” consistent with the “Livingstone Formulation.”

Part of that notion is “the counteraccusation that the raisers of the issue of anti-Semitism do so with dishonest intent, in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israel. The allegation is that the accuser chooses to ‘play the anti-Semitism card’ rather than to relate seriously to, or to refute, the criticisms of Israel.”

Of course, those who refuse to acknowledge that their speech or behavior may, in fact, be anti-Semitic normally resist such designations, but the allegation of Palestine Legal against Mr. Marcus is particularly odious because it seeks to impugn his integrity as someone fighting anti-Semitism, suggesting instead that his true motive, carefully hidden from view and masked as benign activism, is actually to serve the interests of Israel by trying to delegitimize and libel its campus critics.

Moreover, Palestine Legal claims, in order to shield Israel from scrutiny, to insulate its policies and state behavior from critique, Mr. Marcus, they say, pretends to be interested in anti-Semitism but is actually creating a smokescreen to shield Israel “at the expense of civil and constitutional rights.”

In addition to the Livingstone Formulation, these groups are also going after Marcus with the classic charge that Jews are attempting to use gain control of government power for nefarious purposes. “Marcus has no business enforcing civil rights laws when he has explicitly used such laws to chill the speech activities and violate the civil rights of Arab, Muslim, Jewish, and other students who advocate for Palestinian rights,” Khalidi charged.

It is not coincidental, of course, that a group dedicated to undermining efforts to fight anti-Semitism would have been aware of the efforts of Mr. Marcus and his colleagues as they attempted to identify the causes and corrosive impact of campus anti-Semitic speech and behavior.

For at least the last decade the primary source of anti-Zionist, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activism on campuses has been anti-Israel individuals and groups, including the Muslim Student Association and the radical Students for Justice in Palestine, among others. So, even as Ms. Khalidi would have one believe that Mr. Marcus launched a campaign to silence pro-Palestinian activists merely as a tactical ploy to insulate Israel from critique and condemnation, the anti-Israel activism which she so ardently defends has regularly spawned instances in which agitation against Israel has included speech and behavior which has been considered, and in fact often was, anti-Semitic.

Of great concern to those who have observed the invidious byproduct of this radicalism is the frequent appearance of anti-Israel sentiment that often rises to the level of anti-Semitism, when virulent criticism of Israel bleeds into a darker, more sinister level of hatred—enough to make Jewish students, whether or not they support or care about Israel at all, uncomfortable, unsafe, or hated on their own campuses.

That is precisely the type of “hostile environment,” created by generating hostility toward Jewish students over their perceived or actual support of Israel, that may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the legal tools Mr. Marcus has used and may well continue to use in his new role to help insure that universities take steps to ameliorate situations in which such prejudice-laced campus climates are allowed to develop.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), another anti-Israel group that also, not insignificantly, supports the BDS movement, published an open letter denouncing the choice of Mr. Marcus for the OCR appointment, as well, repeating the spurious charge that the use of Title VI statutes, and such guidelines as the U.S. State Department Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, would have the perverse side effect of suppressing the free speech of “pro-Palestinian” activists.

And despite Palestine Legal’s fear that the conflation of “criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism    . . .  has really serious consequences for those who advocate for Palestinian human rights and are being condemned and censored and punished as a result of the enormous pressure being placed on universities by the likes of Marcus and dozens of other Israel advocacy groups,” the truth is that not human rights advocates behave in civil ways, and the fact that “pro-Palestinian” activists support a minority group does not justify their misbehavior and extremism, even for what they clearly believe to be a noble cause.

But pro-Palestinian advocacy on campus—the very activism Palestine Legal is so intent on preserving—has been shown to correlate directly to an uptick in anti-Semitic speech and behavior. For example, in two studies it conducted of anti-Semitism on U.S. campuses, the AMCHA Initiative, an organization that investigates and documents anti-Semitism at U.S. universities, found that “Schools with instances of student-produced anti-Zionist expression, including BDS promotion, are 7 times more likely to have incidents that targeted Jewish students for harm than schools with no evidence of students’ anti-Zionist expression and the more such anti-Zionist expression, the higher the likelihood of incidents involving anti-Jewish hostility.” This “anti-Zionist expression” and “BDS promotion are,” of course, the central aspects of Palestinian activism.

That is the issue here, and why it is necessary and important that, in the effort to promote the Palestinian cause, another group—Jewish students on American campuses—do not become victims themselves in a struggle for another group’s self-determination.

Richard L. Cravatts, PhD, President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews, is also a member of the board of directors of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law and the AMCHA Initiative.

Categories: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Antisemitism and the left, Antisemitism in academia, Antisemitism in America, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Department of Education, Jewish Voice for Peace, Kenneth Marcus, Muslim Students Association, Palestine Legal, Students for Justice in Palestine
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Libyan Security Committee Calls U.S. Muslim Leader a Terrorist

June 12, 2017

Libyan Security Committee Calls U.S. Muslim Leader a Terrorist, Investigative Project on Terrorism, June 12, 2017

Omeish and U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine. Source: Facebook

A prominent Muslim American political activist is included on a list of 75 terrorists issued by a Libyan parliamentary committee.

Esam Omeish is a former president of the Muslim American Society and remains a prominent figure at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va. He is among 75 people the Libyan House of Representatives’ Defense and National Security Committee labeled Friday as enemies.

Libya’s government remains fragmented, with the House of Representatives based in a city called Tobruk. It is considered closely aligned with Egypt.

Omeish is the 29th name listed on the terror list and is described as an “international member of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Another American, Aly Abuzaakouk, appears just after Omeish’s, also identified as an international Muslim Brotherhood member.

Omeish blasted the move in a statement on his Facebook page, saying “my name had unjustly and falsely been placed on a so called list of supporters of terrorism.” He protested Saturday to Virginia U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic vice presidential nominee, and plans to try meeting more members of Congress today.

Omeish wants the committee’s leader “legally prosecuted for fraud, slander and defamation to obtain a judgement inhibiting their ability to travel to America…” He also wants penalties for committee members who approved the list, accusing them of “randomly charging American citizens who have no offense or crime, or involvement with any of the forms of terrorism, and who are major in the American landscape in the fight against terrorism and working with all security and legal agencies to preserve the country’s security and the safety of the society and communities with transparency and integrity which everyone near and far knows.”

Omeish formerly served as president of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which insiders have acknowledged is the Muslim Brotherhood’s overt arm in the United States. In a December Facebook comment, Omeish wrote  that Muslims “have not known of the people of Islam … those more just in understanding, wider in approach and closer in application than the Muslim Brotherhood. We have not known of humane brotherliness and its people, (and we are affiliated with all men whom Allah has created a propensity for love, mercy, an upright disposition, good morals and honorable character) better in ethics, of gentler parts, deeper in adherence to duty, nobler in morals among all their sons, and every one of their actions than the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Last year, he advocated that the U.S. support for a group known variably as the “Revolutionary Shura Council,” or the “Mujahideen Shura of Derna,” despite ties between its officials and al-Qaida. Egypt’s air force bombed the group last month in retaliation for terror attacks against Coptic Christians in April.

Abuzaakouk also has deep Muslim Brotherhood connections. He has served as executive director of the American Muslim Council (AMC), and publications director for the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). He became foreign minister of the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Government of National Salvation based in Tripoli after dictator Muammar Gaddafi fell. That group opposes the internationally recognized government in Tobruk.

The AMC was founded in part by Mahmoud Abu Saud, who helped Hassan al-Banna create the Brotherhood in Egypt, the Washington Post reported in 2004. FBI officials have long suspected that the IIIT housed leading Brotherhood officials in the United States.

Despite his overt support for “the jihad way” and for the Brotherhood, Omeish has been close to Kaine for at least a decade. When Kaine was Virginia’s governor in 2007, Omeish was forced to resign from a state immigration panel after Investigative Project on Terrorism video showed him praising Palestinians during a 2000 rally for knowing that “the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

At a separate event two months earlier, Omeish similarly praised Palestinians “for their bravery, for their giving up their lives for the sake of Allah and for the sake of Al-Aqsa [Jerusalem]. They have spearheaded the effort to bring victory upon the believers in [Palestine].”

It was during a 2010 fundraiser for Omeish’s state assembly campaign that U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison – now the Democratic National Committee’s vice chair – complained that Israel unduly influence U.S. policy in the Middle East. “A region of 350 million all turns on a country of 7 million,” Ellison said. “Does that make sense?”

Ellison added: “We can’t allow another country to treat us like we’re their ATM. Right? And so we ought to stand up as Americans. Now some of us have affinity for other places around the globe. Some of us are new Americans and adopted America as our home. But whether you’re born here or whether you accepted America as your own voluntarily, this is our home. Right? All of our home equally, and we can’t allow it to be disrespected because some, by a country that we’re paying money to.”

In this case, Kaine serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee for North Africa.

It is unclear what impact the Libyan House committee’s terror list will have, especially among U.S. policy makers. There’s no public information indicating Omeish was directly involved in any terror support. But he has openly advocated for “the jihad way” and lauds the Brotherhood, a movement which articulated a goal of creating a global Islamic state and serves as an inspiration for Sunni jihadist groups including al-Qaida, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad  and Ja’amat Islamiya.

“The common link here is the extremist Muslim Brotherhood – all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers,” former National Security and Counter-terrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke testified in 2004 before a U.S. Senate committee.

There are twin bills pending in Congress that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group.  The United Arab Emirates has already done so.

Categories: Esam Omeish, Libya, Muslim Students Association, Terrorist designation
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The Muslim Brotherhood Connection: ISIS, “Lady al Qaeda,” and the Muslim Students Association

June 1, 2017

The Muslim Brotherhood Connection: ISIS, “Lady al Qaeda,” and the Muslim Students Association, Gatestone Institute, Thomas Quiggin, June 1, 2017

“It should be the long-term goal of every MSA [Muslim Students Association] to Islamicize the politics of their respective university … the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more ‘in-your-face’ association.” — Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government.

Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John “Yahya” Maguire and Canada’s first suicide bomber, “Smiling Jihadi” Salma Ashrafi.

What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood — as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

In August 2014, ISIS tried to secure the release from a U.S. federal prison of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui — a Pakistani neuroscientist educated in the United States — formerly known as the “most wanted woman alive,” but now referred to as “Lady al Qaeda”, by exchanging her for American war correspondent James Foley, who was abducted in 2012 in Syria. When the proposed swap failed, Foley was beheaded in a gruesome propaganda video produced and released by his captors, while Siddiqui remained in jail serving an 86-year sentence.

Part of an FBI “seeking information” handout on Aafia Siddiqui — formerly known as the “most wanted woman alive.” (Image source: FBI/Getty Images)

ISIS also offered to exchange Siddiqui for a 26-year-old American woman kidnapped in Syria while working with humanitarian aid groups. Two years earlier, the Taliban had tried to make a similar deal, offering to release U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for Siddiqui. These efforts speak volumes about Siddiqui’s profile and importance in Islamist circles.

Her affiliation with Islamist ideology began when she was a student, first at M.I.T. and then at Brandeis University, where she obtained her doctorate in 2001. Her second marriage happened to be to Ammar al-Baluchi (Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali), nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

During the 1995-6 academic year, Siddiqui wrote three sections of the Muslim Students Association “Starter’s Guide” — “Starting and Continuing a Regular Dawah [Islamic proselytizing] Table”, “10 Characteristics of an MSA Table” and “Planning A Lecture” — providing ideas on how successfully to infiltrate North American campuses.

The MSA of the United States and Canada was established in January 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus. Since its inception, the MSA has emerged as the leading and most influential Islamist student organization in North America — with nearly 600 MSA chapters in the United States and Canada today.

The first edition of the MSA Starter’s Guide: A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA was released in 1996. A subsection on “Islamization of Campus Politics and the Politicization of The MSA,” written by Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government, states:

“It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the politics of their respective university … the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more ‘in-your-face’ association.”

In early 2015, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney suspended Hamdani from the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on National Security. No reason was given for the suspension, but Hamdani claimed it had been politically motivated — related to his support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. The French-language Canadian network TVA suggested, however, that the suspension was actually due to activities in which Hamdani had engaged as a university student, and radical organizations with which he was associated. During the 1998-9 academic year, Hamdani was president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Western Ontario; in 1995, he was treasurer of the McMaster University branch of the MSA.

Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John “Yahya” Maguire and Canada’s first suicide bomber, “Smiling Jihadi” Salma Ashrafi.

What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood — as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

Siddiqui’s involvement in the MSA, her subsequent literal and figurative marriage to al Qaeda and her attempted release by ISIS, perfectly illustrate this ideological connection and path.

Thomas Quiggin, a court qualified expert on terrorism and practical intelligence, is based in Canada.

Categories: "Lady al Qaeda, Al Qaeda, Islamic hatred of others, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamisation, Islamist objectives, Islamists in America, Islamists in Canada, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Students Association
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The Islamic Society of North America’s Destructive Agenda

March 2, 2017

The Islamic Society of North America’s Destructive Agenda, Front Page Magazine, John Perazzo, March 2, 2017

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Below is the fourth installment in a series of articles highlighting the network of major hate groups in America that are supported and funded by the Left. Click the following for the previous profiles on the Souther Poverty Law Center, Students for Justice in Palestine and the New Black Panther Party. 

The truly incredible fact that ISNA’s president occupied a seat on Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security speaks volumes of the utter contempt in which Obama holds the United States and Israel alike.

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A number of major Democrats have cultivated highly significant ties to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). For example: Congressman Keith Ellison (Minnesota), who narrowly lost in his bid to become DNC chairman a few days ago, has spoken at ISNA’s massive national conferences on a number of occasions. Congressman Andre Carson (Indiana) has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from ISNA-affiliated donors, as have Keith Ellison, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. And ISNA president Mohamed Magid was a key figure in Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, where he was authorized to train and advise personnel affiliated with the FBI and other federal agencies.

Yet most Americans are entirely unaware of just how subversive and anti-American the Islamic Society of North America is.

ISNA was established in July 1981 by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood who also had been leaders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA). Muslim Brothers would dominate ISNA’s leadership throughout the Society’s early years, when it was highly dependent upon Saudi funding. ISNA’s founding mission was “to advance the cause of Islam and serve Muslims in North America so as to enable them to adopt Islam as a complete way of life.” Today ISNA is the largest Muslim organization on the continent. Its annual conferences routinely draw 30,000 to 40,000 attendees.

When ISNA was incorporated on July 14, 1981, its headquarters were located at the same address as those of the MSA. Eventually, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF)—the U.S.-based financing wing of Hamas—would share the address as well.

One of ISNA’s key founders in 1981 was Sami Al-Arian, who subsequently became the North American leader of the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad.  He was indicted by the Justice Department in 2003, was held under house arrest for several years, and finally was deported in 2015.

Another ISNA co-founder was Muzammil Siddiqi, who went on to serve two terms (1997-2001) as ISNA president and continues to sit on the organization’s governing board. Siddiqi has praised Islamic suicide bombers as “those who die on the part of justice” and consequently reside “with the Lord” in a place of “the highest honor.” Moreover, he has defined jihad as “the path” and “the way [for Muslims] to receive the honor.”

Yet another prominent founding member of ISNA was Mahboob Khan, who in 1983 helped establish the California-based Muslim Community Association, which at least twice hosted and raised money for Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later go on to become al Qaeda‘s second-in-command.

In November 1987, ISNA established its own Political Awareness Committee headed by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a Muslim Brotherhood operative who in 2004 would be convicted on terrorism-related charges and sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Declassified FBI memos indicate that ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987, and a 1988 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood document bluntly identified ISNA as part of the “apparatus of the Brotherhood.” Further, ISNA was explicitly named in a May 1991 memorandum as an ally that shared the Brotherhood’s goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation by means of a “grand Jihad.”

ISNA leadership rejects all practices and social mores that fail to comport with the Wahhabist vision of Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, Muzzamil Siddiqi calls homosexuality “a moral disorder,” “a moral disease,” “a sin,” and a “corruption” that merits the death penalty.

ISNA plays a major role in providing Wahhabi theological indoctrination materials to a large percentage of the mosques in North America. As such, it is able to influence the nature of the sermons given in those mosques, the selection of reading materials that are available in mosque libraries and bookstores, and the policies governing the exclusion of dissenters from any given congregation. Kaukab Siddique, a Lincoln University professor who has called for the destruction of Israel, avers that “ISNA controls most mosques in America and thus also controls who will speak at every Friday prayer, and which literature will be distributed there.”

ISNA’s central tenet is Jew hatred. On May 24, 1998, ISNA was one of 11 organizations that sponsored a Brooklyn College event where the Egyptian cleric Wagdy Ghoniem spoke about the “infidelity,” “stealth,” and “deceit” of the Jews, and referred to Jews as “descendants of the apes.”  Three years later, when the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) as a terrorist organization, ISNA, which had raised money for the group, complained that HLF was being unfairly “targeted” by “pro-Israel organizations and individuals.”  In December 2003, U.S. Senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance listed ISNA as one of 25 American Muslim organizations that “finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.”

During its 2006 national convention, guest speaker Kamran Memon rationalized al Qaeda’s terrorist activities as understandable reactions to provocative American policies overseas: “Some Muslims in the Muslim world decided that they were just not going to take it anymore. They were angry at our ongoing support from their enemies, so they began to attack American targets to pressure our government to change its foreign policy.”

At ISNA’s  convention a year later in Illinois, Parvez Ahmed of the Council on American-Islamic Relations defended the jihadist activities and agendas of Hamas and Hezbollah as “legitimate.”  And at ISNA’s 2008 convention, a guest speaker lauded the “amazing work” that Hamas was doing to promote education and health care in the West Bank.

Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, assesses ISNA as follows: “ISNA … officials refuse to condemn both [Hamas and Hezbollah], will not label either as terrorist organizations, but instead refer to Hamas favorably as the ‘democratically-elected Palestinian government.’ ISNA studiously ignores the Hamas Charter—a virulently anti-Semitic tract which states that ‘Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it’—and the fact that violent jihad is a core principal of Hamas and Hezbollah.”

The truly incredible fact that ISNA’s president occupied a seat on Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security speaks volumes of the utter contempt in which Obama holds the United States and Israel alike.

Categories: Islamic Society of North America, Islamist objectives, Islamist organizations, Islamists and Israel, Islamists in America, ISNA and Jews, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Students Association
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Muslims Demand Right to Preach in Public Schools: Canada

November 28, 2016

Muslims Demand Right to Preach in Public Schools: Canada, Clarion Project, John Goddard, November 28, 2016

schoolprayercanadaFriday prayers held during class hours at the Valley Park Middle School. Boys pray in front, girls pray behind them separated by a barrier and menstruating girls are obliged to sit at the very back to observe the service but not participate.

Talk of prayers and sermons might come as a surprise to those unaware of how widespread Muslim religious activity has become in some Canadian school jurisdictions, and how far the fundamentalist MSA has penetrated the public education system.

Although the school trustees have allowed the prayers — which are already problematic due to their segregation rules (and certainly embarrassingly stigmatizing to girls who are menstruating) — the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked MSA organizations, which are known promote Islamist ideology, is even more than troubling.

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Student Islamists are mounting a coordinated campaign to expand Muslim religious services in the high schools of Canada’s sixth largest city.

So far, authorities are proving sympathetic, suspending a new policy meant to regulate student sermons.

“The school board should not be policing religion,” campaign leader Shahmir Durrani told one of two November board meetings in Mississauga, Ontario, that heard from imams, parents, high school students and university leaders of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), an organization founded for universities students by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1963.

“Many students are feeling stigmatized because of this.”

Talk of prayers and sermons might come as a surprise to those unaware of how widespread Muslim religious activity has become in some Canadian school jurisdictions, and how far the fundamentalist MSA has penetrated the public education system.

The changes started a decade ago, when the Ontario provincial government encouraged accommodation of an individual’s religious practice at workplaces and schools.

At first, Muslim students were denied Friday congregational prayers and were told they could only pray only as individuals.

Five years ago, however, the Toronto Sun reported that 800 students at Toronto’s Valley Park Middle School were converting the school’s cafeteria into a temporary mosque every Friday during class hours, with boys praying in front, girls praying behind them separated by a barrier and menstruating girls obliged to sit at the very back to observe the service but not participate.

Toronto school trustees upheld the practice, and since then, Friday congregational prayers have been spreading though the public school system ever since.

One of Canada’s highest Muslim concentrations is in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada’s sixth city located at Toronto’s western border. Of the city’s 19 high schools, 17 have a Muslim Students Association (MSA).

The list of 17 includes Meadowvale Secondary, which temporarily banned its MSA 10 years ago after two alumni were caught co-leading a terrorist cell known as the Toronto 18, with plans to blow up buildings in downtown Toronto. A third cell member had led the school’s Friday prayers.

The MSAs promote Friday prayers in schools, but how many Mississauga elementary, middle, and high schools are holding services is not publicly known. “We don’t track school-by-school,” Peel District School Board spokesperson Brian Woodland said.

At some point — Woodland would not give details — staff supervisors reported problems with student sermons.

On Sept. 20, the school board ruled that students could not deliver their own sermons, but must choose from a bank of approved sermons written by a committee of six local imams. Themes were restricted to the board’s stated values of caring, cooperation, honesty, inclusiveness, respect and responsibility.

The students pushed back. In a well organized campaign, three levels of activists publicly petitioned school trustees to scrap mandatory use of approved sermons. They also demanded that students be allowed to pray together every day, not just on Fridays.

“Eliminate the prohibition of allowing students to pray together outside of Jummah [Friday] prayers if it is convenient [to the students],” said campaign leader Durrani, a University of Toronto at Mississauga student and activist for the Canadian Muslim Youth Federation.

“Policing this one group [Muslims] based on prejudice and control… could have serious psychological impacts,” said Maleeha Baig, a student at the same university and coordinator for the High School Muslim Student Associations, a subsidiary of the youth federation.

“This policy… sets out to prohibit the discussion of Islamic beliefs in sermons,” said Hamza Aziz, MSA president at John Fraser Secondary School and part of the third organizational rung. Aziz was one of 16 MSA executive members from five Mississauga high schools who addressed the school board at a recent meeting.

canada-school-board-sit-down-insideBilal Sheikh (extreme front) with other members of the Muslim community who refused to stand up for the Canadian national anthem at a recent school board meeting

Bilal Sheikh, a self-described “active Bilal Sheikh (extreme front) with other members of the Muslim community who refused to stand up for the Canadian national anthem at a recent school board meetingmember of the Muslim community” — and who with several other men refused to stand for the national anthem — accused the board of “systemizing Islamophobia.” (See video below.)

In response, school trustees immediately suspended mandatory use of the approved sermons. As an interim measure, they ruled that students can submit their own sermons to a principal for approval on the Monday before the Friday prayer service. A revised permanent policy is to be announced in the coming weeks, board chair Janet McDougald said.

Although the school trustees have allowed the prayers — which are already problematic due to their segregation rules (and certainly embarrassingly stigmatizing to girls who are menstruating) — the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked MSA organizations, which are known promote Islamist ideology, is even more than troubling.

Categories: Canada - public schools, Islam and females, Islamisation, Islamists in Canada, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Students Association
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Islamophobia Forum Features Panelists Linked to Terror and Bigotry

May 20, 2016

Islamophobia Forum Features Panelists Linked to Terror and Bigotry, Front Page Magazine, Joe Kaufman, May 20, 2016

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This month, the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) will be sponsoring a panel discussion about Islamophobia. Islamophobia is a modern-day term used mainly by Islamists to describe an unwarranted fear or hatred of Islam and/or Muslims and a term also used by the like to, more appropriately, shut down any conversation about the radical element found within the Muslim community. Not surprisingly, the majority of the event’s panel is made up of those linked to terrorism and bigotry, themselves.

The title of the forum, which is scheduled to take place at FAU in Boca Raton, on May 23rd, is ‘ISLAMOPHOBIA, Voices from the Muslim Community.’ The flyer for the event displays the photos of five panelists, at least three of which have known ties to terrorism. They are Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, the imam of the Darul Uloom mosque, located in Pembroke Pines, Florida; Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, the legal counsel for the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); and Bassem Abdo Alhalabi (al-Halabi), an Associate Professor at FAU.

Shafayat Mohamed is the imam at Darul Uloom. He founded it in October 1994. Since then, it has become a haven for al-Qaeda associates. “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla was a student at Darul Uloom. Now-deceased al-Qaeda Global Operations Chief Adnan el-Shukrijumah was a prayer leader there. And Darul Uloom Arabic teacher Imran Mandhai, Hakki Aksoy and Shueyb Mossa Jokhan hatched an operation at the mosque to blow up different structures, including area power stations, Jewish businesses, and a National Guard armory.

Shafayat Mohamed, himself, has been thrown off a number of boards in Broward County due to his outspokenness against homosexuals. In February 2005, an article written by him was published on the Darul Uloom website, entitled ‘Tsunami: Wrath of God.’ In it, he claims that gay sex caused the 2004 Indonesian tsunami. Shafayat Mohamed’s article doesn’t just target homosexuals. It also attacks Jews and Christians. In the piece, he claims that most Jews and Christians, whom he refers to as “People of the Book,” are “perverted transgressors.”

Another of the Islamophobia forum participants is Wilfredo Ruiz. Ruiz is the attorney for CAIR-Florida.

CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the United States for terrorist-related crimes. In November 2014, CAIR, itself, was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.

CAIR-Florida reflects the extremism of its parent organization. In August 2010, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly, who has denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist group, wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God…” In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas”and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

Ruiz is also the legal advisor for Zakkout’s group, the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA). AMANA regularly promotes white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. In fact, the latest posting on AMANA’s Facebook page is an anti-Jewish David Duke video. In July 2010, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) condemned AMANA for posting onto its website homepage another anti-Semitic Duke video. The ADL described the video as being “venomous.” The video was posted right above an expose about Ruiz.

A third participant at the Islamophobia forum is Bassem Abdo Alhalabi.

Bassem Alhalabi has been an Associate Professor at FAU’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering, since August 2002. Prior to arriving at FAU, Alhalabi was located in Tampa at the University of South Florida (USF), working as an assistant to USF Professor Sami al-Arian, while al-Arian was a leader in Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Alhalabi co-authored publications with al-Arian and, when applying to FAU, he used al-Arian as a reference. In May 2006, al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison, after pleading guilty to providing services to PIJ.

Alhalabi has been in trouble with the law, himself. In March 2010, Alhalabi was arrested for physically assaulting two individuals during a Muslim Capitol Day function in Tallahassee, Florida. The assaults took place an hour apart from one another. And in June 2003, the US Department of Commerce charged Alhalabi with illegally shipping a $13,000 military-grade thermal imaging device to Syria, a state sponsor of terrorism.

Alhalabi is a Director and co-founder of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton (ICBR). During his leadership, for three years, the ICBR website had an essay prominently posted on it, stating, “Jews are people of treachery and betrayal… As the Muslims and Jews are enemies residing in opposing religious and doctrinal camps, it is not possible for them to be brought together unless one is made to submit to the other by force… [Muhammad] said, ‘You will fight the Jews and will prevail over them, so that a rock will say, O Muslim! There is Jew behind me, kill him!’”

The contact for the FAU event is Abdur Rahman al-Ghani (aka Samuel Pittman), Events Coordinator for the Islamic Foundation of South Florida (IFSF). Al-Ghani’s Facebook is littered with anti-American, anti-Jewish and Islamic supremacist language and images. In December 2012, he wrote, “Zionist/Israelis are not holy people. They are demonic and the most evil on earth.” In March 2012, he posted a graphic stating, “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD.” And in February 2012, he posted a bloodied CIA logo with the caption, “Wiping out the CIA.”

While the FAU event wishes to portray Muslims as having suffered from the prejudice of others (‘Islamophobia’), it seems that those involved in the event are immersed in bigotry, themselves, where homosexuality is professed to cause natural disasters, where white supremacist David Duke is placed on a pedestal, where Christians are cursed, and where Jews are labeled “demonic” and okay to murder.

‘Islamophobia,’ in the eyes of those behind the FAU forum, in reality, is not a way for people to learn about the suffering within the Muslim community – not at all. Instead, Muslim victimhood is being used as a vehicle to silence those who look to expose their and their terror supporting compatriots’ sinister words and deeds.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

Categories: CAIR, Hamas, Islam and homosexuality, Islam and Jews, Islam and terrorism, Islamic charities, Islamic indoctrination, Islamisation, Islamists in America, Islamophobia, Muslim Brotherhood, Muslim Students Union
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The Buckley Program Stands Up for Free Speech

September 17, 2014

The Buckley Program Stands Up for Free Speech, Front Page Magazine, , September 17, 2014

(When I was a Yale undergraduate (1959-63), I was proud of its then liberal (in the old fashioned sense of the word) affirmation that voices offensive to some should not on that account be banned. Things have changed since then, so I was encouraged by the decision to allow Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak. Based on reports, there were three hundred in the audience, she received three standing ovations, and about one hundred students who wanted to attend could not because there was insufficient room in the auditorium. Three cheers for my Alma mater! There may still be hope for her.– DM)

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The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution. It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15. Hirsi Ali is the vocal Somalian critic of Islamic doctrine whose life has been endangered for condemning the theologically sanctioned oppression of women in Islamic culture. Unlike Brandeis University, which recently rescinded an honorary degree to be given to Hirsi Ali after complaints from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Buckley Program rejected both the MSA’s initial demand, and a follow up one that Hirsi Ali share the stage with one of her critics.

The Buckley Program is a rare instance of an academic organization staying true to the ideals of free speech, academic freedom, and the “free play of the mind on all subjects,” as Matthew Arnold defined liberal education. Most of our best universities have sacrificed these ideals on the altar of political correctness and identity politics. Anything that displeases or discomforts campus special interest groups––mainly those predicated on being the alleged victims of American oppression–– must be proscribed as “slurs” or “hateful,” even if what’s said is factually true. No matter that these groups are ideologically driven and use their power to silence critics and limit speech to their own self-serving and duplicitous views, the modus operandi of every illiberal totalitarian regime in history. The spineless university caves in to their demands, incoherently camouflaging their craven betrayal of the First Amendment and academic freedom as “tolerance” and “respect for diversity.”

In the case of Islam, however, this betrayal is particularly dangerous. For we are confronting across the world a jihadist movement that grounds its violence in traditional Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and history. Ignoring those motives and their sanction by Islamic doctrine compromises our strategy and tactics in defeating the jihadists, for we cripple ourselves in the war of ideas. Worse yet, Islamic triumphalism and chauvinism–– embodied in the Koranic verse that calls Muslims “the best of nations raised up for the benefit of men” because they “enjoin the right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah”–– is confirmed and strengthened by the way our elite institutions like universities and the federal government quickly capitulate to special interest groups who demand that we endorse only their sanitized and often false picture of Islam. Such surrender confirms the jihadist estimation of the West as the “weak horse,” as bin Laden said, a civilization with “foundations of straw” whose wealth and military power are undermined by a collective failure of nerve and loss of morale.

This process of exploiting the moral degeneration of the West has been going on now for 25 years. It begins, as does the rise of modern jihadism, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic revolution. The key event took place in February 1989, when Khomeini issued a fatwa, based on Koran 9.61, against Indian novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel The Satanic Verses, which was deemed “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran,” as Khomeini said. Across the world enraged Muslims rioted and bombed bookstores, leaving over 20 people dead. More significant in the long run was the despicable reaction of many in the West to this outrage against freedom of speech and the rule of law, perpetrated by the most important and revered political and religious leader of a major Islamic nation.

Abandoning their principles, bookstores refused to stock the novel, and publishers delayed or canceled editions. Muslims in Western countries publicly burned copies of Rushdie’s novel and encouraged his murder with impunity. Eminent British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper suggested Rushdie deserved such treatment. Thirteen British Muslim barristers filed a formal complaint against the author. In their initial reactions, Western government officials were hesitant and timorous. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan eagerly assured Muslims that “the U.S. government in no way supports or associates itself with any activity that is in any sense offensive or insulting to Islam.”

Khomeini’s fatwa and the subsequent violent reaction created what Daniel Pipes calls the “Rushdie rules,” a speech code that privileges Islam over revered Western traditions of free speech that still are operative in the case of all other religions. Muslims now will determine what counts as an “insult” or a “slur,” and their displeasure, threats, and violence will police those definitions and punish offenders. Even reporting simple facts of history or Islamic doctrine can be deemed an offense and bring down retribution on violators. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, earned the wrath of Muslims in part for her contribution to Theo van Gogh’s film Submission, which projected Koranic verses regarding women on the bodies of abused women. Van Gogh, of course, was brutally murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. And this is the most important dimension of the “Rushdie rules”: violence will follow any violation of whatever some Muslims deem to be “insulting” to Islam, even facts. In effect, Western law has been trumped by the shari’a ban on blaspheming Islam, a crime punishable by death.

The result is the sorry spectacle of groveling and apology we see almost daily from our government, the entertainment industry, and worse yet, universities. Trivial slights and offenses that civilized nations leave to the market place of ideas to sort out are elevated into “slurs” and “hate speech” if some Muslim organization deems them so. A reflexive self-censorship has arisen in American society, one based on fear of violent retribution or bad publicity harmful to profits and careers.

Thus the government officially proscribes words like “jihad” or “Muslim terrorist” from its documents and training materials in order to avoid offending Muslims. Similarly the Muslim terrorist, a fixture in recent history since the PLO started highjacking airliners in the 60s, has nearly disappeared from television and movies, replaced by Russians, white supremacists, and brainwashed Americans. And when a Muslim terrorist does appear, his motivations and violence are rationalized as the understandable response to the grievous offenses against his faith and people committed by the U.S. and Israel. Islam is airbrushed from the plot, as in the recent series Tyrant, a dramatization of a fictional Arab Muslim state that somehow manages to ignore Islam as a political force. More seriously, universities disinvite speakers at the faintest hint of protest from Muslim organizations, even as they accept Gulf-state petrodollars to create “Middle East Studies” programs that frequently function as apologists and enablers of terrorist violence.

“Free men have free tongues,” as the Athenian tragedian Sophocles said. One of the pillars of political freedom is free speech. When the ability to speak freely in the public square is extended beyond an elite to a large variety of people with clashing views and ideals, speech necessarily becomes rough and uncivil. Feelings get hurt, passions are aroused, and language becomes coarse and abusive. That’s the price we pay for letting a lot of people speak their minds, and for creating a process in which truth and good ideas can emerge from all this rambunctious, divisive conversation. But when we carve out a special niche for one group, provide it with its own rules, and protect it even from statements of uncomfortable facts, then we compromise that foundational right to have our say without any retribution other than a counterargument. So three cheers for the Buckley Program. It has stood up against intimidation and defended one of our most important and precious freedoms.

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