Tag Archives: CAIR

Center for American Progress Defends Shariah, Charges America with Islamophobia

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 25, 2011: There they go again. Friday, the Center for American Progress released “Fear, Inc.,” yet another report in the increasingly hysterical bullying campaign to shout down criticism of political Islamist efforts to influence American foreign and domestic policy. Their latest “copy and paste” effort duplicates large sections of five nearly identical “investigations” just this year, complaining that millions of concerned Americans are Islamophobes.

The primary organizations–  what should be called the “Shariah Defense Lobby“– are the Center for American Progress/ThinkProgress, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with support from a handful of other far-left or Islamist bloggers and Washington lobbyists.

The “Shariah Defense Lobby” whitewashes and protects political, legal, military and religious doctrines of Shariah law (Islamic law) from scrutiny. One of its major goals is to silence all criticism of Islamist aggression, jihadist violence, or Shariah violations of human rights and civil liberties.

Frank J. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, noted that:

The ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ is in a race against time to hide the grim reality of Shariah law as it is actually enforced, as Islamist movements and political parties throughout the Arab world are aggressively seeking to govern by Shariah. Most significantly, the ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ refuses to discuss a simple fact: secular and democratic activists in Egypt and elsewhere in the Muslim world oppose Shariah in their countries, just as Americans oppose it here.

The latest report also attacks venerable American family foundations for supporting educational efforts on national security and counter-terrorism. The funding sources of the “Shariah Defense Lobby” should be exposed to public scrutiny. For example, CAIR– an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror financing trial in American history–  has reportedly received millions in foreign funding from Islamist contributors, including the Organization of Islamic Conference (aka Cooperation). This year, CAIR lost its nonprofit tax status because of its refusal to file tax forms that would have revealed its sources of funding.

In addition to CAIR’s foreign financing, this latest paper from the Center for American Progress reveals that the project depends on money from the Open Society Foundations, a funding vehicle of far-left billionaire George Soros. George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC. He has amassed a personal fortune estimated at about $14.5 billion (as of 2011). His company, Soros Fund Management, controls at least another $27.9 billion in investor assets. Soros’s foundation network– whose flagship is the Open Society Institute (OSI)– has reportedly dispensed billions to a multitude of far left organizations.

The “Shariah Defense Lobby,” which aggressively defends Shariah from its critics, has produced a year-long campaign of remarkably identical agitprop papers, all with a single goal: to attack the millions of Americans who are concerned about political Islamists’ growing power here in the U.S. and abroad.   In these increasingly shrill reports, the “Shariah Defense Lobby” keeps attempting to silence the great majority of Americans who express legitimate concerns about home-grown Islamist terrorism, and about Islamist efforts to enforce Shariah law on American Muslim families and even on non-Muslim Americans.

The Center for American Progress– authors of “Fear, Inc.”– are trying to make Americans afraid of discussing one of the greatest national security threats we face. Thankfully, the American people aren’t buying what they’re selling: the campaign is having the opposite effect of what the Lobby intends.

 

Selected Papers from the Shariah Defense Lobby ‘Copy-and-Paste’ Essay Series

January 2011: Thomas Cincotta, “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace: Private Firms, Public Servants and the Threat to Rights and Security” (Political Research Associates)

March 2011: Wajahat Ali and Matthew Duss, “Understanding Sharia Law” (Center for American Progress)

May 2011: “Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical ‘Shariah Threat’ to Our Judicial System” (American Civil Liberties Union)

June 2011: Corey Saylor, et al. “Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and Its Impact in the United States” (Council on American Islamic Relations and University of California at Berkeley)

June 2011: Robert Steinback, “Jihad against Islam” (Southern Poverty Law Center)

August 2011: Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, Faiz SHakir, “Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” (Center for American Progress)

 

 

The Center for Security Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital to American security and then ensures that such issues are the subject of both focused, principled examination and effective action by recognized policy experts, appropriate officials, opinion leaders, and the general public.

For more information visit www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org.

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Libya: Dictator Down, Islam Rising

Watching the jubilant Libyan rebels celebrating in the streets of Tripoli, it’s easy to get caught up in the euphoria of the moment as a brutal tyrant is at last being brought down. The spokeswoman at the Department of State was giddy with visions of those "universal human rights" the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) supposedly espouses. RAND trotted out Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, who perfectly seriously discussed the "weapons buy-back programs" that he thinks NATO countries might launch in Libya to disarm everybody once the fighting is done.  Even commentators at the usually more sober-minded Fox News were giving President Obama "B" grades for his "success" in helping remove Qaddafi from power. One of the only analysts of substance who seemed to be keeping his head even as all around him were happily losing theirs has been the IDC Herzliya Gloria Center’s Barry Rubin, who rightly faults the Obama administration for approaching events in the Middle East "not as a lion but as a jackal" and projecting weakness by demonstrating a fundamental failure to perceive what is, in fact, a determined regional sweep by the forces of jihad and shariah. As Rubin wrote in his 21 August 2011 post, "The gap between dominant Western perceptions of the Middle East and the region’s reality is dangerously wide."

Part of that reality is actually on full display with the online posting of Libya’s "Draft Constitutional Charter for the Transitional Stage. As the equally level-headed Dr. Andrew Bostom wrote in his 22 August 2011 posting, "the salient feature of Libya’s new draft constitution is Part 1, Article 1: Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)." [emphasis added]

For those still unsure of what is actually happening in Libya, that Article, which places Islamic law (shariah) at the very top of the constitution, means that principles Jeffersonian republicans consider foundational to a democratic system-such as equality, individual freedom, pluralism, tolerance, minority protections, consent of the governed, natural rights/natural law derived through exercise of human reason, independent (secular) judiciary, and a vibrant free press-even if mentioned later in the draft text, have no real validity. It is what comes first and is stated explicitly in the constitution that carries the real weight. In Libya’s case, that means Islamic law.

That should not surprise anyone who’s been watching Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the Libyan Transitional National Council spokesman: that prominent bruise in the middle of his forehead is called a zubibah. It’s the bump a devout Muslim gets from pressing his face to the floor five times daily while praying. Described by human rights advocates as a strong proponent of the rule of law, Jalil studied Islamic law at the University of Libya. He’s also served as a judge, prosecutor, and Justice Minister under Qaddafi’s rule. So, he’s an experienced and knowledgeable jurist. The only question, then, is "Of which law is Jalil such a champion?" The obvious answer is Islamic law-shariah.

Western analysts, leaders, and media seem somehow oblivious to the fact that Middle Eastern Muslim Arabs have nothing in their experience to prepare them for anything remotely resembling "universal human rights." Quite to the contrary, these Islamic tribal societies jumbled together into nation states by arbitrary lines drawn on a 20th century map, are far more familiar with incessant, remorseless warfare than Western concepts of rights or reason. Islam is a belief system based on revelation, not rational thought. Neither democracy nor recognition of the worth of the individual is an automatic default position for human beings. And indeed, under the Articles of the 1990 Cairo Declaration, all the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation-OIC) opted out of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and proclaimed instead their adherence only to shariah. Libya remains an OIC member and the new head of its TNC (just officially recognized by the U.S. as Libya’s legitimate governing authority) is a shariah scholar.

It is impossible not to wish the Libyan people well in their quest to throw off tyranny. Their struggle is far from over, though, even as triumphant gunmen strut about Qaddafi’s burned out Tripoli compound decked out in his headgear and jewelry. One suspects that the looting and revenge-taking has just begun even as a guerrilla insurgency by remaining Qaddafi loyalists sputters to life, well-equipped with all the latest weaponry from Qaddafi’s armories, including Russian-made surface-to-air missiles that have many observers worried. Those taking over are no less a cause for concern: as Walid Phares points out in his insightful Fox News analysis of 23 August 2011, the Libyan TNC is a motley crew comprising "former diplomats, bureaucrats, and military officers from the old regime" as well as "politicians and leaders from movements and groups from the political left, Marxists, Socialists, Arab Nationalists, liberals and Islamists." As in Egypt and elsewhere across the region, however, it is the proponents of shariah who are the best organized and most determined to impose their agenda in the post-revolutionary milieu. Their push for power in Libya already is underway, openly supported by Yousuf al-Qaradawi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and will accelerate from positions within the TNC as its grip on the country is consolidated.

By dealing preferentially with the Muslim Brotherhood and other shariah-adherents in both Egypt and Syria, U.S. leadership is enabling the substitution of secular tyranny with Islamic tyranny in both places. That segments of the population in these places actually clamor to be ruled by shariah does not make them democracies. If the U.S. does the same thing in Libya and fails to provide strong, visible support to the genuine democrats, liberals, and reformers that do still exist in Libya, the outcome there will not be the one dreamy-eyed groupies of the Arab Spring envisioned, but another new regime, founded on Islamic law, that is hostile to American interests and those of our remaining friends and allies.

Blood on the Streets

Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets.

In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces’ open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups.

The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph’s Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman.

Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph’s Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians.

In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah’s massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi’ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006.

In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008.

It is to be hoped that Thursday’s sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt.

By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack.

The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams.

There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt.

Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday’s attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF’s institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula.

This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear.

LIKE THE watershed events in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Thursday’s attack from Sinai did not come out of nowhere. It was a natural progression of the deterioration of the security situation in Sinai in recent months and years.

For more than a decade all the security trends in Sinai have been negative.

Sinai is populated mainly by Beduin. When Israel controlled Sinai from 1967 through 1981, the Beduin were willing to cooperate with Israel on both civil and military affairs. When Egypt took over in 1981, it punished the Beduin for their willingness to work with Israel. Perhaps as a consequence of this, perhaps owing more to regional trends emanating from Saudi Arabia, since the mid-1990s, the Sinai Beduin, like neighboring tribes in the Jordanian desert and, to a degree, their Israeli Beduin brethren, have been undergoing a process of Islamification as the loyalties of more and more tribes have been transferred to regional and global jihadist forces.

The first tangible indication of this came with the 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Taba.

That attack was followed by bombings in Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab in 2005 and 2006. All the attacks were reportedly carried out by Beduin terror cells affiliated with al-Qaida.

Since the Palestinian terror war began in 2000, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak did almost nothing to prevent massive arms smuggling by Palestinian terror groups through Sinai. The Palestinians – from Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad – were assisted by Sinai Beduin as well as by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah. Mubarak also did next to nothing to prevent human and drug trafficking from Sinai into Israel and Gaza.

Mubarak did, however, protect the Egyptian regime’s control over Sinai by among other things sealing the official land border from Egypt to Gaza at Rafah, defending Egyptian police stations and other security installations and vital infrastructure such as the gas pipeline from attack. Forces from his Interior Ministry kept a firm grip on the Beduin tribes.

As bad and increasingly complex as the security situation was becoming in Sinai under Mubarak, it has drastically deteriorated since he was overthrown in February. Actually, the Egyptian government arguably lost control over Sinai while Mubarak was being overthrown, and until last weekend made no attempt to reassert its sovereign control over the area.

As the world media ecstatically reported on the photogenic anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, almost no attention was paid to the insurgency unfolding in Sinai. Shortly after the protests began in Cairo in mid-January, Hamas sent forces over the border into Egyptian Rafah and El-Arish to attack police stations with rifles and RPGs. Hamas fighters reportedly went as far south as Suez. There they joined other terror forces in bombing and raiding the police station in the town that abuts the Suez Canal. In consortium with local elements, Hamas carried out the first of five bombings so far of Egypt’s gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.

In a sharp departure from Mubarak’s policies, the ruling military junta opened Egypt’s border with Gaza and so gave local and regional jihadists the ability to freely traverse the international border.

Hamas and its fellow terrorists have used this freedom not only to steeply expand the missile and personnel transfers to the Gaza Strip. They have also escalated their challenge to Egyptian regime control over Sinai.

Over the past several months, in addition to recurrent bombings of the gas pipeline, these forces have attacked police stations and the port at Nueiba. In the wake of their July 30 attack on El-Arish in which two policemen and three civilians were killed, jihadist cells distributed leaflets calling for the imposition of Islamic law on Sinai.

According to media reports, jihadists also took over many of the main highways in Sinai at the beginning of August.

THESE LATEST assaults and the open challenge the leaflets and road takeovers pose to Egyptian state authority caused the military to deploy two battalions of armored forces to Sinai last weekend.

The stated aim of their operation is to defeat the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist cells operating in the peninsula. Since Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel prohibits the deployment of Egyptian military forces to Sinai, the Egyptian military regime requested and received Israeli permission for the deployment.

It is unclear how effective the latest Egyptian military deployment had been until Thursday’s cross-border attacks on Israel had been. What is clear enough is that Israel cannot expect to receive serious cooperation from the Egyptian military in combating the enemy forces emanating from Sinai. Indeed, at this point it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Egyptian military personnel participated in the murderous attacks.

Passengers in one of the civilian cars attacked by gunmen in the first stage of the operation told the media that their attackers were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.

Almost immediately after the attacks took place, Egyptian military authorities denied the attackers entered Israel from Sinai. These denials signaled that the Egyptian military government will not assist Israel in its efforts to defend itself against the rapidly escalating threats it now faces from Sinai.

And this is not surprising. Since it overthrew Mubarak, the ruling military junta has assiduously cultivated close ties with the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood.

Three days before the attack, the IDF announced that its 2012-2017 budget includes no increase in either force size or equipment levels. As one IDF official told Reuters, "Our current capabilities are sufficient for our foreseeable requirements, though we will be investing anew in training and improving rapid-response mobility to allow for more flexibility during emergencies."

Recently, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz explained that the reason the IDF does not intend to change the training or size of the Southern Command, despite Egypt’s increasing hostility towards Israel, is because Israel doesn’t want to provoke Egypt by preparing for the worst. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to ignore Egypt and point his finger at the usual suspects in Gaza.

While it is reasonable to assume the Palestinians were involved in the attack, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the only culprits. And given the deteriorating security situation in Sinai and Egypt’s escalating hostility, it is madness to limit Israel’s attention in the wake of the attack to Gaza.

What the attack shows is that Israel must prepare for the new strategic reality emerging in Egypt. True, it is early yet to predict how Egypt is going to behave in the coming years. But we do not need perfect information about the emerging strategic reality to prepare for it.

Israel’s requirements are clear. We need to invest the necessary resources to fortify the 240-km. border with Egypt by completing the security fence.

We need to increase the Southern Command’s force levels by at least one regular division, preferably an armored one. We need to equip the IDF with more tanks and other platforms designed for desert warfare. We need for the IDF to begin training in desert warfare for the first time in 30 years.

We need to drastically ramp up the quality of our intelligence about Egypt.

On Thursday, we were shown that although the revolution in Egypt was not about Israel, Israel will be its first foreign victim as the new Egypt rejects the former regime’s peace with the Jewish state.

It is a bitter reality. But it is reality all the same and we need to contend with it, as the blood in our streets makes clear.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Rollback #3: Why did the White House hide the names of 3 guests at Iftar dinner? CSP filing FOIA request to find names of attendees since 2009

August 10, 2011, President Obama hosted his third annual Iftar dinner celebrating Ramadan at the White House.  Neil Munro of the Daily Caller noted that the invite list was much shorter than previous years and had been scrubbed of several “controversial” Muslim leaders who had attended in the past.  Daniel Pipes,  writing at the Investigative Project, identified three Islamist attendees who were not on the official list released by the White House but who are reported to have attended:

  • Mohamed Magid, President of the Islamic Society of North America;
  • Awais Sufi, Chairman of Muslim Advocates; and
  • Haris Tarin, Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

Why did the White House conduct a cover-up of the attendance by these three Muslim leaders of Islamist lobbying and advocacy groups?  Here’s what these three groups share:  first, they have all lobbied the White House, U.S. Treasury and other agencies to gut regulations that prevent Islamic charities from funding terrorism.  And second, they have objected to law enforcement efforts to prevent homegrown terrorism.

In 2009 and 2010, the White House entertained these same leaders who bragged that the Iftar dinners were an opportunity to change U.S. policy on terror financing.  These dinners appear to have become lobbying events under the guise of religious outreach.  Therefore, the Center for Security Policy is filing a FOIA request to OMB asking for the names of all invitees to all agency dinners since 2009 – including the names that the White House has chosen in the past to cover up, like these three below:

  • Imam Mohamed Magid, President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); an organization named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas-funding trial.  ISNA released a special announcement the next day confirming that Magid had attended, and was “very pleased with the focus of Obama’s address.”

Last year as ISNA’s Vice President, Magid and ISNA West Zone Representative Monem Salam attended an intimate Iftar hosted by the U.S. Department of Treasury, with Salam boasting that “ISNA representatives were given a very open platform to discuss our concerns."  The pair met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, explaining that a paramount concern was:

…’the fear by many Muslims to donate zakat (charity), due to the increased scrutiny by the government of donations to Muslim organizations.’  Additionally, many organizations and individuals still have assets frozen by the government, despite the fact that no charges have been brought against them for misuse of funds or ties to terrorism, which would warrant such freezes.

During Ramadan 2010 ISNA announced that its “leadership and staff have been busy attending iftars hosted by the White House, State Department, Federal and State Agencies, Embassies, elected officials and interfaith partners.”  And that in 2010:

…a phenomenal next step has been made where government iftars become coupled with workshops to provide resources and benefit the Muslim community.  The US Department of Agriculture (DOA) and the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations (CCMO) have paired the first of such events, scheduled for August 31, 2010.

  • Awais Sufi, Chairman of Muslim Advocates, an organization that in March 2010 wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to make good on the zakat-related promises in his well-known 2009 Cairo speech:

… for American Muslims, philanthropic activities are complicated by federal laws, policies and practices.  Surveillance, investigations and prosecutions of several Muslim charities have created a chill on well-intentioned charitable activities.  Many American Muslims have faced federal law enforcement scrutiny of their giving or associations with lawful, U.S. charities and as a result are understandably fearful of giving.

In June, 2006, Awais Sufi participated in a panel critical of government efforts to regulate Islamic charities suspected of terrorism funding.

 

 

Obama and Awais Sufi

 

As detailed in the thorough dossier on Muslim Advocates at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project, the organization has a history of opposing cooperation with the FBI or other law enforcement by American Muslims:

    • In hearings held in March 2011, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) read several cases off the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s list of 2010 homegrown terror cases, and asked Muslim Advocates Executive Director Farhana Khera  whether she stood by an alert on the Muslim Advocates’ web page advising people "not to speak with law enforcement officials without the presence or advice of an attorney."  She did. Kyl called that "stunning" because cooperation from Muslim Americans is vital in thwarting potential terrorist plots.
    • In December 2010, Muslim Advocate’s Khera called FBI sting operations that have stopped homegrown terrorism “entrapment operations”  that fuel “anti-Muslim sentiment.” 
    • In an April 13, 2010 article titled “Americans Should Be Free to Pray without FBI Snooping,” Muslim Advocates’ Khera accused the FBI of “planting informants” in “American Muslim congregations.”
    • In July 2010 at the ISNA convention, Muslim Advocates’ Khera spoke in defense of Imam Ahmed Afzali, who had pleaded guilty in March 2010 to lying to the FBI about tipping off New York subway bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi.  Khera said Afzali was trying to “self-police” the community.
    • In December 2007, another Muslim Advocates counsel Akil Vohra denied the connection between Muslim charities such as the Holy Land Foundation (later convicted) and terrorism.

 

  • And Haris Tarin, Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), an organization whose opposition to regulation of charities linked to terrorism funding is concisely documented by the Investigative Project in their 2010 88 page dossier on MPAC (see the section on MPAC and terrorism funding here).  The MPAC dossier lists case after case of MPAC’s predictable denial of any guilt by organizations subsequently convicted of terrorism funding,  accompanied always with harsh criticism of the FBI investigations as an "assault on the community" that "further isolated and alienated law-abiding Muslims."  As the Investigative Project states, “Based on its record, the odds seem substantially longer against MPAC shedding its stance as a perpetual apologist for terrorists and their financiers.”

Of course the Muslim “charities” in question are prohibited from receiving zakat because they have been deemed by the Treasury Department to be funding terrorism or are under investigation for doing so.  It is not surprising that MB-associated groups like ISNA, Muslim Advocates or MPAC would be lobbying for the lifting of sanctions against these organizations, but it is deeply disturbing that the U.S. Department of the Treasury would be giving them such insider access to prominent officials to do so.

The Center for Security Policy has filed a FOIA request for a list of other Iftar-related events and invitees from 2009-2011 at all federal agencies and branches of government.  The public has a compelling interest in any special access given to MB-associated organizations, especially when they have publicly stated that they are lobbying the Treasury Secretary to reduce limits on funding for potential jihadist terrorism.

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.  Follow the campaign at www.therollback.org.

Rollback #1: Rep. Jeff Duncan Takes on the Muslim Brotherhood in the US

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.

As reported July 27, 2011 in The State Column, South Carolina:

 

South Carolina freshman Representative Jeff Duncan is no stranger to the anti-jihad movement in Congress. He first made his mark in the spring of 2011 on the national stage when as a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security Duncan went after Islamic shariah law and declared it to be a threat to the U.S. Constitution.

More recently, in July 2011, Duncan authored and successfully introduced an amendment dubbed the “Muslim Brotherhood Amendment” to the Fiscal Year 2012 Foreign Relations Authorization bill (H.R. 2583). According to Duncan, this amendment will “ensure that no American tax dollars go to that [Muslim Brotherhood] organization.”

In his first year in Congress, Duncan has taken a clear and defined stance against Islamic radicalism within the United States. His tone against the Muslim Brotherhood has been well received by his constituents in South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. One fan on Duncan’s Facebook fan page had this to say: “Thank you very much for the work you are doing to get the Muslim Brotherhood out of the loop for Federal tax money. God Bless you and shield you from harm.” Another fan, had this to say: “It sure is refreshing to see  US Congressman stand up for what is right and protect our American values. Thanks for the amendment prohibiting MB funding with taxpayer dollars. Keep up the good work, we love it!”

However, Duncan, along with Members of Congress that subscribe to the same notion that the Muslim Brotherhood poses a threat to the United States, faces fierce opposition from national groups like the controversial for profit civil rights organization CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations).

According to a former intern at CAIR Nation Headquarters office in Washington D.C., the civil right group is directly tied to the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States. In a Texas court in 2007 FBI Special Agent Laura Burns testified that CAIR was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. In the face of opposition by national groups it is clear that Rep. Duncan continues to move forward in his quest to end radicalism in America.

CAIR In Retreat; Turns To Iranian State Media As Last Resort

So far in 2011, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has posted 30 video clips from 24-hour news networks to its official YouTube channel.  Six were from CNN and two were from Fox News Channel.  The remainder must be from MSNBC, right?

Wrong.  The other 22 clips were from PressTV, the state-owned 24/7 English-language propaganda network of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Possibly because of their proven ties to Hamas and unindicted co-conspirator status in the Holy Land Foundation trial, CAIR talking heads are no longer regularly featured on the "big three" 24-hour cable news networks in America.  Hence twenty-two of the high-value messaging videos featuring prominent national staff that CAIR chose to put on its YouTube channel were produced in Iran, while only 8 were produced in the U.S.

PressTV is now the self-appointed propaganda arm for CAIR, a job that no one else will do.  For example, "Video: Anti-Muslim Hate Promoted by Vocal Minority (CAIR)," and a recent hit piece on Pamela Geller’s new book: "Video: Leading Islamophobe Publishes New Anti-Islam Book (CAIR)."

The genius of PressTV is its generic name, slick production values and the American-accented English of its hosts, which leads the casual viewer to believe they are just another American cable outlet.  In fact PressTV is produced and broadcast from Tehran, with bureaus in London, Washington, Seoul, and Iranian vassal states Syria and Lebanon.

PressTV hosts/presenters include former British MP George Galloway, a close friend of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s and supporter and funder of the Hamas regime in Gaza; and Tariq Ramadan, European-Muslim "intellectual," and grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna who was denied a

U.S. visa for alleged ties to Hamas. You may remember PressTV’s recent report on American Muslim "mourners [honoring] the life and legacy of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Ayatollah Khomeini.

PressTV may be one of the two friendly outlets still open to CAIR leaders.  Last Friday the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) reported that CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad had appeared via telephone on the Hamas-linked Palestinian network Al-Quds TV on July 23, alongside the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood group, the Islamic Action Front.

This lack of support in the American media reflects a lack of support by American Muslims for CAIR as shown in a recent Gallup poll "examining U.S. Muslims’ political, social, and spiritual engagement 10 years after September 11," which found that only 12% of Muslim-American men and 11% of Muslim-American women felt that CAIR, the nation’s highest-profile Muslim group, represented their interests.

And when the American networks come to CAIR with questions based on CAIR’s past associations with terrorists, CAIR’s leadership shies away.  For example, this June when Fox News reported on a controversial February 5, 2002 luncheon that included top Pentagon lawyers, Jihadist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, Mr. Awad was apparently not available for comment:

Fox News sent questions to Awad through a spokesman at CAIR, including whether he had provided positive recommendations for Awlaki to either the FBI or the Defense Department immediately after 9/11.

Fox News also asked whether Awad attended a fundraiser at UC Irvine on Sept. 9, 2001, for the defense of Jamil al-Amin who was later conficted of killing a sheriff’s deputy in Atlanta Georgia. Documents show Awad provided a video message for the fundraising event and al-Awlaki went to the fundraiser. On Sept. 10 of that year, al-Awlaki, who has documented ties to three of the five Sept. 11 hijackers, flew back to Washington, landing on the morning of Sept. 11.

Fox News contacted CAIR multiple times over a 10 day period and there was no response after the initial contact when a spokesman asked for questions to be submitted.

CAIR is under siege from many directions these days.  This June the IRS revoked CAIR’s former non-profit tax-exempt status.   Perhaps a full disclosure of CAIR’s financial records would expose funding from Iran and other foreign sources. But the American public may never know, because CAIR failed to file the required non-profit Form 990 tax returns for three consecutive years.

While CAIR shrinks from American media outlets, patriotic Muslim Americans are filling the gap.  Former U.S. Navy medical officer Dr. Zuhdi Jasser founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks "as an effort to provide an American Muslim voice advocating for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, and the separation of mosque and state."   Dr. Jasser proudly displays 30 videos from his 2011 appearances on cable news shows on his website – and all of them are from networks based in the United States.

Dr. Jasser is one of the founders of a new coalition of like-minded Muslim groups called the American Islamic Leadership Coalition.  Their motto: "As American Muslim leaders, we come together to defend the US Constitution, uphold religious pluralism, protect American security and cherish genuine diversity in the practice of our faith of Islam."

Meanwhile, CAIR is in a state of siege: running away from the IRS, running away from the American media, running away from the American public, and even running away from American Muslims.

Originally published at BigPeace.com

The Jacksonian Foreign Policy Option

Over the past several months, a certain intolerance has crept into the rhetoric of leading neoconservative publications and writers.

This intolerance has become particularly noticeable since February’s neoconservative-supported overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and President Barack Obama’s neoconservative-supported decision to commit US forces to battle against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in March.

The basic concept being propounded by leading neoconservative writers and publications is that anyone who disagrees with neoconservative policies is an isolationist. A notable recent example of this tendency was a blog post published on Wednesday by Commentary magazine’s Executive Editor Jonathan Tobin regarding the emerging contours of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s foreign policy views.

After listing various former Bush administration officials who are advising Perry on foreign affairs, Tobin concluded, "Perry might have more in common with the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party than the isolationists." While this is may be true, it is certainly true that the neoconservatives and the isolationists are not the only foreign policy wings in the Republican Party. Indeed, most Republicans are neither isolationists nor neoconservatives.

Isolationism broadly speaking is the notion that the US is better off withdrawing to fortress America and leaving the rest of the world’s nations to fight it out among themselves. The isolationist impulse in the US is what caused the US to enter both world wars years after they began. It is what has propelled much of the antiwar sentiment on the far Left and the far Right alike since September 11. The far Left argues the US should withdraw from world leadership because the US is evil. And the far Right argues that the US should withdraw from world leadership because the world is evil.

Neoconservatism broadly speaking involves the adoption of a muscular US foreign policy in order to advance the cause of democracy and freedom worldwide. Wilsonian in its view of the universal nature of the human impulse to freedom, neoconservatives in recent years have wholeheartedly embraced the notion that if given a chance to make their sentiments known, most people will choose liberal democracy over any other form of government.

Former president George W. Bush is widely viewed as the first neoconservative president, due to his wholehearted embrace of this core concept of neoconservativism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Aside from their belief that if given the choice people will choose to be free, neoconservatives argue the more democratic governments there are, the safer the world will be and the safer the US will be. Therefore, broadly speaking, neoconservatives argue that the US should always side with populist forces against dictatorships.

While these ideas may be correct in theory, in practice the consequence of Bush’s adoption of the neoconservative worldview was the empowerment of populist and popular jihadists and Iranian allies throughout the Middle East at the expense of US allies. Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections in 2006. Its electoral victory paved the way for its military takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Hezbollah’s participation in Lebanon’s 2005 elections enabled the Iranian proxy army to hijack the Lebanese government in 2006, and to violently take over the Lebanese government in 2009.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s successful parliamentary run in Egypt in 2005 strengthened the radical, anti-American, jihadist group and weakened Mubarak.

And the election of Iranian-influenced Iraqi political leaders in Iraq in 2005 exacerbated the trend of Iranian predominance in post-Saddam Iraq. It also served to instigate a gradual estrangement of Saudi Arabia from the US.

THE NEOCONSERVATIVE preference for populist forces over authoritarian ones propelled leading neoconservative thinkers and former Bush administration officials to enthusiastically support the anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo in January. And their criticism of Obama for not immediately joining the protesters and calling for Mubarak’s removal from power was instrumental in convincing Obama to abandon Mubarak.

Between those who predicted a flowering liberal democracy in a post-Mubarak Egypt and those who predicted the empowerment of radical, Muslim Brotherhood aligned forces in a post-Mubarak Egypt, it is clear today that the latter were correct. Moreover, we see that the US’s abandonment of its closest ally in the Arab world has all but destroyed America’s reputation as a credible, trustworthy ally throughout the region.

In the wake of Mubarak’s ouster, the Saudis have effectively ended their strategic alliance with the US and are seeking to replace the US with China, Russia and India.

In a similar fashion, the neoconservatives were quick to support Obama’s decision to use military force to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from power in March. The fact that unlike Syria’s Bashar Assad and Iran’s ayatollahs, Gaddafi gave up his nuclear proliferation program in 2004 was of no importance. The fact that from the outset there was evidence that al-Qaida terrorists are members of the US-supported Libyan opposition, similarly made little impact on the neoconservatives who supported Obama’s decision to set conditions that would enable "democracy" to take root in Libya. The fact that the US has no clear national interest at stake in Libya was brushed aside. The fact that Obama lacked congressional sanction for committing US troops to battle was also largely ignored.

Neoconservative writers have castigated opponents of US military involvement in Libya as isolationists.

In so doing, they placed Republican politicians like presidential candidate Rep.

Michele Bachmann and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin in the same pile as presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan.

The very notion that robust internationalists such as Bachmann and Palin could be thrown in with ardent isolationists like Paul and Buchanan is appalling. But it is of a piece with the prevailing, false notion being argued by dominant voices in neoconservative circles that "you’re either with us or you’re with the Buchananites." In truth, the dominant foreign policy in the Republican Party, and to a degree, in American society as a whole, is neither neoconservativism nor isolationism. For lack of a better name, it is what historian Walter Russell Mead has referred to as Jacksonianism, after Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US. As Mead noted in a 1999 article in The National Interest titled "The Jacksonian Tradition," the most popular and enduring US model for foreign policy is far more flexible than either the isolationist or the neoconservative model.

According to Mead, the Jacksonian foreign policy model involves a few basic ideas. The US is different from the rest of the world, and therefore the US should not try to remake the world in its own image by claiming that everyone is basically the same. The US must ensure its honor abroad by abiding by its commitments and maintaining its standing with its allies. The US must take action to defend its interests. The US must fight to win or not fight at all. The US should only respect those foes that fight by the same rules as the US does.

THE US president that hewed closest to these basic guidelines in recent times was Ronald Reagan.

Popular perception that Reagan was acting in accordance with Jacksonian foreign policy principles is what kept the public support for Reagan high even as the liberal media depicted his foreign policy as simplistic and dangerous.

For instance, Reagan fought Soviet influence in Central America everywhere he could and with whomever he could find. Regan exploited every opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union in Europe. He worked with the Vatican in Poland.

He deployed Pershing short-range nuclear warheads in Western Europe. He called the Soviet Union an evil empire. He began developing the Strategic Defense Initiative. And he walked away from an arms control agreement when he decided it was a bad deal for the US.

Throughout his presidency, Reagan never shied away from trumpeting American values. To the contrary, he did so regularly. However, unlike the neoconservatives, Reagan recognized that advancing those values themselves could not replace the entirety of US foreign policy. Indeed, he realized that the very notion that values trumped all represented a fundamental misunderstanding of US interests and of the nature and limits of US power.

If a Jacksonian president were in charge of US foreign policy, he or she would understand that supporting elections that are likely to bring a terror group like Hamas or Hezbollah to power is not an American interest.

He or she would understand that toppling a pro-American dictator like Mubarak in favor of a mob is not sound policy if the move is likely to bring an anti-American authoritarian successor regime to power.

A Jacksonian president would understand that using US power to overthrow a largely neutered US foe like Gaddafi in favor of a suspect opposition movement is not a judicious use of US power.

Indeed, a Jacksonian president would recognize that it would be far better to expend the US’s power to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad – an open and active foe of the US – and so influence the nature of a post-Assad government.

For all the deficiencies of the neoconservative worldview, at least the neoconservatives act out of a deep-seated belief that the US is a force for good in the world and out of concern for maintaining America’s role as the leader of the free world. In stark contrast, Obama’s foreign policy is based on a fundamental anti-American view of the US and a desire to end the US’s role as the leading world power. And the impact of Obama’s foreign policy on US and global security has been devastating.

From Europe to Asia to Russia to Latin America to the Middle East and Africa, Obama has weakened the US and turned on its allies. He has purposely strengthened US adversaries worldwide, as part of an overall strategy of divesting an unworthy America from its role as world leader.

He has empowered the anti-American UN to replace the US as the arbiter of US foreign policy.

And so, absent the American sheriff, US adversaries from the Taliban to Vladimir Putin to Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are empowered to attack America and its allies.

In the coming months, Republican primary voters will choose their party’s candidate to challenge Obama in next year’s presidential elections.

With all the failings of the neoconservative foreign policy model, it is clear that Obama’s foreign policy has been far more devastating for US and global security.

Still, it would be a real tragedy if at the end of the primary season, due to neoconservative intellectual bullying, the Republican presidential nominee were forced to choose between neoconservativism and isolationism. A rich, successful and popular American foreign policy tradition of Jacksonianism awaits the right candidate.

NYT Searches for the Leader of the Anti-Shariah Movement, Finds Me Instead

I was featured, complete with pictures (and online video), in a 2,000+ word New York Times article about the anti-sharia movement in this country, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Andrea Elliot, which appeared in the Times’ July 31 Sunday edition, front page, above the fold.  Impressive, no?  Unfortunately, Ms. Elliot exposed herself as biased and in denial, and has since given an interview to NPR in which she more openly evidences journalistic condescension, in addition to the bias one normally expects from the mainstream media.  The story was quite explicitly intended to link a national movement to a single individual, me, and then to suggest that this individual — again, me — was manipulative, hidden, and controversial.  This is evident from the title of the article: "The Man Behind the Anti-Sharia Movement."

The truth remains at a distance, and this analysis will suggest only a more objective telling of the facts.  I say "suggest" because I am the subject of the Times "profile," and as such I cannot realistically claim objectivity.  I will allow others more at a distance to weigh in.  One writer, Ben Shapiro, whom I don’t know, has already done that, and I must note my appreciation (see "In Defense of David Yerushalmi"). 

We begin at the beginning.  Ms. Elliot and I have traded emails on sharia and related matters for about 3 or 4 years.  We first "met" when she did a long profile of Dhaba (Debbie) Almontaser, the spearhead and one-time principal of New York City’s failed Arabic-centric public school called the Khalil Gibran International Academy.  (While KGIA’s doors remain open, everyone both within and without the school’s community of present and past teachers, administrators, students, parents, and early supporters admit it has failed as both an educational center and as a "multi-cultural" outreach.)

Ms. Elliot contacted me several months before the "anti-sharia movement" article was to run saying she wanted only background on the movement since she knew I was involved.  I conditioned my agreement to provide background on an explicit commitment from her that the article was not about me.  She agreed.  When we finally sat down for a three-hour lunch, it was evident at the end of the "background" discussion that Ms. Elliot was focusing too much on personalities, me especially, and not enough on the substantive arguments against sharia.  Every time I pressed her, though, she assured me that the story was "not about you." 

Well, that little bit of journalistic dishonesty we all know is part of the tradecraft.  Journalists will often deceive their subjects about the focus of an interview to get them to open up.  My colleagues and I understood this and discussed the risks of any interview with Ms. Elliot and the New York Times.  But we concluded those risks versus a major story by an acclaimed journalist, even a card-carrying member of the elite Manhattan progressive club like Ms. Elliot, were worth taking.  Why?  Because public policy work is as much about creating a serious discussion and framing it in some non-PC context as it is about suggesting actual legislation or new policies.

And, this goal was most certainly attained.  As Ms. Elliot points out in her story and in her interview with NPR, Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy was, along with others in this effort, able to take a failed national security policy and policy discourse, which treated Islamic-inspired jihad as some kind of ultimate perversion of Islam lacking dogmatic and normative grounding, into a serious discussion of classical and still extant authoritative Islamic law — sharia — as the threat doctrine motivating jihadists from all over the globe.  Determining what doctrine drives your enemy, especially one that can explain both the recruitment capabilities of your enemy and how he is able to bridge cultural, language, and nationality differences, and even intra-religious sect animosities, to come together to fight the West as the common enemy is the second step to defeating the enemy.  The first step, of course, is being able to articulate who the enemy is beyond the intentionally vague nomenclature of "terrorist" or "extremist."

Moving beyond Ms. Elliot’s purposeful deception that she was not writing about me, we come to her writing style (we’ll deal with substance as a final matter).  Ms. Elliot treats her targets — me and the "anti-sharia movement" — more broadly in similar fashion.  She begins by describing the "movement" as a kind of simplified ignorance.  She accomplishes this by implicitly ridiculing a politician in Tennessee who, rather than dealing with the serious matters of the state’s unemployment, home foreclosures, and the like, is dealing with the problem of sharia as a threat to the U.S. and to Tennessee.

Everyone will of course recall, but not because Ms. Elliot mentions it, that Carlos Bledsoe was an African-American Christian living in Tennessee where he was converted and "radicalized" sufficiently to attack an army recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas, leaving one soldier dead and one injured.  And, many will recall, again not because Ms. Elliot mentions it, that it is the Obama administration’s attorney general, Eric Holder, who informs us that homegrown jihad terrorism inspired by the likes of Yemen-based Awlaki is "one of the things that keeps me up at night" because "[t]he threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born."

While Ms. Elliot will no doubt plead that her reporting was a "fair" and "objective" narration of facts, a "fair" and "objective" assessment belies this claim.  Beyond her not-so-veiled ridicule of the anti-sharia movement, she allows herself this bit of rather subjective "analysis" of the merits of the anti-sharia movement: "Yet, for all its fervor, the movement is arguably directed at a problem more imagined than real."  Of course any assertion of fact to support a policy can be "arguably" something else.  In this day and age, you can find "authoritative" voices to argue about anything (battling "experts" in courtrooms across the country demonstrate this point).

But, Ms. Elliot positioned the "arguably" irrational anti-sharia movement as fighting phantoms without bothering to actually articulate what the threat from sharia is, or "arguably" is.  That is, she set up a straw man.  Thus, she turns the sharia threat into a caricature of a Tennessee politician ignoring "real" problems for "imagined" ones and then attaches a "fervor" to all of us who understand sharia as the enemy’s common threat doctrine.  The word "fervor" of course is to lend a sense of faith-based, that is, not real, religiosity to the "anti-sharia movement." 

And, in typical journalistic "objective" fashion, throughout the article, Ms. Elliot sets up in opposition every caricature of the "anti-sharia movement" with a serious academic or "Muslim leader" who dismisses the caricature as an absurd argument, just as one might expect.  What is the point of a 2,000+ word article using this formulation if not simply to ridicule one side of the argument?

Ms. Elliot then wastes no time in allowing her readers to pinpoint the source of this religious "fervor."  As she writes: 

In fact, it is the product of an orchestrated drive that began five years ago in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in the office of a little-known lawyer, David Yerushalmi, a 56-year-old Hasidic Jew with a history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam. Despite his lack of formal training in Islamic law, Mr. Yerushalmi has come to exercise a striking influence over American public discourse about Shariah.

Ah, a Jew, fervently Hasidic no less, with a "history of controversial statements about race, immigration and Islam."  He is the Svengali behind this crazy movement.  Ms. Elliot buttresses the "controversial statements" by citing the Anti-Defamation League’s attack on me as "bigoted" and then takes a few of my statements, typically phrased as questions in long and involved essays, out of context to suggest to the reader that I am somehow sympathetic to the Founding Fathers’ embrace of a representative government based on equality that compelled inequality against blacks and women.  Progressive and left-wing hit-groups like the ADL take my critique of conservatives who bury this problem of our founding generation and turn it on its head to somehow "prove" my bigotry.  Or, this cadre of deep thinkers takes my criticism of a politically correct discourse which prevents us from speaking about racial issues seriously and pronounces that this makes me a "white supremacist." 

Again, anyone, including Ms. Elliot, knows that I have never written anything that remotely speaks in favor of bigotry or "white supremacist" nonsense.  Indeed, my professional career and my published works demonstrate my commitment to protecting constitutional liberties for all Americans.  But, Ms. Elliot dare not "analyze" my actual work and inform her readers, nor does she mention my pro bono work on behalf of African-Americans and Muslim Americans.  At best, she allows me to desperately deny such allegations of bigotry, knowing this will sound, well, desperate.  For goodness’ sake, even the Jewish ADL accuses this Hasidic Jew of bigotry.  What more evidence do you need?

It is not just the fact that Ms. Elliot could have stated in her own voice quite objectively that I have never written anything that calls for discrimination against blacks, women, or even Muslims qua Muslims.  It is not just that Ms. Elliot might have thought to mention that my "controversial" remarks are "controversial" only among far-left ideologues, progressives, and Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas front groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).  Instead, Ms. Elliot buttresses her characterization of my writings as "controversial" by citing to the ADL.  But, the ADL "report" on my "controversial" writings is no different from CAIR’s and the far left’s critique: take a few analytical questions out of context and pose them as absurd and bigoted statements and then conclude that David Yerushalmi is a dangerous bigot.  Indeed, the favorite of the progressive critique is to assert with confidence that I am a "white supremacist," a hard feat for any Jew, much less a Hasidic one contentedly married for more than 20 years to a "dark-skinned" Sephardic Jewess of Iranian descent.

And, as for the ADL, Ms. Elliot neglected to mention that most religiously or politically active Jews discount the ADL as little more than a bank account for Abe Foxman, its long-term leader, who has turned the once-respected institution into a progressive mouthpiece.  Indeed, Ms. Elliot, in citing to the ADL as my chief and most legitimate critic, forgot to mention that this "Anti-Defamation" League has actually been sued successfully for, what else, defamation, by a Colorado couple accused of, what else, bigotry.  It took this courageous couple a decade, and legal battles all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but they finally forced the ADL to pay the state’s largest defamation judgment — in excess of $10 million!  And, this is the credible group accusing me of bigotry. 

Finally, as noted at the outset, in Ms. Elliot’s effort to drum up even more hype around her article, she conducted a 15-minute on-air interview with NPR.  In that interview, Ms. Elliot, to her credit, honestly exposes her own bias.  The anti-sharia movement, she opines, fails to treat sharia honestly.  Sharia, Ms. Elliot tells us, at least as Muslim Americans understand it, has nothing to do with jihad or terrorism or extremism.  Yerushalmi and those like him have "failed" to take into account these nuances among Muslims.  Moreover, the anti-sharia crowd has "conflated" (yes, another favorite word of progressive elites) a radical interpretation of sharia with the mainstream entirely innocuous interpretation.

Little needs to be said here in response beyond the following.  It is Ms. Elliot who has failed to take into account nuance in the form of the nuance of the threat from sharia.  First, if Muslims in Muslim countries overwhelmingly support the imposition of sharia as law to govern an Islamic political order, and if Muslims in Muslim countries overwhelmingly support the imposition of sharia criminal law, such as capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy, and even assuming Ms. Elliot is correct that Muslim Americans have somehow created a very different Islam from what their brethren in the Muslim world believe, how does she know or even assume that this distinction between American Islam and genuine Muslim Islam will continue?

And, how does Ms. Elliot discredit a peer-reviewed published research project by Prof. Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan University and me showing that 82 percent of U.S. mosques promote violent and jihad literature?  She writes: "The study … has drawn sharp rebuke from Muslim leaders, who question its premise and findings."  Who are these "Muslim leaders" and what are their exact criticisms?  We never learn.  Now, that is a fair and objective critique of a rigorous study that was peer-reviewed and approved for publication by two respected journals: Middle East Quarterly (already published) and Perspectives on Terrorism (soon to be published).

And, even more to Ms. Elliot’s substantive analysis of the sharia threat, if Muslim America and American policymakers are afraid to even talk about sharia as a threat, at least as it exists in the Muslim world, how can we know that the Muslim Brotherhood, Gulf oil-financed Salafists, and Iranian-backed mosques and madrassas in this country won’t soon make inroads by implanting the Muslim world’s understanding of sharia?

Ms. Elliot is silent on this point but certain that the anti-sharia movement is conducting a somewhat unsophisticated, crass, and un-nuanced discussion of sharia as a threat.  It should be enough, according to Ms. Elliot, to simply take the word of the Muslim Brotherhood, the apologists for sharia, and the progressives, all of whom are certain that Islamic terrorism and jihad have nothing to do with Islamic law and all to do with American excesses and immoral alliances in its foreign policy.  Now, that is a nuanced position!

 

David Yerushalmi is a litigator specializing in complex commercial matters and public policy.  He serves as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy.

It’s ‘Crazy’ to Ignore Shariah

As the nation mourns the loss in combat of thirty of its military heroes – including 22 members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6 – in Afghanistan over the weekend, the question inevitably occurs:  What are we fighting for that justifies this latest among so much sacrifice in that distant, backwards and inhospitable land?

Sen. John McCain suggested on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that the answer, in part, is to prevent the Taliban from taking over the country again – at horrific cost to the people and, in particular, the women of Afghanistan.  That would be a more credible goal if we were not simultaneously negotiating what amounts to the surrender of the country to Taliban representatives.

A more compelling justification would be if we were fighting to prevent the success of those who, like the Taliban, adhere to the politico-military-legal doctrinethey call shariah.  According to that doctrine, the entire world – not just Afghanistan – must submit to divine dictates as recounted by Mohammed and refined, interpreted and applied for over 1400 years by Muslim rulers (caliphs), scholars, institutions and jihadists.  It is the particular mission of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, notably al Qaeda, to accomplish this objective and establish a new, global caliphate to rule in accordance with shariah.

Unfortunately, many in this country remain clueless about this threat.  A particularly egregious example of official willful blindness was evident in an outburst last week by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. In response to criticism that he had appointed to his state’s superior court a Muslim lawyer known for his ties to shariah-adherent terrorists and their sympathizers, Christie declaimed: "[This] shariah-law business is crap…and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies!"

As Andrew McCarthy a former federal prosecutor, National Review essayist and constituent of the Governor observed over the weekend:

As Governor Christie ought to understand, shariah concerns can’t be dismissed as ‘crap.’ They help us sort out the pro-American Muslims we want to empower from the Islamists. When we dismiss these concerns, we end up building bridges to all the wrong people, as government has done, to its repeated embarrassment, for two decades. That is how we end up ‘partnering’ with the likes of Abdurrahman Alamoudi and Sami al-Arian (both ultimately convicted, with their ties to terrorism duly exposed); Salam al-Marayati, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee leader who argued that Israel should be at the top of the 9/11 suspect list; and such Islamist organizations as the Council on American Islamic relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which, though not indicted, were shown by the Justice Department to be co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case.

Unfortunately, as Mr. McCarthy observes, Gov. Christie is not the only one who is witless about the threat from shariah and the dangers associated with "building bridges" to its adherents, whether in the New Jersey Islamic community, among the Afghan Taliban or via Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR and ISNA.  Such "‘bridge building’ – code for ‘Muslim outreach,’ the law-enforcement strategy that started in the Clinton years, picked up steam in the Bush years and has become the backbone of Obama counterterrorism."

The extent to which such "outreach" has now morphed into unvarnished embrace of Muslim Brotherhood-tied entities is evident in the Obama administration’s "strategy" for "Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States" unveiled last week.  Notable for its moral equivalence – it studiously avoids specificity about the threat in favor of euphemisms such as "radicalization," "terrorism" and "violent extremism" that suggest threats from "Christian" and "right-wing" are equivalent to those from Islamists – the strategy calls for partnering with those who purport to eschew the "al Qaeda ideology."

In so doing, Team Obama is missing the same thing Chris Christie fails to comprehend:  Far from being "crazy" or the ideology of only so-called "extremists" like al Qaeda and its franchises and copycats, shariah also drives the Muslim Brotherhood.  That is true notwithstanding the fact that the Brotherhood uses non-violent – or more accurately pre-violent – means to advance shariah’s imposition.  According to its "phased plan," that will continue to be the case right up until the moment when the Brothers "seiz[e] power to establish their Islamic nation."

Consequently, what’s crazy, to use Gov. Christie’s term, are it is efforts to detect and defeat violent extremism by enlisting the very organizations that the federal government has established in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas are to be Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated entities. So is the Obama administration’s bid to "bridge" differences with the Brothers’ friends in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to stop free expression in the West– if it has whenever there are "consequences," with or without actual connections,  like, conveniently, that "right-wing" extremist’s murderous rampage in Norway.  Ditto, the White House’s reported decision to entrust to a deeply MB-penetrated Department of Homeland Security exclusive responsibility for determining who and what can be used to train local law enforcement and others charged with keeping us safe.

Here’s the bottom line: America is under assault by those who see its Constitution and liberties as the ultimate impediment to the triumph of shariah worldwide.  We will needlessly lose many more of our finest in Afghanistan, elsewhere around the world and ultimately here if we fail to recognize that it is crazy to believe and behave on any other basis.

Anti-American activities: A Cold War-style Effort to Root Out Civilizational Jihad

It is not exactly news that the Obama presidency is determined to go to unprecedented lengths to mollify, appease and otherwise pander to what it calls the “Muslim world.”  But the question has begun to occur:  At what point do these efforts cross the line from a misbegotten policy to one that is downright anti-American – hostile to our values, incompatible with our vital interests and at odds with our Constitution?

The evidence is rapidly accumulating that we have reached that point. Our representatives in Congress must have the courage to re-discover a lost vocabulary, one that is conscious of the fact that subversion of our counter-terror institutions—[and, indeed, our very understanding of the threat we face]—is a goal of our enemy in the War on Terror. The danger entailed cries out for congressional oversight, and corrective action.

What is needed is a new select committee modeled after the much-vilified, but ultimately vindicated, House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).  (This vindication is comprehensively documented in Yale University Press’ groundbreaking Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, and expanded in M. Stanton Evans’ 2009 Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies .  Members of Congress and their staff can only benefit from reading these studies to have a better understanding of the history of their own institution.)  Such a panel needs a mandate to investigate in particular the extent to which the Obama administration’s anti-American activities reflect the success of the toxic Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan) in penetrating and subverting both U.S. government agencies and civil institutions.

Consider a few examples of what appear to be such successes:

On June 30, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that the Obama administration will “welcome…dialogue with those Muslim Brotherhood members who wish to talk with us.” 

As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has observed, Eric Holder’s Justice Department appears to have basically stopped prosecuting alleged material support for terrorism. That was certainly the practical effect when it blocked prosecutors from bringing charges against Muslim Brotherhood fronts listed as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation money-laundering case. 

Such dereliction of duty would seem to be the practical upshot of President Obama’s  much-ballyhooed “Muslim outreach” speech in Cairo in the Spring of 2009 when he pledged to eliminate impediments to zakat.  Mr. McCarthy has noted that the only impediment to such Islamic tithing is the prohibition against the sort of material support to terror that is commanded by the Islamic political-military-legal doctrine known as shariah – which requires 1/8th of zakat to underwrite jihad.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported on 8 July that prosecutors in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia have asked a federal judge to reduce the twenty-three-year sentence of convicted terrorist and al Qaeda financier Abdurahman Alamoudi.  Before he was arrested for plotting with Libyan dictator the assassination of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Alamoudi was one of America’s top Muslim Brotherhood operatives.  

In that capacity, this self-professed “supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah” helped found and operate dozens of MB front organizations.  One of these, dubbed the Islamic Free Market Institute, had the mission of influencing and suborning the conservative movement.  During the Clinton administration, Alamoudi was given the responsibility for selecting, training and credentialing chaplains for the U.S. military and prison system.  (Not to worry about the obvious peril associated with such an arrangement:  After his arrest, Alamoudi’s responsibilities were transferred to the nation’s largest Muslim Brotherhood front, the Islamic Society of North America.)

It is not clear at this writing what the justification for reducing this al Qaeda financier’s sentence might be, or to what extent his prison time will be reduced.  We should all be concerned though that such an individual might be turned loose in our country.  Even more worrisome are reports that the Muslim Brotherhood is making a concerted effort to get the rest of their operatives and allies out of U.S. prisons, as well.

Then, there is Hillary Clinton’s announcement in Istanbul last week that the United States would find common ground with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) on a resolution that the OIC has been pushing for years aimed at curbing free speech that “offends” Muslims.  The United States has already co-sponsored one somewhat watered-down version of this initiative at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. 

The Islamists who see the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference as a kind of new caliphate uniting and advancing the interests of all Muslims (the ummah) will not be satisfied, however, with anything less than the realization of their ultimate objective: an international directive to all United Nations member states to prohibit and criminalize expression that is deemed offensive by the MB, OIC or other shariah-adherent parties. 

To “bridge” the gap between the OIC agenda and our constitutional freedoms, the OIC is pressuring Secretary Clinton to agree that we join Europe in considering the “test of consequences,” not just the content of speech.  That way lies censorship and submission.

The Pentagon recently gave conscientious objector status to a Muslim soldier who claimed that, according to shariah, it was impermissible for him to kill his co-religionists in places like Afghanistan.  No one has explained how the Pentagon proposes to square its acquiescence to that stance with the oath every serviceman and woman takes to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

For that matter, it is hard to see how Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Holder and, indeed, their boss, President Obama, can deem actions like the foregoing as consistent with their oaths of office.  At best, they are acquiescing to far-reaching concessions to the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk.  At worse, they are enabling the MB’s efforts to destroy the West from within.

So pervasive now is the MB’s “civilization jihad” within the U.S. government and civil institutions that a serious, sustained and rigorous investigation of the phenomenon by the legislative branch is in order.   To that end, we need to establish a new and improved counterpart to the Cold War-era’s HUAC and charge it with examining and rooting out anti-American – and anti-constitutional – activities that constitute an even more insidious peril than those pursued by communist Fifth Columnists fifty years ago.  Critics of a new select committee with such a mandate have an obligation to propose another approach to address this manifestly growing problem.

 

 

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.