Tag Archives: David Yerushalmi

Team B II to Congress: Investigate Islamist shariah influence on US security policies

WASHINGTON, DC: In a press briefing announcing the publication of the 370-page Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat to America, four members of the Team will discuss the book’s ground-breaking findings about the totalitarian politico-military-legal program mainstream Islam calls “shariah.”  They will illuminate the role shariah is playing in both animating the violent attacks being mounted against this country and in insinuating– through stealthy, “pre-violent” means– this unconstitutional legal program into the United States.

In the latter regard, the briefing will present case studies of Muslim Brotherhood influence operations that have been mounted against the U.S. government.  According to Team B II founder Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, “The authors will demonstrate that such activities are succeeding in what the Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad” by blinding and silencing American policymakers with respect to the threats posed by shariah.  In light of these and other revelations in the new report, Team B II will urge the newly elected 112th Congress to hold urgent hearings to assess the damage entailed by such operations and their repercussions for America’s national security.”

Copies of the Team B II report are being distributed in coming days to the winners of the 2010 elections and other members of the U.S. Congress, the governors and state attorneys general of all fifty states, major city police chiefs, mayors and other key leaders.

Gaffney stated:

The authors will discuss the upcoming Team B II campaign to educate policymakers about the inherent conflict between shariah law and the Constitution, and the urgent need for Congress and federal and state agencies to recognize the peril posed by the “civilization jihad” being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated U.S.-based organizations.

Patrick Poole’s whitepaper detailing the case studies of Muslim Brotherhood operations in the United States and copies of Shariah: The Threat to America will be available at the press briefing.  Journalists, homeland security and local law enforcement professionals are invited to attend.

The Team B II Report Shariah: The Threat to America can be purchased online at Amazon.com.

 

WHAT: New York Press Briefing and Panel Discussion, Team B II Report, Shariah: The Threat To America

WHO:  Center for Security Policy and Team B II authors:

Andrew C. McCarthy, former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney and best-selling author of Willful Blindness and The Grand Jihad

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President, Center for Security Policy

David Yerushalmi, Shariah expert and lawyer specializing in national security policy

Patrick Poole, counterterrorism consultant for the military and law enforcement

WHERE: New York Women’s National Republican Club, Solarium Room
3 West 51st Street, New York, NY 10019

WHEN: November 9, 2010 from 2:30 pm-4:00 pm, EST

MEDIA RSVP: mhamilton@hamiltonstrategies.com or (610) 584-1096 or (215) 519-4838

NON-MEDIA RSVP: Center for Security Policy 202-835-9077

 

 

Center files national security-focused Amicus Brief in support of Arizona Law SB-1070

September 2, 2010: David Yerushalmi, general counsel to the Center for Security Policy, joined forces with Robert Muise, senior trial counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, to file an important amicus curiae brief in the case USA v. Arizona, the Ninth Circuit appeal of the federal district court’s ruling which held that Arizona’s anti-illegal alien law, S.B. 1070, was unconstitutional.

The lower court just last month had ruled that federal law preempted the State of Arizona’s efforts to take affirmative steps to protect its citizens against what the court conceded was an epidemic of violent crimes caused by an immigration system President Obama described as "broken" and that "everybody knows it."

Notwithstanding the fact that the current system is broken and the fact that Arizona is literally under assault, evidenced by the federally-advised no-go zones just miles outside of Arizona’s major metropolitan areas, Obama instructed his attorney general, Eric Holder, to bring this lawsuit challenging the Arizona statute’s constitutionality.

Messrs. Yerushalmi and Muise filed the amicus brief on behalf of the Center for Security Policy, the Thomas More Law Center, and the Society of Americans for National Existence.

The Center for Security Policy is a premier national security think tank in Washington, D.C., founded and led by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., who acted under President Ronald Reagan as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, the senior position in the Defense Department with responsibility for policies involving nuclear forces, arms control, and U.S.-European defense relations.

The Thomas More Law Center and the Society of Americans for National Existence are public interest law firms litigating in areas to defend the Judeo-Christian foundations of this country and its national sovereignty.

The Center for Security Policy provided this "statement of interest" to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of its filing the brief:

Since before 9/11, Mr. Gaffney has directed CSP in focusing much of its resources on the underlying enemy threat doctrine known to the jihadists as Sharia (i.e., Islamic legal doctrine and system).  In turn, this work has led CSP to investigate the narco-terrorism connection between Middle East arms dealers, Hezbollah, and Central American drug traffickers such as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia ("FARC"). See, e.g., United States v. Jamal Yousef, No. S3 08 Cr. 1213 (JFK), 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 86281, (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2010). 

As set out in the government’s indictment in the Yousef prosecution, there is a working conspiracy between the U.S. State Department-designated Hezbollah jihadist group and militaristic drug traffickers who routinely use the Mexican-American border to transport drugs, money, arms, and personnel between the two countries. 

This jihad presence on our southern border turns an out-of-control immigration problem into an existential security threat beyond measure for individual border states, such as Arizona, and the nation at large.  From a national security policy perspective, it makes no sense for the federal government to prevent Arizona from providing a first layer of defense for itself and the Nation.

CSP’s specific interest in this case is on behalf of policy and national security professionals who call upon CSP to assist in crafting policy initiatives and other tools to counter the threat from Islamic terrorists who would exploit the federal government’s failure to defend our borders. 

What makes this case all the more important is that the same federal government in charge of carrying out congressional legislation requiring secure borders chooses instead to litigate against State governments along our borders which dare to take minimal steps to act in accordance with their responsibilities to protect and defend their own residents.

Mr. Gaffney commented:

What is especially egregious about this lawsuit against Arizona by the Obama administration is that it has absolutely nothing to do with any abuse of personal liberty as we have been led to believe by the president and the main stream media.  Instead, the argument the president effectively made in the government’s complaint is that the federal agencies in charge of immigration have chosen not to enforce the immigration laws passed by Congress and this bureaucratic decision to ignore the law should preempt Arizona’s decision to protect its law abiding citizens who are assaulted daily by the violent crime that has followed illegal immigration.

The amicus brief filed in the federal appeal is available here.

 

David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for more than 26 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona and serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy.

Kagan’s Shariah problem

The author of the New York Times bestseller The Grand Jihad,  Andrew McCarthy has put the Senate Judiciary Committee on notice:  There is a serious problem with the nomination of Elena Kagan to a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court:  "…As Dean [of the Harvard Law School] she became the champion of Shariah." 

Shariah is the name given by the authorities of Islam to the barbaric, totalitarian and supremacist code that its adherents seek to impose on all of us. It calls for the murder of homosexuals, the mistreatment of women, the flogging and stoning of those accused of adultery, the killing of apostates and girls who defile their family’s "honor" by dating non-Muslims or wearing pants or make-up, etc. 

Shariah is no less toxic when it comes to the sorts of democratic government and civil liberties guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  According to this legal code of Saudi Arabia and Iran, only Allah can make laws, and only a theocrat can properly administer them, ultimately on a global basis.

In order to realize that utterly political agenda of world domination, Shariah obliges its adherents to engage in jihad – which that noted Islamic authority, President Obama’s Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, tells us is "a legitimate tenet of Islam."  Indeed, it is.  And according to Shariah, those who are not in a position to engage in the violent form of jihad favored by al Qaeda, the Taliban, Jamaat Islamia, etc., are required to engage in the non-violent form known as "civilizational jihad" or Dawa. 

JihadWatch.org’s director and author Robert Spencer has helpfully coined a term to describe the latter:  He calls it "stealth jihad," since it is being assiduously and largely covertly waged against the West, including the United States, by the Muslim Brotherhood.  Some in the U.S. government confuse the Brotherhood with being "moderate" because it ostensibly eschews violence.  Its aim, however, is exactly the same as al Qaeda’s – the restoration of the Caliphate and the worldwide imposition of Shariah.

Importantly, Muslims who share this goal but are not up to waging jihad themselves are expected to provide financial resources via zakat (or tithing) to those who are.  Fully four of the eight specified causes to which Shariah says such philanthropy can be assigned involve direct or indirect support for the jihadists.  One of our time’s preeminent Islamic scholars and chief ideologue for the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusef al-Qaradawi, has called such tithing "jihad with money."

Which is where Elena Kagan’s enabling of the penetration of Shariah into our capital markets through the Harvard Law School’s Islamic Finance project comes in.  The purpose of that project is, according to an excellent essay by Andy McCarthy entitled "Elena Kagan’s ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ Shariah Policy" published last week in National Review Online, "to promote Shariah compliance in the U.S. financial sector." 

This is accomplished by via legal support to an industry known as "Shariah-Compliant Finance" (SCF)."  It was invented in the mid-20th Century by Brotherhood operatives as a means of facilitating and underwriting the penetration of Shariah into Western societies by mainlining it into their capitalist bloodstreams.

McCarthy notes that: "Kagan and other apologists for Shariah-Compliant Finance would absolve themselves from the real-world consequences of their allegedly well-intentioned diversity fetish.  But legitimizing any aspect of Shariah is the endorsement of all of it….There is no cut-and-dried separation of Shariah brutality from the tidy, white-collar world of financial transactions."  

Against this backdrop another Kagan connection to Shariah looms large.  As my colleague, Christine Brim, observed in a post at Andrew Breitbart’s awesome new national security web portal, BigPeace.com:  During her time as Harvard Law’s dean, Kagan twice (once in absentia, the other time in person) awarded the school’s "Medal of Freedom" to the controversial Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudry.  Today, according to Brim, the thus-legitimated Chaudry is engaged in a "powergrab…to impose Shariah law across Pakistan’s government."

As a new ad by the Center for Security Policy asks, "If Kagan tolerates promoting the injustice of Shariah law on the campus of Harvard, what kind of injustice will she tolerate in America during a lifetime on the Supreme Court?" 

This is the sort of question one would have hoped that Senators would explore thoroughly before voting on her nomination, most immediately in the Senate Judiciary Committee today [Tuesday].  Unfortunately, that did not happen in the hearings to date.

At a minimum, if confirmed, Kagan should be required to recuse herself from dealing with any matters coming before the court involving Shariah.  One headed that way involves a federal lawsuit brought by David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of an Iraq war veteran who believes the constitutional separation of chuch and state is violated by U.S. government ownership of the world’s largest purveyor of Shariah-compliant financial products (the very thing Kagan’s Islamic Finance Project promotes at Harvard!): AIG.

Kagan’s association with and enabling of Shariah is flatly at odds with the Constitution’s stipulation that it is the supreme law of the land.  If she thinks otherwise – or is willing to jeopardize our freedoms by helping a toxic rival legal code to take hold here – we better know it now, not after she gets on the Supreme Court for the rest of her life.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times, featured contributor to BigPeace.com and host of the syndicated program, Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9:00 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.

 

Is Treasury’s support of AIG’s Shariah-promoting subsidiaries Constitutional?

How is it possible that the U.S. Government allows AIG to funnel more than $1 billion to companies that promote Shariah–the very Islamic legal system that calls for jihad against apostates and infidels?  

The Law Offices of David Yerushalmi, P.C.– the General Counsel for the Center for Security Policy– together with the Thomas More Law Center, filed a motion for summary judgment on Monday, June 7, 2010, on behalf of Kevin Murray against the Treasury Department and the FED in the federal lawsuit pending in the Eastern District of Michigan. The lawsuit, captioned Murray v. Geithner et al. was brought by attorneys David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, representing the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, a taxpayer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Specifically, at the time of the government bailout (beginning in September 2008 and continuing to the present), AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Shariah is Islamic law, and it is the identical legal doctrine that demands capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy and provides the legal and political mandates for global jihad followed religiously by the world’s Muslim terrorists. By propping up AIG with tax payer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Shariah.

In May 2009, Judge Lawrence Zatkoff rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the complaint and later rebuffed the defendants’ efforts to stay the proceeding so the government lawyers could take an extraordinary appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.  The court then set the ground rules for discovery and granted the parties until May 2010 to conduct discovery.

After a year of document requests, depositions of current and former government witnesses, and three separate subpoenas issued to AIG and the New York Federal Reserve Board, Messrs. Yerushalmi and Muise filed Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment this past Monday, arguing that the undisputed facts demonstrate that the government, through its absolute control and ownership of AIG, and with tens of billions of tax payer dollars, have directly and indirectly promoted and supported Shariah as a religious legal doctrine.  What makes this case all the more egregious is that this doctrine-Shariah-also happens to be the underlying legal and military doctrine animating jihad against the West by Muslims from the Middle East, Asia, Russia, Africa, and even right here at home.  Each and every one of the domestic and foreign jihad terrorists have proclaimed their allegiance to Shariah and its call for “jihad against apostates and infidels.”  Two experts on Shariah, Shariah-compliant finance, and jihad testified at length through affidavits in support of plaintiff’s case. The government could not-and did not-oppose this expert testimony with any contrary evidence.

A year’s worth of discovery uncovered the following facts in addition to what was known from the public record:

  • AIG has five wholly-owned subsidiaries which promote and practice Shariah in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Bahrain, and the U.S.
  • These Shariah-compliant companies employ or otherwise retain the services of Shariah authorities to tell them how to conduct their business according to Shariah, including the Shariah-compliant charities to which these AIG subsidiaries must contribute.
  • The government places absolutely no controls on how its billions are used by the Shariah-compliant companies or to whom they support with their “zakat” (‘charitable’) dollars. Moreover, these companies all accept Shariah’s mandate to support jihad with zakat insofar as they abide by the authoritative rulings of the world’s leading Shariah authorities.
  • Over one billion taxpayer dollars have flowed through AIG’s headquarters into supporting AIG’s Shariah businesses worldwide.
  • The government has actively promoted Shariah and Shariah-compliant finance in many ways and venues:
    • The Treasury Department has published, edited, and updated articles about Shariah-compliant finance, which essentially promote Islamic law uncritically.
    • The Treasury Department has created and staffed a position called the Islamic Finance Scholar-in Residence.  No other religious law is so honored.
    • Published presentations by senior Treasury Department officials lauding Shariah-compliant finance and stating explicitly that the U.S. government “places significant importance on promoting . . . Islamic finance” and has “recently deepened our engagement in Islamic finance in a number of ways,” including a “call[] for harmonization of Shari’a standards at the national and international levels.“
    • After the AIG bailout, the Treasury Department co-sponsored a half-day conference called “Islamic Finance 101” for government policy makers which was in effect a cheerleading program to promote Shariah and Shariah-compliant finance.

Mr. Yerushalmi remarked: “It is one thing that our government felt compelled to bail out AIG after its fortunes were destroyed due to the company’s own recklessness and bad acts. It is quite another thing to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to promote and support AIG’s Shariah businesses-all of which don’t just sell Shariah products to the Muslim world, but actively promote Shariah as the best, most ethical way of life. Indeed, the Shariah authorities relied upon by AIG’s Shariah Supervisory Committees actively promote jihad-and by jihad we mean kinetic war against the infidel West.”

Mr. Muise, senior trial attorney for the Thomas More Law Center and co-lead counsel in this case, made the additional point that “We have not only traced taxpayer money to support Shariah, we have found explicit public statements by senior Treasury officials actually telling the world that it is U.S. government policy to support Shariah in the form of Islamic finance and even ‘call[ing] for harmonization of Shari’ah’s standards.’ Since when is it our government’s position to involve itself in the internal theological debates surrounding religious laws?”

The government defendants also filed a motion for summary judgment arguing that whatever aid was provided to AIG’s Shariah businesses, it was both unintended and de minimus.

Richard Thompson, head of the Thomas More Law Center, added, “It’s outrageous that the federal government is the owner of a corporation engaged in a business with interests adverse to the United States.  We filed this lawsuit not only to defend constitutional principles, but also to defend our national security.  It’s clear we can’t leave the job of protecting America to the Washington politicians.”

The parties will now continue to brief the issue with cross-opposition  and reply briefs and then the court will decide.  Any decision is likely to end up on appeal at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.  If the government loses, it is quite possible the case could be heard by the Supreme Court.

 

David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for more than 26 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona and currently serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s leading national security think tanks founded by former Reagan administration official Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., and has been Of Counsel and Senior Legal Advisor for Policy Affairs to the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (Potomac, Maryland) since 1988.

 

Documents: Murray v. Geitner et al.

Motion to Compel.

Plaintiff’s Response Brief in Opposition to Defendants’ Motion for Protective Order.

Attachment I. Utah Law Review Article: David Yerushalmi, “Shariah’s ‘Black Box’: Civil Liability and Criminal Exposure Surrounding Shariah-Compliant Finance,” Utah Law Review 2008:3, pp. 1020-1106 (“Shariah’s Black Box Article”)

Attachment II. Letter Proposal to file Amicus Curiae Brief in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation Appeal before Seventh Circuit (en banc)

Attachment III. Amicus Curiae Brief for the Center for Security Policy in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation Appeal before Seventh Circuit (en banc)

Attachment IV. Opinion in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation, Seventh Circuit (en banc)

Attachment V. Complaint filed in Murray v. Geitner et al. re: First Amendment violations re AIG

Attachment VI. Correspondence between Sen. Kyl, Messrs. Yerushalmi & Gaffney, SEC hairman Cox, Fed Chairman Bernanke

Attachment VII. US Government’s Motion to Dismiss in Murray v. Geitner et al.

Attachment VIII. Plaintiff’s Opposition to US Government’s Motion to Dismiss in Murray v. Geitner et al.

Attachment IX. District Court’s Opinion Dismissing US Government’s Motion to Dismiss in Murray v. Geitner et al.

The Trial of Geert Wilders: A Symposium

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders goes on trial in Amsterdam on Wednesday, January 20, on charges related to his political campaign to stop and reverse the Islamization of the Netherlands. The International Free Press Society has asked an array of legal experts, authors and journalists to reflect on this momentous event.

 Bat Ye’or

Muslims might feel insulted by Geert Wilders’ opinions on Islam. However, Geert Wilders and non-Muslims feel insulted – threatened – by the hostile and negative opinions on them enshrined in Muslim holy books, laws and customs. These are not hidden or dismissed as outdated, but continuously and proudly published, taught and publicly expounded throughout the world – without being opposed by Muslim leaders.

Westerners have been conditioned by their governments, their media, the Palestinisation of their culture and societies, to be the culprit and to accept without a murmur the continuous harassment of the permanent terrorist threat. Such terrorism has taken already many innocent lives and wounded countless others since it started, in the 1960s, in Europe with the collaboration of Palestinians and Nazi groups murdering Jews and Israelis.

In view of an aggressive indigenous and foreign terrorism within the Netherlands itself, it is clear that Geert Wilders is answering a provocation against him that obliges him to live under permanent security controls. How is it possible that in the XXIe century, in a democratic and peaceful Europe, some people, politicians, intellectuals, cartoonists or others, need 24-hour security when they have done nothing but lawfully express themselves ? Will self-censorship define our culture?

For most Europeans, Geert Wilders appears to be the hero and defender of their lost freedoms and dignity; a conviction would reinforce his aura and weaken his political enemies. Public opinion would see those enemies as the stooges of the Organization of the Islamic Conference who continuously and by every means pressure European governments to punish severely what it consider blasphemy according to shariah law. For instance, in March 2006, the Executive Committee of the OIC held its first Ministerial Meeting in Jeddah.1 They decided that the OIC Member States and its Secretary-General ought to pursue efforts to realize the following objectives: 1) adoption of a resolution at the 61st session of the UN General Assembly to proscribe defamation of religions and religious symbols, blasphemy, denigration of all prophets, and the prevention in the future of other defamatory actions; and 2) planning a global strategy to prevent the defamation of religions with the implementation of effective and appropriate measures.

Western governments must decide whether they judge by Western or shariah laws. Wilders has defied shariah law, and, as a consequence, his life is in constant danger. It seems to me that the threats against him are the real crimes the Netherlands should address. If Wilders is convicted, Europeans will see in such a verdict the suppression of their own freedom to defend themselves and their submission to dhimmitude.

Wilders’ prosecution reveals a real and profound social and political malaise. Punishments and insults will not help, it will worsen it. Through him, governments must listen to the discontent of their own people whom they have consistently ignored or despised. This is Wilders’ message. It is also Flemming Rose’s revolt and Kurt Westergaard’s ordeal – to name a few other prominent revolutionaries against the imposition of shariah in Europe, without forgetting the Muslim apostates.

The Free World is watching and listening. Buying Europe’s security by appeasement, political correctness, self-censorship and the Palestinisation of society, will lead only to civil wars.

Humans have short memories. But history will record that Wilder’s trial will either condemn freedom of speech, or support this most precious right of Mankind against intellectual terror and cultural totalitarianism.

 Clare Lopez

When Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders goes on trial this week in the Netherlands, he will stand alone before a Dutch court. But make no mistake: it is the very principle of free speech which hangs in the balance there. Brought up on charges of inciting hatred, Wilders is one of the few leaders anywhere in the Western world who dares to denounce a supremacist Islamic doctrine that commands its faithful to jihad and terror against non-believers. As he showed so honestly in his courageous film, ‘Fitna,’ a system of pluralist, tolerant, liberal democracy is fundamentally incompatible with literal, textual Islam as presented on the pages of the Qur’an.

Increasingly, Wilders’ fellow countrymen and lovers of individual liberty under rule of man-made law across Europe are responding to his call to confront those who would follow the way of Islamic jihad. We all are beginning to understand that Geert Wilders is Everyman-every man and woman who believes in the freedom to speak one’s mind, to express truth as he sees it without fear of repression or prosecution. Free speech means nothing if it does not include the right to offend, and no belief system, not Islam and not any other, can be exempt. To speak the truth is no crime-but to rise up in gratuitous violence at the sound of truth, however offensive, ought to be.

The American Founding Fathers declared that our rights derive not from any government or religion but from the Creator Himself and the natural state of human beings. As such, no government may or ought try to alienate such rights from its people. Nor may Islam or any faith. Geert Wilders knows this and to ensure that inalienable rights remain the hallmark of human dignity, he stands in the dock for all of us.

Netherlands: the world is watching. Do not lead Europe into a long black night where the light of freedom flickers but fitfully as it does in every place where Shari’a is law. Stand with your forebears who, like William of Orange, fought to keep Dutchmen free, and do not fear the violence of assassins and mobs. Your liberty is our liberty and Wilders’ free speech is our free speech.

Daniel Pipes

Who is the most important European alive today? I nominate the Dutch politician Geert Wilders. I do so because he is best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent. He has the potential to emerge as a world-historical figure.

The Islamic challenge consists of two components: on the one hand, an indigenous population’s withering Christian faith, inadequate birthrate, and cultural diffidence, and on the other an influx of devout, prolific, and culturally assertive Muslim immigrants. This fast-moving situation raises questions about Europe retaining its historic civilization; it become a majority-Muslim continent living under Islamic law (the Shari‘a).

Wilders, 46, founder and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), is the unrivaled leader of those Europeans who wish to retain their historic identity. That’s because he and the PVV differ from most of Europe’s other nationalist, anti-immigrant parties.

The PVV is politically mainstream, with its roots lying not in neo-Fascism, nativism, conspiricism, antisemitism, or other forms of extremism, but in libertarianism and mainstream conservatism. (Wilders publicly emulates Ronald Reagan.) In addition, Wilders is a charismatic, savvy, principled, and outspoken leader who has rapidly become the most dynamic political force in the Netherlands. Finally, the PVV benefits from the fact that, uniquely in Europe, the Dutch are receptive to a non-nativist rejection of Islam. It has done well electorally; polls now generally show the PVV winning a plurality of votes and becoming the country’s largest party. Thus, Were Wilders to become prime minister, he could fulfill a leadership role for all Europe.

But he faces daunting challenges, including his opponents’ dirty tactics. Most notably, they have finally, after 2½ years of preliminary skirmishes, succeeded in dragging him to court on charges of hate speech and incitement to hatred.

Although I disagree with Wilders about Islam (I respect the religion but fight Islamists with all I have), we stand shoulder-to-shoulder against this lawsuit. I reject the criminalization of political differences and the attempted thwarting of a political movement through the courts. Accordingly, the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project has worked on Wilders’ behalf, raising substantial funds for his defense and helping in other ways.

Wilders today represents all those Westerners who cherish their civilization. The outcome of his trial has implications for us all.

David Harris

Here, in this Ottawa winter, it is dismayingly easy to recall claims that Canada’s capital city is the coldest after Ulan Bator.  I don’t know what heralds the Mongolian capital’s emergence from winter, but a sure sign that Ottawans have defrosted is the blossoming of a kaleidoscope of tulips in their millions, and the advent of the internationally-acclaimed Canadian Tulip Festival.  We have the Netherlands – and, indirectly, the Nazis – to thank for both.

When the Nazis took Holland during the Second World War, the Dutch Royal Family escaped to Canada and made Ottawa their home-in-exile.  It was in this city that Queen Juliana gave birth to Princess Margriet in 1943, and Canada’s Parliament helped ensure the Princess’s royal claims by declaring their hospital suite “extraterritorial” – Dutch territory.  For the only time in Canadian history, a foreign flag – that of the Netherlands – flew over Canada’s Parliament.

Connections of law and spirit were further cemented when the First Canadian Army liberated much of occupied Holland.  Remembering all of this, the Dutch Royal Family upon liberation sent Ottawa thousands of tulip bulbs, a gift that continues yearly, to this day.

This shared history of struggle for liberty and democracy must leave Canadians wondering whether disturbing legal developments in the Netherlands signal a loss of The Hague’s commitment to the freedoms for which Canadians and Dutch sacrificed.  In the land of the tulip, “the first freedom” – freedom of speech – may be in the balance.

For outspoken Dutch parliamentarian and leader of the Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, is being prosecuted by his own government.

Wilders is an international voice of resistance against the supremacist, totalitarian impulses, demands and incursions of radical Islam – “Islamism”.

In truth, many reasonable voices object to some of his ideas, such as the banning of the Qur’an, and his tone can be provocative in ways that play into the hands of those hoping to divert attention from the radical Islamic threat.  But Wilders’ words, for better or worse, are the stuff of vigorous exchanges of views in an open, plural world.  To the extent that he is warning about documented threats, his focus is timely.  To the extent that his country’s governing elites, like those in many Western countries, often abdicate responsibility for recognizing and dealing with the multi-front threat of Islamism, Wilders warnings can be imperative.

Wilders sees the tripartite menace of Islamism.  He sounds the alarm on the threat and actuality of growing terrorist violence.  He identifies Islamic radicalism as in many cases a preparatory phase for this violence and associated subversion.  And he sees that a “soft jihad” is also afoot, a nonviolent jihad of demands to privilege Muslims within society, demands that are contrary to every constitutional principle of equality known to Western liberal values – and the Dutch constitution.  In short, Wilders recognizes the range of the threat, from the violent rampages of outright terrorists to the charm offensives of business-suited Islamists.

Today, Mr Wilders persists, inseparably bound to bodyguards protecting him from the fate of Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker critical of Islam who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street by a Dutch-born Muslim.  This kind of menace has not stopped Wilders from warning about Islamism’s invasive trend, but neither has it stopped the Dutch government from pursuing Wilders in ways that have raised deep concerns about free expression in Holland.

There are serious worries that, underlying the Dutch prosecution, is a wish to silence someone who is embarrassing governing politicians wishing to ingratiate themselves with the increasing numbers of fundamentalist Dutch Muslims and mosques.  There is also suspicion that anything less than highly-visible state-persecution of Wilders could lead to Islamist assaults on Dutch interests, at home and abroad, similar to those that cost the Danes so heavily during the Mohammed Cartoon Affair.  Genuine human rights activists worldwide, are mustering to Wilders’ side, in the growing conviction that Dutch law is being put to uses contrary to the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and more in line with sharia law standards and sensibilities.

An indication of possible caprice in the matter, comes from a startling statement attributed to authorities:

“It is irrelevant whether Wilder’s witnesses might prove Wilders’ observations to be correct”, the ‘Openbaar Ministerie’ stated, “what’s relevant is that his observations are illegal”

Another invitation to disbelief is the fact that, despite the manifest risks to Wilders’ life, the Dutch government is refusing to try the case in a secure courtroom of the sort that was provided for van Gogh’s Islamist killer.  This has driven columnist Mark Steyn to raise a thought that, in other days and times, would have been inconceivable: “You’d almost get the impression it would suit them if he failed to survive till the verdict.” We will see what happens to this turbulent parliamentarian.

In the meantime, it is for the rest of us to shine a light on proceedings, and on what they say about the state of things – and of things to come – in the Netherlands, and elsewhere.  By the coming of spring’s tulips, we should have an idea whether the country will be true to its sacrifices and enlightened traditions, or risk grovelling before more primitive ones.

David B. Harris is a lawyer and Director of the International and Terrorist Intelligence Program, INSIGNIS Strategic Research Inc., Ottawa, Canada.  His three decades in intelligence affairs have included testifying on terrorism and national security before Canadian parliamentary and US congressional bodies; appearing as intervener’s counsel before federal terrorism-related inquiries; consulting to intelligence organizations in Canada and abroad; and time as a senior manager of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in1988-90.  Between 2004 and 2006, he successfully fought off a defamation lawsuit brought by the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) and its Chair, Dr Sheema Khan.  The suit was part of a joint, North America-wide libel “lawfare” assault by CAIR-CAN and its Saudi-funded, American unindicted co-conspirator CAIR mother organization, on the constitutional free speech rights of media and commentators who were enquiring into the radical history, ideology and links of the CAIR/CAIR-CAN enterprise.  In a victory for US First Amendment and Canadian Charter rights, Dr Khan and the enterprise, part of the Washington, DC and Ottawa, Canada “Wahabbi Lobby”, were ultimately forced to withdraw from their various libel suits in the face of damaging disclosures.

David Yerushalmi

Geert Wilders, Member of Parliament of the Netherlands and chairman of the Freedom Party, goes on trial Wednesday in the land of the Dutch. His alleged crime: criticizing Islam in such a way that it insults Muslims and causes other people to hate devout Muslims because of their faith in Islam and its scriptures. Specifically, the lengthy summons and charge sheet set out a host of Wilders’ statements that violate two specific criminal laws. One, Wilders publicly dared to criticize Islam and its scripture in such a way that he insulted devout Muslims who take their faith in Islam seriously. Two, his public statements incite others to hate or discriminate against Muslims because of their religious beliefs. If found guilty, Wilders might very well be imprisoned and stripped of his political office.

The case demonstrates in classic terms the convergence between the Left and tyranny, a relationship documented historically by many commentators and pundits, but not well explained. In the Dutch state’s zeal to prosecute Wilders, we have the opportunity to understand in theoretical and in existential terms, how Western Elites in the guise of Progressive governance seek to destroy their own national existence and to impose an iron-fisted control over thought and speech.

The two Dutch criminal laws at issue are:

Article 137c Dutch Penal Code

  1. He who publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in an way insulting of a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, or their hetero- or homosexual nature or their physical, mental, or intellectual disabilities, will be punished with a prison sentence of at the most one year or a fine of third category.
  2. If the offence is committed by a person who makes it his profession or habit, or by two or more people in association, a prison sentence of at the most two years or a fine of fourth category will be imposed.

Article 137d Dutch Penal Code

  1. He who publicly, verbally or in writing or in an image, incites hatred against or discrimination of people or violent behaviour against person or property of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their gender or hetero- or homosexual nature or their physical, mental, or intellectual disabilities, will be punished with a prison sentence of at the most one year or a fine of third category.
  2. If the offence is committed by a person who makes it his profession or habit, or by two or more people in association, a prison sentence of at the most two years or a fine of fourth category will be imposed.

It is a rather facile effort to insult and cause hatred of the Dutch politicians who have, out of a multicultural religious fervor, enacted these laws, possibly leading to yet another summons and charge sheet directed at the author of this essay. We need not pause long here. What do you say to the Netherlanders who would tolerate such fascist legislation? Is it really possible that a Western European country would criminalize speech that insults a group of people for their anti-Dutch beliefs? Does it matter if the people insulted believe in or worship an evil or violent creed? Is truth a defense? According to the plain language of Article 137c, the answer is no. Can it be that the Dutch courts won’t limit the statute’s reach? The state, in the guise of the prosecutor, wants nothing less than to control Wilder’s public speech by taking his freedom, and more importantly, his Dutch heritage.

The question, thusly framed, is why? What could be the rationale for such laws? There are already laws on the books in the Netherlands and in every Western country criminalizing incitement. Depending on the jurisdiction, criminal incitement is typically circumscribed by the requirement that the inciting speech be a real threat and not just an empty rant of a wild man. But what does it mean to criminalize a man’s speech because it criticizes another man’s religion or beliefs? In the West, freedom of speech is highly prized because a man’s participation in representative government necessitates a willingness to permit public criticism.

Granted, no nation should grant speech no limits. Should we allow political advocacy the ground to advocate murder and the violent destruction of national existence? Even in the U.S. we circumscribe such speech when it is likely to incite imminent violence. But the Dutch have moved beyond incitement and have explicitly criminalized truthful public critique of another’s violent religion or faith. Again, we are forced to ask, why?

To understand the rationale for such laws, we need not travel far. Europeans brought the truth of the Enlightenment to the West. This new truth is not merely close at hand, it is the hand. Indeed, it is the whole of a man’s existence.

The truth of the Enlightenment was and continues to be that there is no truth. Western men live the certainty of this new absolutism because we accept the reduction of man to the mathematical physics of science. To gain the certainty that men are bound by the material counting of scientific symbols is to know that all else is belief or uncertain opinion. What Western men at one time understood as the truth of existence is now only an absolutely uncertain belief. If political man has no access to truth except the truth that no truth exists, there can be no truthful criticism.

The Dutch take their Enlightenment seriously. Geert Wilders’s crime is that he takes his nation and culture no less seriously than he takes Islam’s. No one can study Islam and its legal context, known as Shariah, and not know that it seeks the dominance or destruction of Dutch national existence and culture. The new Dutchmen take neither seriously except to say that neither exist outside of the mind and the “feelings” of the men who harbour such beliefs.

Wilders’ crime is not his speech. It is his commitment to the truth of existence of a Dutch people and nation grounded in Christianity. That truth violates the principles of the Enlightenment now engraved in the tablets of a Western world where the only truth permitted men in the public sphere is a multicultural pluralism devoid of any truthful content but that there is no truthful content.

To that breach of peace, Wilders is guilty. To be sure, his legal team will defend him in the context of the Enlightenment’s new truth. They will argue a technical compliance with the new hate crimes by claiming that he criticized a scripture not Muslims. They will argue that he called for no violent acts or discrimination only peaceful and lawful responses to a violent threat. This defense will echo meaninglessly within the judicial chambers. Wilders will be found guilty as charged and, given the law as written, he is guilty.

The only rational defense to the charges is that the Dutch statutes which Wilders is accused of violating are themselves a violation of what it means to be a Dutchman. If that defense fails, there is no such thing as a Dutchman and in time there will only be Muslimen in the Netherlands. And, with that, the Enlightenment will have reached its necessary end.

Diana West

I cannot overestimate the epochal importance of the court proceeding taking place next Wednesday the 20th in the Netherlands where Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders goes on trial for an array of charges that arises from his courageous and increasingly successful efforts to lead his countrymen against the Islamization of their country and the wider West. A man of political action, Wilders has been targeted not just for his political speech, but for his effectiveness as an advocate of liberty and pluralism, neither of which can survive in societies that are governed by, or in thrall to sharia (Islamic law).

It is not just the repressions and depredations of Islam that Wilders is outspoken about — a subject well-ploughed by certain academics and journalists alike. He is equally if almost singularly outspoken about the political remedies necessary to halt the extension of Islam’s law. Such remedies include stopping Islamic immigration and deporting agents of jihad. These are simple measures any democratic state that wished to repeal Islamization would take. These are simple measures that the Netherlands would take if Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom, which now rivals the country’s ruling party, ever came to power.

It is a political trial, then, in the worst sense, that we are about to witness. And it is about more than the future of freedom of speech. The trial of Geert Wilders is about the future of freedom.

Mark Steyn

A couple of years back, the novelist Martin Amis went to see Tony Blair and brought up the European demographic scenarios of my book.  When the British Prime Minister got together with Continental leaders, Mr Amis wondered, was this topic part of “the European conversation”? Mr Blair replied, with disarming honesty, “It’s a subterranean conversation.” “We know what that means,” wrote Amis. “The ethos of relativism finds the demographic question so saturated in revulsions that it is rendered undiscussable.”

Geert Wilders is on trial for wanting to discuss it.  The European political class will not permit this – even though what is “undiscussable” in polite society is a statement of the numbingly obvious if you stroll through Amsterdam and Rotterdam, not to mention Antwerp, Clichy-sous-Bois, Malmo, or any old Yorkshire mill town. The Dutch establishment is effectively daring the citizenry: “Who ya gonna believe – the state-enforced multicultural illusions or your lyin’ eyes?” Lest you be tempted to call their bluff, the enforcers are determined to make the price of dissent too high.

In the Low Countries, a pattern is discernible. Whenever politicians seek to move the conversation from the “subterranean” to the surface, they are either banned (Begium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Aayan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pym Fortuyn). Given that the court provided greater security to Theo van Gogh’s killer than to Mr Wilders, you might almost get the impression that the authorities are indifferent as to which of these fates consumes him.

Behind this disgraceful prosecution lies a simple truth that the Dutch establishment cannot tell its people – that, unless something changes, their nation will become more and more Muslim and, very soon, slip past the point of no return. They understand the tensions between their ever more assertive Muslim population and an aging “native” working class, but they believe that the problem can be managed by placing “the European conversation” – the non-subterranean conversation – within ever narrower constraints, and criminalizing any opinions outside those bounds. Some of them are blinkered and stupid enough to think that they need to do this in order to save the tolerant multicultural society from “right wingers” like Wilders. In fact, all they are doing is hastening the rate at which their society will be delivered into the hands of the avowedly intolerant and unicultural. In its death throes, Eutopia has decided to smash the lights of liberty.

Nidra Poller

Dutch prosecutors are going after Geert Wilders with an axe, madly determined to hack him up–mind, heart and body politic—and bury the parts under the ashes of six million exterminated European Jews. Look how far we have come since a confused UK hid Salman Rushdie under its skirts, acting on remnants of principles and hardly aware of what was at stake. Today, the courts of a European nation proudly assume the role of hatchet man for conquering Islam.

There is no justification for the persecution of Geert Wilders. He is a legitimate political figure who speaks for a growing sector of the Dutch population and represents a hope for citizens of other European countries struggling to defend civilized values on the battlefields of a frankly declared war-the jihad- which their leaders and opinion-makers are determined to hide from view. European citizens are asking their governments to set limits on Islamic encroachment-the minaret construction freeze voted in a Swiss referendum-and the will of the people sometimes reaches the ears of their elected representatives- forthcoming law against full facial veiling in France, cancellation of permit for a mega-mosque at London’s 2012 Olympic site.

Geert Wilders has played an essential role in this transmission. Precisely because the “far right extremist populist” label written up for him by jihad sources and repeated by mindless journalists does not apply. When men and women of integrity stand up to confront the Islamic assault on our civilized values, they attract broad public support. The danger in Europe today does not come from the last dredges of retrograde extreme right forces, it comes from the jihad friendly Left. Communists, socialists, and ecologists in France shamelessly court the Muslim vote and accuse the Sarkozy government of pétainisme for daring to deport illegal immigrants.

Is this the lesson Europe has drawn from the Shoah? What could be more obscene than enrolling 6 million exterminated Jews in a battle to deprive one honest upstanding legitimate popular Dutch MP of the freedom to oppose the spread of an ideology that blatantly plans the extermination of the remaining Jewish population of the world? And actively promotes the plan here and now in Europe?

If every last Muslim immigrant were deported from every European country… if Muslims to the second and third generation were stripped of their citizenship and deported… many decent people would be unfairly deprived of their acquired rights, but… the wave of violent Jew hatred that is plaguing Europe would come to a sudden halt.

Many analysts who recognize these truths regret “extreme” positions taken by Geert Wilders. They believe he would better serve the cause, and avoid prosecution, if he would tone down his rhetoric. I disagree. Pulling punches, rounding out the angles, applauding the “majority of Muslims who are moderates” though they never appear in public, making false distinctions between Islam and Islamism is getting us nowhere. The fact that the prosecution has stooped to barring the press from a landmark trial that will determine the limits of free expression is an indication of their fear of the eloquence and clarity of Geert Wilders.

We do not want to be faced in this day and age with the choice of liberty or death. But moderation is not the answer. Give me liberty or send me to bed without supper is not a rallying cry for the defenders of freedom.

 

 

 

CAIR sued (yet again) by former clients for fraud & breach of fiduciary duties

Five former clients of the Council on American- Islamic Relations (CAIR) have filed two separate lawsuits in federal court alleging criminal fraud and breach of fiduciary duty against CAIR, a self-described Muslim public interest civil rights law firm. These two lawsuits follow an earlier lawsuit which had also alleged that CAIR’s fraudulent conduct amounted to racketeering, a federal RICO crime. In that case, the court dismissed the RICO counts concluding that CAIR’s conduct as alleged was fraudulent but not a technical violation of RICO. The plaintiffs in that case have appealed and are awaiting the Circuit Court’s briefing schedule.

The two new federal civil complaints were filed in the federal district court for the District of Columbia on January 6, 2010, and served on January 13, 2010.

Both lawsuits arise out of the same facts. The lawsuits allege that Morris Days, the "Resident Attorney" and "Manager for Civil Rights" at the now defunct CAIR MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for legal representation. CAIR knew of this fraud and purposefully conspired with Days to keep the CAIR clients from discovering that their legal matters were being mishandled or not handled at all.

While attorney David Yerushalmi represents the five plaintiffs in these two lawsuits, three of whom are Muslim Americans, the complaints allege that according to CAIR internal documents, there were hundreds of victims of the CAIR fraud scheme.

According to the complaints, CAIR knew or should have known that Days was not a lawyer when it hired him. But, like many criminal organizations, things got worse when CAIR officials were confronted with clear evidence of Days’ fraudulent conduct. Rather than come clean and attempt to rectify past wrongs, CAIR conspired with Days to conceal and further the fraud.

To this end, CAIR officials purposefully concealed the truth about Days from their clients, law enforcement, the Virginia and D.C. state bar associations, and the media. When CAIR did get irate calls from clients about Days’ failure to provide competent legal services, CAIR fraudulently deceived their clients about Days’ relationship to CAIR, suggesting he was never actually employed by CAIR, and even concealed the fact that CAIR had fired him once some of the victims began threatening to sue.

"The evidence has long suggested that CAIR is a criminal organization set up by the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to further its aims of stealth Jihad in the U.S.," Mr. Yerushalmi said referring to the fact that CAIR has been named by the federal government as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial. In addition, several of CAIR’s top executives have been convicted of terror-related crimes. As a result, the FBI has publicly announced that it has terminated any outreach activities with the national organization, which bills itself as "America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization."

"As it turns out, CAIR is America’s largest Muslim criminal organization whose criminal activities know no bounds," Yerushalmi continued.

"According to the facts as carefully laid out in both complaints," Yerushalmi explained, "CAIR has engaged in a massive criminal fraud in which literally hundreds of CAIR clients have been victimized and because of the CAIR cover-up they still don’t realize it. The fact that CAIR has victimized Muslims and non-Muslims alike demonstrates that CAIR is only looking out for CAIR and its ongoing effort to bilk donors out of millions of dollars of charitable donations thinking they are supporting a legitimate organization."

The complaint also alleges that in addition to covering up the fraud scheme, CAIR forced angry clients who were demanding a return of their legal fees to sign a release that bought the client-victims’ silence by prohibiting them from informing law enforcement or the media about the fraud. According to the agreement, if the "settling" clients said anything to anyone about the fraud scheme, CAIR would be able to sue them for $25,000.

This enforced code of silence left hundreds of CAIR’s victims in the dark such that to this day they have not learned that Days was not an attorney and that he had not filed the legal actions on their behalf for which CAIR publicly claimed credit. Days has since died of a lung complication.

The original RICO complaint now on appeal, filed on behalf of four of the five current plaintiffs, identifies CAIR as a racketeering enterprise under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), which is a criminal racketeering statute that allows victims to sue defendants in civil court. In addition to damages, the plaintiffs sought injunctive relief under this and other statutes to shut down CAIR and to prevent the individual defendants from engaging in public interest legal work in the future.

Mr. Yerushalmi, who is also handling the appeal of the RICO claims, believes the chances are good for a reversal: "The judge dismissed the RICO counts but specifically allowed the refiling of the fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims. We believe that we will win the appeal and will then be permitted also to proceed on the racketeering charges."

While the new lawsuits only name the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action Network Inc. (dba CAIR), the RICO suit also names Nihad Awad aka Nihad Hammad who serves as executive director of CAIR National; Parvez Ahmed who was the chairman of the board of CAIR National during the relevant time period; Tahra Goraya who was the national director of CAIR but who has since resigned; Khadijah Athman who is the manager of the "civil rights" division of CAIR; and Nadhira al-Khalili, Esq., who is in-house legal counsel for CAIR.

According to the complaint, CAIR’s in-house Washington, D.C.-based attorney Al-Khalili was directly involved in taking the legal files out of the CAIR Virginia office and concealing them in the D.C. office.
Also named as defendants in the RICO complaint are Ibrahim Hooper and Amina Rubin, CAIR’s director of communications and coordinator of communications, respectively.

According to the complaint, these two were directly responsible for issuing fraudulent press releases about the fraud scheme, thus aiding and abetting the CAIR cover-up.

About David Yerushalmi, Esq.:

David Yerushalmi has been practicing law for 25 years. He is a litigator specializing in securities law, public policy relating to national security, and public interest law. Mr. Yerushalmi is licensed and practices in Washington D.C., New York, California, and Arizona and currently serves as General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., one of the nation’s leading national security think tanks founded by former Reagan administration official Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., and has been Of Counsel and Senior Legal Advisor for Policy Affairs to the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (Potomac, Maryland) since 1988.

For a copy of the two new complaints, go to www.DavidYerushalmiLaw.com.

Is ‘Islam’ at war with us?

Last week, John Brennan, the assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism approvingly recalled a key point in the speech Mr. Obama delivered in Cairo in June:  "America is not and never will be at war with Islam."  Unfortunately, that statement ignores the fact that the decision as to whether the United States is at war with anybody is not entirely up to our leadership or people.  The real question is:  Is ‘Islam’ at war with us?

It is certainly true that hundreds of millions of Muslims the world over are not seeking to wage war against the United States, or other non-Muslim states.  America has, as Mr. Brennan noted in his remarks before the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Thursday, a powerful interest in not making all those who practice Islam into our enemies.

Yet, it would be a grave mistake to construe the problem we face as John Brennan proceeded to do in his speech at CSIS:  "We are at war with al Qaeda which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people.  We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda."  He described that agenda as seeking "to replace sovereign nations with a global caliphate." 

Unfortunately, that is the stated goal of all those who adhere to what authoritative Islam calls Shariah – a number that includes many millions of people the world over.  Mr. Brennan’s speech made no reference to this wellspring of jihadism.

Of course, not all those who embrace Shariah are prepared to use terror against us.  Shariah requires though that if its adherents do not actually engage in violent jihad, they must support it through financial or other means.  After all, according to Shariah, the purpose of jihad is to bring about the triumph of Islam over the entire world.  Shariah commands that the faithful must use violence where possible to advance that objective, and non-violent means where not.

By failing to recognize this justification and catalyst for the threat we face, Mr. Obama and his administration effectively foreclose the possibility of countering it effectively.  Worse yet, in their understandable desire not to give gratuitous offense to Muslims, the U.S. government has repeatedly deferred to those who are most easily and most vocally offended. 

Specifically, the latter – notably, the putatively non-violent, but virulently Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and its myriad front organizations – have come to dictate what our officials can and cannot say about the danger posed not just by al Qaeda and its "violent extremist allies," but by all those who embrace the teachings, traditions, institutions and dictates of what authoritative Islam defines as "mainstream": Shariah.

This practice effectively disenfranchises American Muslims who reject this Shariah program – precisely the sorts of people we should most want to empower.  Last week, I discussed this problem on our talk radio program with someone who is trying to do something about it: Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina. 

As it happens, Ms. Myrick’s district is not far from where Daniel Patrick Boyd and other alleged "homegrown" jihadists were reportedly plotting attacks abroad, and possibly here.   What is more, the financial sector so prominent in the Charlotte community she represents is also a prime target of one of the most insidious forms of what author Robert Spencer calls "stealth" jihad: Shariah-compliant finance.

Congresswoman Myrick, a co-founder of the House Anti-Terror Caucus, recently convened a meeting to afford "moderate" Muslims an opportunity to interact with representatives of various federal law enforcement and other agencies responsible for securing this country.  According to Ms. Myrick, some of the officials seemed to be discovering for the first time that there are practitioners of Islam who do not embrace the seditious tenets of Shariah – and who were extremely concerned about the government’s almost exclusive reliance on those who do.

Fortunately, decisions in federal court in recent weeks may produce some urgently needed policy course-corrections.  Judge Laurence Zatkoff in the Eastern District of Michigan recently cleared the way for accelerated and wide-ranging discovery in connection with a suit brought by a Michigan Iraq war veteran, Kevin Murray, against the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve.  Mr. Murray is challenging on constitutional separation of church-and-state grounds the practice of a U.S. government-owned company, the insurance conglomerate AIG, promoting Shariah-compliant products. 

It seems likely that the depositions that will now be taken by Mr. Murray’s legal team – securities litigator and Shariah expert David Yerushalmi and attorneys at the Thomas More Law Center, led by its director Richard Thompson – will shed important light on the federal government’s understanding of authoritative Islam’s seditious program.  It may also reveal the extent to which U.S. officials have, with their failure to comprehend the true nature of the threat we face, acted, either wittingly or unwittingly, in ways that have enabled it to metastasize further.

Whether through the revelations of this law suit or through the work of influential legislators like Sue Myrick*, the time has come to recognize that even if we insist we are not at war with Islam, the authorities of Islam are at war with us.  Only by so doing can we connect with and empower our natural allies in this war – Muslims who want to enjoy liberty in a Shariah-free America.  And only by so doing, do we have a chance of prevailing.

 

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for the Washington Times and the host of the nationally syndicated Secure Freedom Radio.

* Listen to my interviews with Rep. Myrick and Sen. John Cornyn.

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Sovereign Immunity or cover-up?

Full disclosure: I have a pony in this race. I am an American and, as an attorney, I am an officer of the court. I make this disclosure in the light of an amicus curiae brief recently filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the Obama-Holder Department of Justice. The brief pertains to the mammoth case that came to the Supreme Court via the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (New York) called In re Terrorist Attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The Supreme Court is currently pondering whether the case merits its review.

In its friend-of-the-court brief, the Justice Department has argued, almost unimaginably, that the Supreme Court should not review the Second Circuit’s ruling that the victims of 9/11 and their families may not sue the Saudi government or, more importantly, the individual Saudi princes who personally (not as government actors) gave money to Muslim charities they knew would be funding al-Qaeda’s jihad against America.

The basis for both the trial court’s dismissal of the complaint and the Second Circuit’s affirmation of that ruling is the complex area of the law known as sovereign immunity. To avoid the weeds, let’s stay at a high altitude. The basis for sovereign immunity is clear: Governments need to know that other countries’ governments will not allow their citizens to lodge lawsuits in their home courts for any perceived wrong committed by the foreign power. Without sovereign immunity, governments would spend fortunes and tie up personnel defending themselves in courts around the globe.

For much of our history, U.S. courts have granted the executive branch a great deal of leeway in determining the scope of this immunity because it is the executive branch that is responsible for international relations. Before 1952, the executive took the view that all acts of a sovereign nation should be immune. From 1952 onward, however, the government has taken the more reasonable "restrictive" approach. This grants immunity for actions a foreign government takes when it is acting as a government, but not for actions taken when it is acting as, for example, a commercial enterprise, which might occur when the government in question owns a company doing business in the United States.

In 1976, Congress passed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), which effectively codified the restrictive view of sovereign immunity. The statute is not clear on many points, however, and that leads to legal disputes like the 9/11 case.

What makes the Justice Department’s position unimaginable is that its brief concedes that the Second Circuit’s ruling got the law wrong (although the brief maintains that it fortuitously got the result right) and that it is in conflict with other circuit courts that have ruled on the issue.

The two situations in which the Supreme Court is most likely to accept the type of discretionary appeal known as a writ of certiorari are when the circuits below "split," or when a circuit has issued a bad ruling that will have serious implications for federal law. The Obama-Holder Justice Department admits that both conditions are met in this case, yet it still favors immunity. Worse, it believes the Supreme Court should not even review the matter. In other words, the Obama administration concedes that the Second Circuit, one of the more influential federal appellate courts, got the rationale for its holding wrong, but it nonetheless opposes giving the victims of 9/11 their day in court.

The other unimaginable position maintained by the U.S. government is that the Saudi princes acting as private individuals should be immunized from lawsuits by the victims of 9/11 – not on the basis of sovereign immunity, but because the Obama administration doesn’t feel there is enough evidence against them. But even the Second Circuit recognized there was a wealth of evidence to show that these princes knowingly funded al-Qaeda’s terrorism via Muslim charities.

What makes this position even more outrageous is that the only valid basis for the Justice Department to step in and offer its opinion in this case was to clarify for the Supreme Court the executive’s view of the interpretation of sovereign immunity under the FSIA. That the Justice Department would even venture its opinion on the wholly unrelated issue of whether there was sufficient evidence presented in the complaint to justify allowing the case to go forward against the individual princes is, at the very least, problematic.

The question now crying out to be asked: How far will the Obama administration go to prevent private plaintiffs from exposing the quite personal ties between our Saudi "friends" – who love to host U.S. presidents bearing words of praise – and our jihadi enemies fighting to impose the rule of sharia around the world?

David Yerushalmi is an attorney specializing in litigation and general counsel to the Center for Security Policy. This originally appeared in National Review.

US District Court denies Motion to Dismiss AIG-Shariah lawsuit

(Washington, D.C.) A lawsuit claiming that the U.S. government’s bailout of the American International Group is helping promote Shariah law has won its first victory in court on May 26, 2009.

The lawsuit, which was filed in December 2008 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, is a constitutional challenge to that portion of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (EESA) that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the federal government’s majority ownership interest in AIG, which engages in Shariah-based Islamic activities.

In the May 26 filing, Judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff, of the US District Court for the Eastern District Court of Michigan, denied the U.S. government’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Kevin Murray. (The full opinion may be downloaded here: http://www.saneworks.us/uploads/news/applications/43.pdf) Mr. Murray, who is represented by legal counsel David Yerushalmi and the Thomas More Law Center (Richard Thompson and Robert Muise), filed a federal complaint against the Treasury Secretary, representing the U.S. Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Board alleging that AIG’s promotion of Shariah in its Shariah-compliant insurance products violates the Establishment Clause because the federal government owns and controls 80% of AIG and AIG’s actions have become the government’s.

The government filed its motion to dismiss making two arguments. One, Mr. Murray, as a former combat Marine, practicing Catholic, and tax payer, did not have standing to even bring this lawsuit. Two, even if he did have standing, the government acted in buying AIG without any intent to promote or become involved in religious questions.

The Court spent much of its opinion reciting the law on the narrow exception to the no-tax-payer-standing rule. That exception is triggered in a claim of a violation of the Establishment Clause and when there is a specific legislative grant for spending that implicates the First Amendment. The Court carefully reviewed all of the relevant case law and found the argument made by Messrs. Yerushalmi and Muise in their brief persuasive.

On the second issue, the Court put together all of the facts as presented by the Plaintiff’s brief and concluded:

In this case, the fact that AIG is largely a secular entity is not dispositive: “The question in an as-applied challenge is not whether the entity is of a religious character, but how it spends its grant. Kendrick, 487 U.S. at 624” 25 (Kennedy J., concurring). The circumstances of this case are historic, and the pressure upon the government to navigate this financial crisis is unfathomable. Times of crisis, however, do not justify departure from the Constitution. In this case, the United States government has a majority interest in AIG. AIG utilizes consolidated financing whereby all funds flow through a single port to support all of its activities, including Sharia-compliant financing. Pursuant to the EESA, the government has injected AIG with tens of billions of dollars, without restricting or tracking how this considerable sum of money is spent. At least two of AIG’s subsidiary companies practice Sharia-compliant financing, one of which was unveiled after the influx of government cash. After using the $40 billion from the government to pay down the $85 billion credit facility, the credit facility retained $60 billion in available credit, suggesting that AIG did not use all $40 billion consistent with its press release. Finally, after the government acquired a majority interest in AIG and contributed substantial funds to AIG for operational purposes, the government co-sponsored a forum entitled “Islamic Finance 101.” These facts, taken together, raise a question of whether the government’s involvement with AIG has created the effect of promoting religion and sufficiently raise Plaintiff’s claim beyond the speculative level, warranting dismissal inappropriate at this stage in the proceedings.

In September, the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve took a nearly 80-percent stake in AIG when it injected $150 billion to help prop up the troubled company.

In an earlier appearance on FOX News discussing the lawsuit, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy said “The suit is aimed at persuading the U.S. government it is unconstitutional to engage in the promotion of a faith. In this case, Islam, and its practices, which include among many other things, Shariah.”

Gaffney, who opposes Shariah, said the federal lawsuit sheds light on a problem that is under the radar. “There’s also a host of other aspects of Shariah that are now beginning to be adopted or accommodated in our country. We think far from being frivolous or innocuous or innocent, these represent a form of, what I think [is] best described as stealth Jihad.”

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