Tag Archives: Fox News

Assassination plot in DC related to increasing Iranian presence in Western Hemisphere

Until Chavez assumed power Iran’s presence in the Western Hemisphere was not as strong as it is today. Its proxy, Hezbollah, had presence and even committed a number of atrocities in Latin America such as the attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires. However, its presence increased manifold since Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution began to spread throughout the hemisphere.

Not surprisingly the Iranians have tried to carry out another act of terrorism by attempting to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States with the help of a Mexican criminal group. Iran intended to carry out this attack by using an American citizen of Iranian origins who contacted a member of a well-known Mexican gang and drug cartel called "The Zetas". It was also disclosed that during their exchanges, they discussed attacks on Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and Buenos Aires.

This event surprised a number of analysts and journalists including the New York Times because Iran usually carries out its terrorist attacks through proxies such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Mahdi Army. This time, however, Iran sought the help of a drug cartel and a gang that seeks to make money and not to carry out political terrorist attacks.

Thus, Max Aub, a Mexican journalist working in Miami, raised the question on Spanish language TV, why would the Zetas undertake such a risky operation for such a small amount of money- only $ 1.5 million?

From a different angle, Ali Alfoneh, an expert on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute doubts that Ayatollah Ali Khamanei planned such an attack because "he is a very cautious statesman and thus he would not gamble on something that involves so many risks". In Mr. Alfoneh’s view, this plot is indicative of an internal struggle within the Iranian leadership.

Nevertheless, the Menges Hemispheric Security Project has been warning for some time of the connections between Middle Eastern terrorist groups, rogue states and drug cartels. (See the latest here ).

Unlike countries in the Middle East where Iran has at its disposal, proxy groups such as the ones mentioned above, countries like those in the Western Hemisphere- far away from Iran’s natural geographical sphere of influence-consist of relatively unknown territory for Iran. Drug cartels and other local criminal elements on the other hand, being heavily involved in many types of criminal activities, possess logistical and strategic knowledge of their operational territory and are therefore capable of providing a tremendous service to rogue states with terrorist intentions such as Iran.

The attacks carried out by Iran against the Israeli Embassy and the Jewish community headquarters in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 respectively are a case in point. During the investigation of these attacks it became clear that top officers of the Buenos Aires Province-which is the largest and one of the most corrupt police forces in Argentina- were involved in providing logistical and institutional support to the terrorists who carried out the attack. The cases against these police officers were dismissed for reasons that are not at all clear or justified (except on internal political grounds).

In the case of the plot against the Saudi Ambassador, the logic seems to be that the Iranians knew that the "Zetas" had ways to penetrate U. S. territory, since they have already done it. Also, the "Zetas" is the most ruthless and murderous group of all the drug cartels and gangs combined. The "Zetas" have been responsible for many massacres in Mexico, including mass murder of immigrants near the border, as well as kidnapping and extortion activities and piracy. In addition, they have been the main providers of fire -power initially to the Mexican Gulf Cartel and most recently to the families that control drug trafficking in Guatemala. Of course the "Zetas" are a drug cartel. However, they have always mainly been a supplier of violence. I would dare to say that for the "Zetas" being a killing and torture machine comes first and being a drug cartel comes second. Ruthlessness and audacity are key factors that the Iranians need. In answering the question why the "Zetas" would take such risk when the profit is not worthwhile, we can say that killing is part of the equation. Drug gangs are not there only for the money. There is a psychological element that plays a role. Killing is a challenge that is not necessarily limited by the need to make a profit. As an example a Mexican gang leader captured by Mexican authorities last summer, Oscar Garcia, admitted to killing 300 people with his own hands (he used to sadistically decapitate his victims with a knife) and ordered the death of another 300 people. This man- who confessed not without amusement that he was born to kill- began his career, like the majority of the "Zetas" members, in the police and the military. In other words, this is a vivid example of a man who joins the drug cartels not to become rich but to kill. It is safe to assume that he is not the only one.

Iran’s Strategy

It was the Iranian Quds force that planned the plot. Interestingly enough, the Quds force was established as a special branch of the Revolutionary Guards to help export the revolution through subversion and terrorism. Therefore, the Quds Force’s activities take place beyond the borders of Iran and it reports directly to the Supreme leader, Ali Khameini, and most probably to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well. There is no reason to believe that these leaders did not know about the plot. To talk about an internal plot against the will of these leaders whose ruthlessness has been proven beyond any doubt, is also a baseless speculation.

A totalitarian state such as Iran is designed to inflict damage on what it considers to be its enemy. Iran has carried out a number of operations where it has not assumed responsibility for them. First the attacks in Buenos Aires mentioned above; the attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996; a series of attacks on Paris’ metro systems; the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 from Athens to London in 1985 where a U.S navy diver was murdered and others. Iran never assumed responsibility of these lethal attacks precisely because evidence beyond reasonable doubt against Iran was never clear. It was always Lebanese Shiites or unknown people who committed these crimes. This time Iran tried to do the same thing, which is to carry out an attack where there is no evidence of its involvement.
As scholar, Walid Phares, has rightly pointed out in an interview with Fox News, "in its operation against embassies in DC, Iran’s regime subcontracted cartels to strike, so that the Ayatollahs would escape international responsibility".

At this point there is little reason to doubt Iran’s responsibility for the plot against the Saudi Ambassador. What Iran is capable of doing on American soil or in any other country in the Western Hemisphere is a serious challenge that cannot be ignored. It requires heavy involvement by the White House. It cannot be delegated to any bureaucracy or agency that would treat these events as business as usual.

Iran has allies in the Western Hemisphere, first and foremost Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. But other countries, following Chavez’ lead, such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua have also deepened relations with Iran at a very dangerous level.

Venezuela is Iran’s Main Gate to the Western Hemisphere

Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, has been a major facilitator of the Iranian banking system by helping create a joint Iranian Venezuelan bank to fund "development" projects. CSP staff member, Nicolas Hanlon reported that this bank is the offspring of The Export Development Bank of Iran. This Iranian institution is under sanctions from both the U.S. Treasury and the international community for its alleged involvement in Iran’s nuclear program. The joint bank venture is aimed at finding new ways to finance Iran’s nuclear program, and mainly avoid sanctions imposed on Iran by the international community.

Moreover, Chavez also maintains a relationship with the Al Quds Force.

In fact, in January 2009, the Italian daily "La Stampa", reported that the regular flights between Caracas, Damascus and Tehran constitute a device for Venezuela to help Iran send Syria material for the manufacture of missiles. Accordingly, the materials are destined for the "Revolutionary Guards", the main force protecting the Iranian regime. In exchange for those materials Iran provided Venezuela with members of their revolutionary guards and their elite unit, "Al Quds", to strengthen Venezuela’s secret services and police. Finally, In April 2010, the Pentagon reported the presence of the Quds Force in Venezuela.

Chavez also provides logistical help to Iran. In 2008, it was reported at a conference organized by the CSP Menges Hemispheric Security Project that there were Iranian partnerships with dubious local businessmen in factories located in sensitive areas with access to strategic routes. One of the speakers at the conference talked about those partnerships as possibly including connections between drug trafficking networks that control sensitive strategic areas and Iran. In fact, Iran has established a financial and business infrastructure with Chavez’s consent and encouragement that now includes banks, gold mining, a cement plant, a tractor and bicycle factory, a tuna processing plant and a joint oil venture. On December 30th, 2008 twenty two containers were confiscated from an Iranian cargo ship bound for Venezuela. When the Turkish authorities inspected the shipment, they did not find tractor parts but components to build weapons, bombs and possibly some radioactive material (See story here)

Finally, a 2009 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that for some time Venezuelan ports and airports are being freely used by drug traffickers. It is no secret that Venezuela has become a major trans-shipment point for drugs coming from Colombia and Ecuador and that Chavez has close connections to the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) who in turn work closely with the Mexican cartels.

U.S. Policy Action Required: Sanctions Against Venezuela Are Crucial

Thus far, U.S. policy has detached Venezuela policy from Iranian policy despite everything mentioned above. Venezuela has served as Iran’s main ally in helping Iran to avoid sanctions, to increase its presence in the Western Hemisphere and has even maintained nuclear cooperation with Iran.

Currently there are sanctions against Iran imposed by the United Nations and by the United States. These are sanctions directed primarily against Iran’s energy sector but these measures need to be fully implemented. In addition, the Central Bank of Iran must be sanctioned. This past August, more than 90 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Barack Obama pressing him to sanction Iran’s central bank, with some, threatening legislation to force the move. Such a step could freeze Iran out of the global financial system.

In regard to Venezuela, U.S policy has been very mild towards Chavez for fear of looking like a "bully" and for fear of losing influence on a continent where the left has gained substantial power.

The Venezuelan oil-giant PDVSA was mildly sanctioned last summer. The sanctions imposed on PDVSA only prohibit the company from obtaining either a U.S. export visa or money from the U.S. Import-Export Bank, as well as banning them from attempting to obtain U.S. procurement contracts. These sanctions, however, are remarkably limited in scope. They do not affect PDVSA’s U.S. branch (CITGO), nor does it stop the import of Venezuelan oil to the U.S. About 10% of the total oil the U.S imports comes from Venezuela. (See more about sanctions on Venezuela here)

Since Venezuela is a key Iran partner it only makes sense for the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to impose sanctions on Venezuela, as well. Additional sanctions against Iran will only be partially effective as long as the Iranian government has carte blanche to launder their money through the Venezuelan banking system.

The U.S needs to be assertive also with other countries in Latin America that maintain relations with Iran. Not only Chavez and his Bolivarian allies hold strong relations with Iran but also moderate socialist countries such as Brazil and Uruguay have strengthened their relations with Iran as a show of independence from the United States. This includes trade relations and stronger political relations. With news about murderous Iranian intentions, it is vital that the United States along with Europeans press Latin American countries to distance themselves from Iran and join the sanctions policy.

In conclusion, security challenges emanating from the Western Hemisphere have long been neglected. It is not that surprising that Iran hatched a plot reaching out to a Mexican drug cartel to carry it out. What is surprising is the lack of awareness of Iran’s substantial presence in our hemisphere and the seeming nonchalance with which the U. S. treats this ever rising danger.

 

Originally published at The Americas Report, a project of the Center for Security Policy.

Exposing the US government’s failed history of Muslim outreach since 9/11

Patrick Poole is an expert terrorism analyst and co-author of the Center for Security Policy’s Amazon best-seller Team B II: Shariah – The Threat to America. For the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks he wrote a scathing assessment of “Muslim outreach” efforts under successive U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat.  He describes official policy as “disastrous” as Muslim Brothers such as Abdulrahman Alamoudi became White House insiders in the 1990’s, and some government agencies continue to liaise closely with Muslim Brotherhood groups such as the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to this day:

When President Obama hosted his annual iftar dinner in August to commemorate Ramadan, the list of invitees published by the White House was curiously missing the names of several attendees — all of whom are top leaders of organizations known to be purveyors of jihadist ideology. But it was not like they had crashed the party. One of the unlisted, Mohamed Magid, head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America, was photographed by Reuters sitting at the front table only a few feet from the president as he spoke.

This was just the most recent episode in the federal government’s disastrous attempts at outreach to the Muslim community since the 9/11 attacks. With the release of President Obama’s new strategic plan to combat “violent extremism” by expanding outreach to these same terror-tied groups, the present administration seems intent on compounding the problems wrought by its predecessors.

Misguided outreach activities began long before 9/11, with the best example being the case of Abdurahman Alamoudi.

Alamoudi was the conduit through which much of the U.S. government’s outreach was pursued following the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Not only was he asked by the Clinton administration to help train and certify all Muslim military chaplains, his organization being the first to do so, but he also was appointed by the State Department in 1997 as a goodwill ambassador to the Middle East, making six taxpayer-funded trips. It is fair to say that during this period, Alamoudi was the most prominent and politically connected Muslim leader in America.

As we now know, Alamoudi was indicted in October 2003 for moving money on behalf of Libyan intelligence in an assassination plot targeting Saudi Prince (now King) Abdullah. The U.S. government has admitted that at the time he was being courted by Democrats and Republicans alike, he was a major fundraiser for al-Qaeda.

However, it is not as if the U.S. government was unaware of Alamoudi’s attachments. As far back as 1993, an informant told the FBI that Alamoudi was funneling regular payments from Osama bin Laden to Omar Abdel Rahman, the “blind sheikh” who was convicted of authorizing terror attacks against New York landmarks. In March 1996, Alamoudi’s association with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook was exposed in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Two years later, the State Department came under fire by the New York Post for inviting Alamoudi to official events despite his known remarks in support of terrorism and terrorist leaders.

When President Bush took office, Alamoudi was quickly courted by the new administration. In June 2001, the Jerusalem Post reported that Alamoudi was going to be part of a White House meeting with Vice President Cheney despite the fact that Alamoudi was known to have attended a terror confab in Beirut earlier that year featuring representatives from virtually every major Islamic terrorist organization in the world, including al-Qaeda.

Yet just days after the 9/11 attacks, Alamoudi was one of the Muslim leaders asked to appear with President Bush at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C. That same week, one of Alamoudi’s close associates, Muzammil Siddiqi, was asked to deliver an Islamic prayer and to represent the entire Muslim-American community at the national prayer service mourning the fallen.

The inclusion of Alamoudi and Siddiqi at the post-9/11 events was highly criticized, especially because Alamoudi had been videotaped in October 2000, as noted by the Los Angeles Times, expressing his support for Hamas and Hezbollah at a rally held just steps from the White House. At that same demonstration, Siddiqi accused the U.S. of responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians and warned that “the wrath of God will come.” One former Secret Service agent told Fox News that “the intelligence community has known for some time the association of Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi and Mr. Alamoudi and their association with terrorist organizations.”

The decision to continue doing business with Alamoudi and others like him was just one of many blunders made by the U.S. government in its eagerness to conduct Muslim outreach in the wake of 9/11.

Most embarrassing of all, one of the first Muslim leaders to whom the government turned after the attacks was none other than Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda cleric who was in direct contact with at least three of the 9/11 hijackers and is currently on the CIA’s kill-or-capture list.

 Read the full article at Pajamas Media.

 

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

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

We call it The Rollback.

 

Glenn Beck’s revealing visit

American media superstar Glenn Beck’s visit to Israel this week was a revealing and remarkable event. It revealed what it takes to be a friend of Israel. And it revealed the causes of Israel’s difficulty in telling its enemies from its friends.

Many world leaders, opinion-shapers and other notables profess enduring friendship with Israel. From Washington to London, Paris to Spain, policymakers and other luminaries preface all their remarks to Jewish audiences with such statements. Once their declarations are complete – and often without taking a breath – they proceed to denounce Israel’s policies and to deny its basic rights.

US President Barack Obama exemplifies this practice. Obama always begins his statements on Israel by proclaiming his enduring friendship for Israel. Then he tells us to deny Jewish property rights, accept indefensible borders, or desist from defending ourselves from aggression.

The Israeli Left habitually embraces self-proclaimed friends such as Obama. Often leftist leaders encourage such friends to harm Israel in the name of helping it. For instance, in 2007, speaking to then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice – who had a habit of comparing her friend Israel to the Jim Crow South – then-Haaretz editor David Landau asked her to "rape" the Jewish state. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni recently encouraged Obama to increase pressure on Israel.

When anti-Semitic public intellectuals such as the late Nobel laureate Jose Saramago compare Israel to Nazi Germany, the Israeli Left makes light of their remarks. For instance, when at the height of the Palestinian terror war in 2002 Saramago said Israel was worse than the Nazis and that Jews had no right to speak of the Holocaust, Yediot Aharonot’s Ariella Melamed referred to Saramago as "one of the most beloved foreign novelists in Israel."

On Thursday, Israeli Arab actor and filmmaker Muhammad Bakri was the subject of a two-page hagiographic profile in Yediot. Bakri’s libelous 2003 film Jenin, Jenin, in which he falsely portrayed IDF soldiers as murderers and war criminals, was brushed off as merely "controversial."

Making no mention of Bakri’s family ties to terrorist murderers or supportive statements regarding terrorism and war against Israel, Yediot portrayed this foe as a hero. Bakri, who has used his considerable talents to criminalize and demonize the country and to support its terrorist enemies, was lionized as an unwilling culture warrior who would much rather be acting than fighting, but feels he cannot escape his duty to fight for the great causes he holds dear.

Also Thursday, Yediot ran a story about Beck’s Restoring Courage Rally beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The headline read, "Glenn Beck’s Messianic Show."

In general, the Israeli media responded to Beck’s visit to Israel either as a non-event, or they distorted who Beck is and what he is trying to do. Thursday’s print edition of Ma’ariv sufficed with a photograph from Beck’s rally in Jerusalem the previous day.

By casting Beck’s visit as insignificant, Ma’ariv disserved its readers. Beck is one of the most influential media personalities in the US today.

Unlike the leftist public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman who are celebrated and obsessively covered by the Israeli media, Beck exerts real influence on public opinion in the US. His calls for action are answered by hundreds of thousands of people. His statements are a guidepost for millions of Americans. Aside from radio host Rush Limbaugh, no media personality in the US has such influence.

It is highly significant that thousands of Beck’s supporters followed his call and came with him to Israel for a week to express their support for Israel and the Jewish people. It is similarly significant that millions more of his supporters followed his actions on Internet.

Those media that did not seek to downplay the importance of Beck’s visit opted instead to distort who he is and what he is doing. As the Yediot headline indicated, the media portrayed him as an unstable messianic, or they castigated him as an extremist and marginal force in the US. Haaretz and Globes both ran articles attacking Beck as an anti-Semite.

These claims are outrageous and represent yet another gross disservice to Israeli news consumers who do not have an independent means of judging Beck, his message and his actions for themselves.

Beck came to Israel to launch a global movement of activists committed to supporting Israel, not in order to "rape" it, but in order to empower it to defeat its enemies and to stand up to an increasingly hostile world. In his speech under the Temple Mount, Beck roused his audience – which contrary to media reports was a mix of American Christians and American Jews joined by scores of Israelis – to action. With gripping prose, Beck told his audience to disregard the "convenient" lies about Israel and embrace the truth.

That truth, he said, is that "In Israel, there is more courage in one square mile than in all of Europe. In Israel, there is more courage in one Israeli soldier than in the combined and cold hearts of every bureaucrat at the United Nations. In Israel, you can find people who will stand against incredible odds, against the entire tide of global opinion, for what is right and good and true. Israel is not a perfect country. No country is perfect. But it tries, and it is courageous."

From Israel he proceeded Wednesday night to South Africa to tell the true story of Apartheid and to dispel the popular falsehood that Israel bears any similarity to Apartheid South Africa. From there he will continue on to Latin America to meet with communal leaders and mobilize them to support Israel. And from there he will return to the US where he will launch his global movement to support Israel before a mass audience in Dallas early next week.

What was most remarkable about Beck’s message was its rarity. Beck did not say anything factually inaccurate. The vast majority of Israelis certainly would find nothing controversial in any of his assertions. Yet despite his honesty, and his reasonable interpretation of Israel’s strategic and diplomatic circumstances, Beck’s is a voice in the wilderness. One almost never comes across a foreigner – or even an Israeli – who is willing to speak such basic truths in public.

Both the rarity of truthful assessments of reality such as Beck’s and the gross distortion of his message and importance by the media are the consequence of intellectual and social intimidation that has led to groupthink among members of the media and of the cultural elites in Israel and throughout much of the Western world.

As Beck put it, "The grand councils of the earth condemn Israel. Across the border, Syria slaughters its own citizens. The grand councils are silent…

"These international councils, these panels of so-called diplomats, condemn Israel not because they believe Israel needs to be corrected. They do so because it is convenient.

"Everyone does it. In some countries, it’s a crime not to.

"The diplomats are afraid, and so they submit. They surrender to falsehood. The truth matters not. To the keepers of conventional wisdom, a sacrifice of the truth is a small price to pay. What difference does it make if we beat up on little Israel? These are the actions of the fearful and cowards."

And in the face of this cowardice, Beck organized his visit to Israel under the banner "Restoring Courage."

He told his audience, "I stand here to tell you this: Fear is the pathway to surrender. And to overcome fear, we must have courage."

Beck is rare, because he refuses to bow to the intellectual intimidation and groupthink that plagues the discourse on Israel in Israel itself and throughout the world. He refuses to play by the rules in which friends of Israel are castigated as messianic crazies and extremists and Israel’s enemies are praised as friends and great artists and courageous dissidents. He is an exception to a demented rule.

Israel’s media didn’t come to their hatred of Beck on their own. Most of it is fueled by American Jewish leftists. Beck ran afoul of the liberal American Jewish establishment through his outspoken attacks on George Soros. In January, Beck ran several shows on Soros, the extremist leftist anti-American and anti-Zionist global financier who has given more than $100 million to radical leftist groups.

Among other things, Beck ran a 1998 interview that Soros gave to CBS News’s Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes. During the course of the interview, Soros admitted that as a boy in Nazi occupied Hungary he collaborated with the Nazis in confiscating Jewish property. Beck dwelled on Soros’s statement and his stated lack of guilt for his actions. Beck considered its impact on the shaping of Soros’s personality.

For his actions, Beck was attacked as an anti- Semite by the Soros-funded Jewish Funds for Justice. The group which conducts community organizing in liberal Jewish congregations collected the signatures of several dozen rabbis and ran a $100,000 ad in The Wall Street Journal asking Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch to take action against Beck. According to JCCWatch.org, New York’s UJA-Jewish Federation has given more than a million dollars to the Soros-funded organization.

The Left’s attacks on Beck are fueled by the fact that he is a Christian Zionist. The Left’s default mode is to accuse Christian Zionists of a hidden agenda to convert Jews and a secret desire to see us killed in an Armageddon.

But in truth the media’s embrace of Israel’s enemies, their rejection of Beck, and most importantly Beck’s refusal to bow to their conventional wisdom that Israel’s enemies should be praised and its friends should be condemned all reveal the reason that Christian Zionists can be trusted and embraced by Israelis.

Christian Zionists – like Jewish religious Zionists – are unmoved by the media’s intimidation because of their faith in God, and their reliance on scripture. Their faith provides them with a means of judging reality that is independent of the largely post-religious intellectual commissariat that runs the media and the cultural elite in the Western world. They don’t seek or care about receiving the accolades of the New York Times or other post-religious totems for their actions. And Beck’s message to Israelis is that we shouldn’t care either.

For most Israelis, this message rings powerful and true. But for the media, in Israel and throughout the West, it is dangerous sedition that must be marginalized and destroyed.

Beck said that his movement will be one of individuals who work together to defend Israel and the Jews from those who seek our destruction. He argued that regular people are far more capable of understanding what needs to be done than the well-heeled experts who lead us down the garden path of weakness and demoralization.

And he is right.

And in bringing this message to Israel, he demonstrated his friendship. We should return the favor by taking his advice. We should trust ourselves and our instincts and stop listening to the "experts" who preach weakness and surrender.

 

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. 

 

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.

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

Fact-Checking NPRs Agenda Journalism on Terrorism

Yesterday’s poorly reported National Public Radio Morning Edition story, "Terrorism Training Casts Pall Over Muslim Employee," demands a fact-check critique. The NPR report alleged that the head of Ohio’s Muslim outreach program Omar al-Omari was wrongly terminated due to a law enforcement briefing on political Islam.  We needed to issue several corrections:

NPR Claim #1: "Federal officials familiar with the case say Omari was singled out because he distinguished between extremist Muslims and mainstream Muslims in his outreach and training programs."

Fact Check #1: Many of the materials Omari had written, including his Guide to Arabic and Islamic Culture, and a brochure titled ‘Agents of Radicalization‘ were slanted towards a pro-radical Islamic view and support a revisionist history which blames America for many of the Middle East’s problems.  In the Guide, Omari defines jihad as:

Jihad doesn’t mean holy war, as many people are led to believe. It actually means a struggle to achieve excellence. It’s the struggle Muslims face in life which varies from the Greater Jihad where a person is obliged to struggle within him/herself to overcome evil and establish good, to the Lesser Jihad which is the struggle in daily life. As Muslims are obliged to maximize their potential in order to be the best citizens they can be, jihad is the vehicle that lifts them to the challenge.  The term holy war is a European concept that began with the Crusades and was extended to Islam by the West.

In an interview with The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Zuhdi Jasser, Muslim President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy was highly critical of Omari’s publications:

Jasser describes the two publications as "full of factual inaccuracies" including the assertion that 66 percent of American Arabs are Muslim (close to three-fourths are Christian). Alomari also "misses the core problem: political Islam." Instead, he indulges in "bizarre revisionist history" which "seeks to portray Muslims as victims."

The United States is engaged in "a war of ideas" with radical Islam. Regarding jihadists, "you would hope that [Alomari] would say that these are corrupt thugs who have hijacked our faith," Jasser told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. But instead he "describes [terrorism] as a response to what the West has done."

The material Alomari’s agency is putting out is "classic Islamist propaganda" which suggests that "these thugs who kill people in restaurants and shopping malls will stop if we solve the Arab-Israeli conflict," Jasser said. "In fact, they’ll find another grievance in a year or two."

The brochure "Agents of Radicalization," was printed but then copies were destroyed because Omari had listed as "organizations we are working with" a list that included numerous unindicted co-conspirators from the Holy Land Foundation terrorism finance trial: "Some of the organizations we are working with," Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA) Muslim American Society (MAS) Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) Muslim Student Association (MSA)." Many of these groups were listed as unindicted coconspirators in the largest terrorism financing trial in American history, US vs Holy Land Foundation.

Omari’s brochure on radicalization was never distributed, according to a source within the Department:

Thousands of copies were printed up by the department (at taxpayer expense, of course). Some copies had been provided to some of our partner agencies. As boxes of these things were getting ready to be shipped out, our director was contacted by some counter-terrorism officials and told that the brochure was promoting groups that the FBI and other agencies were trying to distance themselves from (like CAIR).

According to a report by counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole, Ten Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat,

"When [Omari] organized a forum on "interfaith dialogue" for the department in August 2009, the two lone Muslim representatives included a local imam, Hany Saqr, who was identified in the Holy Land Foundation trial as one of the top Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the nation; and CAIR-Ohio president Asma Mobin-Uddin."

NPR Claim #2: "Omari lost his job with the state of Ohio, though not because of claims that he had ties to terrorism…his employment application was incomplete. He hadn’t listed all of the schools where he had worked before taking the job with the state of Ohio."

Fact Check #2: Omari was fired not only for failing to list his prior employment at Columbus State Community College, "where he was fired after an improper consensual sexual affair with a student," according to the Columbus Dispatch newspaper but also for failing to disclose his prior work for the Jordanian Minister of Labor and for lying to investigators, also reported by FOX News and first published at the online investigative journalism website My Pet Jawa.

According to reports, Omari sued the female student who had reported his illicit activities as sexual harassment to higher-ups, claiming the woman had defamed him.  He lost.

Omari is now currently suing the state of Ohio for wrongful termination, as well as other alleged discriminations he suffered while working as the Multicultural Relations Officer for the Ohio Department of Public Safety.

NPR Claim #3: According to the NPR story on the mid-April 2010 training session, "Deputy Chief Jeffrey Blackwell of the Columbus Division of Police stated about Omari that "I knew him really well … And I thought he was a great professional, so that was part of the reason why I was so surprised when his picture popped up in the presentation."

Fact Check #3: Omari’s highly Islamist-influenced brochure (the one that had to be destroyed) and guide had been widely publicized after he testified to Congress on March 17 and was widely criticized – one month PRIOR to the mid-April law enforcement training session, where the trainers discussed the content of the Omari publications with the attendees.  The facts raised by the trainers about Omari’s publications were not in dispute when published in March or presented by trainers in April.  According to participants the trainers had been invited to brief by the Columbus Police Department, and far from being "suspended," the training continued through to the end of the planned session.  The entire course of instruction was completed.

This information was available to National Public Radio by simply googling Omari’s name, but NPR’s story was not an exercise in journalism.  They’re in the whitewashing business for Islamist supporters like Omari.

Congress, on the other hand, is in the spending reduction business these days.  Exactly one year after the public exposure of Omari began, on March 17, 2011, the House of Representatives voted to stop federal funding for National Public Radio.  The vote was 228 to 192.  Not even close.

Soros, Obama & ‘Responsibility to Protect’

Earlier this week, Frank Gaffney appeared on Fox Business News with Eric Bolling to discuss the civil war in Libya. First, Aaron Klein of WND reports on Obama national security adviser Samantha Power’s relationship with far-leftist George Soros and their common affinity for the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ provision in the UN’s Libya resolution. The left correctly sees this ‘Responsibility to Protect’ at least as a blow to American sovereignty; it’s time all Americans get to know the implications of this dangerous new precedent.

Also featured in the clip is San Francisco attorney Yasser Tabbara, appearing as a representative for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted coconspirator in the largest terrorist finance trial in American history. Tabbara– just back from Egypt– accuses Frank of demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

New Study on Hate Crimes Debunks the Myth of a Growing Trend in Muslim Victimization

The Center for Security Policy today released a revised edition of their groundbreaking longitudinal study, Religious Bias Crimes 2000-2009: Muslim, Jewish and Christian Victims –  Debunking the Myth of a Growing Trend in Muslim Victimization, based on FBI statistics reported annually in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The Center’s study contradicts the assertions that religious bias crimes against Muslims have increased, and that the alleged cause is widespread “Islamophobia” in America.  In fact, the study shows that religious bias crimes – also known as hate crimes – against Muslim Americans, measured by the categories of incidents, offenses or victims, have remained relatively low with a downward trend since 2001, and are significantly less than the numbers of bias crimes against Jewish victims.

The Center’s study also contradicts the assumption of increased hate crimes against Muslims which has been asserted by Senator Richard Durbin’s (D-IL) Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, and is the topic of hearings being held today.  Printed copies of the study were delivered to each member of the U.S. Senate early this morning.

According to the Center’s analysis, in 2009, Jewish victims of hate crimes outnumbered Muslim victims by more than 8 to 1 (1,132 Jewish victims to 132 Muslim victims). From 2000 through 2009, for every one hate crime incident against a Muslim, there were six hate crime incidents against Jewish victims (1,580 Muslim incidents versus 9,692 Jewish incidents).  Even in 2001 when religious bias crimes against Muslims increased briefly for a nine-week period, total anti-Muslim incidents, offenses and victims remained approximately half of the corresponding anti-Jewish totals.

The study provides hard data that disproves the counterfactual statements made by a small number of highly vocal Muslim lobbying groups, many linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as leftwing activists.   Citing these false assumptions concerning America’s alleged “Islamophobia” and a supposed rising trend in hate crimes against Muslim Americans, these organizations  argued against holding the March 10, 2011 House Committee on Homeland Security hearings on Muslim American radicalization, and have argued for today’s hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution.  The study shows that these arguments against the March 10 hearings, and for today’s March 29 hearings, are not based on facts but rather on a political agenda.

Frank Gaffney, President of Center for Security Policy remarked:

This report is important because it exposes a false belief perpetuated by a few vocal groups that religious bias crimes against Muslims are on the upswing.  The truth is quite the opposite.  These arguments, unsubstantiated by hard factual data, are corrosive to community relationships at every level of American society, and a potential threat to national security.

Note: This Center for Security Policy Occasional Paper is available as a PDF, or is reprinted below.

 

Religious Bias Crimes (2000-2009): Muslim, Christian & Jewish Victims – Debunking the Myth of a Growing Trend in Muslim Victimization

Clare M. Lopez, Roland Peer & Christine Brim

 

Introduction

Misperceptions about religious bias hate crimes in America are widespread.  This study is a longitudinal comparison of religious bias hate crimes, as reported by the FBI, from the pre-9/11 year of 2000 through 2009, the most recent year for which statistics were available.[1]  The assertion that religious bias hate crimes against one group in particular, Muslims in America, have proliferated in the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001 has gained acceptance within media and government, thanks to a steady drumbeat of assertions to this effect from a small but vocal group of advocacy organizations.

Internationally, the most aggressive of these is the 57 member state Organization of the Islamic Conference, with its so-called “Islamophobia Observatory.” In the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)[2] and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)[3] have taken the lead in issuing claims that discrimination and religious bias hate crimes against Muslims are increasing.[4]  These organizations have also asserted that “Islamophobia” and statements critical of Islam, Shariah law, or political Islamist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood may be linked to the alleged rise in hate crimes.  Alternatively, counterterrorism expert Steve Emerson has suggested “In advancing the notion that government policy has resulted in an undeserved backlash against ordinary Muslims, CAIR seeks to muster opposition to the anti-terror laws it finds objectionable.”[5]

To inform this public debate about religious bias hate crimes in America, the Center for Security Policy analyzed data from 2000 through 2009 for three FBI-identified victim groups: Jews, Muslims, and Christians (a combined statistic for the purposes of this whitepaper, combining separate FBI data for Catholics and Protestants). The source of all the religion bias crimes information cited in the following report is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program,[6] which collects crime statistics on an annual basis and presents them online. Appendices B-T at the end of this report present those official FBI statistics in tables and charts showing the comparative incidence of religious hate crimes for Christians, Jews, and Muslims from 2000-2009.

The results may prove surprising to those who took CAIR or MPAC spokesmen at their word. For example, in 2009[7], in totals for a combined five categories of hate crime, from Simple Assault to Crimes Against Property, Jewish victims of hate crimes by religion outnumbered Muslim victims by more than 8 to 1 (1,132 Jewish victims to 132 Muslim victims). Nor is 2009 an anomalous year in terms of these numbers. Across the decade, from 2000 through 2009, Jewish victims of hate crimes by religion outnumbered their Christian and Muslim counterparts, with the exception of a nine-week period following the 9/11 terrorist acts for two categories of bias crimes: simple and aggravated assaults statistics.[8]   From 2000 through 2009, for every one hate crime incident against a Muslim, there were six hate crime incidents against Jewish victims (1,580 Muslim incidents versus 9,692 Jewish incidents).

The Center for Security Policy presents this study to inform the dialogue surrounding religious bias crimes in the U.S. and to provide a fact-based resource that analysts, researchers, and citizens can use for a reality check.

Prior Research

Although a number of European academics and institutes (particularly the British[9]) have produced studies on the general topic of “Islamophobia” in the years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, few Americans have tackled “hate crimes” from the objective perspective of a neutral academic and empirical study based on the available FBI statistics. Two studies are representative, though unlike our study, neither is a longitudinal study encompassing a ten-year period.

Jeffrey Kaplan, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh authored a report entitled, “Islamophobia in America?: September 11 and Islamophobic Hate Crime.”[10] Although this report does reference FBI hate crime statistics, it does so only for the period from 2000-2002, as Kaplan’s study focus is that period of time just after the September 11 attacks on the U.S. He concludes that “The intense phase of these attacks comprised approximately nine weeks, after which the number of hate crimes fell sharply” due, he writes, to national leadership from the U.S. president, decisive law enforcement intervention, grassroots outreach to Muslim communities across the country, and a “rapid dissolution of American moral certainty about the War on Terror.”

In other research, Steven George Salaita produced a study for the New Centennial Review in the Fall of 2006 which set out to “summarize the evolution of the Arab image in American media since Ronald Stockton’s seminal 1994 analysis, with emphasis on the role of 9/11, and advance the usage of the term anti-Arab racism as a more accurate replacement for the traditional descriptors Orientalism and Islamophobia in relation to the negative portrayal of Arabs in the United States.”[11] Unlike our study, the author approached the topic with a non-empirical framework.

Scholarly research in the area of hate crimes is increasingly a popular area for specialization, as witnessed by the Journal of Hate Studies, celebrating its 8th Volume in 2010.[12]  A useful short review of the field’s scope – though unfortunately not addressing a longitudinal analysis nor  the FBI data – can be found in Barbara Perry’s essay, “The more things change…post-9/11 trends in hate crime scholarship,” a summary of the various disciplines’ research addressing the issue of hate.[13]

Methodology and Findings

The “Religious Bias Crimes in America” study is a longitudinal look at the instances of religious bias crimes, also known as hate crimes, against Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the United States from 2000 to 2009. The use of the term “Hate Crime” is defined by the FBI in its 1996 Training Guide for Hate Crime Data Collection[14] as well as in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program,[15] which find their authorization in the April 23, 1990 “Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990.”[16] This legislation requires the U.S. Department of Justice to compile and publish an annual summary of data about crimes that “manifest prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.”  This study focuses on those hate crimes that clearly demonstrate prejudice based on bias against Christians (Catholics and Protestants combined), Jews and Muslims, as identified by the FBI.  Three other categories of religious bias crime for which the FBI collects statistics, but which were not included in this study because they are less specific for purposes of comparison are: anti-other religion, anti-multi-religious group, and anti-atheism-agnosticism.

The Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines define a bias crime:

A criminal offense committed against a person or property which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin; also known as Hate Crime.

Definitions of the various offenses against person and property are also provided in the Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines.[17]

Three broad categories of religious hate crimes are included in this study: incidents, offenses, and victims. A single incident may include more than one offense (for example, intimidation and robbery). An offense may have more than one victim.  A victim may be the target of more than one offense.  Data categories for offenses and victims are sub-divided between crimes against persons, and crimes against property. Each of these sub-categories is further broken down by specific types of crimes.  For example, crimes against persons include 1) murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, 2) forcible rape, 3) simple assault, 4) aggravated assault, 5) intimidation (by far the largest crimes against persons category), and 6) other.   Crimes against property include 1) robbery, 2) burglary, 3) larceny/theft, 4) motor vehicle theft, 5) arson, 6) destruction/damage/vandalism (by far the largest crimes against property category), and 7) other.  A third category, crimes against society, (at the same hierarchical level as crimes against persons, and crimes against property) presented only insignificant numbers for all three religions in the study (19 victims for all three religious groups from all ten years combined – see Appendix C, Table 2).

While there has been a slight variation through the years, anti-Jewish hate crimes have hovered around 70% of total anti-religious hate crime, while anti-Muslim violence has accounted for around 10%, and anti-Christian hate crime has totaled slightly less than 10%. Jewish and Muslim populations in America, as noted previously, each are estimated at 6 million persons (with an alternate estimate by Pew for the Muslim population). There was an increase in anti-Muslim violence in 2001 (exceeding both Jewish and Christian rates for simple and aggravated assault), which decreased to the 10% range in 2002, where it has remained (a temporary smaller spike was seen in 2006 against both Jewish and Muslim victims).  Even in the anomalous year of 2001, total anti-Muslim incidents, offenses, and number of victims were approximately half of the corresponding anti-Jewish totals (Muslim Incidents – 481, Victims – 546, Offenses – 554; Jewish Incidents – 1043, Victims – 1117, Offenses – 1196). That the terrorist attacks occurred relatively late in the year – in September of 2001 – suggests that the increase in anti-Muslim violence occurred over a period of a few weeks, or more specifically nine weeks as noted in Kaplan’s study. Looking at total numbers of victims over the 2000-2009 period, for every Muslim victim from 2000 to 2009, there have been over six (6.13) Jewish incidents of hate crimes.  As noted previously, in 2009 the ratio increased: for every Muslim victim, there were even more – over 8 – Jewish victims.

Most anti-religious hate crimes in the United States are not of a violent nature against persons. Aggregating anti-Christian, anti-Muslim, and anti-Jewish hate crimes against persons and property from 2000 to 2009[18], demonstrates that 64% of total hate crimes are crimes against property, and of these, 92% are cases of destruction/damage/vandalism, and the majority of the remaining 8% are burglary and larceny/theft. There have been 38 robbery offenses, or 0.3% of total hate crimes and of these, 23 were anti-Jewish. The rate of arson is very small, accounting for slightly more than 1% of total crimes against property.

Of the remaining 36% of total cases that are crimes against persons, most (77%) are classified as intimidation. Virtually all of the other 23% are simple or aggravated assault. There were no rape cases and only one murder, of a Jewish victim. There was an increase in 2006 in anti-Muslim aggravated assault (24 offenses), compared to 22 anti-Jewish offenses, and in 2009 (11 vs. 9). There were no similar spikes in cases of simple assault, and in other years, anti-Jewish aggravated and simple assault cases are double that of anti-Muslim assault cases. While cases of anti-Jewish aggravated assault decreased between 2008 and 2009 from 25 to 9, anti-Jewish simple assault cases increased sharply from 58 to 82. When compared to the overall population of over 300 million people, anti-religious hate crimes are not highly prevalent in the United States for any religious group.  Bias-motivated crime is simply not that common for any religious group in the U.S.

Comparing the prevalence of anti-religious hate crimes by religion requires measuring the number of incidents against the overall population of Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the United States. Self-identified Christians accounted in 2008 for 76% of the adult American population[19], or 173,402,000 persons, significantly higher than for Muslims or Jews, and therefore the relative prevalence of anti-Christian crimes is by far the lowest of the three. Muslim groups in the U.S. such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), with an interest in presenting the U.S. Muslim population as equivalent to the Jewish one, repeatedly have declared the number of Muslims in the U.S. to be about 6 million persons, ,[20]  Within the same range, Chicago Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, the 2010 Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions’ Board of Trustees Chairman, has cited 2001 estimates of 5.8 million and 6.7 million Muslims in America.[21] On February 3, 2011, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) similarly cited “the reality of 6 million Muslims.”[22] A lower estimate was published by the Pew Research Center in January 2011, when it put the Muslim population of the U.S. at 2.6 million.[23] The 2010 US Census estimates the Jewish population in the United States to be 6.5 million, or 2.1% of the total population in 2009, and this includes those who self-define as Jewish either by religion, ethnicity, or culture. [24] This broad definition thus can be seen as defining an upper boundary for the U.S. Jewish population, given that the FBI hate crime statistics define Judaism as a religion.

The Facts Contradict the Myths

These findings seem to contradict the popular perception that Muslims face more discrimination than Jews in the United States. For example, a Pew poll conducted in 2009 found that 58% of Americans believe there is “a lot of discrimination against” Muslims, opposed to 35% who thought the same for Jews. [25] FBI statistics do show a lower percentage of anti-Jewish hate crimes have identified offenders, which may contribute to the misperception that anti-Jewish hate crimes in the United States are not as prevalent as they really are.  Of total known offenders from the period of 2000 to 2009, 56% committed anti-Jewish hate crimes; the number rises to  67% when unknown offenders are included.

The process of local law enforcement data collection and categorization is inconsistent and both over-reporting and under-reporting may occur[26].   The goal of our analysis is to show the relative frequency of hate crimes, by religion and by type.

We have looked at primarily at some summary statistics for this report.  In addition, we include the tables here as appendices along with a selection of charts.  The spreadsheet data tables and charts are available for download in excel format at securefreedom.org.

Hate Crime Rhetoric

 Concerns about a backlash against Muslims in America arose in the aftermath of 9/11 and were given added impetus by books, studies, and other publications and statements by various organizations and Muslim leadership figures and groups. The November 2002 report by Human Rights Watch, “We Are Not the Enemy: Hate Crimes Against Arabs, Muslims, and Those Perceived to be Arab or Muslim after September 11″[27] is representative of the genre. Citing a “severe wave of backlash violence” involving “more than two thousand September 11-related backlash incidents” against Arabs and Muslims in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, the report claims such people were targeted “solely because they shared or were perceived as sharing the national background or religion of the hijackers and al-Qaeda members deemed responsible for attacking the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.”[28] Although the report goes on to claim that “comprehensive and reliable national statistics are not available,” this study cites the readily-available official FBI statistics that indeed do show a spike from 28 to 481 total hate crimes against Muslims between the years 2000 and 2001; however, according to the FBI figures, even that high mark is exceeded by a factor of two for the typical annual total of hate crimes against Jews in America.[29]

The January 6, 2010 report, “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim Americans,” produced with funding from the Department of Justice, also cites an “increased anti-Muslim bias” in the years since the 9/11 attacks. This paper’s three authors, David Schanzer and Ebrahim Moosa of Duke University and Charles Kurzman from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, assert that Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of government counterterrorism initiatives, some of which they consider discriminatory.[30]

Then there is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which styles itself an organization “that challenges stereotypes of Islam and Muslims” and a “Washington-based Islamic advocacy group” dedicated to challenging “anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide.”[31] The CAIR website includes an extensive section on “Islamophobia,”[32] a term reportedly coined by the Muslim Brotherhood front group, the International Islamic Institute of Thought (IIIT),[33] in an effort to find a concept useful in beating back critics of Islamic law (shariah) and jihad.[34]

CAIR traces the phenomenon of “Islamophobia” to writing by Samuel Huntington in the 1990s that posited a coming “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West. CAIR claims that “when 9/11 happened,” those already prejudiced against Islam were influenced by “right wing outlets” and “pro-Israeli commentators such as Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Judith Miller, and Bernard Lewis” to amplify an atmosphere of “extreme prejudice, suspicion, and fear against Muslims.”[35] Deftly sidestepping the historical record of decades of international terror attacks perpetrated by Muslim jihadis well before 9/11[36], in addition to centuries of shariah-inspired jihad that preceded the current one[37], CAIR’s Islamophobia page cites a number of surveys conducted in the years following 2001 that indicate Americans believe Islam encourages violence, does not teach respect for the beliefs of non-Muslims, or that mosques ought to be monitored by U.S. law enforcement officials. Americans’ entirely rational concerns about jihadist attacks and the encroachment of shariah on American society are then described not only as the font of “discrimination, exclusion, and violence” against Muslims (without citing any official statistics to substantiate the accusation), but the naturally-to-be-expected source of Muslims’ own “disillusionment, social disorder, and….irrational violence.” [Emphasis added][38]

Slander, Blasphemy, and Insult to Islam in Shariah

It is imperative that western societies like ours understand the serious implications within Islamic law for accusations of insult to Islam, Islamic doctrine, or Muslims. Under shariah, the offense of slander is defined very differently than in U.S. law. According to the ‘Umdat al-Salik (or Reliance of the Traveller), a book of Islamic law that carries the imprimatur of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the global seat of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence, Slander “means to mention anything concerning a person [a Muslim] that he would dislike…”[39]  Several pages later, a further explanation is provided: “A person should not speak of anything he notices about people besides that which benefits a Muslim to relate or prevents disobedience.”[40] Under Islamic law, truth is no defense against an accusation of slander and the offense is held to be a Hudud crime, one deserving the harshest punishment.

Even more serious than Slander under Islamic law is the offense of Blasphemy. The Muslim authorities hold Blasphemy to be insulting or abusing that which is held sacred in Islam. This can include anything from cursing Allah or the prophet Muhammad to irreverent behavior towards Islamic religious beliefs or customs. Even expressing opinions about Islam considered at variance with normative beliefs can be construed as blasphemy under this extremely subjective definition. Not only Muslims traditionally have been held accountable under the Islamic blasphemy laws, but also non-Muslims, especially dhimmis (conquered, subjugated People of the Book, i.e., Christians and Jews). “Reviling Muslims” or “Harming the Friends of Allah Most High” are considered serious sins, termed “Enormities”.[41]  Such offenses are described in Islamic law as those that entail either a threat of punishment in the hereafter, a prescribed Hadd punishment, or being accursed by Allah or the prophet Muhammad.[42]

Islamic laws on Blasphemy and Slander should not be considered outmoded or an irrelevant remnant of the 7th century: they remain very much in effect in modern times, as the following excerpt from the authoritative Malaysian scholar Mohammad Hashim Kamali’s 1997 essay, “Freedom of Expression in Islam“, makes clear:

“However, a general observation which should be made here is that in matters which pertain to the dogma of Islam, or those which are regulated by the direct authority of the Qur’an or Sunnah, criticism, either from Muslims or non-Muslims, will not be entertained, as personal or public opinion does not command authority in such matters. Islam is basically a religion of authority, and the values of good and evil, or rights and duties are not determined by reference to public opinion, or popular vote…” [Emphasis added][43]

It might be added that Dr. Kamali, who was a Professor of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence at the International Islamic University Malaysia and also Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought & Civilization (ISTAC) from 1985 – 2007, and is currently Chairman and CEO of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies, Malaysia, is considered not only a leading international academic authority on Islam, but a “moderate Muslim.”  He was on the advisory group for Imam Feisal Rauf’s “Shariah Index Project” and is a listed expert at the purportedly moderate organization World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE).[44]

The deadly intent of the shariah laws on Blasphemy and Slander repeatedly has been demonstrated in recent times: among examples which could be cited are the Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1989 fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie, the 2004 murder of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, and Anwar al-Awlaki’s 2010 fatwa against the Washington state journalist Molly Norris (who was forced into permanent hiding for jesting online about an “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day”). The consequences, therefore, of being accused by a Muslim of offending Islamic beliefs, customs, or laws should not be underestimated. The developing concept of “Islamophobia” obviously is heading in this direction.

Here is a final example. Given the centrality of this doctrine to Islam, the 21 February 2011 demand by CAIR for Fox News program host and former Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, to apologize for “inaccurate and offensive” comments about Islam and to meet with Muslim leaders to discuss growing Islamophobia in American society”[45]  needs to be taken very seriously. CAIR’s leadership knows exactly what such an accusation implies under Islamic law; it is to be hoped that the Governor does, too.

There is one more aspect of the Islamic laws on Slander that needs to be mentioned in this regard. Our jihadi enemy does not want the non-Muslim infidel world (and especially our national security leadership) to understand the true character and intentions of those shariah adherents who are dedicated to “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”[46] Specifically, the enemy reserves the right to employ taqiyya (deceit and dissimulation) as well as the Islamic laws on obligatory lying[47] to keep such information from those whose knowledge of it could lead to effective defensive measures against shariah. Attempted enforcement of this legally sanctioned code of silence about the genuine nature and objectives of the jihadist enemy is one of the key usages of the Slander and Blasphemy laws in the west.[48]

“Islamophobia” and Defensive Jihad

To carry through the Islamic legal principles inherent in the Slander and Blasphemy laws to their logical end point, it is useful to refer to classical as well as modern pronouncements on the elements that Muslim scholars hold necessary to justify and declare defensive jihad. For, in fact, this justification is where accusations of “Islamophobia”, religious “hate crimes,” and insult to Islam plausibly lead.  In fact, in numerous cases, hate crime violence or intimidating threats of violence against persons and property in response to perceived “blasphemy” has been a response in the last decade in Muslim-majority countries, and also in Canada, Europe, and the U.S.  The examples in Muslim-majority countries are too numerous to list, but a sample of U.S. cases include the jihad threats against Molly Norris, creator of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”, the South Park cartoon producers, and publications that republished the Danish “Muhammed Cartoons.”

Classical scholars of Islam, such as Al-Shaybani (8th-9th century disciple of the Hanafi school of jurisprudence and a jurist in his own right) and Ibn Rushd (12th century legal scholar known as Averroes in the West) have written extensively and assertively on the obligatory nature of offensive jihad according to shariah, simply for the purpose of establishing Islam in the world.[49] It was understood both explicitly and implicitly that defensive jihad was obligatory as well. Among the Qur’anic verses commonly cited as justification is the following:

“Fight them until there is no persecution and the religion is Allah’s entirely.”  —  (Q 8:39)

Turning to the modern Islamic scholars, Louay Safi is a Muslim author and scholar who has served at the top ranks of Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the U.S. He formerly was the Executive Director of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)’s Leadership Development Center, Executive Director and Director of Research for the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), editor of the Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, and President of the Association of Muslim Social Scientists (AMSS) (1999-2003). ISNA, IIIT, and the AMSS all appear on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.”[50] Safi currently serves as Common Word Fellow at the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at GeorgetownUniversity. His credentials, in other words, would seem impeccable to speak to Islamic rulings on defensive warfare.

The slim 2001 paperback book, “Peace and the Limits of War,” was authored by Safi and published by the IIIT in response to the post-9/11 surge in public awareness of Islam and jihad. While Safi attempts to distance himself from the classical Islamic scholars on the topic of mandatory offensive jihad, he has no such compunctions when it comes to “War in defense of Muslim individuals and property.” He writes:

“When wrong is inflicted on a Muslim individual by a member, or members, of another political community….the Islamic state is obligated to make sure the individual, or his family, is compensated for his suffering, and that his rights are upheld…it suffices to say that the Islamic state should ensure that justice has been done to the wronged Muslim, even if that take a declaration of war…”[51]

Perceptions about the prevalence of hate crimes against Muslims matter, especially when considered in the context of Islamic law (shariah), which criminalizes insults to Islam as “slander” or even “blasphemy.”[52] A false belief, perpetuated by a few vocal groups, that deliberate religious bias crimes against Muslims are increasing regardless of the lack of support by hard factual data, is corrosive to community relationships at every level of American society, and a potential threat to First Amendment free speech rights and national security. Efforts at the international level, especially by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)[53], to define any questioning of Islamic doctrine as “hate speech” leading to “hate crimes”, such as  “Islamophobia” and as a “human rights violation” by way of official resolutions at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), directly create the premise for criminalization of free speech. Further, although non-binding at this time, such UNHRC resolutions conceivably could legitimize an eventual casus belli, by which an appropriate fatwa could declare justification for violent defensive jihad by the forces of Islam.  As recently as March 7 2011, James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, formerly with the Democratic National Committee, wrote of critics of the Shariah law and Islamic terrorism in America, that:

If these ‘professional bigots” have provided the grist, the mill itself was run by the vast network of rightwing talk radio and TV shows and websites and prominent preachers, who have combined to amplify the anti-Muslim message nationwide. Their efforts have done real damage. They have tormented descent [sic] public servants, created protests that have shuttered legitimate institutions, fomented hate crimes and produced fear in the Muslim community.[54]

Conclusions

This data presented in this study demonstrate that common perceptions about the incidence of “hate crimes” in America that are directed at individuals or groups on the grounds of religious identification often mistakenly ascribe the majority of such offenses to anti-Muslim sentiment. To the contrary, the 2000-2009 FBI crime statistics data used in this study indicate that the majority of U.S. “hate crimes” in fact are perpetrated against Jews. The spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes following 9-11 did not last longer than nine weeks according to prior research.  The most important conclusion may be that total religious bias crimes are few in a country of over 300 million persons.  In fact, the U.S. is a model as a tolerant country, with a significantly low (and in some cases falling) number of hate crimes, in which most Muslim Americans are fully integrated and accepted, as well as economically and socially successful, fellow citizens.

The persistence, scope, and sophistication of the campaign to portray Muslims in America inaccurately, as making up the majority of “hate crime” victims, points to an organized effort whose potential implications derive from Islamic law (shariah). Insult towards Islam, Islamic doctrine, and individual Muslims, especially by non-Muslim infidels, can carry serious penalties under Shariah law. Further, because the “crimes” of insult, slander, and blasphemy are so subjectively defined in shariah, the doorway is wide open for those with an agenda of victimology to lay a foundation that not inconceivably could lead ultimately to a declaration of “defensive jihad” against persons, property or the broader community.   “Homegrown” jihadist terrorism can find its motivation as part of the radicalization process in this heightened, and counter-factual, sense of victimization that justifies organized or “lone wolf” acts of jihad that are rationalized as defensive.

 

 

Charts & Data

Charts and data for this Occasional Paper are available in the PDF, or as Microsoft Excel files below:

 

[1] Center for Security Policy staff and interns contributed to the data entry, analysis, and verification.

[2] The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) presents itself as an Islamic advocacy group and America’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization. CAIR was included on the Department of Justice’s published list of unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding case of 2007-2008. Its Internet home page may be found at http://www.cair.com/Home.aspx . See CAIR’s reports on bias from 2007 (http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/2007-Civil-Rights-Report.pdf)
and 2008 (http://www.cair.com/Portals/0/pdf/civilrights2008.pdf ).

[3] The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) calls itself a “Public service agency working for the civil rights of American Muslims”. According to the counterterrorism think tank The Investigative Project, “MPAC’s public advocacy often involves defending accused terror financiers and opposing law enforcement efforts to root out terrorists and their enablers.  In nearly every case, MPAC has responded to investigations by the FBI and the U.S. Treasury Department with complaints that authorities have not proven their allegations, and variations on the constant themes that enforcement actions unfairly single out Muslim groups and ‘bear strong signs of politicization.’  At the same time, MPAC has been equally diligent in defending individual terrorists uncovered by federal investigations.” http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/181,accessed February 28, 2011.

[4] “Behind CAIR’s Hate Crimes Report,” Daniel Skinner, The Weekly Standard, may 6, 2004, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/054aycfi.asp; “CAIR’s Hate Crime Nonsense,” Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, May 18, 2005, http://www.danielpipes.org/2627/cairs-hate-crimes-nonsense; “Fudging the Numbers on Hate Crimes,” Mike Pesca, NPR, may 23, 2005, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4662915; all accessed February 28, 2011.

[5] “CAIR Pushes Phony Charges of Anti-Muslim Hysteria, Hate Crimes,” Investigative Project, April 4, 2008.  http://www.steveemerson.com/2008/04/cair-pushes-phony-charges-of accessed February 28, 2011.

[6] The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program and its annual Crime in the United States reports are described online at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr

[7] 2009 is the most recent year for which full data are available. See the FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 2009 at http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/victims.html, accessed 12 February 2011.

[8]  Simple Assaults by Victim by Religion for 2001 (Muslim 66, Jewish 45, Christian 3); Aggravated Assaults by Victim by Religion for 2001 (Muslim 27, Jewish 13, Christian 1)

[9] Neil Chakraborti, editor, Hate Crime: Concepts, policy, future directions, Willan Publishing, 2010.

[10] Kaplan, Jeffrey, “Islamophobia in America?: September 11 and Islamophobic Hate Crime,” Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group. Accessed 20 February 2011 at http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a737727150

[11] Salaita, Steven George, “Beyond Orientalism and Islamophobia: 9/11, Anti-Arab Racism, and the Mythos of National Pride,” CR: The New Centennial Review, Michigan State University Press, Volume 6, Number 2, Fall 2006, pp. 245-266. Accessed online 21 February 2011 at http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/new_centennial_review/v006/6.2salaita.html

[12] Journal of Hate Studies, Volume 8 (No. 1), 2010, http://journals.gonzaga.edu/index.php/johs/issue/archive accessed February 28, 2011.  The Journal’s authors defend a wide spectrum of beliefs, ranging from a positive review for the anti-jihad movie “Obsession” (Vol 5, #1) to numerous articles from a more conventional perspedctive.

[13]Perry, Hate Crime: Concepts, Policy, Future Directions, p. 17

[14] Accessed online 21 February 2011 at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/trainguidedc99.pdf

[15] The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program and its annual Crime in the United States reports are described online at http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr

[16] 28 U.S.C. § 534. See Appendix C for the full text of this legislation.

[17] Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines, p. 24, http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/hcguidelinesdc99.pdf accessed February 28, 2011.

[18] This does not include the negligible number (19) of “crimes against society) from 2000-2009 for all three religious groups.

[19] “Self-described Religious Identification of Adult Population: 1990 – 2008,” U.S. Census, http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0075.pdf, accessed February 28, 2011.

[20] Ihsan Bagby, Ph.D., Paul M. Perl, Ph.D., Bryan T. Froehle, Ph.D., The Mosque in America: A National Portrait, Council on American Islamic Relations, April 26, 2001, p.6: “Estimates of a total Muslim population of 6-7 million in America seem reasonable…”

[21] Abdul Malik Mujahid, “Muslims In America: Profile 2001,” Soundvision, http://www.soundvision.com/info/yearinreview/2001/profile.asp , accessed February 28, 2011.

[22] “Background Information on Radicalization Hearings,” Muslim Public Affairs Council, February 3, 2011.  http://www.mpac.org/programs/government-relations/background-information-on-radicalization-hearings.php# accessed February 28, 2011.

[23] The Future of the Global Muslim Population, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Jan. 27, 2011. http://pewforum.org/The-Future-of-the-Global-Muslim-Population.aspx. Accessed 7 March 2011 at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1872/muslim-population-projections-worldwide-fast-growth.

[24] Table 77, Christian Church Adherents, 2000, and Jewish Population, 2009 – States. 2010 US Census. http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0077.pdf.

[25] Muslims Widely Seen as Facing Discrimination. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Sept. 9, 2009. http://pewforum.org/Muslim/Muslims-Widely-Seen-As-Facing-Discrimination.aspx.

[26] “FBI Report Notes Rise in Hate Crimes,” Deborah Tedford, NPR, November 23, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120715771 , accessed February 28, 2011.

[27] Available in PDF format and accessed 21 February 2011 at http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2002/11/14/we-are-not-enemy

[28] “We Are Not the Enemy: Hate Crimes Against Arabs, Muslims, and Those Perceived to be Arab or Muslim after September 11,” Human Rights Watch, NOVEMBER 2002 VOL. 14, NO. 6 (G) (p. 4).

[29] See Appendix D, “Hate Crime Trends: 2000-2007”

[30] Schanzer, David, Charles Kurzman, and Ebrahim Moosa, “Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans,” January 6, 2010. Accessed online 21 February 2011 at http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/229868.pdf

[31] The official CAIR website is at http://www.cair.com/Home.aspx. CAIR’s foundational organization, The International Association for Palestine, was included on a list of organizations called “our organizations and the organizations of our friends” in a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood document called “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.”

[32] “Islamophobia,” http://www.cair.com/Issues/Islamophobia/Islamophobia.aspx accessed February 28 2011.

[33] The website of the Herndon, Virginia-based International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is at  http://www.iiit.org/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx  The IIIT, like CAIR, is on the Muslim Brotherhood list of its friends and organizations of friends; also like CAIR, the IIIT was included in a list of unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.

[34] Muhammad, Abdur-Rahman, “Whether or not Ground Zero mosque is built, U.S. Muslims have access to the American dream,” The New York Daily News as cited by The Investigative Project on Terrorism, September 5, 2010. Accessed online 21 February 2010 at http://www.investigativeproject.org/2164/whether-or-not-ground-zero-mosque-is-built-us. Muhammad is a former member of the IIIT, whose by-line states that he “now works to combat Islamic extremism in the American Muslim community.”

[35] CAIR “Islamophobia” page; accessed 21 February 2011 at http://www.cair.com/Issues/Islamophobia/Islamophobia.aspx

[36] “List of Islamic Terror Attacks Against America Before 9/11,” http://factreal.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/list-of-islamic-attacks-against-america/ , accessed February 28, 2011.

[37] Andrew Bostom and Ibn Warraq, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims, Prometheus Books, 2008.

[38] “Islamophobia,” http://www.cair.com/Issues/Islamophobia/Islamophobia.aspx

[39] ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. Section r2.0: Slander (p. 730).

[40] Ibid, Section r3.0 (p. 741).

[41] Ibid, Section p50.0 (Hurting or Reviling Muslims) and p51.0 (Harming the Friends of Allah Most High) (pp. 686-688.

[42] Ibid, The Author’s Introduction, Section p0.0 (pp. 651-2).

[43] Kamali, Mohammad Hashim, “Freedom of Expression in Islam,” Islamic Text Society, 1997. From chapter IX. Freedom of Religion (Al-Hurriyyah al-Diniyyah). Accessed online 22 February 2011 at www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/…/freedom/kamali_freedom.doc      

[44] “Mohammad Hashim Kamali, Biographical Highlights,” http://worde.org/specialists/ProfessorMohammadHashimKamali.php accessed February 28, 2011.

[45] “Dissemblers At Council On American Islamic Relations – CAIR – Whip Up The Discredited Bogeyman Of Islamophobia,” PipelineNews.org, February 21, 2011. Accessed 22 February 2011 at http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=cair2212011102.htm

[46] “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” a 5/22/91 Muslim Brotherhood document entered into evidence in the 2007-2008 U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.

[47] ‘Umdat al-Salik, Section r8.0, Lying (beginning on p. 744).

[48] “Shariah: The Threat to America,” Center for Security Policy, October 2010 (pp. 103-106).

[49] See “The Islamic Law of Nations: Shaybani’s Siyar” by Majid Khadduri and Ibn Rushd’s magnum opus, “Bidayat al-Mudtahid wa-Nihayat al-Muqtasid” for their authoritative treatments of jihad.

[50] “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America,” 1991. ISNA also appeared on the U.S. Department of Justice list of unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007-2008 Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror funding trial.

[51] Safi, Louay M, “Peace and the Limits of War.” International Institute of Islamic Thought, Herndon, VA.

[52] See “Slander (Ghiba)” in Section r2.0 of the ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law (pg. 730). For a thorough discussion of Slander and Blasphemy in Islamic law, see also the Center for Security Policy study, “Shariah: The Threat to America,” September 22, 2010. Available online at http://www.amazon.com/Shariah-America-Exercise-Competitive-Analysis/dp/098229476X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297556949&sr=1-1

[53] Organization of the Islamic Conference: http://www.oicun.org/9/20100727101615770.html

[54] “Islamophobia can create radicalization,” James Zogby, March 7, 2011, The Nation, http://nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Columns/07-Mar-2011/Islamophobia-can-create-radicalisation/1  accessed March 8, 2011.