Tag Archives: CAIR

America and the Arab Spring

A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial. 

This week, the final vote tally from Egypt’s parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.

The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.

As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West’s go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt’s internal affairs.

This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt’s Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.

As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak’s overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed "virginity tests" on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.

The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don’t need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have – a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.

The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists’ domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt’s political transformation on the country’s foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead – treaty or no treaty.

EGYPT’S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.

Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.

Radda’s capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO’s help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Take for instance last weekend’s riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters’ anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.

In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi’ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi’ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi’ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.

As supporters of Bahrain’s Shi’ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain’s Shi’ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq’s Shi’ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.

Extolling Iraq’s swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, "In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic’s way of practice and thinking."

While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran’s increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran’s Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September’s mob assault on Israel’s embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.

But the truth is that while on balance Israel’s regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.

Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel’s allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.

Since Israel’s stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.

TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America’s losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.

Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.

One year later, the elements of the US’s alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US’s spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.

Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the anti-regime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi’s courthouse.

US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.

In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.

Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.

Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America’s regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.

Obama’s behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US’s rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

American Laws for American Courts

Shortly before Newt Gingrich’s decisive victory in South Carolina last week, he was asked a critical question by a Palmetto State voter:  Would he support a Muslim candidate for president?  The former Speaker of the House answered in a way that was both characteristically insightful and profoundly helpful with respect to one of the most serious challenges our country faces at the moment.

Mr. Gingrich responded by saying it depends on a critical factor:  Is the candidate “a modern person who happens to worship Allah”?  Or “a person who belonged to any kind of belief in shariah, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us”?  Speaker Gingrich observed that the former would not be a problem, while the latter would be a “mortal threat.”  The Georgia Republican went on to assert the need for federal legislation that would prevent shariah from being applied in U.S. courts.

Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are squealing like, well, stuck haram (or impure) pigs.  After all, they have been working overtime to try to obscure the true nature of shariah and to prevent the enactment of legislation that would interfere with the considerable progress being made below the radar in states across the country: the insinuation of shariah into the American judiciary.

Resorting to their standard technique of ad hominem attacks, CAIR and its friends have derided Mr. Gingrich’s stance as “racist,” “bigoted” and “Islamophobic.”  Such comments evidently were not persuasive to South Carolina voters – and they should be equally dismissed by everybody else.

The simple fact of the matter is that shariah defines the fault line between people who are Muslims but can love our country, respect and enjoy its freedoms and support our form of government and Constitution on the one hand, and those who are obliged by doctrine to oppose all those things.  Worse, adherents to shariah must – in accordance with that doctrine – seek, as Speaker Gingrich says, “to impose it on the rest of us.”

For the latter Muslims, the preferred way of achieving such submission is, as Mohammed taught, through violence.  Where that would be impractical and/or counterproductive for the moment, however, their doctrine encourages the use of stealthy techniques to advance the same, supremacist goal.

The Muslim Brotherhood in America calls this “civilization jihad.”  It seeks through, for example, the use of shariah in U.S. courts to insinuate their program here at the expense of our constitutional rights and state public policy.

A sense of how far along we are in this process was provided by a study conducted last year by the Center for Security Policy.  Entitled Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases, the report is a microcosm of U.S. jurisprudence.  Its findings were alarming:  Out of a sample of 50 cases, in 27 instances in 23 states, the courts involved allowed the use of shariah to adjudicate the dispute.

In almost all of the cases, that outcome was at the expense of the constitutional rights of American women or children.  Under shariah, they simply do not enjoy the same stature and are not entitled to the same freedoms as they are under U.S. law.

In November 2010, seventy percent of the voters of Oklahoma approved an amendment to the state constitution that would have barred shariah from being used in Oklahoma’s courts.  No sooner had the balloting ended than the local franchise of CAIR – an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial – asked for an injunction on the grounds that such a prohibition would violate Muslims’ constitutional rights.  A federal judge agreed, and was recently upheld by an appellate court.

Fortunately, those who concur with Newt Gingrich on the nature of the threat posed by shariah and who want to prevent its further penetration into this country have another option.  Three states – Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona – have already enacted a statute known as American Laws for American Courts (ALAC).  It prohibits the use of any foreign law in the state’s courts that would interfere with U.S. constitutional rights or state public policy.

While shariah would certainly be covered by ALAC, it is not singled out for special treatment.  No challenge has been mounted thus far in any of the states where it is the law today.  And some 20 other states are actively considering ALAC’s adoption in the current legislative session.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its friends desperately hope to stave off the further enactment of American Laws for American Courts.  They recognize that it can effectively thwart a key part of their civilization jihad in this country.  They also have seen that, wherever ALAC is considered, more and more of our countrymen are becoming aware of the problem Newt Gingrich has helped define: the threat from shariah and the need to keep its adherents from imposing that toxic, anti-constitutional doctrine on the rest of us, whether by stealth in our courts (among other places) or through terrifying violence.

For all these reasons, we should ensure that neither shariah nor any other form of foreign or transnational law is allowed to trump our constitutional rights.  To the Muslim Brotherhood’s fury, ALAC is a way of doing it in a constitutionally sound and highly teachable way.

American Laws for American Courts

On Monday, September 12, 2011, the 10th Circuit Court held a hearing on the constitutionality challenge to the Oklahoma state constitutional amendment, passed overwhelmingly in November of 2010, to prevent courts in Oklahoma from using international law or shariah law in their decisions.  Dubbed the "Save Our State" amendment and referred to officially as State Question 755 (SQ 755), the initiative stated:

The Courts provided for in subsection A of this section, when exercising their judicial authority, shall uphold and adhere to the law as provided in the United States Constitution, the Oklahoma Constitution, the United States Code, federal regulations promulgated pursuant thereto, established common law, the Oklahoma statutes and rules promulgated pursuant thereto, and if necessary the law of another state of the United States provided the law of the other state does not include Sharia law, in making judicial decisions. The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia Law. The provisions of this subsection shall apply to all cases before the respective courts including, but not limited to, cases of first impression.

This well-meaning amendment seemed reasonable at first glance and was hailed in conservative circles as a step in the right direction to preserve American sovereignty and prevent the incorporation of shariah law into American courts and institutions.  The bill’s supporters wanted, rightly, to prevent the European mistake of allowing parallel shariah court systems, which have denied legal rights to Muslim citizens and prevented full integration into Western society.  And 70% of the Oklahoma electorate supported the bill’s principles of preventing "foreign laws in general, and Islamic Sharia law in particular, from overriding state or U.S. laws." 

But first glances can be deceiving.  In fact, the reality is very different.

Unfortunately, SQ 755 has had the opposite of its intended effect.  It has proven to be a boon to its opponents, and a distraction from the more carefully drafted bills designed to prevent both the entry of unconstitutional foreign laws such as shariah in American jurisprudence and the use of transnationalism by activist judges.

SQ 755 contains several flaws, some legal and some practical.  The legal flaws have already been exposed in the federal courts, which have effectively quarantined the amendment from being implemented.  Here is a summary of the flaws in SQ 755, Oklahoma’s Save Our State amendment:

  • SQ 755 is not facially neutral, because it specifies shariah law. 
  • SQ 755 contains what appears to be a blanket ban on the use of international law or the laws of foreign nations.  While this may seem like a good idea at first glance, from a practical standpoint it may interfere unnecessarily in the right to contract and could serve as an impediment to international commerce.  In essence, if someone in Oklahoma, or a business or corporation in Oklahoma, wants to sign a contract with provisions of foreign or international law, they can do so.  This is not an uncommon practice in business in these times, and throwing such agreements out of Oklahoma courts simply based on the fact that they contain elements of foreign law could in fact place Oklahoma corporations at a disadvantage in having to have all disputes adjudicated away from home.
  • SQ 755 is too vague.  It does not give the courts specific enough instructions with regard to such complex legal issues as comity and choice of forum.  This could create loopholes for activist judges.
  • Practically speaking, SQ 755 is defective if its aim is to prevent the enforcement of shariah laws in America.  The bill bans the use of shariah in decisions without defining what shariah is.  Judges in the U.S., Oklahoma being no exception, are not generally educated or informed about shariah.  They cannot be expected to recognize shariah.  If a question arises in a case as to whether some aspect of a conflict comprises shariah or not, a judge will be forced to consult an outside expert or source to make a determination.  In almost every circumstance, that outside expert or source will end up being a shariah scholar or the work of a shariah scholar.  So, ironically, the very law that is designed to prevent shariah from working its way into our legal system will have invited shariah experts in to make rulings.

Unfortunately, SQ 755 has now given ammunition to proponents of shariah and transnationalism, who point to 755 as "proof" that any law designed to prevent the incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines into state courts in the United States is unconstitutional, or will be subject to expensive legal challenges from Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) or the judicial activist/transnationalist ACLU.

The reality is that there is an effective alternative to SQ 755 legislation and its various copycats around the country.  That legislation is called American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) and it can be accessed here. 

ALAC has already been passed into law in 3 states — Tennessee (April 2010), Louisiana (June 2010), and Arizona (May 2011) — and has not incurred any legal challenges, because there is simply no legal basis on which to challenge ALAC.  This is significant because SQ 755 was challenged in federal court within days of passage.

ALAC remedies the flaws in SQ 755, and in many ways takes a diametrically opposite approach to SQ 755:

  • ALAC is facially neutral.  In an honest debate, it cannot be accused of discriminating against any religion or protected class.
  • ALAC is based on a completely different legal premise from SQ 755’s.  Rather than seeking a ban on foreign or international law, ALAC seeks to preserve the constitutional rights and state public policy protections of American citizens and legal residents, in cases involving foreign laws in the particular dispute being adjudicated.  If a case arises in which a foreign law or foreign legal doctrine is involved in a dispute in a state court, ALAC prevents the use of that foreign law or foreign legal doctrine if any of the parties’ constitutional rights or state public policy would be violated in the process.  This is very different from a blanket ban on foreign laws.  ALAC also contains a specific provision for corporations and businesses so as not to interfere with commerce; it exempts Native American laws; it specifically says that the law cannot detract from the right to free exercise of religion, which would include religious courts like Jewish Bet Din or Catholic ecclesiastical courts; and it states that the law would not interfere with compliance with international treaties the U.S. has signed.
  • ALAC is not vague.  It provides specific instructions for judges on complex legal issues involving comity and choice of forum, thus closing potential loopholes for activist judges.
  • Because of the careful planning and thought behind ALAC’s wording, in contrast to SQ 755, from a practical standpoint, it is effective in preventing the enforcement of any foreign law — including in many cases, shariah law — that would violate U.S. and state constitutional liberties or state public policy.
  • And the need for an effective law preserving constitutional rights against the enforcement of unconstitutional foreign law is both real and urgent: an independent study found fifty cases in 23 states where shariah law had been introduced into state court cases, including many appellate and trial court cases where the judges ruled for shariah law over U.S. law.  Most victims of foreign laws in these cases had come to America for freedom and individual liberty — including American Muslims seeking to escape shariah laws.

It is important that activists, legislators, and the media recognize the flaws in Oklahoma’s SQ 755, so that they do not use it as a model. 

Fortunately, most legislators have already made the right choice.  The American Laws for American Courts Act — already passed in three states and never challenged in court — is progressing through legislatures in several states with two-year or year-round sessions, and is either scheduled to be introduced or under consideration in over 25 additional states for the coming legislative session. 

On August 31, 2011, the initiative received an important endorsement when the Michigan version of the American Laws for American Courts bill was endorsed by a prominent group of American Muslims opposed to the enforcement of shariah law in America: the American Islamic Leadership Coalition.  The model American Laws for American Courts Act on which the Michigan bill is based has already been endorsed by a former CIA director; a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency; a former inspector general for the Defense Department; and dozens of lawyers, law professors, rabbis, clergy, and community leaders across the country as "the 21st Century civil rights initiative to ensure constitutional liberties for all Americans."

  

Christopher Holton is Vice President for Administration, Marketing & Development at the Center for Security Policy.  Mr. Holton came to the Center after serving as president and marketing director of Blanchard & Co. and editor-in-chief of the Blanchard Economic Research Unit from 1990 to 2003.  As chief of the Blanchard Economic Research Unit in 2000, he conceived and commissioned the Center for Security Policy special report "Clinton’s Legacy: The Dangerous Decade."  Holton is a member of the Board of Advisers of WorldTribune.com.

 

 

Islamic World Tells Clinton: Defamation of Islam Must be Prevented — in America

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton welcomes Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to Washington this week, it is critical that Americans pay attention to what these two leaders intend to do.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, working teams from the Department of State (DoS) and the OIC are going to discuss implementation mechanisms that could impose limits on freedom of speech and expression.

The OIC’s purpose, as stated explicitly in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia, is to criminalize "incitement to hatred and violence on religious grounds."  Incitement is to be defined by applying the "test of consequences" to speech.  Under this twisted perversion of falsely "yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater," it doesn’t matter what someone actually says — or even whether it is true or not; if someone else commits violence and says it’s because of something that person said, the speaker will be held criminally liable.

The OIC is taking direct aim at free speech and expression about Islam.  Neither Christianity nor Judaism is named in the OIC’s official documents, whose only concern is to make the world safe from "defamation" of Islam — a charge that includes speaking truthfully about the national security implications of the Islamic doctrine of jihad.

Incitement to hatred under the OIC definition includes artistic expression like the Danish cartoons, literary expression like Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, or Pastor Terry Jones’ burning of his personally owned copy of the Qur’an.  According to the "test of consequences," if Muslims feel compelled to burn, loot, riot, and kill in response to such exercises of free expression, under the laws the OIC wants the U.S. to enact, it would be the editor and cartoonist of the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Salman Rushdie, and Terry Jones who would be held criminally responsible for any damage or deaths that ensue.

Last March, the State Department and Secretary Clinton insisted that "combating intolerance based on religion" can be accomplished without compromising Americans’ treasured First Amendment rights.  But if that were so, there would be no possible excuse for engaging at this level with an organization like the OIC that is openly dedicated to implementing Islamic law globally.  This is why it is so important to pay attention not only to the present agenda, but to a series of documents leading up to it, issued by both the U.S. and the OIC.  From 12 to 14 December 2011, the DoS and OIC working teams will focus on implementation mechanisms for "Resolution 16/18," a declaration that was adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council in April 2011.

Resolution 16/18 was hailed as a victory by Clinton, because it calls on countries to combat "intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization" based on religion without criminalizing free speech — except in cases of "incitement to imminent violence."  But if the criterion for determining "incitement to imminent violence" is a new "test of consequences," then this is nothing but an invitation to stage Muslim "Days of Rage" following the slightest perceived offense by a Western blogger, instructor, or radio show guest, all of whom will be held legally liable for "causing" the destruction, possibly even if what they’ve said is merely a statement of fact.  The implications of such prior restraint on free speech would be chilling (which is precisely the point).

In fact, the "test of consequences" is already being applied rigorously in European media and courts, where any act or threat of violence — whether by a jihadist, insane person, or counter-jihadist — is defined as a "consequence" of statements that are critical of some aspect of Islam and, therefore, to be criminalized.  Recent trials of Dutch political leader Geert Wilders, Austrian free speech champion Elizabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, and Danish Islamic expert Lars Hedegaard (as well as the witch hunt for "instigators" that followed the murderous attacks by Norwegian blogger Anders Behring Brevik) all attest to the extent of these "hate speech" laws’ oppressive pall over what is left of the European Enlightenment.  Now, if the OIC and the Obama administration have their way, it’s America’s turn.

Once it’s understood that under Islamic law, "slander" is defined as saying "anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike," the scope of potential proximate causes of Muslim rage becomes obvious.  For instance, in the Preamble to the Resolutions on Legal Affairs Adopted by the 38th Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the OIC in Astana, Kazakhstan in June 2011, under paragraph 9, the OIC:

Denounces media campaigns and fabrications made by some quarters in non-Member States [i.e., the Dar al-Harb or West] regarding the mistreatment of non-Muslim minorities and communities in the OIC Member States under the slogan of religious freedom and so on.

Consider what is likely to be a bloodbath for Coptic Christians that will occur as soon as the Muslim Brotherhood and its Salafist allies are firmly in control of Egypt.  This provision means that any Western media that accurately report that coming massacre could be legally charged with "incitement to imminent violence" under the test of consequences, in effect blaming those who raise the alarm instead of those who perpetrate the violence.

Clearly, the OIC feels some sense of urgency to get the rest of the non-Muslim world, and especially the U.S., on board with these objectives as Paragraph 10:

Expresses the need to pursue as a matter of priority, a common policy aimed at preventing defamation of Islam perpetrated under the pretext and justification of the freedom of expression in particular through media and Internet.

In this same document is the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers’ "Resolution No. 1/38-LEG On Follow Up and Coordination of Work on Human Rights," which makes reference to the OIC’s new "Independent Permanent Commission on Human Rights" and stipulates that it "shall promote the civil, political, social, and economic rights enshrined in the Organization’s covenants and declarations and in universally agreed human rights instruments, in conformity with Islamic values."  [Emphasis added.]  This wording alone should set off alarm bells in view of the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI), which explicitly declared that when the Muslim ummah (as represented by the OIC) uses the term "human rights," what is meant is Islamic law (sharia).  "Universally agreed" or not, the CDHRI was served as an official document to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1993, thereby creating an established instrument of reference on the Islamic definition of "human rights." 

The foundational documents upon which the Muslim ummah — the OIC — now relies to undergird its sharia agenda were drafted years ago.  The 1966 U.N. Commission for Human Rights International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which entered into force in 1976, was based firmly on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and preceded the 1969 creation of the OIC by just a few years.  The ICCPR’s Articles 19 (3) and 20 nevertheless foreshadow sharia Islam’s demand for restrictions on free speech in an explicit and chilling way — and, as will be seen, in a way the OIC is trying to exploit:

Article 19

1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference

2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression: this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of this choice

3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as provided by law and are necessary.

   (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;

   (b) For the protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals.

Article 20

1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law

2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Clearly, the OIC is trying to exploit these international standards, as shown in its April 2011 4th Annual Report on Islamophobia posted at its online Islamophobia Observatory.  Given the ICCPR’s assertions above, the OIC’s objective has long since been entered into official U.N. language.  It required only a narrowing of the focus from the generality of the ICCPR down to the OIC’s exclusive interest in protecting Islam from discrimination.  It also required bringing the U.S. on board with the program to enforce Islamic law on slander.  With the willing participation of the Obama administration, the OIC has tackled both of these challenges.  In Section 6 of the Islamophobia Report, "Conclusions and Recommendations," the language references the OIC goal of "removing the gaps in international legal instruments" to force the non-Muslim world to comply with its plan to criminalize "slander" of Islam (emphasis added):

d. Ensuring swift and effective implementation of the new approach signified by the consensual adoption of HRC Resolution 16/18, entitled ‘combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence, and violence against persons based on religion or belief’, by inter alia, removing the gaps in implementation and interpretation of international legal instruments and criminalizing acts of incitement to hatred and violence…

e. Constructively engaging to bridge divergent views on the limits to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, in a structured multilateral framework…geared toward filling the ‘interpretation void’ with regard to the interface between articles 19(3) and 20 of the ICCPR based on emerging approaches like applying the ‘test of consequences.’

Those "gaps in implementation and interpretation" refer to U.S. objections to criminalizing free speech (in violation of the First Amendment), and the "structured multilateral framework" would appear to be the agenda in Washington, D.C. from December 12 to 14 at the meeting between Clinton and OIC Secretary General Ihsanoglu.  It would not be overreaching to conclude that the purpose of this meeting, at least from the OIC perspective, is to convince the Obama administration that free speech that rouses Muslim masses to fury — as defined by the "test of consequences" — must be restricted under U.S. law to bring it into compliance with sharia law’s dictates on slander.

Clinton’s own statements reflect the OIC language on the "gap" (emphasis added):

… together we have begun to overcome the false divide that pits religious sensitivities against freedom of expression, and we are pursuing a new approach based on concrete steps … to use some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming, so that people don’t feel that they have the support to do what we abhor.

Despite disingenuous protestations by Clinton, another OIC document likely to be on the table at the Department of State/OIC working sessions abandons all pretense that any other religion besides Islam is the point of discussion.  The Resolutions on Political Affairs Adopted by the Thirty-Eighth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers at the June 2011 OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Kazakhstan (emphasis added):

5. Affirms that freedoms have to be exercised with responsibility and with due regard for the fundamental rights of others and, in this context, condemns in the strongest possible terms, all blasphemous acts against Islamic principles, symbols and sacred personalities, in particular, the despicable act of burning of the Holy Quran in Florida, USA on 20 March 2011, publication of offensive caricatures of Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), all abhorrent and irresponsible statements about Islam and its sacred personalities, and screening of defamatory documentary about the Holy Quran [Wilders’ Fitna] and dissemination of this hate material under the pretext of freedom of expression and opinion[.]

Subsequent sections in the same document stress "the need to prevent the abuse of freedom of expression and press for insulting Islam and other divine religions" and to reaffirm "that terrorism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or group." It furthermore:

[c]alls upon all States to prevent any advocacy of religious discrimination, hostility or violence and defamation of Islam by incorporating legal and administrative measures which render defamation illegal and punishable by law, and also urges all Member States to adopt specific and relevant educational measures at all levels[.]

It may be recalled that the Obama administration claimed, obviously incorrectly, that defamation was no longer part of these agreements.  The language of these resolutions instead stresses "the importance of expediting the implementation process of its decision on developing a legally binding international instrument to prevent intolerance, discrimination, prejudice and hatred on the grounds of religion, and defamation of religions[.]"

The Department of State is not the only U.S. government agency committed to achieving compliance with the OIC’s "Islamophobia" censorship agenda.  The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security both have committed publicly to an overhaul of their training materials to ensure that nothing in the curriculum gives "offense" to Muslim Brotherhood affiliates such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) or the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), with which both departments maintain close relationships.  Instructors who previously taught the intrinsic connection among Islamic doctrine, law, and scripture and Islamic terrorism henceforth will be blacklisted by the U.S. government.  As documented by the intrepid columnist and author Diana West, the Department of Defense also has made its obeisance to Islam, with troop instructions on how to handle the Qur’an and avoid spitting, urinating, or sleeping with feet pointed in the direction of Mecca.

Capping the administration’s campaign to align U.S. national security policy within the parameters of Islamic law, the White House published "Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States" in December 2011.  The plan makes clear that "violent extremism," not Islamic terrorism, is the primary national security threat to the homeland.  According to this "strategy," the solution is partnership with "local communities" — the term used for the administration’s favored Muslim Brotherhood front groups, which already are using such relationships to silence their critics, both inside and outside government.  These new rules of censorship state that the term "violent extremism" can no longer be used in combination with terms like "jihad," "Islam," "Islamist," or "sharia."  And these new rules are already being taught to U.S. law enforcement, homeland security offices, and the military nationwide.

The agenda of this week’s Department of State/OIC meetings may mark an important "milestone," as Sayyed Qutb might put it, on the pathway to sharia in America.  If — under the "test of consequences" — those who speak truth about Islam, sharia, and jihad may be held criminally responsible for the violent actions of those who say they find such truth "offensive," then, in the future, "violent extremists" could be just about anyone…anyone the government, in obedience to the sharia dictates of the OIC, decides they are.

Further, if the rubric is to be based on this "test of consequence," then it creates a real temptation to any administration so inclined to "create" consequences that will justify a change in America’s free speech rights.  By way of example, analysts have suggested that the motive for the Department of Justice’s "Fast and Furious" scandal, now under congressional investigation, may have been to create a "crisis" — a "consequence" — caused by U.S. guns shipped across the border to Mexican drug-dealers (and used in multiple homicides, including an American Border Protection officer) to "nudge" public consensus to expand gun control laws.

Even if Obama’s State Department seems fully enamored with a "test of consequences" on speech critical of Islam, most Americans across the political spectrum will realize that this perverts the traditional understanding of the First Amendment.  It is to be hoped that dedication to the Constitution — rather than to the OIC’s definition of "slander" of Islam or the "test of consequences" — will prevail among the ranks of our national leadership.  Regardless of what’s going on behind closed doors at the State Department this week, Americans should be aware — and outraged.  An informed citizenry, as always, remains the final defense of the Republic.

Clare M. Lopez is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and also at The Clarion Fund.

Gingrich’s fresh hope

Last Friday, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, "who are in fact Arabs."

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the "Palestinian people" was artificially carved out of the Arab population of "Greater Syria." "Greater Syria" included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term "Palestinian people" only became widely accepted after 1977.

As Daniel Pipes chronicled in a 1989 article on the subject in The Middle East Quarterly, the local Arabs in what became Israel opted for a local nationalistic "Palestinian" identity in part due to their sense that their brethren in Syria were not sufficiently committed to the eradication of Zionism.

Since Gingrich spoke out on Friday, his factually accurate statement has been under assault from three directions. First, it has been attacked by Palestinian apologists in the postmodernist camp. Speaking to CNN, Hussein Ibish from the American Task Force on Palestine argued that Gingrich’s statement was an outrage because while he was right about the Palestinians being an artificial people, in Ibish’s view, Israelis were just as artificial. That is, he equated the Palestinians’ 91-year-old nationalism with the Jews’ 3,500-year-old nationalism.

In his words, "To call the Palestinians ‘an invented people’ in an obvious effort to undermine their national identity is outrageous, especially since there was no such thing as an ‘Israeli’ before 1948."

Ibish’s nonsense is easily dispatched by a simple reading of the Hebrew Bible. As anyone semi-literate in Hebrew recognizes, the Israelis were not created in 1948. Three thousand years ago, the Israelis were led by a king named David. The Israelis had an independent commonwealth in the Land of Israel, and their capital city was Jerusalem.

The fact that 500 years ago King James renamed the Israelis "Israelites" is irrelevant to the basic truth that there is nothing new or artificial about the Israeli people. And Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, did not arise in competition with Arab nationalism. Zionism has been a central feature of Jewish identity for 3,500 years.

THE SECOND line of attack against Gingrich denies the veracity of his claim. Palestinian luminaries like the PA’s unelected Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told CNN, "The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history."

Fayyad’s historically unsubstantiated claim was further expounded on by Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dmitri Diliani in an interview with CNN. "The Palestinian people [are] descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 BCE," Diliani asserted, 

The Land of Israel has the greatest density of archeological sites in the world. Judea, Samaria, the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan Heights and other areas of the country are packed with archeological evidence of the Jewish commonwealths. As for Jerusalem, literally every inch of the city holds physical proof of the Jewish people’s historical claims to the city.

To date, no archeological or other evidence has been found linking the Palestinians to the city or the Jebusites.

From a US domestic political perspective, the third line of attack against Gingrich’s factual statement has been the most significant. The attacks involve conservative Washington insiders, many of whom are outspoken supporters of Gingrich’s principal rival for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

To date, the attackers’ most outspoken representative has been Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin. These insiders argue that although Gingrich spoke the truth, it was irresponsible and unstatesmanlike for him to have done so.

As Rubin put it on Monday, "Do conservatives really think it is a good idea for their nominee to reverse decades of US policy and deny there is a Palestinian national identity?"

In their view, Gingrich is an irresponsible flamethrower because he is turning his back on a 30- year bipartisan consensus. That consensus is based on ignoring the fact that the Palestinians are an artificial people whose identity sprang not from any shared historical experience, but from opposition to Jewish nationalism.

The policy goal of the consensus is to establish an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan River that will live at peace with Israel.

This policy was obsessively advanced throughout the 1990s until it failed completely in 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak’s and then US president Bill Clinton’s offer of Palestinian statehood and began the Palestinian terror war against Israel.

BUT RATHER than acknowledge that the policy – and the embrace of Palestinian national identity at its heart – had failed, and consider other options, the US policy establishment in Washington clung to it for dear life. Republicans like Rubin’s mentor, former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, went on to support enthusiastically Israel’s surrender of Gaza in 2005, and to push for Hamas participation in the 2006 Palestinian elections. That withdrawal and those elections catapulted the jihadist terror group to power.

The consensus that Gingrich rejected by telling the truth about the artificial nature of Palestinian nationalism was based on an attempt to square popular support for Israel with the elite’s penchant for appeasement. On the one hand, due to overwhelming public support for a strong US alliance with Israel, most US policy-makers have not dared to abandon Israel as a US ally.

On the other hand, American policy-makers have been historically uncomfortable having to champion Israel to their anti-Israel European colleagues and to their Arab interlocutors who share the Palestinians’ rejection of Israel’s right to exist.

The policy of seeking to meld an anti-Israel Arab appeasement policy with a pro-Israel anti-appeasement policy was embraced by successive US administrations until it was summarily discarded by President Barack Obama three years ago. Obama replaced the two-headed policy with one of pure Arab appeasement.

Obama was able to justify his move because the two-pronged policy had failed. There was no peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The price of oil had skyrocketed, and US interests throughout the region were increasingly threatened.

For its part, Israel was far more vulnerable to terror and war than it had been in years. And its diplomatic isolation was acute and rising.

Unfortunately for both the US and Israel, Obama’s break with the consensus has destabilized the region, endangered Israel and imperiled US interests to a far greater degree than they had been under the failed dual-track policy of his predecessors. Throughout the Arab world, Islamist forces are on the rise.

Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power.

The US is no longer seen as a credible regional power as it pulls its forces out of Iraq without victory, hamstrings its forces in Afghanistan, dooming them to attrition and defeat, and abandons its allies in country after country.

The stark contrast between Obama’s rejection of the failed consensus on the one hand and Gingrich’s rejection of the failed consensus on the other hand indicates that Gingrich may well be the perfect foil for Obama.

Gingrich’s willingness to state and defend the truth about the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the perfect response to Obama’s disastrous speech "to the Muslim world" in Cairo in June 2009. It was in that speech that Obama officially abandoned the bipartisan consensus, abandoned Israel and the truth about Zionism and Jewish national rights, and embraced completely the lie of Palestinian nationalism and national rights.

Both Rubin and Abrams, as well as Romney, justified their attacks on Gingrich and their defense of the failed consensus by noting that no Israeli leaders are saying what Gingrich said. Rubin went so far as to allege that Gingrich’s words of truth about the Palestinians hurt Israel.

This is of course absurd. What many Americans fail to recognize is that Israeli leaders are not as free to tell the truth about the nature of the conflict as American leaders are. Rather than look to Israel for leadership on this issue, American leaders would do well to view Israel as the equivalent of West Germany during the Cold War. With half of Berlin occupied by the Red Army and West Berlin serving as the tripwire for a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, West German leaders were not as free to tell the truth about the Soviet Union as American leaders were.

Today, with Jerusalem under constant political and terror threat, with all of Israel increasingly encircled by Islamist regimes, and with the Obama administration abandoning traditional US support for Israel, it is becoming less and less reasonable to expect Israel to take the rhetorical lead in telling important and difficult truths about the nature of its neighbors.

When Romney criticized Gingrich’s statement as unhelpful to Israel, Gingrich replied, "I feel quite confident that an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of, and the casualties they are taking and the people around them who say, ‘They do not have a right to exist and we want to destroy them.’" 

And he is absolutely right. It was more than nice. It was heartening.

Thirty years of pre-Obama American lying about the nature of the conflict in an attempt to balance support for Israel with appeasement of the Arabs did not make the US safer or the Middle East more peaceful. A return to that policy under a new Republican president will not be sufficient to restore stability and security to the region.

And the need for such a restoration is acute. Under Obama, the last three years of US abandonment of the truth about Israel for Palestinian lies has made the region less stable, Israel more vulnerable, the US less respected and US interests more threatened.

Gingrich’s statement of truth was not an act of irresponsible flame throwing. It was the beginning of an antidote to Obama’s abandonment of truth and reason in favor of lies and appeasement. And as such, it was not a cause for anger. It was a cause for hope.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

Silencing the Watchdogs of Religious Freedom: Durbin’s War on the USCIRF

We have been hearing a lot about the Muslim Brotherhood lately – and none of it is good news.  Get used to it.  With the Brotherhood’s ascendancy in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and beyond, the world is going to be subjected to a crash course in Islamist supremacism – and what it means for the rest of us.

We were on notice even before the Egyptian elections in which the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and their allies secured upwards of sixty percent of the votes in that country’s new, post-Mubarak parliament – and the murderous violence towards Coptic Christians that preceded them.  A reminder came on December 7th when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed convictions ofleaders of the MB-associated Holy Land Foundation.  The earlier trial in 2008 did much to expose the totalitarian, supremacist nature and seditious objectives of that group, elsewhere and here in the United States.

Notably, evidence introduced (uncontested by the defense) in that case by federal prosecutors established that the Brotherhood has established myriad front organizations, including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the North American IslamicTrust (NAIT), to pursue what it calls “civilization jihad.”  This is a stealthy form of holy war, designed to “eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within…by their hands [i.e., those of the infidels].”

The Obama administration has greatly facilitated the efforts of such organizations to penetrate and influence the government of the United States.  To cite but one example, on December 12-14, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is convening a meeting with representatives of theBrotherhood’s multinational official counterpart, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).  As Phyllis Chesler points out in a brilliant essay published by PJMedia () entitled “The End of Religious Freedom,” the OIC’s stated purpose for this meeting is to counter: “media campaigns and fabrications made by some quarters in non-member states regarding the mistreatment of non-Muslim minorities and communities in the OIC member states under the slogans of religious freedoms and so on.”

Put simply, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and other adherents to the Islamist politico-military-legal doctrine of shariah seek to impose their practice of “blasphemy” laws worldwide.  Accordingly, they seek to suppress information that “offends Muslims” or otherwise puts them, their agenda or their behavior in a negative light – no matter how accurately.

In recent years, the U.S. government has increasingly conformed to what amount to  shariah blasphemy laws.  A singular exception has been the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).  Since its inception by act of Congress in 1998, the unpaid commissioners have rendered incalculably important servicemonitoring and reporting on threats to freedom of religion emanating from Islamist and other sources.

USCIRF has, for example, documented the plight of Copts in Egypt and Christians and Jews inother parts of the Middle East.  They have exposed how non-shariah-adherent Muslims and “apostates” from Islam have been raped, tortured and killed for deviating from what is deemed to be the true faith by Brotherhood, OIC and like-minded forces.

The Commission has also helped expose how Saudi government-supplied textbooks used, among other places, in American madrassas, extol violent jihadism and intolerance for people of other faiths.  Interestingly, such texts explain three different ways homosexuals can be executed in conformity with shariah’s treatment of their behavior as a capital offense.

Now that Team Obama has made promoting the radical lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender agenda whatMrs. Clinton calls a U.S. foreign policy priority,” one would think the administration would be grateful for the work the Religious Freedom Commission has done, among other things, to expose and demand changes in such Saudi textbooks.

To the contrary, the Obama administration has been working behind the scenes to do as its Islamist friends have demanded by shutting down the USCIRF.  It has enlisted for this purpose Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate’s Number 2 Democrat.  Sen. Durbin is not only perfectly placed to do the deed stealthily.  He has his own close associations with a number of the Brotherhood’s top fronts and operatives in his home state of Illinois, in Washington and elsewhere across the country.

As it happens, in addition to serving as the Majority Whip, Sen. Durbin is a member of both the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees – the panels responsible for reauthorizing and funding the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.  He has used his leadership and committee positions to place what amount to secret “holds” on legislation that would extend the life of the commission.

Consequently, unless something changes before the current government funding bill expires, our nation’s sole official, independent and still-effective watchdog for religious liberty – and the most trusted and important American voice for those being denied it – will go out of business on December 16th.

The Majority Whip’s role in this stealthy jihad against an agency that still dares to speak thetruth to the Islamists’ power is all the more reprehensible since Senator Durbin frequently excoriates his colleagues’ use of secret holds.  In fact, he has cosponsored legislation to bar the practice.  Such rank hypocrisy simply adds to the venality of Sen. Durbin’s conduct in this matter.

So does the reported reason for the hold Senator Durbin has yet to acknowledge he is exercising against the USCIRF.  Evidently, he is trying to euchre members of the House of Representatives into earmarking funds for the federal government to purchase a state prison in Thompson, Illinois that his home state can no longer afford to operate.

When the idea of a federal takeover of this facility was first floated last year, it ran into strenuous opposition on both sides of Capitol Hill.  Not only was the deal deemed to be unaffordable at a time of yawning federal deficits.  It turned out that the Obama administration and its allies in Illinois’ Democratic machine in Washington and Springfield state had in mind another, even more outrageous motivation: the Thompson prison could serve as the place to relocate terrorists currently held offshore at Guantanamo Bay, allowing Gitmo’s closure.

In other words, Sen. Durbin is seeking to secure by stealth an earmark that would overturn existing legislation barring the relocation of such detainees inside the United States – and the real risk that they would, thereby, be granted constitutional rights, access to civilian U.S. courts and perhaps be set loose in our country by irresponsible federal judges.  How many more reasons do the American people need to oppose and condemn Dick Durbin’s shenanigans?

Voters in Illinois and elsewhere need to call out Senator Durbin’s contribution to the stealth jihad – both with his office and, in the case of other Senators’ constituents, those of their own representatives.  America needs to safeguard religious freedoms against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  To that end, we must strengthen, not garrote, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom – the one official entity still doing that vital mission.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

Cynthia Farahat: Jihad and the War on Egypt’s Coptic Christians

Cynthia Farahat testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. Reps. Frank Wolf and James McDermott presented "Under Threat: The Worsening Plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians."

Cynthia Farahat is an Egyptian political activist, writer and researcher. She co-founded the Liberal Egyptian Party (2006-2008) and served as a member of its political committee. In 2008-2009, she was program coordinator and program officer at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty in Cairo, a multi-national free market think tank. She was a founder of the Masr El-Om (Mother Egypt) Party and was a member of its political committee (2004-2006). 

Other witnesses included Kathy Fitzpatrick (Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State); Nina Shea (Director, Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute); Dina Guirguis (Member, Egyptian American Rule of Law Association); Adel Guindy (President, Coptic Solidarity International); and Raymond Ibrahim (Middle East specialist and Associate fellow, Middle East Forum).

The following is Ms. Farahat’s testimony for the record and, below, is a transcript of her comments at the hearing.

Cynthia Farahat: Testimony before the Tom Lantos Commission, December 7 2011. Click here for a PDF of his testimony for the record.

 

 
 
 

 

TESTIMONY OF CYNTHIA FARAHAT

TOM LANTOS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

Thank you Chairman Wolf and Chairman McGovern for organizing this important hearing. I am very pleased to have the honor of testifying in front of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission today about the current status of Copts in Egypt.

I am an activist and writer in Egypt, and have been involved in the political process for nearly a decade. I am a Copt. I addressed the crowd at last year’s protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and have participated in Coptic demonstrations in Maspero.

With my colleagues I helped found two political parties: first, the Masr El-Om (Mother Egypt) Party in 2004, and then the Liberal Egyptian Party in 2006. Both were dedicated to the values of secularism, human rights, capitalism, the rule of law, and rejection of pan-Arabism and Islamic imperialism. This platform was controversial with the Mubarek regime for many reasons, but the most important was the conscious rejection of the application of Islamic law and jurisprudence, shariah and fiqh, in the state’s affairs. The Liberal Egyptian Party was rebuffed by the regime and rejected as a legal entity twice in court, putting these important ideas outside legal discourse in the country. As a consequence of my activism, I have been living in fear and under constant threat and harassment, from the Mubarek regime and its subsequent military junta and from Salafist jihadists who were as threatened by classical liberalism and freedom as the rulers themselves.

The ideas I dedicated my life to promoting are articulated best in America’s founding documents, in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and in the Enlightenment works that, in turn, inspired them. The regime’s opposition to these concepts-summed up in a word, liberty-also unlocks the reasons for the persecution of Copts.

The large and educated minority of Copts in Egypt is the biggest obstacle for Islamists to turn Egypt into another Iran or another Saudi Arabia. Through propaganda and acts of state violence the governing body of Egypt, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), has attempted to manufacture[1] a violent conflict between Coptic Christians and Muslims. With the full power of the state, media and the military at their disposal, however, any such "civil war" will be one-sided tragedy; it will be a massacre of Christians at the hands of the state, its vast paid militia and Salafis sympathetic to the cause.

At present, SCAF has imprisoned 12,000 civilians in military court for political crimes. Meanwhile, the regime has freed of hundreds of convicted terrorists from prison, like Col. Aboud al-Zomor,[2] the mastermind behind the Sadat assassination, and Badr Makhlouf,[3] the Emir of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya of Qena that was convicted with murdering tourists in a 1993 terrorist attack. This double standard sends a message that advocating for freedom and equality for Copts and other minorities in Egypt will have severe consequences.

 

MASPERO & THE WAR ON THE COPTS

In contrast to the terrorists released, among those imprisoned were liberal dissidents like Maikel Nabil Sanad, a Coptic blogger and political activist, and Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a secular Muslim pro-freedom blogger who was previously imprisoned by Mubarak’s regime in 2006. He has been our ally for years, and has written hundreds of posts on his blog to support freedom of speech and religion for Copts and Bahai’s.

As a secular Muslim, Abdel-Fattah was a more serious target of the regime. Under the dictates of shariah, he is considered a traitor and apostate from Islam, and the appropriate punishment is death. Abdel-Fattah was at the protests in Maspero on behalf of equality for Copts. Outrageously, he might be facing murder and terrorism charges-as the regime is trying to frame the massacre of dozens of Copts in Maspero on him.

Michael Mosad was, like myself, a liberal Coptic political and human rights activist. I knew him well. He was one of the people killed by the Egyptian military at Maspero on 9 October 2011. He was at the protest with his fiancé, Vivian, and the newly engaged couple was terrified. Suddenly, she said she did not feel Michael’s hand in hers. She then saw him caught in the wheels of a military vehicle that drove onto the pavement and ran him over. His skull was fractured and his legs were nearly severed from his body. As she sat next to him crying and calling for help, soldiers gathered around Michael, brutally beating and kicking his motionless body. Vivian threw her body over his to protect him. She begged them to stop, but military officers beat and cursed her; they called her an infidel, "Christian sons of dogs," and worse.

Nawar Negm, a Muslim political activist who was in the protest to support Copts said the peaceful protestors were being randomly shot at, and that organized mobs in civilian clothes started attacking Christians.[4] The mobs were backed by soldiers whom she saw checking the hands of protestors for crosses before brutally beating them, as many Egyptian Christians tattoo crosses on their hands.

Another Muslim photographer, Ali Khalid, who was at the site and was shot in the face said, "I have seen death with my own eyes, at the hands of the people who claim to be the protectors of the country."[5]

Bothayna Kamel, another courageous Muslim woman, and a prominent TV presenter and journalist in Egypt who was among the protestors, witnessed the horror herself. She said:

As the attack on the protest started I went to hide with a priest and Muslim and Christian protestors inside a nearby building where Al-Hurra TV station’s office is located. We hid inside the office, and I could hear the police and army soldiers attacking the building as they were screaming ‘Allahu Akbar’ and dragging protestors inside the building. Don’t tell me these were Islamic organizations or Salafis; the military and police have the same bigoted minds. After they left the building and we felt it was safe to leave the office, we saw the blood of protesters who were beaten by soldiers screaming ‘Allahu Akbar,’ covering the floors and stairs of the building. To get out of the building safe, you had to tell the police and the army, ‘I’m a Muslim who believes in one God’-otherwise they attack you.[6]

This was happening as the military police attacked the Jan25 television station and terrified the broadcaster, who screamed hysterically on air as they confiscated the video footage that was shot of the protests[7]. Minutes later, an extremely gruesome video[8] of murdered Copts in the entrance of Jan25 station emerged on YouTube. Some of the protestors were dead; others were dying.

Even after the killings, the SCAF and its media machine was intent on flaring tensions. That evening, the regime’s state-run television incited Muslims to converge on Maspero and ‘defend’ the Egyptian army against the gathering of unarmed Christians: "The Egyptian army is under attack from Coptic protestors, and we urge the honorable citizens to go to Maspero and aid the army." [9]

In order to justify their war crime against the Copts, Egyptian officials later claimed [10]to CNN that Copts killed 12 army troops. This propaganda was also repeated by official state TV as the army was massacring Christians in the street. Not only didn’t he army not convict the criminals responsible for the murder and torture of Copts at Maspero, the Egyptian army held a press conference claiming their soldiers were not armed, and that the armored vehicle used to crush Copts beneath its treads was stolen by a protestor. In other words, the regime’s spin amounted to a theory in which Coptic protestors stole an armored vehicle, ran themselves over, and shot themselves. I’m sure the regime would also give credence to the farcical possibly floated by the Al-Fagr newspaper, blaming the massacre on Israelis.[11]

The Coptic Christians at Maspero were killed with live ammunition, and with weapons the military probably acquired through its average of $2 billion in annual military aid from the United States.[12]  A massive shipment of 21 tons of tear gas was just sent to Egypt from the US before the elections.[13]  These weapons are not used by the military against militant Islamists who are trying to subvert and destroy our country, institute shariah law, and inflame the broader Middle East; these weapons are used against the allies of the United States of America, the Copts and the secular moderate Muslims. 

Like the regime’s hostility toward classical liberalism, the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt is deeply embedded in the ideological foundation of the current military oligarchy, which shares history, doctrine and personalities with the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Muslim Brotherhood does not formally or organizationally rule Egypt, its ideas have ideologically controlled the country for nearly sixty years since the overthrow of the monarchy by the July 1952 coup d’état (euphemized as the "July Revolution").

The fear of Islamists seizing power in Egypt and the situation worsening for Copts and the whole region, assumes that the Muslim Brotherhood does not already wield power yet may be able to hijack the current political unrest. In fact, this situation already exists; both the Mubarak regime and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) have subtly colluded with Islamists against Copts for decades. The real question, then, is not whether the Muslim Brotherhood and other militant Islamic groups will seize power but whether it will continue to hold it, either directly or by proxy.

In 2005, Mubarak allowed eighty-eight Muslim Brotherhood members into parliament as a useful tool for scaring the Western governments into thinking that democracy in Egypt would inevitably bring the Islamists to power.

 

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD & THE EGYPTIAN REGIME[14]

Not only does the Egyptian constitution since 1971 make the shariah "the principal source of legislation,"[15] but the Free Officers (as the perpetrators of the 1952 putsch called themselves) were closely associated with both the Muslim Brotherhood’s military wing or "secret apparatus" (Nizam al-Khass) and the Young Egypt Society (Misr al-Fatat), a nationalist-fascist militia established in 1929 by religiously-educated lawyer Ahmad Hussein. Both Egyptian presidents hailing from the Free Officers-Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956-1970) and Anwar Sadat (1970-1981)-received their early political schooling in the Young Egypt Society. The Young Egypt Society transformed into the National Islamic Party in 1940.

The Muslim Brotherhood spread its xenophobic and militant ideas through its magazine, al-Sarkh’a (Scream), which combined vicious attacks on Western democracy with praise for Fascism and Nazism and advocacy of the implementation of shariah rule. In a famous letter, Hussein invited Hitler "to convert to Islam." This outlook was shared by the Muslim Brotherhood’s publication, al-Nazir, which referred to the Nazi tyrant as "Hajj Hitler." The Brotherhood’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, was also an unabashed admirer of Hitler and Mussolini. As late as 1953, Anwar Sadat, whose pro-Nazi sympathies landed him in prison during World War II, wrote an "open letter"[16] to Hitler in a leading Egyptian newspaper. He applauded the genocidal tyrant, pronouncing that the leaders of the Axis Powers, "guided their peoples to unity, order, regeneration, power, and glory."

The Young Egypt Society’s attempted assassination in 1937 of Egypt’s democratically-elected liberal prime minister, Mustafa Nahhas, got the organization banned. In the 1940s, the officers took their radicalism a step further by collaborating with the Muslim Brotherhood’s military wing. Some even joined the Brotherhood themselves; Nasser himself reportedly joined in 1944. In his memoirs, Khaled Mohieddin, a fellow Free Officer claimed that Banna had personally asked Nasser to join the Brotherhood, recounting how he and Nasser swore allegiance on a gun and a Qur’an.[17]

This background has continuing relevance because it forms the DNA of the regime that has ruled Egypt from 1952 to the present day; this military oligarchy has pursued means and goals that originated in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Young Egypt Society.

Moreover, the Young Egypt Society’s Islamic-socialist and fascistic ideas are very much alive and well today. In 1990, the party was reestablished and granted a license to work as a legal entity by Mubarak’s regime that has long been considered an ally of the west. This organization’s approval by the state could not be in starker contrast to the rejection of my own Liberal Egyptian Party and its pro-freedom platform.

Following Hassan al-Banna’s murder on February 12, 1949, by government agents in retaliation for the assassination of Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha a few weeks earlier, the military and civilian wings of the Muslim Brotherhood split. Nasser proceeded to form the Free Officers movement, which mounted the 1952 coup. In the coming decades, the military regime and the Brotherhood would maintain a strenuous relationship interrupted by occasional outbursts of violence and terrorism-notably a 1954 attempt by the Brotherhood on Nasser’s life-and repressive countermeasures by the regime including mass arrests and sporadic executions. But this should be understood not as a struggle between an autocratic, secular dictatorship and a would-be Islamist one but a struggle between two ideologically similar, if not identical, rival groups, hailing from the same source.

Indeed, the symbiotic relationship between the jihadist ideologues and the current regime continues, as it has from 1952. For example, the SCAF has revealed alarming extremism last summer when they publically consulted with Salafi jihadist Mohammed Hassan on how to deal with Copts instead of prosecuting their attackers. Hassan is known in Egypt for inciting Mujahedeen in Gaza to kill Israelis before killing themselves in suicide attacks.[18]

 

A WELL-EXECUTED DRAMA: USING THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD AGAINST THE WEST

Given the shared history and entwined ideological affinities of the Muslim Brotherhood and the military regime that has ruled Egypt since 1952, it is hardly surprising that both Mubarak’s regime and the SCAF would persecute the Coptic community with religiously motivated enthusiasm. The world often wonders why secularists, liberals and Copts are unorganized in Egypt; this situation exists because we-not the Brotherhood-were under daily threats and state security surveillance, and our parties banned from politics. Meanwhile, the regime cynically empowers the Brotherhood and other Salafi jihadist groups against which it can play out a drama meant to both oppress moderate and liberal opposition internally, and to frighten western governments from the prospect of a peaceful transition of power to a civilian government.

This well-executed drama is not new, and its contours should be familiar to all Americans in two different contexts: the United States’ relationships with Pakistan and the Palestinian Authority. In both these cases, "moderate" leaders pose as allies, using the threat of a more radical replacement to coerce the US for support and funding. In both countries too, there exists a seamless spectrum of potential coercion-from "radical" to "moderate" to "ally"-that is based on political expediency rather than on ideology. And the constant refrain is the demand for more American money and support.

Broadly speaking, the template with which these nations play the US is based on the decades-long the myth of the secular Turkish military’s ability to maintain constitutional, secular and pro-west governance in that country amid threats from Islamist groups. The failure of the Turkish military to stem the tide of the slowly encroaching Islamism of the AKP owes to the fact that, over time, the sympathies of the military will invariably shift; there is no guarantee subsequent generations will feel the same commitment to secular rule that their predecessors had. In Egypt, the situation is even worse. As we have seen, the military regime since 1952 is ideologically committed to oppose secularism and is bound by shariah, specifically as it relates to the treatment of minorities or dhimmis.

There is overwhelming evidence that Egypt’s military is, at present, enacting this play at American expense. Last week, former Ambassador Marc Ginsburg reported that the SCAF has been directly funding the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in the current parliamentary elections. As the regime receives billions in military aid and assistance from the United States, this collusion between so-called "allies" and the Muslim Brotherhood is a deeply cynical act, and one that betrays the true intentions of the regime. The thought that the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood is occurring, albeit indirectly, through the largess of the American taxpayer is shocking, and should cause a re-evaluation of these transfer payments.

As Ambassador Ginsburg also points out,

The military leadership has not only channeled financial support to the Islamists, it has also secretly collaborated with Salafists who have attacked Copts throughout Egypt in a show of support for more punitive discriminatory acts against Egypt’s Coptic minority to curry further favor with Salafists."[19]

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, three things must happen in order for the Coptic Christians to stand a chance of seeing their present human rights situation in Egypt improve significantly:

First, the United States should cease all American aid to Egypt until there is demonstrable, verifiable evidence that the Egyptian government is allowing non-Muslim religious minorities in Egypt to exercise the freedom of speech and religion without fear of intimidation or reprisal. 

Second, the Obama administration should explain and possibly reevaluate its vetting process for foreign national employees of or advisors to American embassies, particularly in Egypt, where Egyptian nationals loyal to the military regime have used their embassy positions to deny Coptic religious asylum requests to the United States. 

Third and finally, the United States must avoid legitimizing the joint effort by the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s ruling military regime to use "blasphemy" laws against non-Muslim minorities in Egypt, and therefore should decline to meet with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to discuss any agenda to apply "blasphemy" laws globally under the guise of confronting "Islamophobia."

TRANSCRIPT OF CYNTHIA FARAHAT’S TESTIMONY

TOM LANTOS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

DECEMBER 7, 2011

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s an honor to be able to testify today in front of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about the status and plight of Copts in Egypt. I’m a Coptic classic liberal political activist. I’m also a writer and researcher in Egypt. I just came to the US last month. I’ve been involved in a political process for over a decade. And I’ve addressed the protestors in Tahrir Square and also I’ve been involved in Maspero protests. To be able to discuss the plight of Copts and why they are – why they are persecuted in Egypt, I would have to ask the question who are the current rulers of Egypt? Who are the Supreme Council of Armed Forces? What is their ideology and are there – are they are secular autocrats like they like to give the impression to Western governments? Or is it something else? What I claim here – and these are all historic facts – that the current military oligarchy originates from the Muslim Brotherhood organization. In 1952, the free officers perpetrated a coup detat against the Egyptian monarch. The free officers were the branch of the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. They only split after the death and the assassination of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1949. Before that, they were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the first president of Egypt, the actual first president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and in ’44, he joined and swore allegiance to Hassan al-Banna on a Koran. This is the founding father.

This is according to Khaled Mohieddin, a fellow free officer and also previously a member of parliament in Egypt. This is according to his own biography. These are the founding fathers, almost ninety people that perpetrated the 1952 coup detat were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the reality of the basis of the current ideological foundation of the Egyptian army and the regime and the oligarchy that has had control for over six decades, sixty years of this, this is what we are having. And it was inevitable that shariah law becomes part of the constitution. In 1971, President Sadat introduced shariah law to the constitution and now I think it’s, qualifies to say that Egypt is a constitutional theocracy and it’s not a modern state. The consequences were that Copts are no longer, according to shariah law, identified or defined as citizen. I have an Egyptian passport, but I’m not a citizen. The concept of citizenship is a Western concept that does not apply to us in Egypt. I’m a woman and I’m a Copt. I’m a fourth-class citizen in Egypt. A first-class citizen in Egypt is the Sunni male, Muslim male. The second-class is the Sunni female. The third-class is the Coptic male. And fourth-class is the Coptic female.

And that’s why none of the people that committed crimes, none of the criminals that committed crimes against Copts were prosecuted in any way. Because it is against shariah law and that’s a fact. It’s not an opinion. To persecute someone for – a Muslim, for killing, raping, torturing, or vandalizing the property of a non-Muslim or a dhimmi. So this is our legal status. And this has been happening under the Mubarak’s so-called moderate regime, an ally of the West, and it’s now happening now. It was only inevitable that they take their radicalism a step further and start killing Copts in the street in front of TV cameras with live ammunition and running them over with armored military vehicles they probably got from the United States of America. One of my friends was in the protests. I was supposed to go there on the ninth with him. And with other people. What happened was my friend was there. Michael Mossad [PH], with his fiance, Vivian, and they were walking. And he felt, when he started – when the army started attacking Maspero and they saw them screaming, Allahu Akbar, like they are going on an Islamic fatwa and an invasion, they got scared and they decided to leave. But he called his family and he told them, I’m going to die tonight. And I want to – I want to say goodbye. Because I’m going to get killed tonight. That’s what happened to my friend. He got on the pavement and then they turned around to leave, but what happened was the armored vehicle got on the pavement to intentionally run him over and they did run him over and almost severed his legs from his body and crushed his skull. And as he – as Michael was lying there, breathless and dying, his fiance kept screaming for help, asking someone to come and help him, or – what happened was, the military started beating him up. They kept beating up his motionless body and beating her up and spitting on her and calling her an infidel and so much worse.

At the same time, while this was happening, I was watching Egyptian television where a military official would say, they would talk about the Copts and he would say, the Christian sons of dogs. We are, according to the state, the Christian sons of dogs. That’s how the state defines us. And this is the current ally of the United States of America. So that’s the situation and that’s what happened in Maspero. Bussein Akamel [PH], a moderate Muslim and secular Muslim TV personality and journalist in Egypt said that she was in Maspero and I also know her, she was there and as she got terrified of the attacks by the military, she went to hide inside the building of Alhurra TV channel. What happened was, she said the military started attacking the building while screaming Allahu Akbar, dragging Christians inside the building and beating them and torturing them. And then when she said the screams stopped and we felt we were safe to get out of the building, she said we were walking in blood of Copts and to get out of the building or safe, you had to say I’m a Muslim who believes in one Allah. That was a jihadist attack. This looks like a jihadist attack. It doesn’t look like military trying to protect or stabilize a situation. That was religiously inspired. After that, also Nawad Enigen [PH], she is a Muslim political activist and also a TV personality, she stated that she saw the military checking the hands of Copts for crosses before attacking and torturing them in the street. They kept around, checking the hands of protestors, because most Copts put crosses on their hands. And there are people in this room, there are Copts in this room with crosses in their hands who wouldn’t have passed this test of the military. It’s something that was also happening. This was the situation at Maspero and it was even so much worse. If I had more time, I could even write a book from the amount of testimonies and my personal friends and my losses. My personal loss that day.

What I would – I would like to add that right now, currently, the Egyptian regime, military regime, is transforming into a Pakistani model. We are now approaching another Pakistan in Egypt. It is going to be inevitable unless there are serious measures taken to dismantle the current status quo. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are now funding Salafi jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood. And the US is now currently funding the military that has evidently funded the Muslim Brotherhood in the past elections. As former ambassador Marc Ginsberg states in his article last month, that he confirms evidence that the military is funding Salafi jihadists, the al-Qaeda style jihadists and the Muslim Brotherhood. Obviously, from money that might have come from the USA. And also they have brokered a deal with Salafi jihadists. Now to force the West – the equation is, they want to force their Western, so-called, allies to choose either between the military dictatorship or between the Islamists. That’s the equation. Although that’s not the reality of things. Tahrir Square was filled with moderate and was filled with secular Muslims. There are six million Sufis that are formally cooperating with Copts that could be better alternative instead of this vicious equation. Right now, the equation is, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood Salafi jihadists, Egyptian military and the US on one side. And now the Copts and seculars, moderate forces, moderate Muslims, are on the other. And I think the US has always been our ally and this is not part of the equation that they should be. When President Bush’s administration suggested that they might condition aid, our lives became immediately better in Egypt. It was like someone clicked on a button and the world looked totally and entirely and completely different. What happened was, Mubarak had to leverage, because that’s how America gets leverage. And by giving us more freedom. What we did was, we started co-founding secular political parties that called for – that were against Islamic imperialism and against theocracy and pro-free market and human rights. In this atmosphere, we were able to work. Because that’s how countries reform to better ideas and modern ideas. When secular Muslims and moderate Muslims and Copts are getting death threats, how are we going to spend – how are we going to spread our ideas? Not everyone can tolerate getting messages like the messages and the death threats I used to get. That’s not an atmosphere that was – that is open to spread ideas of reform and modernity. So that’s the current situation now.

 What we would like to ask and my condition – sorry – my conclusion of this is, America should look at the plight of Copts as a national security issue. We’re America. It’s not only a humanitarian crisis, but these are the true allies of the United States and true believers of the ideas and  – the beautiful ideas that this country stands for. These are the true allies. In conclusion, three things must happen in order for the Coptic Christians and moderate Muslims to stand a chance of seeing their present human rights situation in Egypt improve significantly. First, the United States should seize all American aid to Egypt until there is verifiable evidence that the Egyptian government is allowing non-Muslim religious minorities in Egypt to exercise the freedom of speech and religion without fear of intimidation. Second, president Obama’s administration should explain and possibly re – sorry, reevaluate its vetting process of foreign national employees or advisers of American embassies, particularly in Egypt where Egyptian nationals, loyal to the regime have used their embassy positions to make it hard for Copts to apply for religious asylum and requests to the United States from the American embassy in Cairo out of fear of being targeted by Egyptian state security. Third and finally, the United States might – must avoid legitimizing joint effort by the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s ruling military regime to use blasphemy law against non-Muslim minorities in Egypt and therefore should decline to meet with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation

[1] http://www.danielpipes.org/9388/copts-pay-the-price

[2] http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/7445/Egypt/Politics-Aboud-and-Tarek-ElZomor-amongst-released-prisoners.aspx

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Egypt

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo51tpAWg

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWuC3N9Vpvg

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbo-IhyxODE

[7] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvPWB-ThuhI

[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41PzqZ49kbE

[9] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7m08JJdxao

[10] http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/09/world/meast/egypt-protest-clashes/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[11] http://www.elfagr.org/Detail.aspx?nwsId=68173&secid=1&vid=2

[12] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/29/us-egypt-usa-aid-idUSTRE70S0IN20110129

[13] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/egypt-dock-workers-protest-us-tear-gas-shipments-to-egypt/2011/11/30/gIQACr4gCO_blog.html

[14] A more in-depth treatment of the relationship between the Egyptian military regime and the Muslim Brotherhood can be found in "The Arab Upheaval: Egypt’s Islamist Shadow," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2011. http://www.meforum.org/2887/arab-upheaval-egypt-islamist

[15] http://www.egypt.gov.eg/english/laws/constitution/chp_one/part_one.aspx

[16] Open letter from Anwar Sadat to Adolf Hitler, al-Musawwar (Cairo), Sept. 18, 1953.

[17] Khaled Mohieddin, Memories of a Revolution (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1995), p. 45.

[18] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1odMl2_wBBs

[19] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/amb-marc-ginsberg/unholy-alliance-egypts-mi_b_1109534.html

Raymond Ibrahim: Shariah, Dhimmitude & the Copts

Raymond Ibrahim testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. Reps. Frank Wolf and James McDermott presented "Under Threat: The Worsening Plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians."

Raymond Ibrahim is a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, best known for The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday, 2007), he guest lectures at universities, including the National Defense Intelligence College, briefs governmental agencies, such as U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency, provides expert testimony for Islam-related lawsuits, and has testified before Congress regarding the conceptual failures that dominate American discourse concerning Islam. 

Other witnesses included Kathy Fitzpatrick (Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State); Nina Shea (Director, Center for Religious Freedom, Hudson Institute); Dina Guirguis (Member, Egyptian American Rule of Law Association); Adel Guindy (President, Coptic Solidarity International); and Cynthia Farahat (Egyptian political activist).

The following is Mr. Ibrahim’s testimony for the record and, below, is a transcript of his comments at the hearing.

Raymond Ibrahim: Testimony before the Tom Lantos Commission, December 7 2011. Click here for a PDF of his testimony for the record.

 

 

 

TESTIMONY OF RAYMOND IBRAHIM

TOM LANTOS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

 

Since the year 641, when Muslims invaded Egypt, the Copts-Egypt’s Christian, indigenous inhabitants-have been subject to persecution, discrimination, and over all subjugation on their homeland (etymologically, the word "Copt" simply means "Egyptian").[1] The result is an Egyptian culture and mentality that sees Copts as second-class citizens, or, in Islamic legal terminology, Dhimmis-"infidels" who are tolerated as long as they embrace their inferior status.

Whole books and treatises have been written on the treatment of Dhimmis (for instance, Ibn Qayyim’s authoritative 8th century Ahkam Ahl al-Dhimma, or "Rulings for Dhimmis").  The idea of subjugating non-Muslims, aptly coined "Dhimmitude," comes from Quran 9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid that which Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, nor follow the religion of Truth [Islam], from the People of the Book [Christians and Jews], until they pay the Jizya [tribute] with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued."

The so-called Pact of Omar,[2] a foundational text for the treatment of Dhimmis, offers an idea of how this Quranic decree manifested itself in reality.  In order to maintain their Christian faith, among other things, conquered Christians had to agree to the following: 

We shall not build, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new monasteries, churches, convents, or monks’ cells, nor shall we repair, by day or by night, such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims … We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it. We shall show respect toward the Muslims, and we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.  We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims… We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims. We shall use only clappers in our churches very softly. We shall not raise our voices when following our dead…  We shall not bury our dead near the Muslims. We shall not build houses overtopping the houses of the Muslims.

During the colonial era and into the mid 20th Century, as Egypt experimented with westernization and nationalism, Christian persecution was markedly subdued.  Today, however, as Egypt all but spearheads Islam’s resurgence-giving the world key figures and groups such as Sayyid Qutb, Hassan Bana, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda’s Aymen Zawahiri in the process-that is, as Egypt reclaims its Islamic identity, the Copts find themselves again under persecution.

Today, popular Muslim preachers on Egyptian TV openly condemn Christians, publicly calling for the return of Dhimmi status; Copts and their churches are almost always attacked on Friday, immediately after the weekly mosque sermons and to cries of "Allahu Akbar!" demonstrating the Islamic pedigree of the attack. 

None of this is surprising when one considers that even Egypt’s Grand Mufti himself, often touted in the West as a "moderate," recently classified all Christians[3] as "infidels," or kuffar,[4] a term that immediately positions Copts as enemies to be suppressed. 

Aside from the fact that practically every week an account of Muslims attacking Copts emerges-whether the destroying of churches, the killing of Copts for wearing crosses, the abducting, raping, and force-converting of Coptic girls-perhaps nothing exemplifies their plight as the following governmental, that is, institutionalized, stipulations:

According to the Second Article of the Egyptian Constitution,[5] Sharia law-which is based on the anti-Christian words of the Quran and prophet Muhammad as contained in the Hadith-is "the principal source of legislation"; and since Dhimmitude is part and parcel of Sharia law, expectations for Copts to behave as subdued, second-class citizens, or Dhimmis, becomes implicit.  For instance, and in accordance with the aforementioned stipulations of the Pact of Omar, it is next to impossible for churches to be built.

The Egyptian government likewise makes it next to impossible for Muslims to convert to Christianity (apostasy is a crime under Sharia). Among the more popular cases are Mohammad Hegazy[6]: he tried formally to change his religion from Muslim to Christian on his I.D. card-in Egypt, people are identified by their religion, again, as stipulated in the Pact of Omar -only to be denied[7] by the Egyptian court.  Conversely, it takes mere days for Christian converts to Islam to change their religious I.D.

Most recently, several aspects of the Maspero massacre revealed the Egyptian government’s inherent hostility to its Christian citizenry:

Soldiers screamed "Allahu Akbar!"[8] and cursed "Infidels" as they approached and attacked Coptic protesters; a video of an Egyptian soldier boasting that he shot a Christian in the chest is greeted by the crowd around him with "Allahu Akbar!"[9]; and after the incident, Dr. Hind Hanafi, president of the University of Cairo, recommended separating wounded Christians from wounded Muslims admitted into the hospital, thereby institutionalizing religious discrimination, even in hospitals.[10]

Aside from these formalized aspects, Egyptian officials are notorious for turning a blind eye to Muslim mob attacks on Christians and their churches.  In fact, it is this governmental complacency-or complicity-regarding attacks on Christians that that caused Copts to demonstrate at Maspero in the first place, before the government, including through the use of snipers, death squads, and tanks that intentionally ran over protesters, initiated the bloodbath that followed.

Anyone familiar with Muslim doctrine and history, especially as it applies to Egypt and the Copts, will find none of the above surprising; rather, the treatment of Copts in the Medieval era and their treatment today demonstrate great continuity-from the destruction of churches to the subjugation of Christians. 

However, because there was a lull in this animosity, from the colonial era when Islam was on the wane, to just a few decades ago, most Westerners, deeming events closer to their time and space more representative of reality, ignore the continuum of history and doctrine dealing with persecution, and thus fail to comprehend what is otherwise so obvious and open for the world to see.  This is exacerbated by the fact that the articulators of knowledge-the media, academia, and apologists of all stripes-in the name of multiculturalism and political correctness, have made uncomfortable truths all but unknowable.   

In short, the evidence of Muslim persecution of Christians in general, persecution of Egyptian Copts in particular, is overwhelming-doctrinally, historically, and current events.  What is lacking is a Western paradigm that can accept-and act upon-this evidence.

 

APPENDIX A

The following two reports discuss the Maspero Massacre and the events leading up to it, namely, the destruction of yet another Coptic Church, and provide proper context to the plight of Egypt’s Copts.

Report 1: Egypt-Destroying Churches, One at a Time

What clearer sign that Egypt is turning rabidly Islamist than the fact that hardly a few weeks go by without a church being destroyed, or without protesting Christians being attacked and slaughtered by the military?

The latest chaos in Egypt-where the military opened fire on unarmed Christians and repeatedly ran armored vehicles over them, killing dozens[11]-originates in Edfu, a onetime tourist destination renowned for its pharaonic antiquities, but now known as the latest region to see enraged Muslims destroy a church.

This church attack is itself eye-opening as to the situation in Egypt. To sum, St. George Coptic Church, built nearly a century ago, was so dilapidated that the local council and governor of Aswan approved renovating it, and signed off on the design.

It was not long before local Muslims began complaining, making various demands, including that the church be devoid of crosses and bells-even though the permit approved them-citing that "the Cross irritates Muslims and their children."[12]

Coptic leaders had no choice but to acquiesce, "pointing to the fact that the church was rebuilt legally, and any concessions on the part of the church was done for the love for the country, which is passing through a difficult phase."

Acquiescence breeds more demands: Muslim leaders next insisted that the very dome of the church be removed-so that the building might not even resemble a church-and that it be referred to as a "hospitality home." Arguing that removal of the dome would likely collapse the church, the bishop refused.

The foreboding cries of "Allahu Akbar!" began:[13] Muslims threatened to raze the church and build a mosque in its place; Copts were "forbidden to leave their homes or buy food until they remove the dome of St. George’s Church"; many starved for weeks.

Then, after Friday prayers on September 30, some three thousand Muslims rampaged the church, torched it, and demolished the dome; flames from the wreckage burned nearby Coptic homes, which were further ransacked by rioting Muslims.

This account of anti-church sentiment in Egypt offers several conclusions:

First, the obvious: animosity for churches, demands that they be left to crumble, demands to remove crosses and stifle bells, are an integral part of Islamic history and dogma.[14]  That church attacks in Egypt always occur on Friday, Islam’s holy day, and are always accompanied by religious cries of "Allahu Akbar!" should be evidence enough of the Islamist context of these attacks.

Because there was a lull in this animosity from the colonial era to just a few decades ago, most Westerners, deeming events closer to their time and space more representative of reality, incorrectly assume that church toleration is the rule, not the exception in Islamic history, which has more frequently been draconian to churches, and is back: "the Muslim Brotherhood announced immediately after the revolution that it is impossible to build any new church in Egypt, and churches which are demolished should never be rebuilt, as well as no crosses over churches or bells to be rung."[15]

This is also why Muslim authorities are complacent, if not complicit. According to witnesses, security forces, which were present during the Edfu attack, "stood there watching." Worse, Edfu’s Intelligence Unit chief was seen directing the mob destroying the church.[16]

As for the governor of Aswan, he appeared on State TV and "denied any church being torched," calling it a "guest home" (a common tactic to excuse the destruction of churches[17]). He even justified the incident by arguing that the church contractor made the building three meters higher than he permitted: "Copts made a mistake and had to be punished, and Muslims did nothing but set things right, end of story."[18]

Equally telling is that perpetrators of church attacks are seldom if ever punished. Even if sometimes the most rabid church-destroyers get "detained," it is usually for show, as they are released in days, hailed back home as heroes (this, too, goes back to Muslim dogma).

This year alone has seen the New Year church attack, which left 23 dead;[19] the destruction of the ancient church of Sool,[20] where Muslims "played soccer" with its sacred relics; the Imbaba attacks,[21] where several churches were set aflame; and now Edfu, wherein, as usual "none of the attackers were arrested."[22]

Indeed, three days after Edfu, Muslims attacked yet another church.[23]

Aware that they are untouchable, at least when it comes to making infidel Christians miserable, anti-Christian Muslims have a simple strategy: destroy churches, even if one at a time, safe in the knowledge that, not only will they not be prosecuted, but Egypt’s military and security apparatus will punish the infidel victims should they dare to protest.

Report 2: Egypt’s Massacre of Christians: What the Media Does Not Want You To Know

Western media coverage of the recent massacre of Coptic Christians in Cairo, Egypt-in which the military killed dozens of Christians and injured some 300-was, as discussed earlier, deplorable.[24] It merely repeated the false propaganda of the complicit state-run media, without checking facts. Since then, further proofs of the lies and brutality surrounding the massacre have emerged; they are compiled in the following report which consists of facts and videos from Arabic sources-many of which have not appeared in the Western media.

This report documents: 1) the activities of the Supreme Military Council of Egypt and de facto ruler; 2) the lies and duplicitous tactics of both the Military Council and its media mouthpiece, Egyptian TV; and 3) the anti-Christian sentiment pervading all aspects of this incident.

The Egyptian Military

Along with a new report by Magdi Khalil asserting that the day before the planned march, a "death squad" of snipers hid atop buildings and shot at protesters, armored vehicles intentionally chased after and ran over protesters, killing and mutilating many.[25] Videos captured by witnesses included:

o   A high-speed armored vehicle willfully plowing over unsuspecting Christian demonstrators.[26]

o   Another armored vehicle chasing protesters, and a soldier opening fire into the fleeing crowds.[27]

o   High-speed armored cars running amok in the middle of the crowds, including chasing protesters on the curb, as well as soldiers beating protesters.[28]

o   More eyewitness testimony attesting to the brutality of the massacre, and they are many, and the victims include Muslims. Videos: 1[29]  2[30]  3[31]  4[32]  5[33]

The Tactics of the Military Council (or "War is Deceit")[34]

After the incident and notwithstanding crushing evidence, Egypt’s Military Council held a news conference wherein senior official, Mahmoud Hegazy,[35] spun lie after lie: he stated that the military would "never, never" run over civilians; that the very idea was "impossible, impossible!" and "Shame on those who accuse the Egyptian military of such things!… Never has our military run over a single person, not even when combating the Enemy [Israel]."[36]

Hegazy portrayed the Christian protesters as the aggressors, attacking and killing "honorable" soldiers. To prove his point, he showed an image of a protester on top of a stalled armored vehicle, throwing a rock at the soldier inside, and a video of a military vehicle-that he claimed was hijacked by a protester-driving wildly into the crowd.

Hegazy’s deceit lies in the fact that the "hijacked" vehicle running amok, and the one stalled and attacked by a protester, were one and the same vehicle: Al Dalil revealed that both vehicles had the same identification number.[37] In other words, when the vehicle in which a soldier was chasing and running over protesters finally stalled, the protesters then attacked it. Egypt’s leaders willfully manipulated the footage to exonerate themselves and portray the Copts as violent aggressors.

Several eyewitnesses, including Muslims, further stated that, to hide the "evidence," they saw soldiers hurling the mutilated bodies of those run over into the nearby Nile River.[38] 

As Copts have long suspected, the "thugs" (al-baltagiyya) who always appear in protests attacking Christians seem to be men whom the military uses to create an excuse to open fire and exercise brutality. Muslim eyewitnesses say they saw the thugs coming with State Security:[39] Al Dalil showed a video clip of a soldier exposed dressed as a civilian, interspersed among Coptic protesters, and other videos showing the thugs cooperating with the military.

A video[40] might offer the greatest proof: Days before the massacre, when Copts were protesting the destruction of their latest church,[41] around 20 Egyptian soldiers and security personnel captured a protester and mercilessly beat him (while calling him an "infidel," to put the beating in context).[42] Mixed among the military (camouflage uniforms) and security (black uniforms) is what appears to be a plainclothes civilian, who proceeds to stab the Christian protestor in the head with a knife several times; the victim later received 20 stitches. The plainclothesman is most likely a member of the military or security, dressed as a civilian for stealth purposes, otherwise he would not have been able to move among them so casually.

The Role of the Egyptian State Media (or "War is Deceit")[43]

"Egyptian TV"-demonstrating, unsurprisingly, that state-run media always serve dictatorial regimes-merely propagated the lies of the Military Council.

Even as armored vehicles were mowing down Christian protesters, Egyptian TV broadcast footage of reporters saying, "Help, the Copts are killing our heroic, patriotic soldiers and burning Qurans!" One segment on Egyptian TV had an outraged reporter condemning Christians-"as if they were the Israeli enemy"-for killing "our noble protectors [soldiers], who never once fired a single shot."[44] As a result, many Muslims took to the streets brutally attacking Christians and their property.

Egyptian TV also lied by saying three soldiers died at the hands of Copts: officials at the TV station later confessed to making it up.[45] That, however, did not stop a barrage of op-eds in Egypt blaming the Christians for their own massacre.[46]

Due to Egyptian TV’s misinformation, several Egyptian reporters unequivocally condemned it. Anchorwoman Dina said: "I am ashamed that I work at this despicable TV channel… Egyptian TV was effectively calling for civil war between Muslims and Christians… Egyptian TV has proven that it is a slave to those who rule." Another news anchor, Mahmoud Yousif, announced that he "washes his hands of what Egyptian TV is broadcasting."[47]

Anti-Christian Hate

Although it should be clear that anti-Christian sentiment fueled this latest Muslim slaughter of Christian minorities, a few specifics follow:

  • Soldiers screamed "Allahu Akbar!" and cursed "Infidels!" as they approached and attacked the protesters[48]-which of course is not so unexpected when one considers that, even in olden times and in movies, the Egyptian military was called the Jihadiyya (the organization that wages holy war).
  • A video of a soldier boasting that he shot a Christian in the chest is greeted by the crowd around him with "Allahu Akbar!"[49]
  • After the incident, Dr. Hind Hanafi, president of the University of Cairo, recommended separating wounded Christians from wounded Muslims admitted into the hospital, thereby institutionalizing religious discrimination, even in hospitals.[50]

Conclusion

A massacre at this level never occurred during the thirty-year reign of ousted president Hosni Mubarak, and yet Mubarak is being charged with "crimes against Egyptians." What about the Military Council? It has committed greater crimes-even though it has been in charge for less than a year. Saddam Hussein was condemned by the international community for using chemicals on his own people; where are the international community, the media, and the so-called human rights groups when it comes to a government running over its own civilians with armored vehicles and having "death squads" of snipers shooting at them?

Finally, if this report testifies to crimes against humanity, consider what it says about diplomacy: If Egyptian leadership lies and deceives to suppress its internal "infidel" citizens-whose "crime" was to object to the continual destruction of their churches[51]-how credible can it be to external "infidels," such as the U.S.?

 

APPENDIX B

The following list of articles and reports by the author further discuss the plight of Egypt’s Copts:

 

 

TRANSCRIPT OF RAYMOND IBRAHIM’S TESTIMONY

TOM LANTOS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

DECEMBER 7, 2011

 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’m taking somewhat of a different approach. I think one of the best things to begin to understand the situation for the Copts and how it’s being exacerbated is – excuse me – is to establish context, for starters. And the fact is, what we are hearing about tonight – or today, I’m sorry – is about a phenomenon that has been going on for about fourteen hundred years. This is not something new. The sort of – and so the key to understand to where we are today is to establish the continuity from former centuries past. And the amazing thing is, when you look at history – and this is my field, history and doctrine, when you look at these two – especially history, you will find that what happened to the Coptic people when Islam invaded Egypt in the 7th Century, and as recorded by reliable Muslim historians, medieval Muslim historians who had no great love for the Copts, when you look at these texts, you will find that they are identical to what is happening today. And there’s – I mean, it’s – the parallels are just outstanding how just identical they are. And I’ll just give you some examples. Of course, there’s the attacks on Copts in general. That has been going on. Attacks on churches. I was reading the other day from a medieval source, a primary source from a Muslim who talked about in one emir’s reign in that time they destroyed three thousand churches. Abduction of girls. Christian girls and rape. And forced conversions. Plunder as expectations from second-class citizen Copts, taking what’s called the jizya, collective punishment.

All of these have past precedents for fourteen hundred years and are well documented in Islam’s own historical texts. Now when you look at that and you bring it to today and we fast forward to the 21st Century and what we’re seeing today, to me, this is the key. Now you understand that this is not an aberration. What we’re seeing. This is not something strange. But rather part and parcel of Islamic history, especially in Egypt. And I’m mentioning to you Islamic primary sources and I think that’s important because these are not sources that were written by, you know, polemicists or Christians or non-Muslims, but by Islam’s own most authoritative and revered historians and theologians. And they make it unequivocally clear that Islam, from its entrance into Egypt, decimated the Coptic people and their churches and all but their civilization. There were a few, of course, times when it was better and then it would get worse. And, you know, one guy – one, for example, person, he’s known as Al-Maqrizi and he’s one of the most popular and authoritative historians of Egypt, medieval Egypt. And he, again, while you read it and you see that he’s a very faithful Muslim and he has no great sympathy for the Copts, he is so objective and he declares all of these points that we are talking about today. So the reason I bring this to you, again, is to show that the continuity is there. This is nothing new. This is nothing strange. Now we come up to – I mentioned a little bit of history, I’d like to quickly discuss some doctrinal issues.

The word dhimmi, which was not known before, but has become somewhat famous nowadays and including a new coinage of it, which is dhimmitude – and I think that’s all good, because these words need to come out in the open. I think it’s also a little bad, because they’ve been somewhat taken out of context and popularized inaccurately, but the word itself in fact is integral to Islamic law. The word dhimmi. And from the beginning of Islam’s entry into Egypt and the other non-Muslim territories, dhimmi is a person, a non-Muslim, who of course does not accept Islam, wants to maintain their religious identity, in this case the Christian Copts, but to do so, they have to accept several debilitating and humiliating circumstances. And this goes to the Koran. The Koran itself, Koran 9, surah 9, verse 29, says to Muslims, fight the people of the book – and these, of course, include Jews and Christians – until they pay the jizya, which basically means tribute, to their overlords, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves utterly subdued. Now this is the Koran and to Muslims, the infallible word of God that transcends all time and is applied back then in the era that I’m discussing and to many Muslims today applies to today and needs to be upheld vis a vis people like the Copts, non-Muslims. So what it ultimately means is – this concept of dhimmi is someone who does not want to become a Muslim, who willingly has to accept second class citizen status, and whose rights ultimately depend on the goodwill of the Muslim overlords.

And another seminal treatise that was written and goes back and it’s called The Pact of Umar, named after either the first khalif or probably another khalif by the same name, but this pact, again, when you read it, it was what Christians had to sign in order to not be molested and destroyed. And among the things that it says is number one, we cannot – we Christians cannot build or repair our churches. We cannot practice our religion openly. We must show respect to Muslims. We must not offend Muslims. It even says we shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit down. All of this was enforced then, all of it is coming back now in strong force. Now, all of it has been now, for example, the issue of churches in Egypt. As you see, there are always being attacked, they are always being destroyed. As far as the government is concerned, it’s like pulling teeth just to try to get a permit to repair a church. And again, this goes to this. These pacts and these doctrines, which are so little known in the West and which seem to be just some – you talk to people about it, they hear these words and they think these are just some sort of throwback from ancient history, they’re really not that relevant today, but they’re immensely relevant to those and to the practitioners of the faith who think of these as divine institutions of their religion. And then there’s another aspect to all of this. I’ve discussed the historic and the doctrinal aspects of keeping Copts and others, non-Muslims, suppressed. But there’s a word that’s not well known at all and it was coined – in a few decades ago – and it’s called Islamicate. And what Islamicate means is that just because Islam teaches, let’s say X, Y, and Z, but as a culture, a Muslim need not necessarily be a religious or a pious Muslim to start doing these things. Because they become ingrained and permeate the culture. So seeing a Copt as, for example, a second class citizen, whether you’re a secular Muslim or not, these sorts of things feed into the culture and the worldview of the general populace of Egypt. And so the radical Muslim, of course, will be more hostile and more fierce. But even the general Muslim or the people in the military who do not identify themselves as radicals, because of the fourteen hundred years of these institutionalized forms of discrimination, these ideas have become just part of the worldview of so many people in Egypt, unfortunately. And, but usually it became into sort of discrimination.

But now as you see these Islamist parties, not just the Salafists, who are getting, you know, lots of, I think, twenty percent of the vote, and what are they doing? They’re going beyond little things like just discrimination. And now they want to reinstitutionalize things like the jizya. Which again goes back – this goes back to that Koranic verse I read, which says fight them until they pay tribute. Jizya means paying tribute, which is a way of acknowledging that you are a second class citizen and you’re buying your life. Because you’re paying for it, you’re being blackmailed. And so now these people who are being voted into the new government of Egypt, the Salafists, are calling openly for the return of jizya. And of course, it’s not just a matter of money, but with the return of jizya comes all of these other aspects of quote/unquote dhimmitude. To be expected of Copts. Which includes no more churches at all whatsoever. No more – you have to hide your religious identity. No crosses in public. And so forth. And all of these other types of debilitations. Now, and then you have the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, of course, the problem is, I think there’s so many people who see the Brotherhood and the Salafists as sort of, you know, one’s moderate and one’s radical. That’s, of course, a joke. The Muslim Brotherhood – a better way to see it, or to give you an American analogy is you can think of them as the Muslim Brotherhood are the Democrats and the Salafists are the Republicans. In other words, they’re two faces of the same coin. Because in America, Democrats and Republicans, of course, have different viewpoints. But they are all based on the same source and they’re all based on the same paradigm. And it’s the same for these Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. Whatever their little differences are, they all go back and trace their sources to shariah law. Which is not very – which is clear cut what it says. But also, the Muslim Brotherhood are a little smarter than the Salafists. Because they know the game and they know they’re not going to sit up now and start talking about institutionalizing jizya. Or dhimmi status for Copts. They’re not going to say that now. Whereas the Salafists will say it now. But at any rate, now you have these two groups who are about sixty percent – who won sixty percent of the votes. And their opinions of the Copts go straight back to what I was discussing from fourteen hundred years ago. Which is this worldview that they are there to be plundered, kept suppressed, and their churches destroyed. And this is why we’re seeing it all now.

Now I started earlier by saying that somewhat – we’re here having a hearing about a phenomenon that’s been going fourteen hundred years. So why are we having a hearing? Why is this new? It’s new because we – it’s sort of, this goes to somewhat of intellectual history, but if you look at what happened the last two hundred years with the colonial era, when the Western powers invaded and colonized the Muslim world, what happened then is, and this is a fact, that so many of the Muslims turned their back on Islam, in a way. In other words, they were just secular and Islam was something that, you know, was not taken seriously. And this is well known. And a perfect example, of course, is Ataturk, who abolished the caliphate in 1928, I believe, and he, of course, this was the nation which was the head of the Muslim world. So right at the early 20th Century, what you had is Muslims were experimenting with Westernizing and secularizing and modernization and nationalism. This is what happened. Now during that era, yes, Coptic persecution was markedly subdued. And this is also a fact. The discrimination, the subtle things, they were still there. But the sort of wholesale attacks that we’re seeing today were really not that present. Now what this has done, though, because this sort of – or this new approach, went on for a few generations, is it’s created a Western worldview that does not see the earlier precedents or the past history. So now, in history classes, when we discuss – when we discuss the history of the Middle East and Egypt, we just start talking about the Muslim world or from about the 1900s and the 20th Century, where no, there wasn’t a lot of persecution and, if anything, the paradigm is that the West was the evil oppressive force and the Muslim world was not. So this, I think, has created an intellectual hurdle to understand what’s really going on.

And of course it’s exacerbated tremendously by the Western mainstream media, which some of my colleagues have pointed out, never really reports the truth or really equivocates. They use the term sectarian strife. When you have a few thousand Muslims who go burn down a church and they call that sectarian strife, which in my mind, suggests, you know, two equal – equally powerful forces, like Sunnis and Shias killing each other. And that’s not the case. But the media tries so hard to come off neutral. And I even remember during the Maspero massacre where, you know, the tanks were intentionally running down and mowing over Copts and killing them and opening fire, FOX News, which is considered the, you know, the conservative balanced one, was telling us about how soldiers were crying as they watched Copts attack their fellow soldiers. Okay, and so – and then, you know, the holders and articulators of knowledge in the West have completely undermined reality. And the same goes with academia. Academia, especially area studies, seems to exist solely now just to put the best spin on things and to make, you know, if, you know, your area of study is the Muslim world, none of these things that we’re talking about, these historical aspects, these primary sources, Koranic and historical, that I’m quoting, you’ll never hear these. And I know from firsthand experience, I was at Georgetown, for instance, for awhile, and every class was based upon how either the Islamic world has been abused or how, you know, we have to understand them, we have to appease them and this sort of thing. So it is unfortunate that we have all these intellectual hurdles that are making something that is fourteen hundred years old and so obvious to anyone who has studied this and looked at this, it’s unintelligible to us today. And we have to have a hearing to even start talking about it. And it is because of all of these forces, you know, whether they’re intellectual history and sort of anachronisms or whether it’s the mainstream media and political correctness run amok or academia. But this is the situation we’re at. And there’s nothing new. But I think the only – the good news apparently is that we’re still in the early stage. There’s still many Egyptians in Egypt, including Muslims who are not of that variety who are not the Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood and so we are not exactly in the medieval era where it’s a wholesale massacre. And so I think there is some light at the end of the tunnel. And what needs to be done, of course, is to support and as my colleagues all said, the aid must be conditional upon these sorts of things.

We must identify and support the liberal voices. Because they are our friends. The idea of saying, you know, democracy, using that word and, you know, everything has to stop before that word, is ridiculous. Because what’s being – what’s happening in Egypt is democracy means the people are going to bring the sort of government that they want. And ostensibly that sounds good and fair. But what is – when they bring a fascistic government, you know, Hitler, for instance, the people brought him to power. The people had support for him. So that doesn’t mean we should – what I submit, then, is we should not always be – stand beholden before the word democracy as if it’s this sort of sacrosanct thing. We have to understand it’s a mode of government. But what really matters is what the people themselves do create with this mode once they’re empowered.

 

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copt#Etymology

[2] http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pact-umar.asp

[3] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10608/top-muslim-declares-christians-infidels

[4] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10742/grand-mufti-distorts-word-infidel-to-dupe-infidels

[5] http://www.uam.es/otroscentros/medina/egypt/egypolcon.htm

[6] http://www.meforum.org/2631/dissident-watch-mohammed-hegazy#_ftn5

[7] http://archive.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=news%E2%8C%A9=en&length=long&idelement=5209&backpage=archives&critere=&countryname=Egypt&rowcur=25

[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaGr75r34w

[9] http://www.youtube.com/user/thecopticmartyrs?gl=US#p/u/15/qyn2Yow1aN8

[10] http://islamexplained.com/UVG/UVG_video_player/TabId/89/VideoId/791/037—-.aspx

[11] http://news.yahoo.com/24-dead-worst-cairo-riots-since-mubarak-ouster-232452205.html

[12] http://www.light-dark.net/vb/showthread.php?p=4939#post4939

[13] http://www.aina.org/news/20110908193725.htm

[14] http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/pact-umar.asp

[15] http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2011/09/20/who%E2%80%99s-in-charge-of-the-holy-sepulchre/

[16] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8zlWL35PE4&feature=player_embedded#!

[17] http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/two-churches-torched-in-indonesia/456930

[18] http://www.light-dark.net/vb/showthread.php?p=4939#post4939

[19] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12101748

[20] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/8968/no-revolution-for-egypt-christians

[21] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/9595/muslim-inferiority-complex-kills-christians

[22] http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Attacks-against-Coptic-churches,-part-of-a-plan-to-expel-Egypt%E2%80%99s-Christians-22828.html

[23] http://www.aina.org/news/20111004183833.htm

[24] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10498/the-egyptian-military-crimes-against-humanity

[25] http://www.dostor.org/opinion/11/october/17/58242

[26] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1sbJehl-ms

[27] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo0qxrg0Ink&feature=related

[28] http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=gI4T1UUoOt0

[29] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsP2qqBf-0I

[30] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo51tpAWgyE&feature=related

[31] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2tJBygSFys

[32] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBZ0Xbk8xUQ

[33] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZYYzr5WHk&feature=related

[34] http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/052-sbt.php#004.052.269

[35] http://www.copts.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3358&Itemid=1

[36] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5TbgK8Mlkk

[37] http://islamexplained.com/UVG/UVG_video_player/TabId/89/VideoId/800/038—-.aspx

[38] http://www.light-dark.net/vb/showthread.php?p=9936#post9936

[39] http://m.elfagr.org/dailyPortal_NewsDetails.aspx?nwsId=8178&secid=10

[40] http://www.youtube.com/user/thecopticmartyrs?gl=US&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fuser%2Fthecopticmartyrs%3Fgl%3DUS#p/u/28/IXYgzHRYRxQ&has_verified=1

[41] http://www.raymondibrahim.com/10492/egypt-destroying-churches

[42] http://www.aina.org/news/2011109123846.htm

[43] http://www.meforum.org/2538/taqiyya-islam-rules-of-war

[44] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7m08JJdxao

[45] http://bikyamasr.com/45280/egypt-state-television-admits-to-making-up-news-over-soldiers-deaths/

[46] http://www.aina.org/news/20111017175249.htm

[47] http://www.arabnet5.com/news.asp?c=2&id=113867

[48] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKaGr75r34w

[49] http://www.youtube.com/user/thecopticmartyrs?gl=US#p/u/15/qyn2Yow1aN8

[50] http://islamexplained.com/UVG/UVG_video_player/TabId/89/VideoId/791/037—-.aspx

[51] http://www.hudson-ny.org/2489/egypt-destroying-churches

 

 

A predictable fiasco

The Egyptian elections have resulted in a rout for the throngs whose springtime hopes for freedom are now facing the prospect of a nuclear winter at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and its fellow Salafists.  These Islamists appear to have garnered 60% of the seats in the next parliament and the opportunity to shape the country’s new constitution in line with their ambitions to impose the totalitarian doctrine of shariah nationwide.  That will be bad news for the people of Egypt, for Israel and for us.

This fiasco was made predictable in early February when President Obama announced that President Hosni Mubarak had to leave office at once.  It was clear even then that the most organized, most disciplined and most ruthless group would prevail in the ensuing, chaotic electoral environment.  Apart from the military, in Egypt that group has been the Muslim Brotherhood basically since its founding in 1928.

Press reports indicate that the Obama Administration spent $200 million to help non-Islamist parties organize and compete in last week’s elections.  If true, it adds insult to injury.  The money was wasted, not only because the liberal and secular elements to whommuch of it reportedly was given, were hopelessly outgunned by the Brotherhood.  More importantly, it was squandered because Team Obama, in the person of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, made a point in the run-up to the vote of welcoming the Muslim Brotherhood’s participation in the “political dialogue” in Egypt.

In so doing, the Obama administration not only signaled that it could do business with the Brotherhood.  It gave lie to any pretense of concern about the Islamists’ role in the massacre of Coptic Christians (which will be the subject of an important hearing in the House of Representatives’ Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on Wednesday).

Similarly, the President and his subordinates appear determined to ignore the Brotherhood’s virulently supremacist and jihadist creed.  They are also evidently indifferent to the strategic plan issued in 1991 by the MB’s American arm and the phased approach for realizing its goal of “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”  (Documents enshrining these ambitions were introduced uncontested into evidence by federal prosecutors in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.)

At the same time, the Obama administration is reaching out to and empowering Muslim Brotherhood front groups as their exclusive interlocutors with Muslims inside the United States.  Incredibly, the Department of Homeland Security has recently promulgated guidelines that effectively require all trainers and their training material to be approved by “community leaders” – read, officials of organizations like the Islamic Society of North America and the Council on American Islamic Relations that the federal government has identified as tied to the Brotherhood.

One wonders about the extent to which such fatally flawed policies reflect the influence exercised on senior administration officials by people with deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.  For example, Secretary of State Clinton’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, has a mother (Saleha Abedin) and a brother (Hassan Abedin) who have been linked, respectively, to the Muslim Sisterhood and Brotherhood.  Could such associations be coloring Mrs. Clinton’s judgment about, notably, the advisability of having the MB come to power in Egypt and the reliability of the Islamist government of our NATO “ally,” Turkey?

Perhaps such influences are also shaping Secretary Clinton’s willingness to engage next week in Washington with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in aneffort to bridge differences between the United States and Islamists bent on its submission to shariah.  The issue involves one of our most fundamental liberties – freedom of expression.  Unfortunately, it is hard to see how this conclave will do anything but impinge upon that constitutionally protected right.

After all, the OIC has been seeking for years to secure worldwide acceptance of its shariah-adherent prohibition on expression that offends Muslims.  The Obama administration has already associated itself with a watered-down version of this initiative.  Now, it seems intent on finding a way to deny free speech to those who the Islamists depict as “Islamphobes.”

Given this agenda, it is ironic that Vice President Joe Biden has been lately touting the importance of free speech – most recently during a visit to, of all places,  Turkey.  He seems to epitomize the old saw that “somebody always doesn’t get the word.”  Neither the Veep nor Mrs. Clinton (who started her dialogue with the OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Istanbul in July) seem to have noticed that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan is in the process of completing the Islamization of his country andsnuffing what is left of independent media that dares to challenge him.

In fact, what is happening in Turkey right now is a roadmap for what is to come in Egypt – and wherever else the Muslim Brotherhood or its ilk come to power.  The willful blindness of the Obama administration to the reality that such Islamists are determined to impose shariah at the expense of freedom has – as was predictable and predicted – facilitated that outcome in Cairo.  If it persists, such malfeasance will simply substitute the despotic misrule of clerics for the despotic misrule of secular autocrats, to the detriment of the people most immediately affected and, in due course, of America’s as well.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org), a columnist for the Washington Times and host of the nationally syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WRC 1260 AM.

New congressional directive restricts Muslim Brotherhood groups access to FBI

Early in 2009 the FBI publicly severed all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood front group the Council on American-Islamic relations (CAIR), following the conviction of Hamas fundraisers associated with the Holy Land Foundation (HLF).  CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the plot, the largest terrorism funding trial in U.S. history.  Despite this, PJ Media national security and terrorism correspondent Patrick Poole reported last April that FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni continued to meet with CAIR officials, shirking the FBI’s specific ban.

Now, Mr. Poole has broken a story that the Congress has included new restrictions on CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the continuing budget resolution President Obama signed last week.

Under Division B, Title II of the bill, is the following provision:

Liaison partnerships– The conferees support the FBI’s policy prohibiting any formal non-investigative cooperation with unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism cases. The conferees expect the FBI to insist on full compliance with this policy by FBI field offices and to report to the Committees on Appropriations regarding any violation of the policy.

This provision seeks to expand the FBI ban beyond CAIR to include other HLF unindicted coconspirators such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

Poole observes:

What impact this new legislation will have remains to be seen, but it is clearly intended to roll back the Obama administration’s penchant for relying on groups identified by government prosecutors as fronts for designated terrorist organizations as partners for “outreach.”

…

Congressional officials expressed skepticism that the new legislation would permanently stop the schizophrenic government policy of engaging groups and individuals that the government itself has said are tied to terrorist groups, but it puts the Obama administration on notice that the days of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” outreach policies are drawing to a close.

Read Poole’s exposé in its entirety at PJ Media.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood’s growth in America has expanded greatly since the 1990s, with their stated goal “that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands.”   The Muslim Brotherhood’s plan to impose Shariah and censorship in America reaches into our media, our government, our military and law enforcement, our textbooks and our colleges.  Anyone who openly opposes the Muslim Brotherhood – that would be well over 200 million Americans, according to polls – has been labeled an “islamophobe” by the leftwing media.

Enough is enough.  Americans across the nation have started pushing back against the Muslim Brotherhood’s trademark intimidation and threats.  The Center for Security Policy is tracking these efforts to expose and to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood’s  influence over  how we talk and think, how we govern ourselves and  enforce our laws, and how we make our own plans for our children’s future of freedom under the Constitution, not enslavement under Shariah law.  

We call it The Rollback.