Tag Archives: Team B II

Frank Gaffney: New York State Senate Testimony

On April 8, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney testified before the New York Senate’s Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee regarding New York’s readiness for another terrorist attack in the shadow of the World Trade Center site in Manhattan.

At the invitation of Sen. Greg Ball, Gaffney delivered a sharp and concise picture of the penetration of Muslim Brotherhood and other Shariah-adherent organizations in the United States, highlighting both the violent Jihad as well as the stealthier “civilization Jihad” these groups are engaged in. Rep. Peter King and Nonie Darwish of Former Muslims United were among the other experts called to testify. Representing the opposition view were representatives of CAIR and the Arab American Association of New York. Gaffney held up the book Shariah: the Threat to America as a comprehensive guide to the threats that Shariah-adherent Islam pose to the state of New York and the nation.

 

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.

NPRgate and the King Hearings

Yesterday’s videotaped revelations by the intrepid James O’Keefe provides welcome grist for many mills. Most obviously, it offers irrefutable evidence that National Public Radio employs elitists who are hostile to Republicans, Tea Party activists, and others derided as gun-toting, white “racists.”

The principal focus of the expose filmed last month, Ron Schiller, the network’s now-departed vice president of development and president of the NPR Foundation, declared that his organization would be “better off in the long-run” without government underwriting.

Presumably, such sentiments will make it impossible for members of Congress to justify continued public funding of the organization when the Senate considers the decision taken by the House of Representatives to zero out NPR in the latest stopgap funding measure.

What is particularly instructive, however — and highly relevant to the hearings that Rep. Peter King will convene in his House Homeland Security Committee tomorrow — is the subtext of the new O’Keefe undercover videos: NPR seems to have had no problem sitting down with, and apparently entertaining the offer of $5 million from, representatives of a group that explicitly described itself as a Muslim Brotherhood organization and that promoted the “acceptance worldwide” (read, imposition) of shariah (the Islamists’ totalitarian politico-military-legal program).

Chairman King has made the focus of his first hearing what he calls “extremism” in the Muslim American community. A more accurate term for what ails that population would be shariah, for it is the adherence to that supremacist doctrine that obliges its followers to engage in jihad.

As a distinguished group of national security experts observed in a new book published by the Center for Security Policy, titled Shariah: The Threat to America, we must be concerned about more than just the threat of violent jihad. After all, according to shariah, where violence is impracticable, jihadists are supposed to use stealthy (or pre-violent) means to advance the cause that O’Keefe’s fictitious Muslim Education Action Center and the myriad real Muslim Brotherhood fronts share with al-Qaeda and its ilk: the imposition of shariah everywhere and the establishment of a global Caliphate to rule pursuant to it.

In tomorrow’s hearing and, those that will presumably follow it, Mr. King and his colleagues will have an opportunity to explore the role the stealth jihadists are playing in the Muslim American community. Muslim Brotherhood front groups like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) have, with Saudi money and that of other enablers of jihad, created organizational infrastructures.

With help from successive U.S. administrations, they have been legitimated in their bid to be seen as the sole representatives of American Muslims. Most recently, that message was communicated tangibly by the visit paid to a prominent shariah-adherent mosque in the Washington, D.C., suburbs by the deputy national security advisor to the president, Denis McDonough. In his prepared remarks, McDonough extolled one of the top Muslim Brothers in America, Imam Mohamed Magid, president of ISNA, the largest MB front in the country.

Worse yet, this top U.S. national security official actually parroted talking points pushed out by CAIR and its ilk to suppress expression concerning the threat Rep. King knows needs to be addressed. McDonough warned that, if we choose to criticize those in the American Muslim population who encourage shariah, “we risk feeding the very feelings of disenchantment that may push some members of that community to violent extremism.”

No examination of the “response” of the Muslim-American community to the “extremists” in its midst — which is the self-described purpose of Rep. King’s hearing tomorrow — would be complete without exploring the role being played by the Muslim Brotherhood and its operatives. Here’s hoping that the evidence James O’Keefe has provided of how open to penetration and influence operations are key elements of our society will provide fresh encouragement to the chairman and his colleagues to identify and root out the Brotherhood and other shariah-adherent “extremists” in the Muslim American community.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. held senior positions in the Reagan Defense Department. He is president of the Center for Security Policy (www.SecureFreedom.org) and host of the syndicated weeknightly show, “Secure Freedom Radio” (www.SecureFreedomRadio.com).

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 Georgetown University. 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.

King of the Hill

On Thursday, Chairman Peter King of New York will convene in his House Homeland Security Committee one of the most anticipated – and controversial – hearings in memory.  The subject? "The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community’s Response."  It is hard to imagine a more timely, and more urgently needed, inquiry.

For one thing, events in the Middle East have thrust to the forefront concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or, in Arabic, Ikhwan).  That organization was established in Egypt in 1928 and it is likely to become the dominant political force there in the wake of the overthrow of the MB’s long-time nemesis, former President Hosni Mubarak.

For another, confusion about the true nature and intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood is much in evidence at the moment.  The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, contributed to it, first by testifying last month that the Brotherhood is "a largely secular organization."  He subsequently recanted that preposterous characteri­zation, but nonetheless downplayed concerns about the group by insisting that it is "heterogeneous," has "eschewed violence" and is engaged in good works, like hospitals and day care.

Such contentions are, presumably, contributing to the Obama administration’s intention – as reported on the front page of the Washington Post last Friday – to establish relations with Muslim Brotherhood-dominated or other Islamist governments emerging from the revolutions sweeping the Middle East.  The implications of that decision would be incalculably problematic for our homeland security, as well as our foreign policy interests.

For these among other reasons, Congressman King’s hearings provide an invaluable opportunity to examine not just the threat of "extremism" posed by al Qaeda, but also that arising from the Muslim Brotherhood’s operations at home and abroad.  Absent the latter, it will be impossible to understand either the source of much of what has been dubbed "extremism" in the Muslim-American community, or the reason that community has been so deficient in systematically, comprehensively and consistently helpfully responding to extremists in its midst.

In point of fact, as a book published last November by the Center for Security Policy – Shariah: The Threat to America – makes clear, the Muslim Brotherhood is not just somebody else’s problem; its ours.  It operates in some seventy countries worldwide, including the United States.  In each, it adapts its methods to suit the local conditions.  Where practicable, the MB uses violence to achieve its goals; where not, its uses stealth.

But the Ikhwan‘s goals are the same in every case.  Indeed, they are the same as those embraced by Islamists everywhere, including al Qaeda:  By definition, they are dedicated to the global triumph of shariah, a politico-military-legal program that is unalterably totalitarian and supremacist in character and wholly incompatible with this country’s Constitution.

If Congressman King and his colleagues want to get to the bottom of what is happening in the Muslim-American community at the moment, they must explore the extent to which virtually every prominent group that purports to speak for that community is a front for the Muslim Brotherhood or sympathetic to its agenda.  This is not a matter of speculation; it has been established by the Department of Justice in federal court in connection with the Holy Land Foundation trial, largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history.

Particularly dispositive is the Brotherhood’s strategic plan which the prosecution introduced into evidence uncontested in that trial.  After declaring the mission of the Ikhwan in America to be "destroying the Western civilization from within…by their [that is, our] hands and the hands of the believers," this document describes such groups as the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Society of North America and the progenitor of the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Association of Palestine, as "our organizations and organizations of our friends."

It should, therefore, be no surprise that such groups have been aggressively vilifying the chairman as a "racist" and "bigot," assailing his choice of witnesses (including an authentic Muslim reformer, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser) and denouncing the whole hearing enterprise as an example of "Islamophobia" and McCarthyism.

Shakespeare’s cynical turn of phrase – "They doth protest too much" – comes to mind.  This caviling is transparently aimed at preemptively discrediting and, if possible, aborting the King hearings.  Clearly, the Brotherhood’s effort to wage stealth jihad inside the United States and, in particular, its successful penetration of the U.S. government, could be seriously imperiled if Rep. King and his colleagues do their jobs.

The rest of us, however, hope and expect that the Homeland Security Committee will not shrink from a close examination of the role being played in the American Muslim community by both al Qaeda and its ilk, and by the Muslim Brotherhood.

For example, of whom was Gen. Clapper speaking when he told ABC’s Diane Sawyer last December that he considered the "Muslim community to be a source of advice, counsel and wisdom" with respect to the extremists among them.  Was he referring to the self-appointed "leadership" of that community – namely, the Muslim Brotherhood’s front groups?

If Thursday’s hearing takes the nation to school on the source of such extremism – shariah – and the role played in promoting it by the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as al Qaeda, every patriotic American, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, will owe Chairman King an enormous debt of gratitude.

 

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

Liberty Alliance holds Press Conference in Lafayette Park on Shariah Law and the Constitution

On Thursday, March 3rd, the Liberty Alliance Coalition and Center for Security Policy, a partner organization, held a press conference regarding the threat of Shariah law to the Constitution.  The press conference, held in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, presented speakers including Constitutional law expert Andrew Cochran, Faith McDonnell of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, African democracy activist Khalid Gerais of Rescue Nubia, and a prepared statement from prominent Muslim American reformer Tawfik Hamid of the Islamic Society for Liberty and Modernity.    Video from the press conference will be posted at the Center’s website shortly.   A flyer detailing the conflict of laws between Shariah and the Constitution was distributed to the media attending, including NBC, Fox, Daily Caller, CBN, and Voice of America.   The final list of speakers included:

  • Tim Brown, Liberty Rocks and Coalition to Honor Ground Zero
  • Andrew Cochran, The 7th Amendment Advocate
  • Frank J. Gaffney Jr., Center for Security Policy
  • Khalid Gerais, Rescue Nubia
  • Faith McDonnell, Institute on Religion and Democracy
  • Beverly Perlson, Band of Mothers
  • Tawfik Hamid, Islamic Society for Liberty and Modernity (statement read and distributed)

Tawfik Hamid, in his statement, addressed the theme of the press conference:

Shariah law is a threat not only to the US Constitution, but also to our security.  This law encourages discrimination against women, accepts slavery, and devalues the life of non-Muslims.  In addition, it promotes that Muslims must declare wars against non-Muslims to spread Islam.   The real problem is that such laws are unchallenged in modern times in Shariah and represent the mainstream Shariah.  

According to an article at Foxnews.com in advance of the press conference, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, supported the Center’s event and called on "all people of conscience to counter these ideas and demonstrate the fact that these are the very ideas that radicalize Muslims."

The Center for Security Policy has been a leader on the issue of the threat of Shariah law to the Constitution.  The Center for Security Policy Press has published an authoritative book on the topic, Shariah: The Threat to America, authored by national security and legal experts, available for free download at shariahthethreat.com, or in paperback or kindle at amazon.com.

The Center’s President Frank Gaffney commented:

The American people, including Muslim-American leaders, are beginning to voice their concerns that Shariah is utterly antithetical to the U.S. Constitution. We call on our elected officials to follow their lead, and to repudiate any application of Shariah law in America.

 

Materials from the Press Conference

‘Shariah: The Threat to America’ now only $2.99 on Kindle

As the demand for books moves to e-readers (such as the iPad, Kindle, and other devices), the Center for Security Policy Press has just released its best-seller, Shariah: The Threat to America (An Exercise in Competitive Analysis) as a specially-priced $2.99 download at Amazon.com.

This past Christmas, online retailer Amazon.com announced that, for the first time ever, ebooks sold through its portable e-reader Kindle topped sales of regular books. In addition, Amazon reported that the new Kindle was the most-gifted item ever.

 

 

Even more recently, the revolution in Egypt and the triumphant return of Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf Qaradawi has television anchors, radio talk show hosts, and American citizens all talking about the Muslim Brotherhood.  This country needs to know what the Brotherhood has planned for Egypt, Europe—and America. Buy Shariah: The Threat to America and let journalists and mainstream media talking heads try to catch up with you, their more informed viewers.

Shariah: The Threat to America is the result of months of analysis, discussion and drafting by a group of top security policy experts concerned with the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time: the legal-political-military doctrine known within Islam as “shariah.” It is designed to provide a comprehensive and articulate second opinion on the official characterizations and assessments of this threat as put forth by the United States government. This study challenges the assumptions underpinning the official line in the conflict with today’s totalitarian threat, which is currently euphemistically described as “violent extremism,” and the policies of co-existence, accommodation and submission that are rooted in those assumptions.

Buy Shariah: The Threat to America in paperback or as an ebook now…

 

Regime change in Libya

The Obama administration continues to be behind the power curve on the evolving uprisings in the Middle East, particularly those in Libya and Iran. One of the worst despots in the world is the mercurial Moammar Gadhafi of Libya. He is followed closely by the rogue regimes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran. Both governments have been leaders in state-sponsored terrorism. Both have more American blood on their hands than does Osama bin Laden.

Why the administration continues to equivocate on calling for the removal of these two rogue regimes is mind-boggling. It appears not to recognize that what’s going on in the Middle East is a paradigm shift. The uprisings should be seen as an opportunity to rid the world of these corrupt and evil authorities. With Col. Gadhafi’s imported mercenaries firing on and murdering his own people, drastic action by the United States as leader of the Free World and its allies is urgently needed.

As a first order of business, we should reposition an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The USS Enterprise and the USS Kearsarge, both in the Red Sea, and perhaps the USS Ponce as well, should be turned around to re-transit the Suez Canal and take a position off the coast of Libya. The Enterprise is to relieve the USS Carl Vinson, which currently is in the Gulf of Aden. This relief could take place in the Mediterranean, which would result in two carriers off the coast of Libya. U.S. Air Force B-2 strike bombers also should be repositioned in the region. The USS Kearsarge and other amphibious ships from our allies should be positioned to assist in evacuating Americans and other nationalities by sea if evacuations cannot be accomplished by air charter flights or other means.

As German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated, Col. Gadhafi’s rambling, incoherent TV speech "amounted to him declaring war on his own people." Calls for reimposing sanctions and suspending Libya’s membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council, plus other cosmetic actions, are ridiculous and will do nothing to help the protesters who are trying to take back their country. Incidentally, Libya having a seat on the Human Rights Council illustrates the need for restructuring of the U.N. and its bylaws.

It has been reported that many members of the Libyan army and police force are supporting the protesters and demonstrators. We and our allies who have a relationship with the Libyan military need to encourage them to support the protesters by preventing Col. Gadhafi’s imported mercenaries from interfering with this dramatic uprising. With a carrier battle group positioned off the cost of Libya, a no-fly zone over Libya could then be declared and enforced.

Libya’s air force should be encouraged by the United States and its allies to support the demonstrators by refusing to have pilots fly missions against their own people. Libyan pilots flying their planes to Malta also should be a welcomed option. To encourage the Libyan air force to take this bold action, it should be conveyed to the air force leadership that should they continue to conduct airstrikes against their own people, they will be subjected to a devastating strike from U.S. and allied resources. Cruise-missile strikes also should be planned against government control and communications centers.

We should recall that when Saddam Hussein was about to be forced out of Kuwait he torched the Kuwaiti oil fields. We should anticipate that Col. Gadhafi, as unbalanced as he seems to be, might take similar action as one of his last desperate acts of defiance. Special Forces working with our allies who have relations with the Libyan forces need to assist them in taking the necessary action to protect the oil fields from being torched by Col. Gadhafi’s mercenaries or loyalists.

If we are to live up to our stated principles, statements condemning Col. Gadhafi’s barbaric acts against his own people will be seen as hollow gestures unless concrete actions, as proposed above, are taken.

With regard to Iran, the administration should declare our unequivocal support for the "green revolution." Iran has declared war on the United States several times, starting with the takeover of our embassy in Tehran in November 1979, and the Oct. 23, 1983, bombing of our Marine barracks in Beirut, and has continued to train and provide material to the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have earned our just retribution.

As part of the next demonstration, we should use the opportunity to implement our strategic strike plan to destroy Iran’s key nuclear infrastructure and other military facilities. We can successfully carry out such a strike because we will have a unique "window of opportunity" with four carrier battle groups in the region. Such action should provide the necessary support for a successful green revolution.

Retired Navy Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations. Adm. Lyons is the chairman of the Center’s Military Committee, and a member of Team B II.

Who tossed Egypt (to the wolves)?

Dick Morris has observed that President Obama’s tenure will be darkly remembered by our countrymen for his having "lost" Egypt.  Since the effect of the Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak collapsing imminently and its replacement by one dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood will likely be a terrible regional war, it would be bad enough if the Obama administration were simply culpable of the sort of malign neglect that contributed in the past to the toppling of other friends of the United States.

Unfortunately, the question to be pursued – presumably by the new Republican House of Representatives – is not "Who lost Egypt?" but rather "Who tossed Egypt?" as in, to the wolves.

To be sure, Wikileaks has recently published classified diplomatic cables from Embassy Cairo that exhibit the standard clientitis (a pathology common in State Department circles, in which Foreign Service types strive to protect bilateral relations by doing what the host government wants).  For example, as the Wall Street Journal editorialized today:

"The Egyptians quickly responded [to President Obama’s explicit rejection of George W. Bush’s "Freedom Agenda"] by telling the new Administration to drop the Bush emphasis on political reform. ‘Wherever [Mr. Mubarak] has seen these U.S. efforts, he can point to the chaos and loss of stability that ensued,’ reported current U.S. ambassador to Cairo Margaret Scobey in a 2009 [message to Foggy Bottom]."

Still, it appears that the Obama Administration has been "reaching out" for some time to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt among other places, including here in the United States.  Most obviously, as Sean Hannity noted on his program with me and Egyptian expatriate author and former Muslim Nonie Darwish last night, President Obama insisted that Muslim Brotherhood representatives be included in the audience for his speech in Cairo in June 2009.

 

 

In September 2009, the Obama administration co-sponsored with Egypt a deeply problematic resolution in the deeply problematic UN Human Rights Council.  While it is technically true that the Mubarak regime was the lead sponsor, the real impetus behind this bid to have United Nations members take steps to sanction expression that offends Islam were actually fronting for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).  The OIC is a multinational Islamist entity whose views and policies closely correlate to the MB’s shariah-promoting agenda.  (For more on the menace posed by OIC, see Shariah: The Threat to America).

Aaron Klein points out that:

This past weekend, the London Telegraph reported the U.S. embassy in Cairo in 2008 helped a young dissident attend a U.S.-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.  The Telegraph would not identify the dissident, but said he was involved in helping to stir the current protests.  The report claimed the dissident told the U.S. embassy in Cairo that an alliance of opposition groups had a plan to topple Mubarak’s government.

Klein added that, “The disclosures, contained in U.S. diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.”

In the days since the “street” started erupting in Egypt, moreover, Team Obama has been ever more explicitly cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood.  For example, the President, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs have, in turn: pressed Mubarak publicly not to use violence against the demonstrators; then called on him to negotiate with them; then insisted that he  make an orderly transition to democracy; then announced that “important non-secular actors” should be included in that successor government; and then, after the dictator announced he would not run for reelection, told him to leave office now.

And now we learn from Egyptian government sources, that Obama emissary and former U.S. ambassador to Egypt Frank Wisner has met face-to-face in Embassy Cairo with Issam El-Erian, a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.  What was said by the two has yet to be disclosed.  But the message could not be more transparent:  The Muslim Brotherhood is now deemed by Washington to be a legitimate interlocutor and welcome to exercise power in Cairo.

Based on this trajectory, it is predictable that, within days – if not hours, America will be formally endorsing a new MB-dominated government.  This will be an unmitigated disaster, not just for our ally, Israel, but for U.S. security interests in the region and beyond.

At a minimum, how will the United States be able to oppose the Ikhwan’s ascendancy in other states throughout the so-called “Muslim world”?  And what are we going to do about the immense amounts of advanced military hardware successive administrations have foolishly sold or given to the governments we are now complicit in toppling, weapons that will almost surely be used against us?

Before this impending debacle eventuates, Congress should immediately launch investigations to determine exactly what President Obama and his subordinates have done to toss Egypt to the Islamist wolves – and what may yet be done to limit the damage done to our credibility as an ally and to our security interests.

The Muslim Brotherhood: the enemy in its own words

As Egypt lurches towards the end of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, one way or another – by "an orderly transition to democratic rule" (as Hillary Clinton delicately puts it), through violent overthrow or simply through the demise of the ailing 82-year-old president – much is unclear. One thing that should not be is that the Muslim Brotherhood is our enemy, and whatever role it plays in Egypt’s future will be to our detriment.

Such clarity is readily available since the Brotherhood (MB or in Arabic, Ikhwan) has told us as much. Consider, for example, the mission statement for the MB found in one of its secret documents entitled "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America":

The Ikhwan must understand 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 and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.

As a blue-ribbon group of national security experts convened by the Center for Security Policy, "Team B II" noted in their new best-seller Shariah: The Threat to America, the incompatability of the Ikhwan’s agenda with our interests has been evident from its inception:

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement shariah worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State (caliphate).  Therefore, al Qaeda and the MB have the same objectives.  They differ only in the timing and tactics involved in realizing them.

We also know how the Brotherhood plans to pull off our destruction.  Another MB document, this one undated, is called "Phases of the World Underground Movement Plan."  It describes a five-installment program for achieving the triumph of shariah – together with a status report on the realization of several of the phases’ goals:

Phase One: Discreet and secret establishment of leadership.

Phase Two: Phase of gradual appearance on the public scene and exercising and utilizing various public activities. It [the MB] greatly succeeded in implementing this stage.  It also succeeded in achieving a great deal of its important goals, such as infiltrating various sectors of the Government.

Phase Three: Escalation phase, prior to conflict and confrontation with the rulers, through utilizing mass media.  Currently in progress.

Phase Four: Open public confrontation with the Government through exercising the political pressure approach.  It is aggressively implementing the above-mentioned approach. Training on the use of weapons domestically and overseas in anticipation of zero-hour.  It has noticeable activities in this regard.

Phase Five: Seizing power to establish their Islamic Nation under which all parties and Islamic groups are united.

If any further evidence were needed of the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, consider the comments on October 6, 2010 by Mohamed Badie, the Ikwan’s virulent promoter of shariah who was installed as its leader ("Supreme Guide") last year.  According to a translation provided by the indispensable Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Badie declared: 

[Today, the United States] is withdrawing from Iraq, defeated and wounded, and it is on the verge of withdrawing from Afghanistan. [All] its warplanes, missiles and modern military technology were defeated by the will of the peoples, as long as [these peoples] insisted on resistance. Its wealth will not avail it once Allah has had his say, as happened with [powerful] nations in the past.  The U.S. is now experiencing the beginning of its end, and is heading towards its demise.

Barry Rubin, one of the most astute observers of the Middle East, warned within days that this speech represented a "declaration of war" by the Brotherhood, with it "adopting a view almost identical to al Qaeda’s" but coming from "a group with 100 times more activists than al Qaeda."

At first blush, it seems incredible that the sort of clarity about the Brotherhood’s intentions that the foregoing provide seems to be eluding many in official Washington and the policy elite.  On closer inspection, however, the muddle-headedness that has many describing the Ikhwan as "non-violent," "democratic" and desirable candidates for a coalition to replace Mubarak’s dictatorship is, to use an old Soviet expression, "no accident, comrade."

In fact, the aforementioned MB "Explanatory Memorandum" provides a list of "Our Organizations and the Organizations of Our Friends" that includes virtually every prominent Muslim-American organization in business at that time.  What is incredible, therefore, is that many of these same Muslim Brotherhood fronts are used by the U.S. government for "outreach" to the Muslim community and policy advice.  The nation’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, has actually characterized the resulting "dialogue with the Muslim community" as "a source of advice, counsel, and wisdom."

As a result, one other thing should be frighteningly clear:  We are having our policies towards Egypt’s succession – and the tsunami it is accelerating elsewhere in the region influenced, shaped and probably subverted by the Muslim Brotherhood’s American operatives.  If we let our enemies call the shots, there is no doubt who will wind up taking the bullet.

 

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