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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Andrew Harrod</title>
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		<title>Suhaib Webb Goes to Washington</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/suhaib-webb-goes-to-washington/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=suhaib-webb-goes-to-washington</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/suhaib-webb-goes-to-washington/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2014 05:35:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dunya Iftar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Imam Suhaib Webb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[MakeSpace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=245089</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A “moderate” Muslim assumes a new position.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/humazah.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-245092" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/humazah-450x304.png" alt="humazah" width="274" height="185" /></a>Imam <a href="http://www.suhaibwebb.com/aboutus/#webb">Suhaib Webb</a> is the new <a href="http://www.imakespace.com/isw-joins-makespace/">Resident Scholar</a> for MakeSpace, a Washington, DC, area mosque meeting in Alexandria, Virginia’s <a href="http://www.dunyabanquet.com/">Dunya Restaurant</a>, MakeSpace announced October 29. Both Webb and MakeSpace have radical backgrounds belying their “moderate” Muslim pretensions.</p>
<p>An Oklahoma <a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/05/11/imam-william-suhaib-webb-emerges-face-boston-muslim-community-time-crisis/Kd8v0O48vkHSZAnOpYCqOI/story.html">convert to Islam</a>, Webb came to America’s capital from a Resident Scholar position at the <a href="http://isbcc.org/imam-suhaib-webb/">Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center</a> (ISBCC). <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/26/OKC-Killer-Linked-Through-Imam-to-Al-Qaeda-Leader-Awlaki">Previously he served</a> as the <a href="http://www.isgoc.com/site/">Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City</a>’s (ISGOC) imam. Praised by MakeSpace as a “world-class visionary,” Webb’s reputation as a modern Muslim thinker has placed him in “<a href="http://themuslim500.com/profile/imam-suhaib-webb#http://themuslim500.com/profile/imam-suhaib-webb">The Muslim 500: The World’s Most Influential Muslims</a>.”</p>
<p>Yet examination of Webb reveals a radicalism suggesting more than coincidence in the fact that Oklahoma City beheader Alton Nolen and Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended ISGOC and ISBCC’s sister mosque, respectively. Webb had been an <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/27/dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-imam-shares-ties-with-senior-al-qaeda-operative/">associate of Anwar Al-Awlaki</a>, a senior Al Qaeda propagandist killed by a September 30, 2011, American drone strike in Yemen. Webb appeared with Al-Awlaki two days before September 11, 2001, at a fundraiser for the legal defense of H. Rap Brown, an Atlanta Muslim later convicted of shooting two Georgia police officers.  The <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/169">Muslim American Society</a>, a Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group, meanwhile, runs ISBCC.</p>
<p>Webb himself <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/moderate-boston-imam-suhaib-webb-hirsi-ali-idiot-secularism-lunatic-ideology">has denounced</a> “secularism…a radical, lunatic ideology” in contrast to the “dynamic, empowering, pluralistic Islam of the prophet’s era.”  “I love CAIR,” Webb says of the <a href="http://www.cair.com/">Council on American-Islamic Relations</a> (CAIR), a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/172">radical</a> faux civil rights group and an unindicted terrorism financing <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/1854/doj-cairs-unindicted-co-conspirator-status-legit">coconspirator</a>.  Webb also <a href="http://ellacollinsinstitute.org/shame-on-me-a-commitment-to-discourse-instead-of-demonization-by-suhaib-webb/">critiqued</a> his “demonization of others,” having “compared ISIS to Ebola. While I don’t agree with ISIS, al-Qāida, certain progressives and others, I…apologize to anyone that I have spoken ill towards or demonized.” <a href="http://peaceandtolerance.org/2012-07-26-13-33-15/the-seventy-rabbis/176-the-cult-of-jewish-muslim-dialogue-boston-version">Denunciations of America and Israel</a> (e.g. “America’s Frankenstein monster”) along with anti-Semitism also appear in Webb’s views.</p>
<p>Webb “is hailed as a moderate,” <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/09/oklahoma-beheaders-mosque-taught-caliphate-destruction-of-us-and-israel">anonymously wrote</a> a former Muslim convert who attended ISGOC. Webb, though, “explicitly told me that according to Islam, three choices are to be given to non-Muslims: convert, pay the jizyah tax and live under Islamic rule, or jihad.” ISGOC members like Webb “try very hard to whitewash Islam when the media is around, but they believe in their religion and the ultimate goal of an Islamic caliphate.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imakespace.com/about-us/">MakeSpace</a> similarly proclaims itself a “non-judgmental community” with a “strong focus on youth and young professionals,” emphasizing “universal as well as Islamic values of compassion, cooperation and service.”  From an <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0925_TVspecial.html">Afghan background</a>, MakeSpace founder Imam <a href="http://www.muslimlinkpaper.com/community-news/community-news/3387-out-of-place-at-area-masajid-nova-youth-create-their-own-space.html">Zia Makhdoom</a> studied <a href="http://www.irusa.org/tag/imam-zia/">Islam in Pakistan and computer science at George Mason University</a> before serving in Washington, DC’s Muslim community for a decade. MakeSpace also runs “<a href="http://www.imakespace.com/programs/vhmc-high-school-msas/">Torchbearers</a>, formerly known as Virginia High School MSA Council,” in order “to connect the Muslim Student Associations of every High School in Virginia.” The <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/166">1963-founded MSA</a>, though, is a <a href="http://www.meforum.org/603/islamisms-campus-club-the-muslim-students">Saudi-supported organization</a> aligned with MB.</p>
<p>This reporter’s introduction to MakeSpace occurred at a Dunya Iftar dinner at congregant <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/dinner-with-saba/">Saba Ahmed</a>’s invitation. This Pakistani-American Muslim achieved brief national notoriety in confrontations with ACT! for America’s Brigitte Gabriel at the Heritage Foundation and on Fox News. Interviewed at Dunya, Ahmed revealed herself as a 9/11 Truther, who believes that the federal government, not Al Qaeda, staged the September 11, 2001, attacks. MakeSpace, meanwhile, distributed literature for <a href="http://www.guidanceresidential.com/">Guidance Residential</a>, a “Leader in Islamic home financing” in the interest-free “Sharia Way,” whose chief sharia adviser is radical Pakistani Supreme Court Justice <a href="http://www.guidanceresidential.com/the-difference/sharia-board/">Muhammad Taqi Usmani</a>.</p>
<p>Ahmed is apparently not the only 9/11 Truther to appear at MakeSpace, as precisely a week following my Ahmed interview, radical Imam <a href="http://www.newislamicdirections.com/nid/about/">Zaid Shakir</a> addressed <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10152250440253359">MakeSpace at Dunya</a> on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/566250143486172/">July 24</a>. Shakir <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/2520/ipt-profiles-zaid-shakir">has entertained</a> conspiracy theories involving America and Israel concerning not just 9/11, but also the first 1993 World Trade Center (WTC) bombing and condemned the “U.S. war machine” as the “single greatest threat to world peace.” Brooklyn mosque imam <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=716">Siraj Wahhaj</a>, who spoke at the <a href="http://www.imakespace.com/events/banquet-dinner-10242014/">October 24 MakeSpace banquet</a> officially welcoming Webb, is also still seeking “<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/409">correct information</a>” about 9/11 while being a first WTC attack unindicted coconspirator.</p>
<p>Wahhaj joined at the banquet South African ambassador to the United States <a href="http://www.saembassy.org/ambassadors-biography/">Ebrahim Rasool</a>, who gave a keynote address to <a href="https://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/12177-cair-releases-video-of-south-african-ambassador-inspiring-banquet-address.html">CAIR’s 2013 annual banquet</a> where MakeSpace received CAIR’s Community Organization of the Year Award. Rasool specializes in equivalency, <a href="http://juicyecumenism.com/2013/12/04/georgetown-universitys-one-way-street-of-christian-muslim-understanding/">suggesting at Georgetown University</a>, for example, that Jews founding Israel after escaping genocidal Nazism and Arab refugees from Israel’s 1948 independence war “all carry the burdens of victimhood.” A supposedly brutal America in its fight against Muslim terrorists also presented for Rasool “competing extremisms” at a <a href="http://www.newamerica.org/international-security/islamophobia-extremism-and-the-domestic-war-on-terror/">New America Foundation event</a>.</p>
<p>Muslim-American comedian <a href="http://amanali.net/">Aman Ali</a>, an advocate for “<a href="http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/07/my-take-muslims-should-stop-apologizing-about-911/">mainstream American Islamic groups</a>” like CAIR and another <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/178">terrorism financing unindicted coconspirator</a>, the Islamic Society of North America, also welcomed Webb at his inaugural banquet. “Islam unequivocally condemns terrorism….Grab a copy of the Quran…and find out for yourself,” Ali has previously asserted Islam’s supposedly self-evident peaceful nature. “Don’t rely on some cherry-picked crackpot interpretation…on some Islamophobic hack’s poorly designed website,” Ali caveats.</p>
<p>Mahkdoom himself was more equivocal while discussing the Islamic obligation of tithing or <em>zakat</em> for Islamic Relief USA, an American branch of the London-headquartered global <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/islamic-relief-usa">Islamic Relief Worldwide</a> (IRW). IRW has numerous MB connections, and Israel banned IRW for supporting Hamas terrorism. In a <a href="http://www.irusa.org/tag/imam-zia/">video</a> (beginning at minute 16) he discusses sequentially the <a href="http://www.nzf.org.uk/Knowledge/ReceivingZakat">eight categories</a> of <em>Muslim</em> individuals (only Muslims or possible converts receive <em>zakat</em> under <a href="http://www.joebradford.net/is-zakat-for-non-muslims/">traditional Muslim teaching</a>) allowed to receive alms.</p>
<p>Yet Mahkdoom actually only discusses seven categories, omitting the category of <em>fisibillah</em> or “In the Cause of Allah,” namely the “defense of Islam.” Jihadists around the world <a href="http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2012/08/28/how-zakat-funds-jihad/">derive support from this category</a>, as well as possibly from the fifth category for ransoming those “unjustly imprisoned.” Mahkdoom, though, slyly mentions in passing the Arabic <em>fisibillah</em> without English explanation as merely one category supporting orphans (whose parents have fallen in jihad).</p>
<p>MakeSpace and Webb thus disturbingly present more than meets the eye, veneers of Muslim moderation notwithstanding. Given the views Webb and his associates hold, Islamic violence in their surroundings in Oklahoma City and Boston is not surprising. Worrisome is whether Webb’s bloody track record will continue to Washington, DC.</p>
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		<title>A Lesson on Free Speech and Sharia in Knoxville</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/a-lesson-on-free-speech-and-sharia-in-knoxville/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-lesson-on-free-speech-and-sharia-in-knoxville</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2014 05:10:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom X]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[high-school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[William J. Becker]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244240</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A stunning defeat for CAIR in an unlikely place. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/lk.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244243" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/lk-450x137.jpg" alt="lk" width="279" height="85" /></a>A recent legal victory by <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/">Freedom X</a> upheld the right of private citizens to discuss openly sharia law at a Knoxville, Tennessee, high school. “This is a victory for free speech,” Freedom X’s President <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/board-of-directors-2/">William J. Becker</a> rightly explained, in yet another instructive example of Islamists seeking to subvert the United States Constitution’s First Amendment.</p>
<p>A local Knoxville chapter of <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/">ACT! for America</a> began the case by arranging an April 24 evening town hall at <a href="http://www.knoxschools.org/farraguths">Farragut High School</a> (FHS). The event featured Dr. <a href="http://www.cspipublishing.com/">Bill French</a>, Center for the Study of Political Islam founder under the pen name Warner, and <a href="http://vimeo.com/93287215">Matt Bonner</a>, regional director of the <a href="https://www.crescentproject.org/">Crescent Project</a>, a Christian evangelization ministry for Muslims. They intended to address the encroachment in America of sharia, vaguely described in one online <a href="http://www.al.com/living/index.ssf/2014/04/anti-islam_event_cancelled.html">report</a> as “Islamic laws governing worship and lifestyle.” Becker correctly clarifies that “Sharia is incompatible with our constitutional and legal protections” in numerous ways.</p>
<p>Both local and national Muslims groups, however, greeted the event with harsh opposition. <a href="http://tntoday.utk.edu/2013/03/12/muslim-youth-minister-unique-position/">Abdel Rahman Murphy</a>, a Muslim chaplain at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, emailed then FHS principal <a href="http://elps.utk.edu/ed_admin/Reflective%20Essays%20-%20Field%20Award/Reflective%20Essay%20-%202001%20Michael%20Reynolds.pdf">Mike F. Reynolds</a> on April 8 requesting the event’s cancellation. The town hall flyer had “kind of an aggressive tone,” Murphy <a href="http://www.wate.com/story/25220254/upcoming-event-at-high-school-as-some-muslims-on-edge">argued to reporters</a>. “Feel free hosting” the event “anywhere else by renting out a banquet hall,” Murphy added, “but to host it at a public place…is not comfortable for the rest of us.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cair.com/">Council on American-Islamic Relations</a> (CAIR), a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/172">radical</a> faux civil rights group and an unindicted terrorism financing <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/1854/doj-cairs-unindicted-co-conspirator-status-legit">coconspirator</a>, also objected. An April 11 CAIR <a href="https://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/12446-cair-welcomes-cancellation-of-anti-muslim-event-in-tenn-school.html">news release</a> publicized a letter by CAIR National Communications Director <a href="http://www.cair.com/about-us/cair-national-board-and-key-staff/ibrahim-hooper-communications-director.html">Ibrahim Hooper</a> to FHS the previous day that “vilifies…French, Bonner and ACT! for America” with a “false attribution” of “anti-Muslim hate” refuted by Becker’s complaint. “We support the First Amendment right to free speech—even…hate speech used by these speakers,” Hooper argued. The “need for a safe and inclusive learning environment,” though, makes a “school…not the proper setting.”</p>
<p>Principal Reynolds’ April 10 letter to Knox County Schools Superintendent <a href="http://kcs.farragutis.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=47850&amp;SID&amp;printable=TRUE&amp;SID&amp;portrait_or_landscape=portrait">James P. McIntyre, Jr.</a> shared Hooper’s sentiments. “Groups promoting hate rather than tolerance” would have the event “serve as a public forum for harassment and bullying practices that contradict the open-minded, academic discussion we seek to…foster at” FHS, Murphy wrote. The event would generate “little positive press or educational benefit,” yet “polarize our community” when “deemed ours by association.” Concerns of “potential backlash” and “future security threats” from “retaliation of opposing groups” existed. These “expressed concerns…about…disruption” from an event unsuitable for “a safe, healthy and comfortable learning environment” caused McIntyre to rescind ACT!’s invitation in an April 11 letter to its Knoxville chapter leaders.</p>
<p>A Knoxville school official was “happy to announce” ACT!’s uninviting. Hooper boasted of the school’s decision, arguing that “this event in a public school would send an implicit message of endorsement for the bigoted views of the speakers.” Knoxville schools must “remain a safe place for all students,” concurred <a href="http://acotn.org/about-us/staffboard/">Remziya Suleyman</a> from the Tennessee-based Muslim organization, American Center for Outreach.</p>
<p>The Knoxville ACT! chapter’s president John Peach held the event in a <a href="http://freedomxlaw.com/fx-sues-tn-school-district/">church</a>, not seeking other public venues for fear of another cancellation. “Sharia is not well-understood and we wanted to inform the public” as “concerned Americans,” Peach said. An “American…should” not “be afraid to speak out on public matters in a public forum.”</p>
<p>Peach noted that Muslim groups such as the Saudi-backed <a href="http://www.meforum.org/603/islamisms-campus-club-the-muslim-students">Muslim Students Association</a>, meanwhile, could openly operate unopposed at the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus. “If it’s right for Muslims to host events in tax-funded public facilities, then what is wrong with a group of citizens wanting the same,” he asked. “This is a great example of what Sharia Law is doing to America.”</p>
<p>On August 4<sup>th</sup>, Peach and French with Becker as counsel sued the school district for violating his First Amendment constitutionally protected rights. “It is unfortunate we have to educate the educators,” Becker stated in filing the lawsuit to coincide with the school year opening, but the First Amendment’s “freedom of speech…distinguishes America from Muslim nations.” “CAIR and other terror-affiliated groups are exploiting our laws,” Becker analyzed, “to erode…freedom of speech…part and parcel of a greater plan” for an “Islamic caliphate.” “Unfortunately…as Muslim activists play the victim card,” this trend will grow, even though blasphemy laws are unconstitutional.</p>
<p>Because “litigation would have been futile,” Becker rejoiced, the school’s attorneys settled just 21 days after his filing. An “undifferentiated fear or apprehension of disturbance is not enough to overcome” the “hazardous freedom” that “is the basis of our national strength,” the 1969 United States Supreme Court <a href="http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1968/1968_21"><em>Tinker v. Des Moines School District</em></a> decision cited by Becker held. In addition to paying plaintiff attorney fees and costs, a new school district policy states that “[a]pproval for use of school buildings and property will not be withheld based upon the content of the message or viewpoint of the applicant.”</p>
<p>As with a prior June 2014 Chicago CAIR lead <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/16/Council-on-American-Islamic-Relations-Seeks-to-Undermine-the-Land-of-the-Free">protest</a> involving another instance of ACT! using public facilities for an anti-Sharia program, America’s First Amendment protections have stopped those who would inhibit open discussion of Islam. Vague “hate” or “disruption” claims have not silenced indirectly in America speech censored directly in majority-Muslim countries or “multicultural” sensitive Europe. The Knoxville case, a precedent that will not remained unnoticed, has shown groups like CAIR that Americans will not hesitate to defend free speech under assault even in the land of the free.</p>
<p><em>This article was commissioned by </em><a href="http://www.legal-project.org/"><em>The Legal Project</em></a><em>, an activity of the </em><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><em>Middle East Forum</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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		<title>Juan Cole’s ‘New Arab’ Fantasies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/juan-coles-new-arab-fantasies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=juan-coles-new-arab-fantasies</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Oct 2014 04:07:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[juan cole]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[The vain search for lasting democracy in the Middle East. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/juan-cole.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243791" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/juan-cole-450x307.jpg" alt="juan-cole" width="355" height="242" /></a>The “advent of a new generation” of Arabs was the overly optimistic theme for University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole’s recent <a href="https://docs.zoho.com/writer/ropen.do?rid=otj666baaa043fca648f191abced399970924#bookmark=http://www.gwu.edu/~imes/events/IMES.cfm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">lecture</span></a> at the George Washington University Elliot School of International Relations.  Cole’s discussion of his new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Arabs-Millennial-Generation/dp/1451690398"><span style="color: #0433ff;">book</span></a>, <i>The New Arabs:  How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East</i>, to an audience of about fifty, mostly Elliot School students, failed to substantiate his ongoing hopes for the so-called Arab Spring.</p>
<p>Elliot School professor <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/gnehm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Edward W. (Skip) Gnehm</span></a> introduced Cole as a Middle East expert who is popular on television, a supposedly confidence inspiring credential. Cole focused on Tunisia, noting that this comparatively small North African country with no oil resources had received “insufficient press.”  His main concern was “youth revolutionaries,” as the Arab press termed Arab Spring regime opponents in Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Cole began by claiming that a “relatively successful . . . transition away from authoritarianism” under the “Ben Ali clique,” who were “basically bank robbers,” had marked Tunisia’s Arab Spring.  Nonetheless, Tunisia is still “on a tightrope,” he added, as some Tunisian regions are prone to violence and Tunisia’s neighbor Libya also presents dangers.  The “Mad Max-like scenes of post-apocalyptic horror” previously described in <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-cole-arab-spring-millenials-20140629-story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Cole’s writings</span></a> “have . . . dashed” the Arab Spring’s “bright hopes” in Libya and elsewhere.  Elliot School professor <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/part-time-faculty-l"><span style="color: #0433ff;">William Lawrence</span></a> noted in a post-lecture conversation that Libya’s parliament has now fled the capital Tripoli for a Greek <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/09/libyas-exiled-government-is-living-inside-a-car-ferry/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">car ferry</span></a> moored in Tobruk.  However, in December 2011, Cole stated erroneously that the “Libyan Revolution has largely succeeded, and this is a moment of celebration.”</p>
<p>Cole contrasted Libya with Tunisia, calling the new 2014 Tunisian <a href="http://www.aucegypt.edu/gapp/cairoreview/pages/articledetails.aspx?aid=577"><span style="color: #0433ff;">constitution</span></a> “very good on paper” and “very nicely worded.”  The “secularists won” in defeating attempts to codify sharia, which Cole dubiously compared to Catholic canon law, as well as a gender “complementarity” clause.  “The feminists in the room know what that means,” Cole said of the latter, before equating the “party of the Muslim religious right,” Tunisia’s Islamist, pro-jihadist <a href="http://henryjacksonsociety.org/2012/09/13/moderates-or-manipulators-tunisias-ennahda-islamists/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ennahda Party</span></a>, initial supporter of both measures, with American conservatives.</p>
<p>But Cole conveniently omitted key passages of Tunisia’s constitution, including the opening traditional Islamic invocation, “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.”  Other passages stipulate Tunisia’s “Islamic-Arab identity” and “civilizational affiliation to the Arab-Islamic nation.”  The preamble also supports “just liberation movements . . . against all forms of occupation and racism,” whose “forefront . . . is the Palestinian liberation movement.”  Article 1, which “cannot be amended,” further proclaims that Tunisia’s “religion is Islam” while Article 6 denotes state duty “to protect the sacred.”</p>
<p>Tunisia’s regionally unique “broad spectrum of politics” includes “militant” secularists, even though Ennahda won a thirty-seven percent plurality in the October 23, 2011 constitutional assembly <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/11/20111114171420907168.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">elections</span></a>, Cole observed.  “People will say things in Tunisia that if you said them in Cairo you certainly would be killed” by some Muslim vigilante, he noted.  Yet even Tunisia “pushing the boundaries,” erroneously compared by Cole with American history, has its limits.  A television broadcast of <i>Persepolis</i> depicting God as an old man brought a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/tunisian-who-showed-persepolis-on-tv-fined-in-free-speech-case/2012/05/03/gIQA0GpzyT_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">blasphemy conviction</span></a>, he warned.</p>
<p>Cole contrasted his book’s focus on “secular, leftist movements” with what he called the media’s obsession with the “Arab world—Muslim barbarians,” but audience questions prompted him to address the role of Islam.  “I can’t deny that religious themes are very important in politics” in Iraq now, Cole conceded.  Yet Shiites and Sunnis killing each other over theology “just doesn’t seem to me . . . the way the world works,” he incorrectly concluded.</p>
<p>Cole praised the Middle East’s “new political generation,” noting that, according to polls, it’s “significantly less religiously observant” than previous generations.  He warned, however, that democracy is “not necessarily . . . breaking out.” Elaborating on his Arab variant of the secularization thesis (refuted throughout history), he added that countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya had urbanized in past decades.</p>
<p>“At this point in the American Revolution, the British still had Staten Island,” was Cole’s ahistorical Middle East/America comparison.  Presidential term limits in Egypt’s new constitution, for example, show that “things are changing a little bit.”  Events are “still changing . . . fluid,” and it’s “too early to call” on renaming the Arab Spring the “Islamic Winter.”</p>
<p>Despite Cole’s wishful thinking and strained comparisons of Arab upheaval with American political history, the Middle East’s road to liberty under law will remain rocky.  Small, atypically secular Tunisia’s narrow democratic success does not justify Cole’s optimism that the Middle East will develop open societies freed from Islamic atavism.  While the Shiite-Sunni sectarian strife Cole consistently downplays ravages Iraq, Syria, and beyond, jihadists hail from Saudi Arabia, other urbanized parts of the Middle East, and the West.  As with Arab Spring Libya, Cole will certainly err again.</p>
<p><i>Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the</i> <a href="http://www.thelawfareproject.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Lawfare Project</i></span></a><i>; follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for</i> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Campus Watch</i></span></a><i>, a project of the</i> <a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Middle East Forum</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
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		<title>Dinner With Saba</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/dinner-with-saba/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dinner-with-saba</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Aug 2014 04:26:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237812</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My evening with an Islamic "activist" -- and a 9/11 Truther. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/saba-ahmed.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237859" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/saba-ahmed-450x236.jpg" alt="saba-ahmed" width="272" height="143" /></a>Another Ramadan has past, but not without personal opportunity to examine a recent Muslim media darling, <a href="http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/a-moderate-muslim-at-the-heritage-foundation/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Saba Ahmed</span></a>.  The 9/11 Truther and other radical beliefs expressed by Ahmed and her associates during a recent interview make her aspirations of being the “head of the Muslim peace movement” not worthy of further consideration.</p>
<p>After achieving national notoriety with Brigitte Gabriel at the Heritage Foundation and in two subsequent <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4-HdVFbnw8"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fox News appearances</span></a>, further attention for Ahmed, such as a <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/180412/what-right-misses-about-islamic-extremism-conversation-saba-ahmed"><i>Nation</i> interview</a></span>, followed.  Her lobbying firm “monitor[s] all congressional hearings related to national security,” Ahmed explained, “primarily targeting” everything thereby that “has to do with Islamists.” According to Ahmed, using this word “to define ‘terrorist’” contradicts Qur’an <a href="http://quran.com/2/256"><span style="color: #0433ff;">2:256</span></a>’s message that “there is no compulsion in religion.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ahmed’s recurring requests for interaction with me resulted in a July 17 invitation to an Iftar hosted by <a href="http://www.imakespace.com/about-us/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Make Space</span></a> mosque, a “non-judgmental community” with a “strong focus on youth and young professionals.”  Make Space emphasizes “universal as well as Islamic values of compassion, cooperation and service” as opposed to a “counter-productive focus on controversial issues” in Islam.  At Alexandria, Virginia’s <a href="http://www.dunyabanquet.com/restaurant.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Dunya Restaurant</span></a> I removed my shoes and entered to be met by mosque volunteers, including a South Asian-looking, unveiled American woman wearing business slacks and blazer.</p>
<p>Literature for <a href="http://www.guidanceresidential.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Guidance Residential</span></a>, the “Leader in Islamic home financing” for American interest-free “Home Ownership the Sharia Way,” filled a table near the entrance.  A postcard featuring Justice <a href="http://www.guidanceresidential.com/the-difference/sharia-board/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Muhammad Taqi Usmani</span></a>, Guidance Residential’s Sharia Board Chairman, caught the eye.  A member of Pakistan’s Supreme Court since 1982, <a href="http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/2011/11/24/craziness-for-profit-shariah-scholaradvisor-mufti-taqi-usmani-blames-commodities-markets-for-financial-crisis/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Usami played a key role</span></a> in introducing sharia laws on blasphemy, corporal punishments, and other matters during Zia al-Haq’s dictatorship.  The <i>Muslim 500:  The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims</i> <a href="http://themuslim500.com/profile/shaykh-muhammad-taqi-usmani"><span style="color: #0433ff;">2013-2014 edition</span></a> ranks Usami 25<sup>th</sup>, a “leading scholar of Islamic jurisprudence” and “intellectual leader” of the <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/islam-deobandi.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Deobandi</span></a> movement that gave rise to the Taliban.</p>
<p>Contrasting with laywoman Ahmed, Usami’s 2002 book <a href="https://ia600605.us.archive.org/4/items/IslamAndModernismByMuftiTaqiUsmani/42345132-Islam-and-Modernism_text.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Islam and Modernism</i></span></a> does “not make excuses” for saying that the “command of jihad remains till the last day” and “killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah after they are humbled.”  During jihad the “clear manifest truth is that taking slaves is permissible,” Usami’s <a href="http://www.deoband.org/2013/01/hadith/hadith-commentary/slavery-in-islam/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islamic slavery apologetic</span></a> argues.  “Fiercely anti-American” according to <a href="http://news.investors.com/print/ibd-editorials/070810-539764-tea-with-terrorists-.aspx"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Investor’s Business Daily</i></span></a>, Usmani has urged Muslim support for fighting American forces in Afghanistan <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2009/03/02/hsbcs-shariah-man-2/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">and Iraq</span></a>.  Islamic teaching, however, “proves the impermissibility of playing backgammon,” another <a href="http://www.deoband.org/2010/06/hadith/hadith-commentary/sports-and-entertainment-in-islam/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Usami article</span></a> declares.</p>
<p>Ahmed arrived shortly after me and explained to an inquiring Make Space organizer her “Dawah” or Islamic propagation with me.  Ahmed introduced in turn her friend <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wejdan.alharbi.7758"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Wejdan Alharbi</span></a>, a fellow American University law student from Saudi Arabia.  While Ahmed wore her usual modest <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/beliefs/niqab_1.shtml"><span style="color: #0433ff;">hijab</span></a> attire of slacks, long sleeves, and veil, Alharbi additionally wore the niqab face covering, leaving only eyes through a slit and glasses visible.  (Alharbi thus emulated Aisha, the “most beloved wife” of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, she later explained.)  After much introductory handshaking, I mistakenly offered my hand to Alharbi, who observed the strict Muslim norm of not touching an unrelated male.</p>
<p>Following a brief prayer with genders divided across the banquet hall, Ahmed, Alharbi, and I entered the buffet line and enjoined the Iftar on the floor of the designated family area.  Conversation during and after dinner roamed over various topics, but Ahmed’s oft-invoked “root causes of terrorism” became the focus.</p>
<p>“Stop blaming the religion,” Ahmed demanded with respect to associations of Islam with aggression and atrocities.  “Terrorism has no place in Islam” with its “strict rules of war,” Ahmed contended, making groups like the Islamic State “completely un-Islamic.”  “Not Islam,” but “grievances all around” motivated Muslims to act violently.  Ahmed, however, ignored <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/12/british-muslim-leader-only-muslims-are-innocent"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Islamic teachings</span></a> condemning all non-Muslims in jihads waged by Muslims like Usmani as military targets.</p>
<p>Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, though, climaxed the evening’s discussion.  “Everyone outside the United States” knows that 9/11 is “just made…up,” Ahmed argued, contradicting her <a href="http://victoriataftkpam.blogspot.com/2011/05/local-muslim-group-to-calls-off-rally.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">2011 televised appreciation</span></a> for the killing of the “criminal” Osama bin Laden.  America “just needed a stimulus” for justifying conquests of mineral resources in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, Ahmed contended.  Today “we have to keep on killing people” as Americans “play with joy sticks” in drone strikes.</p>
<p>“Nobody wants to find out the truth” on 9/11 and risk being tarred as a &#8220;truther,&#8221; Ahmed claimed. Ahmed speculated about discredited theories concerning a <a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/episodes/911-science-and-conspiracy1/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">controlled demolition</span></a> of World Trade Center’s <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/engineering/architecture/4278874"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Building Seven</span></a>.   Wreckage at the <a href="http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/debunking-911-myths-pentagon"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Pentagon</span></a> and in <a href="http://www.nps.gov/media/photo/gallery.htm?id=C7A45234-155D-451F-67A019C294E6A905"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Shanksville, Pennsylvania,</span></a> appeared to Ahmed too insignificant to result from plane crashes, she argued while poring over photos on her smartphone.  How could a <a href="https://suite.io/john-seidenberg/5pss27d"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Saudi hijacker’s passport</span></a> on display at Washington, DC’s Newsuem survive an airplane crash, Ahmed likewise doubted in questioning Saudi hijacker involvement in 9/11?</p>
<p>“I don’t know what hit the Pentagon,” Ahmed responded to questioning. What about my law school professor, <a href="http://www.law.gwu.edu/faculty/profile.aspx?id=3285"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Robert A. Youmans</span></a>, who saw through his Navy Annex office window a low-flying airliner seconds before it rammed into the Pentagon on 9/11?  A drone airliner-look-a-like, Ahmed suggested.</p>
<p>The hour getting late, Ahmed kindly offered me a ride to a metro station and the three of us entered her <a href="http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/mercedes-benz-c230-kompressor-short-take-road-test"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Mercedes-Benz C230</span></a>.   Asked by Ahmed, I affirmed that I had once read the Qur’an as she played an Arabic singing of its <a href="http://quran.com/36"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sura 36</span></a>, the “<span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.al-islam.org/the-heart-of-the-quran-commentary-of-sura-yasin-ayatullah-dastaghaib/foreword">Heart of the Qur’an</a>.</span>”  This sura, I later analyzed, exalts the “straight path” of “Prophet Muhammad” and the “wise Qur’an” while warning unfaithful of the “Hellfire which you were promised…for what you used to deny.”</p>
<p>Political scientist <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arendt/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Hannah Arendt</span></a> famously described the “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Banality-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039881"><span style="color: #0433ff;">banality of evil</span></a>” during her coverage of <a href="http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/eichmann_trial/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Israel’s 1961-1962 trial</span></a> of Nazi genocide organizer Adolf Eichmann.  This banality can include the denial of Ahmed, an individual whose devotion to Islam’s “straight path” precluded reflection upon sources of evil within the faith.  Yet, as Gabriel discussed at Heritage, defeating tyranny amidst any group, Germans, Muslims, or otherwise, demands that the majority define and defend a clear conviction of human dignity against internal enemies.  Ahmed, though, dismissed at the Iftar any analogies in this regard with totalitarianisms past as inapplicable to Muslims, seen by her never as perpetrators, but only as suffering victims driven to extremes.  Thus foreign military interventions in Muslim countries by America and others can only result from nefarious motives, not legitimate concerns with the Islamic world’s incessant instabilities and dangers.</p>
<p>Subsequent Ahmed Facebook postings confirmed her views of Islamic innocence.  Historically “Israel opposed all UN efforts to create two states” and perpetrated “aggressive killings,” she complained.  Additionally, Israel has “stolen lands over the last several decades” depicted in a posted <a href="http://www.jvpchicago.org/resources/brief-history"><span style="color: #0433ff;">map</span></a> for which “there is no Jewish claim,” Ahmed proclaimed.  Jews “were the chosen people until they disobeyed God and were punished by leaving their lands.”  “I see now you hate the Jewish people,” a “saddened” person who had hoped Ahmed “were more moderate” responded.</p>
<p>Ahmed’s outlook had preoccupied me during the ride as the Pentagon and its <a href="http://pentagonmemorial.org/explore/design-elements"><span style="color: #0433ff;">9/11 memorial</span></a> appeared alongside the freeway in a yellowish glow of exterior lights.  Among 184 dead from that fateful day there honored are 59 from the airliner Al Qaeda crashed into the Pentagon, deaths which Ahmed cannot explain.  The <a href="http://www.nps.gov/flni/historyculture/index.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Flight 93 National Memorial</span></a> in Shanksville honoring the civilian heroes who lost their lives in a victory over Al Qaeda is also presumably fraudulent for Ahmed as she still searches O.J. Simpson-like for 9/11’s real killers.  Ahmed’s fantasies of being a Muslim peace leader and national security expert notwithstanding, her 15 minutes of fame should end.</p>
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		<title>Profs Blame Pro-Israel Bias for Stereotyping Muslims</title>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 31 Jul 2014 04:25:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bias]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Edmund Ghareeb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jack Shaheen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Academics lament the powerful influence of the "friends of Israel" in the media. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Pro-Israel-media-bias.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237373" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Pro-Israel-media-bias.jpg" alt="Pro-Israel-media-bias" width="311" height="221" /></a>Arabs and Muslims have an image problem in media and entertainment as a result of a pro-Israel political agenda. So claimed <a href="http://www.american.edu/cgp/scholars-in-residence.cfm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Edmund Ghareeb</span></a> and <a href="http://neareaststudies.as.nyu.edu/object/kc.media.jackshaheen"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jack Shaheen</span></a>, professors at American and New York Universities, respectively, on June 11, 2014, before an audience of forty middle-aged individuals at Washington, D.C. <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/46653"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jerusalem Fund think tank</span></a>.</p>
<p>Ghareeb and Shaheen’s presentation, “Portraying Arabs: 30 Years Later,” commemorated their respective 1984 publications, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Split-Vision-Portrayal-Arabs-American/dp/094318200X"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Split Vision: The Portrayal of Arabs in the American Media</i></span></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TV-Arab-Jack-G-Shaheen/dp/0879723092"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>The TV Arab</i></span></a>.  Drawing upon personal experiences, Ghareeb decried a “lack of balance” in Middle East news coverage in Israel’s favor, although groups such as <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp"><span style="color: #0433ff;">CAMERA</span></a> and <a href="http://honestreporting.com/7-principles-of-media-objectivity/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Honest Reporting</span></a> routinely demonstrate the reverse. According to Ghareeb, this allegedly biased media stereotyping “dehumanizes a people” and “allows for the use of force” against Arabs.</p>
<p>As evidence for this dubious claim, Ghareeb relied upon equally dubious sources such as Senator William Fulbright, who announced on television in 1973 that “<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Features/Washingtons-elders-of-anti-Zion"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Israel controls the United States Senate</span></a>” and later became a registered lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.  Ghareeb also praised the <a href="http://www.mrc.org/profiles-bias/palestine-pete-jennings-and-palestinians"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reporting</span></a> of  <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1733"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Peter Jennings</span></a> as an isolated example of balanced Middle East coverage and labeled <i>Orientalism</i> author Edward Said an “important figure” for writing, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Covering-Islam-Media-Experts-Determine/dp/0679758909"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Covering Islam:  How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World</i></span></a>.  He then cited <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/259606/Muhammad-Hassanein-Heikal"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Muhammad Hassanein Heikal</span></a>, longtime editor of Egypt’s semiofficial <i>Al Ahram</i> newspaper and government minister under Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, two individuals who inspired little confidence.</p>
<p>Shaheen began his presentation by recounting how, in 1974, his children told him about “bad Arabs on television,” prompting him to study Arabs and Muslims in popular entertainment.  For his interest in this subject, Shaheen claimed he was “tagged the Arab professor” and had his research dismissed as “not academic; it’s propaganda.” A <i>Rockford Files</i> producer, meanwhile, allegedly rejected his interview request with the statement, “I hate Arabs.”</p>
<p>Hollywood prejudice has now “spread its wings” from Arab Muslims to Muslims in general. Shaheen claimed, noting in a <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/how-long-will-prejudices-against-arabs-and-muslims-linger"><span style="color: #0433ff;">subsequent article</span></a> on the event that “Islamophobia [has] joined Arabophobia.”  He objected to headlines involving “Islamist extremists” in stories where Islam is not a factor, although he neglected to provide any examples. He did concede that, when pertinent, religion “should be part of the story.”</p>
<p>Shaheen alleged that “people who have a political agenda” play a significant role in creating such stereotypes, while entertainment involving an “Israeli connection” is “pervasive.” <a href="http://www.jta.org/2013/10/02/arts-entertainment/ncis-says-goodbye-to-mossad-operative-ziva-david"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Eight seasons of the television crime show <i>NCIS</i></span></a>, he noted, featured American intelligence cooperation with an Israeli Mossad agent, not with a Palestinian or Yemeni agent. Yet despite CIA cooperation with Palestinian and Yemeni agents, American ties with Israel are clearly much stronger and mention of them in a TV show involving spies simply reflects reality. Vaguely referenced “friends of Israel” in the media are “much more influential, powerful,” than their opponents, Ghareeb added conspiratorially.</p>
<p>After the event, this reporter asked whether there was an analogy with consistently negative portrayals of Germans, given their authoritarian and aggressive past.  Shaheen called this a “totally different issue.”  He then reiterated his <a href="http://www.anisamehdi.com/projects/nightlinejackshaheen/transcript.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">2002 <i>Nightline</i> comments</span></a> that Americans “were at war with a country” in the World Wars and not with Islam’s supposedly “lunatic fringe, al-Qaeda.”  Yet decades-long conflict with various Islamic terrorist organizations and dictatorial regimes is hardly a “fringe” phenomenon.</p>
<p>Undeniably, Hollywood’s dream factory and the media can stand more realism, but Shaheen and Ghareeb’s often cartoonish views condemning a supposed pro-Israel political agenda offer little benefit.   Substantial evidence of anti-Israel media bias, however, does exist, and despite Ghareeb and Shaheen’s dubious sources and wishful thinking, art does, in fact, imitate life when it depicts violence among Arabs and other Muslims. Ignoring these facts in deference to the professors’ fantasies would be the real fiction.</p>
<p><i>Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the </i><a href="http://www.thelawfareproject.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Lawfare Project</i></span></a><i>; follow him on twitter at @AEHarrod. He wrote this essay for </i><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Campus Watch</i></span></a><i>, a project of the </i><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><span style="color: #0433ff;"><i>Middle East Forum</i></span></a><i>.</i></p>
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		<title>No Islamic City upon a Hill</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/no-islamic-city-upon-a-hill/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=no-islamic-city-upon-a-hill</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2014 04:10:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Abdul Mawgoud Dardery]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=235044</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Muslim faith and freedom fail to combine at conference.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Abdul-Dardery.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-235047" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Abdul-Dardery-450x253.jpg" alt="Abdul-Dardery" width="288" height="162" /></a>“Islamic democracy and Muslim democrats” are emerging as a “viable alternative to dictatorship,” <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n3cstlgd">Abdul Mawgoud Dardery</a> from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) stated on June 12 in Washington, DC. Yet Dardery and fellow panelists at the conference “<a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-struggle-for-democracy-in-turbulent-times-practical-solutions-for-us-policy-tickets-11798209763?utm_source=REVISED+PROGRAM+-+CSID+15th+ANNUAL+CONFERENCE+-+June+12%2C+2014&amp;utm_campaign=REVISED+PROGRAM+-+CSID+15th+ANNUAL+CONFERENCE+-+June+12%2C+2014&amp;utm_medium=email">The Struggle for Democracy in Turbulent Times: Practical Solutions for U.S. Policy</a>” failed to prove this optimistic proposition.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.csidonline.org/">Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy</a> hosted the daylong conference at the <a href="http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/wasrb-renaissance-washington-dc-downtown-hotel/">Renaissance Hotel</a>. Academics, lobbyists, and policymakers from the United States and abroad analyzed the Arab Spring’s aftermath in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia.</p>
<p>“Crystallizing authoritarian rule” according to political scientist <a href="http://www.liu.edu/Brooklyn/Academics/Faculty/Faculty/F/Dalia-Fahmy">Dahlia Fahmy</a>, though, preoccupied Dardery’s fellow panelists <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LrXmlOBVvU">discussing Egypt</a> following the 2013 coup against President Mohammad Morsi. Even pre-Arab Spring “formal trappings of democracy” had disappeared under Egypt’s new strongman, former general <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19256730">Abdul Fattah al-Sisi</a>. Sisi had imprisoned thousands of Islamists and increased control over mosques. Article 74 in Egypt’s new post-coup <a href="http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/Templates/Articles/tmpArticles.aspx?CatID=2603#.U6W7-pUg-B1">constitution</a> banned religious parties like the MB-based Freedom and Justice Party of the deposed Morsi and parliamentarian Dardery. Nonetheless, <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE12/005/2014/en">Amnesty International actually judges the 2014 constitution</a> an “improvement over the <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/egyptsource/unofficial-english-translation-of-egypts-draft-constitution">2012 version</a>” passed under Morsi with its various <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-s-new-constitution-limits-fundamental-freedoms-and-ignores-rights-women-2012-11-30">Islamist rights restrictions</a>.</p>
<p>“Egyptians that want stability” supported Sisi’s military-installed regime, Fahmy conceded. “Egyptian society is divided and highly polarized” and “desperate to find any kind of normalcy,” fellow academics <a href="http://www.aucegypt.edu/fac/emadshahin">Emad Shahin</a> and <a href="http://about.me/shimy">Yasser El-Shimmy</a> respectively concurred. Advocating an Egyptian “non-ideological state,” Shahin called for “comprehensive national reconciliation” as “no side can win” among Egypt’s contending factions and “exterminate the other.”</p>
<p>By contrast, Dardery attributed much of Egypt’s divisions to “colonial…divide and rule” practices of the Sisi regime in contrast to an “Egypt for all” theme of diverse Egyptians currently discussing a free future. Yet Dardery’s <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3524/mb-charm-offensive-courts-washington">past statements</a> on matters such as supporting sharia as a <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/apr/6/picket-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-sharia-law-firs/">legal guide</a> remain reminders of the MB’s dangerous divisiveness and cast in doubt Dardery’s role as a conciliator. Similarly ominous, Dardery sported the black-yellow <a href="http://www.r4bia.com/">R4BIA</a> lapel pin commemorating hundreds of MB supporters <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Cairo_sit-ins_dispersal">killed in August 2013</a> by Egyptian security forces clearing two Cairo city squares. Previously worn by Dardery at a <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/georgetown-panel-sides-with-muslim-brotherhood/">January 2014 Georgetown University conference</a>, the R4BIA <a href="http://www.r4bia.com/en/content/what-r4bia">website</a>celebrates MB ideology such as the “end of Zionists.”</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HXQbvV8anM&amp;sns=tw">Libya panel</a>, meanwhile, dealt with an unstable “stateless country,” as described by Libyan-American doctor <a href="http://esamomeish.wordpress.com/about-esam/">Esam Omeish</a>, notable for his <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/search.php?cx=007811315508120065319%3Avf7yhgtccei&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;sa=Search&amp;q=Esam+Omeish">fiery pro-jihad rhetoric</a> and corresponding <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/494/ipt-footage-takes-down-omeish">2007 removal</a> from Virginia’s Commission of Immigration. “We are now on number six, I think,” World Bank adviser <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hafedalghwell">Hafed Al-Ghwell</a> estimated in counting successive Libyan governments following the Arab Spring regime change. While “not a failed state” with functioning municipal governments, Libya answered to a “confederation of militias” according to Middle East specialist <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/part-time-faculty-l">William Lawrence</a>. “Most of the militias are not shooting at each other most of the time” despite regularly reported fears of civil war.</p>
<p>Al-Ghwell worried about Libya descending into chaos absent short-term solutions to pressing problems. He noted one million Libyan exiles, about a fifth of Libya’s population, who had fled what he described as a civil war, not a revolution, overthrowing Gaddafi. American diplomat <a href="http://www.eurasiangroup.org/expert_more_eng/experts1/jonathan_m_winer/">Jonathan Weiner</a>, meanwhile, discussed assassinations and kidnappings of foreigners as indications of an unsafe environment ruling out an American presence in eastern Libya.</p>
<p>Any future Libyan government would reflect that Libya’s “conservative society…heavily leans” towards a “large role” for Islam and sharia, Omeish predicted. Likewise “no Tunisian route” emulating the passage of a constitution without sharia in Libya’s neighbor appeared to Lawrence given opinion polls. What sharia would entail in Libya, though, remained undetermined.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVyhA4Ju1rQ">Syria panel</a>, meanwhile, focused on crisis management efforts such as ceasefires rather than democracy. A “game changer” would be portable antiaircraft missiles for Syria’s anti-Bashar Assad rebels, <a href="http://www.sacouncil.com/tag/mohammed-ghanem/">Mohammad Ghanem</a> from the <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/american-islamists-curious-support-for-the-syrian-rebels/">Syrian American Council</a> (SAC) argued. With Assad’s key air supremacy neutralized, rebels could then not only overthrow Assad, but also strike at the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in a two-front offensive with the Iraqi government.</p>
<p>SAC’s radical associations as well as the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-syria-crisis-usa-idUSBRE9BA08820131211">predominance of jihadist elements</a> amidst <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/search_gcse?q=FSA">shifting and loose anti-Assad coalitions</a>, though, raise grave concerns about military aid. Prized possessions for terrorists, antiaircraft missiles in particular can shoot down both military and civilian aircraft such as jetliners. Far from cooperating with Syrian rebels, meanwhile, Iraq’s government has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/world/middleeast/iran-supplying-syrian-military-via-iraq-airspace.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">allowed Iranian aid and Iraqi Shiite fighters</a> to support Assad from Iraq in what has become a regional Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict.</p>
<p>Rather than Syria, American policy supporting “dictatorship and apartheid” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region concerned George Mason University Professor <a href="http://pia.gmu.edu/people/bhaddad">Bassam Haddad</a>’s rant. Haddad did not explain what a “more balanced and just foreign policy” in Syria would be upon questioning or where Middle East apartheid existed. Haddad’s <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/08/20118286551105182.html">online writings</a>, though, quickly reveal that his “apartheid regime” is indeed Israel. An “arguably legitimate reverence for the Syrian regime’s support of the resistance—principally through Hezbollah—to US and Israeli imperialism” might cause some in Haddad’s view to support Assad.</p>
<p>The one “fragile success” for the conference according to Lawrence is Tunisia. A “bright light” for Arab democracy, CSID President <a href="http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/resources/people/radwan-masmoudi">Radwan Masmoudi</a>’s native Tunisia literally took center stage at lunch as American and Tunisian flags flanked the speakers. (The Tunisian ambassador&#8217;s residence hosted a sumptuous post-conference dinner as well.) The <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2014/01/21/tunisia-s-compromise-constitution/gyzc">new Tunisian constitution</a>, “one of the most progressive in the Arab world,” <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/tunisia-assembly-prepares-last-vote-new-charter">ratified</a> on January 26, 2014, received the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRbdLZNaviw">praise</a> of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State <a href="http://diplopundit.net/2013/01/09/us-embassy-libya-new-charge-d-affaires-william-roebuck-assumes-office/">William Roebuck</a>.</p>
<p>Opposition forced Tunisia’s Islamist party <a href="http://www.orenkessler.com/2012/09/moderates-or-manipulators-tunisias-ennahda-islamists/">Ennahda</a>, holder of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-tunisia-constitution-idUSBRE82P0E820120326">40% of the Constituent Assembly’s seats</a>, to abandon calls to introduce sharia into the constitution. The <a href="http://www.tunisia-live.net/2014/01/21/tunisias-draft-constitution-an-english-translation/">text</a>’s preamble opens with the traditional Islamic invocation of “In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate,” though. Therein the Tunisian people possess an “Islamic-Arab identity” and a “commitment to the principles of Islam.” Article 1 that “cannot be amended” retains a previous constitutional stipulation that Tunisia’s “religion is Islam.”</p>
<p>Article 6 contains “serious legal contradictions,” <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/03/problem-tunisia-s-new-constitution">according</a> to Amna Guellali from Human Rights Watch online. Both obligations to “freedom of belief” and to “protect the sacred” exist in this “complicated and wordy” article. Attempted hereby is the “impossible task of reconciling…two irreconcilable visions” of “hyper-religious” and those supporting “freedom of religious choice,” with disturbing implications for free speech.</p>
<p>Tunisia’s “Arabic exception” resulted from competing parties being “open to each other” in order to “avoid all the extremism,” <a href="http://www.iri.org/news-events-press-center/news/democracy%E2%80%99s-hero-ahmed-nejib-chebbi">Ahmed Nejib Chebbi</a>, leader of Tunisia’s Democratic Progressive Party <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR8MnuK0roE">stated</a>. Tunisian leaders “learned a lesson” from democracy’s breakdown in Egypt amidst confrontation between secular and religious forces. The “experience of Tunisia,” Chebbi warned, “could not be exported.”</p>
<p>Not the secular Chebbi, however, but Ennahda received at lunch CSID’s self-selecting Muslim Democrat of the Year Award. Ennahda Constituent Assembly member <a href="http://magharebia.com/en_GB/articles/awi/features/2013/07/16/feature-02">Sahbi Atig</a>, attending the conference along with another Ennahda member, former Prime Minister <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/world/africa/21islamist.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=1&amp;">Ali Larayedh</a>, accepted the award. “[W]hoever kills the will of the people will be killed in the streets of Tunisia,” Atig had said at a July 13, 2013, Tunis rally in support of the recently deposed Morsi. Seen by many Tunisians as incitement, Atig’s statement reminds of Ennahda’s troubling Muslim militancy. “It is fair to be suspicious of Ennahda,” <a href="http://www.gmfus.org/expert/experts_dirc/hassan-mneimneh/">Hassan Mneimneh</a> from the German Marshall Fund later observed on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQF74-vNk4w">Tunisia panel</a>, despite Atig’s claim of Ennahda’s “middle, modest Islam.”</p>
<p>Mneimneh’s skepticism of Islamic ideology and its compatibility with free societies, though, remained largely absent from the conference. Masmoudi deemed problems in MENA the “direct result of oppression.” “When democracy loses, terrorism wins,” Fahmy had proclaimed. Egyptian security cooperation with the United States and peace with Israel appeared to her as part of a given Egyptian national interest, irrespective of ruling ideology.</p>
<p>The radical background of audience member <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/175">Ahmed Bedier</a>, one of Representative <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxz4t7v92Mo">Keith Ellison</a>’s “real tight friends,” appeared likewise not to bother Ellison. “Orientalist, racist ideas about Arabs not being able to govern themselves” instead concerned him along with colleagues who “erroneously conflated” the MB’s “democratic Islamists” with Al Qaeda. Muslim parties that “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SeqLZ3MH9Q">renounce violence and agree to the rules of the game</a>” should participate in democracy, Obama Administration adviser <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gordon">Philip Gordon</a> stated. Whether such parties might radically change rules received no mention.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.mcc.gov/pages/about/profile/lorne-craner">Lorne Craner</a>, a former George W. Bush Administration official, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGzr8l-3VY">noted</a> that “people started to lose their ardor” for MENA democracy after 2006 Palestinian elections brought Hamas jihad terrorists to power. The bitter fruits of costly American attempts to establish Iraqi Muslim democracy, meanwhile, remained largely unmentioned by the conference. Tunisia’s significant Western, non-Islamic influences also received little praise as a reason for that country’s success and ability to check forces like Ennahda. Alternatively, Haddad condemned the region’s one stable free society, Israel, indicating precisely the threats American power could unwittingly enable. Lawrence’s “democratically enthused populations” in MENA will have to do more to demonstrate that Islamic belief can sustain democratic behavior.</p>
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		<title>The Early Roots of Anti-Israel Lawfare</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/the-early-roots-of-anti-israel-lawfare-3/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-early-roots-of-anti-israel-lawfare-3</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jun 2014 04:11:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[Lawfare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sreemati Mitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=234619</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The long and disturbing history of the legal assault against the Jewish State. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/weapon-of-choice.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-234622" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/weapon-of-choice-350x350.jpg" alt="weapon of choice" width="259" height="259" /></a>Anti-Israel lawfare actually has a longer pedigree than usually imagined, dating from a seemingly obscure lawsuit arising from Israel’s 1948 re-birth.  <a href="http://belfercenter.hks.harvard.edu/experts/2893/sreemati_mitter.html">Sreemati Mitter</a>, an Ernest May Fellow at the Belfer Center of Harvard University’s Kennedy School and Harvard history Ph.D. candidate detailed the matter in a May 20 lecture.  About forty mostly middle-aged and older pro-Palestinian individuals at the like-minded <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/46328">Jerusalem Fund</a> think tank heard Mitter.</p>
<p>Mitter recounted the June 12, 1948 freezing by the newly reborn state of Israel of all bank accounts belonging to Arab refugees from Israeli-controlled territory during the country’s independence war.  She focused on the Palestine branches of Barclays and the Ottoman Bank in London, the two of which held deposits from the Arab Bank, a “Palestinian nationalist bank.”</p>
<p>Arab Bank’s attempts to win restitution of its seized accounts ultimately resulted in a “seminal lawsuit in banking history” against Barclays and Ottoman.  A 1954 House of Lords (then the British high court) decision in <i>Arab Bank Ltd. v. Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas)</i>, though, rejected Arab Bank’s demands.  Yet Barclays and Ottoman “won in Britain, lost in Jordan” as lawsuits in the latter country produced the opposite result. These banks then threatened to leave an economically developing Israel, leading to a settlement with Israeli account restitution in return for a low interest loan from the two British banks.</p>
<p>Mitter assesses that in principle “everybody is happy” in this story, as the banks along with the United Kingdom in general preserved commercial reputations, the account holders received their assets, and Israel got a loan.  Yet her general euphoria has one wrinkle.  Rebuffed in the United Kingdom, lawyers for the Palestinian account holders tried to “find a legal regime that does not recognize Israel,” Mitter explained.  Some fifty resulting lawsuits filed in Jordan led to the judicial holding that Israel is an “illegal entity” not entitled to seize property.  Therefore “Palestinians really fought for their rights” and “turned to the law” precisely by denying Israel its rights.</p>
<p>Britain’s Law Lords, by contrast, affirmed in their decision private sector subordination to wartime Israeli state action.  Similarly, Israel’s March 14, 1950 <a href="http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/E0B719E95E3B494885256F9A005AB90A"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Absentee Property Legislation</span></a> seizing Palestinian refugee property in Israel comes “almost word for word” from British enemy property legislation, Mitter noted.  These laws have the “same justification, which is war.”</p>
<p>The decision cites the Israeli proclamation on May 19, 1948, five days after Israel’s independence declaration, that Palestine Mandate “English law…should remain in force” wherever “not repugnant to” Israeli enactments.  Thus in “all questions relevant . . . there is no difference” in British and Israeli application of “English common law regarding trading with the enemy.”  Under a “general principle . . . not in dispute . . . war prevents the further performance of contracts” with “persons in enemy territory . . . . Many kinds of contractual rights are totally abrogated.”</p>
<p>The “economic dimension” of “what it means to be stateless” formed the central theme of Mitter’s presentation, which sought to place “Palestinians in context with stateless people everywhere.”  Yet, upon this reporter’s questioning, Mitter conceded that Jordan did bestow citizenship upon <a href="http://prrn.mcgill.ca/background/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">West Bank Palestinian refugees</span></a>, the largest Palestinian refugee contingent, in contrast to other Arab states.  Mitter also acknowledged that Jewish refugees fled Arab countries following Israel’s independence.</p>
<p>In fact, these <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/the-jewish-exodus-from-arab-landstoward-redressing-injustices-on-all-sides/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Jewish refugees</span></a> exceeded Palestinian refugees from the 1948 and 1967 wars with Israel in numbers and property losses, prompting Israeli demands that Jewish refugees concurrently receive compensation in any Palestinian refugee settlement.  Most of these Jewish refugees avoided statelessness precisely through immigration to an “illegal” Jewish homeland at considerable integration costs to Israel.  Not surprisingly, <a href="http://www.angusreidglobal.com/polls/1401/israelis_reject_reparations_for_1948_refugees/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">68 percent</span></a> of Israeli respondents in a 2007 poll rejected compensating 1948 Palestinian refugees.</p>
<p>This long record of lawfare against the Jewish state, with the goal of denying Israel’s right to protect sovereign interests, provides Israel’s enemies with legal and propaganda weapons used to delegitimize its existence to this day. The assertion that Jewish settlement in any territories won by Israel in the 1967 war, including Jerusalem, are absolutely illegal, rest on these efforts, as do (more perniciously) attempts to justify sanctions and actual violence against Israel. While Mitter and others focus on the plight of Palestinian refugees and their descendants who deserved integration into Arab states long ago, Israel, a country formed largely by Jewish refugees from all over the world, remains under threat.</p>
<p><i style="color: #000000;">This essay was written for</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank"><i>Campus Watch</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">, a project of the</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">.</i></p>
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		<title>Professors Shill for Islamism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/professors-shill-for-islamism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=professors-shill-for-islamism</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jun 2014 04:30:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carl W. Ernst]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Pipes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Following Muhammad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Qutb]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=233356</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If Islam has problems it's the West's fault. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sd2.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-233360" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/sd2-269x350.jpg" alt="EGYPT-NESF ELDONIA" width="269" height="350" /></a>Only ten people, including two imams and a reporter, showed up to hear University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, professor of religious studies <a href="http://www.unc.edu/~cernst/">Carl W. Ernst</a> deliver the “<a href="http://www.icmes.net/?p=3760">First Annual Ibrahim Abu-Rabi Lecture</a>” on May 7 at the <a href="http://www.icmes.net/">International Council for Middle East Studies</a> (ICMES) in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Ernst was introduced by ICMES founder and president <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=mezvinsky&amp;sa=Search#960">Norton Mezvinsky</a>, who came to ICMES after a 42-year career teaching Middle East history at Connecticut State University.</p>
<p>A self-professed “<a href="http://www.icmes.net/?page_id=384">anti-Zionist</a>,” Mezvinsky endorsed the infamous 1975 Zionism-is-racism U.N. resolution and developed amiable relations with the deranged anti-Semitic <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9871">Lyndon LaRouche</a> movement and once spoke at the LaRouchite <a href="http://newparadigm.schillerinstitute.com/media/norton-mezvinsky-the-destructive-effects-of-religious-extremisms/">Schiller Institute</a> in Germany. He also co-authored <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Fundamentalism-Israel-Introduction-Mezvinsky/dp/0745320902/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1247113061&amp;sr=8-1"><em>Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel</em></a> with the late Israel Shahak, whose <a href="http://www.meforum.org/87/israels-academic-extremists">work</a>, MEF Fellow Asaf Romirowsky <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8029">wrote</a>, “rests on his conviction that Judaism is the font of all evil and that most global issues can ultimately be traced back to Judaism via a world-wide Jewish conspiracy.”</p>
<p>In dedicating its inaugural lecture series to the memory of former ICMES director <a href="http://pointdebasculecanada.ca/ibrahim-abu-rabi/">Ibrahim Abu-Rabi</a>, ICMES signals its support of his radical ideology. Mezvinsky tearfully recalled his late “very good friend” and “distinguished scholar,” about whose book on the Muslim Brotherhood’s Sayyid Qutb Daniel Pipes wrote, “author and subject meld into a nearly seamless whole” so that, for Qutb and likeminded individuals, Abu-Rabi was “their apostle to an English-speaking audience.”</p>
<p>Appreciatively hearing Mezvinsky were Imams Mohammad Magid and Johari Abdul-Malik. The <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2562">Sudanese-born Magid</a> heads two groups with disturbing Islamist connections, the Muslim Brotherhood-founded, terrorism unindicted co-conspirator <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/178">Islamic Society of North America</a> and the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/all-dulles-area-muslim-society-center">All Dulles Area Muslim Society</a> mosque in northern Virginia. The American convert <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2286">Abdul-Malik</a>, meanwhile, who called Magid “my teacher” at a <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/4381/deceptive-islamist-support-for-nigerian-girls">press conference</a> the day after the ICMES lecture, is outreach director at northern Virginia’s <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/case/417">Dar al-Hijrah mosque</a>, known for many years of attracting violent individuals, some personally defended by Abdul-Malik.</p>
<p>Ernst used PowerPoint to illustrate a chapter on Islamic ethics from his 2004 book, <a href="http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-7369.html"><em>Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam in the Contemporary World</em></a>. Hackneyed accusations of “modern Islamophobia” with a “connection to racism &amp; anti-Semitism” in an aggressive, post-Cold War Western society seeking “another opponent to take the place of the Soviet Union” introduced Ernst’s comments. “Islamophobia,” Ernst elaborated, “draws upon a well-established attack” upon Catholics previously called disloyal to a secular state.</p>
<p>Colonialism’s “untold results continue to play out” among Muslims as well, Ernst claimed in yet another presentation of the erroneous thesis that present development ills derive from past Western imperialism. Ernst referenced a Dars-i Nizami curriculum established in northern India around 1700 with an “emphasis on rational subjects” suffering marginalization under British rule while more theological Islamic institutions such as the Deobandi prospered. Mixed “Anglo-Mohammedan” law also codified Islamic precedents, thereby eliminating Muslim judges’ “considerable degree of independence.” Ernst left unexplained why Muslim countries such as Turkey, defeated but never colonized, chose to import Western influence.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://quran.com/5/48">Koran 5:48</a>’s ambiguous words Ernst sees a supposedly unique Islamic acceptance of “multiple religious traditions and ethical ways.” “Against de-humanizing essentialism” of a monolithic Islamic civilization, Ernst rejected the “ludicrous concept” of a “separate planet . . . inhabited exclusively by Muslims.” “There is one world of which we are all a part,” rather than civilizational groupings like the West and Islam “juxtaposed as opposites.” Such platitudes, though, leave unexamined whether Western or Islamic civilization is more open to foreign influences such as Anglo-Saxon common law. Orthodox Islamic supremacist doctrines, expressed in canonical sources such as <a href="http://quran.com/3/110">Koran 3:110</a>, for example, belie Ernst’s vision of a Muslim mindset open to borderless experimentation.</p>
<p>“Stealth analysis” is Ernst’s favored tactic for dialogue without “complicated academic jargon” that “doesn’t really connect to the audience” and “gives scholars a bad name.” Yet Ernst’s thesis of multicultural Muslim societies suffering long-lasting imperialist harm is rather transparent. Deficient Islamic intellectual inquiry and the resulting civilizational inferiority vis-à-vis the West, though, is empirical and not part of any Western “selective amnesia” per Ernst in <em>Following Muhammad</em>. Ernst himself bemoaned at ICMES globalization, “ostensibly bringing together various parts of the world,” being “actually a one-way phenomenon” with many Muslims excited by the West, but not vice-versa. Perhaps they know something Ernst refuses to admit.</p>
<p><i style="color: #000000;">This essay was written for</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank"><i>Campus Watch</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">, a project of the</i><span style="color: #000000;"> </span><a style="color: #1155cc;" href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i style="color: #000000;">.</i></p>
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		<title>Rashid Khalidi’s False Narrative of Israeli History</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/rashid-khalidis-false-narrative-of-israeli-history/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=rashid-khalidis-false-narrative-of-israeli-history</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 01 May 2014 04:44:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab guilt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rashid Khalidi]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224441</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Making up Israeli history -- and whitewashing Arab guilt and perfidy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gh34.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224445" alt="gh34" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gh34-450x260.jpg" width="315" height="182" /></a>Palestinian-American Columbia University professor <a href="http://history.columbia.edu/faculty/Khalidi.html">Rashid Khalidi</a> addressed America’s role in the <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/44678/pid/44385">Arab-Israeli peace process</a> on April 17, 2014, at Washington, DC’s <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/Home/pid/187">Jerusalem Fund</a>, a pro-Palestinian think tank.  Describing Israel’s “entirely false narrative” into which “we have all been brainwashed,” Khalidi revealed his own myopia before an audience of about forty mostly likeminded, middle-aged people.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.johnhalaka.com/index.html">John Halaka</a>’s “<a href="http://www.johnhalaka.com/artwork-PDD.html">Portraits of Denial and Despair</a>” photo exhibit <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/d/sp/i/225/pid/225">currently displayed</a> in Jerusalem Fund hallways set a worrying ambience for Khalidi.  Amidst photo captions damning an Israeli “settler colonial state,” <a href="http://www.johnhalaka.com/artwork-PDD-27.html">one photo montage</a> shows Yasser Arafat’s former press secretary, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/09/in-a-ruined-country/304167/12/">Raeda Taha</a>.  She grew up “in the shadow of a martyr,” a caption declares, a “symbol of the national struggle,” namely her pictured terrorist father <a href="http://www.skyjack.co.il/chronology.htm">Ali Taha</a>, “killed in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/world/europe/05levy.html?_r=0">hijacking operation he commanded</a>.”</p>
<p>Khalidi discussed how the United States has “systematically failed” to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace given “structural reasons.”  “Corrupt terms” such as “honest broker” expressed by Secretaries of State James Baker and Condoleezza Rice enabled America’s “myth” as a “disinterested mediatory.”  Rather, “continuing complicity” and “virtually identity of views” with Israel since 1975 make America sometimes “more Israeli than the Israelis.”  “Ceaseless colonization” of East Jerusalem and the West Bank has actually “made this conflict worse” despite 1991 Madrid Conference American assurances of no “prejudicial” actions during peace negotiations.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry’s current negotiations continue America’s “pusillanimous role” amidst “widespread skepticism.”  The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) “position of weakness” faces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “uncompromising stand,” including Israel’s “brand new, never before revealed demand” for Jewish state recognition.  Does this mean in Israel “everybody has to sing <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/hatikva.html">HaTikvah</a>,” the national anthem, Khalidi joked.</p>
<p>Such biases “driven by domestic pressure” from the “Israel lobby” became “intense” during President Barack Obama’s “humiliating retreat” from a supposedly longstanding policy on ultimate <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/19/remarks-president-middle-east-and-north-africa%20">1967-based Israeli borders</a>.  Israel, however, must otherwise “conform to American wishes,” such as during the Iran nuclear agreement.  Here the “United States did exactly how it pleased.”</p>
<p>Middle East arms deals also occur without Israeli consent, often involving Saudi Arabia’s “stealth lobby” operating in conjunction with American oil interests.  Yet “in fact no contradiction” exists between American relationships with Israel and Gulf monarchies that, like all Arab autocracies, ignore local popular support for the Palestinian cause.  “Some of them…are on Israel’s side,” Khalidi judged.</p>
<p>Israeli has meanwhile created a “bastardized one-state solution,” entailing Palestinian statehood’s “indefinite deferral” under the Oslo Accords’ “historic mistake.”  Khalidi’s one-state solution would recognize “two peoples,” in contrast to some “Palestinian one-staters” who would tolerate merely a “few Jews.”  PA corruption in Ramallah’s “boomtown” and “destructive” divisions with the equally corrupt Hamas-run Gaza, though, remain obstacles.</p>
<p>The Palestinians’ “entirely asymmetrical” conflict with a powerful, American-backed Israel belies a “rough equality” of “two victimized, tragic peoples.”  Stateless since 1918, Palestinians have undergone a “century-long odyssey.”  The 1947 United Nations partition plan foresaw a Jewish state, but “strangled in its cradle” a Palestinian state about which “no one gave a damn.”  As refugees, most Palestinians “no longer live in historic Palestine.”</p>
<p>The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement’s “considerable economic impact” in Europe offered Khalidi a ray of hope.  Israel’s greatest threat “used to be Iran; now it is” BDS, an addition to “non-violent resistance” or “other means.”  BDS also disrupts Israel’s “discursive hegemony” such that <i>New York Times</i>’ “sclerotic coverage” of Israel no longer interests the youth.  Thus “how can one not endorse the BDS movement?”</p>
<p>Khalidi’s bias contains numerous distortions.  Israel’s “ceaseless colonization” includes historically Jewish areas of Judea and Samaria such as Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter and Wailing Wall.  This as well as Israeli security concerns led <a href="http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040414-3.html">President George W. Bush to recognize</a> that Israel would retain certain territories won in 1967, an understanding that has <a href="http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2013/01/03/the-ultimate-settlements-are-not-the-problem-article/?singlepage=true">largely restricted post-Oslo Accords settlement building to such territories</a>.  Obama’s suggestion that Israel accept 1967 lines as a negotiation starting point, by contrast, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-obama-did-to-israel/2011/05/26/AGJfYJCH_story.html">was hardly uncontroversial</a>.</p>
<p>Khalidi hardly discussed, meanwhile, Israel’s Gaza withdrawal, one of several Israeli peace moves, including Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s 2000 two-state proposal, under Khalidi’s Oslo Accords “historic mistake.”  Alternatively, recognizing Israel as a fundamentally “Jewish state” with some minorities is also hardly extraordinary.  Bush so defined Israel in an understanding going back to the 1917 <a href="http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/e210ca73e38d9e1d052565fa00705c61?OpenDocument">Balfour Declaration</a> supporting a “national home for the Jewish people.”</p>
<p>Khalidi equally distorts history, beginning with an asserted Palestinian statelessness since 1918.  No independent Palestine has ever existed within the territory now claimed by Palestinians, an area historically under other regimes such as the Ottoman Empire.  Khalidi’s assessment of the 1947 partition plan is particularly baffling.  New-born Israel fought for survival against Arab states with no interest in an independent Palestine, as shown by subsequent Jordanian and Egyptian occupations.</p>
<p>Khalidi’s assertion that an “Israel lobby” controls American Israel policy does not comport with his concession of widespread American neglect of Israeli interests.  Perhaps the United States (along with some Arab regimes) actually shares interests with an Israeli ally respecting the Palestinians?  Who defines an “honest broker,” anyway, the Palestinians or the Israelis?</p>
<p>The former <a href="http://www.martinkramer.org/sandbox/2008/10/khalidi-of-the-plo/">Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman Khalidi</a> thus fully displayed ongoing Palestinian intransigence towards an Israel now over 60 years old.  For Khalidi, Israeli colonialism has dispossessed a non-existent “historic Palestine” in the name of an illegitimate Jewish state.  Hence Khalidi’s rejection of any past peace proposal such as the Oslo Accords and acquiescence in Palestinian terrorism, such as that of a <a href="http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/www.thejerusalemfund.org/carryover/documents/charter.html">genocidal Hamas</a>, whose past division with the PA Khalidi bemoaned.  No wonder the “peace process” fails.</p>
<p><i>This essay was written for </i><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><i>Campus Watch</i></a><i>, a project of the </i><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i>.</i></p>
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		<title>The United Kingdom’s Continuing Koran Censorship</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/the-united-kingdoms-continuing-koran-censorship/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-united-kingdoms-continuing-koran-censorship</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Apr 2014 04:05:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[koran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ripped pages]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soccer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UK]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222788</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[British justice sinks further.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/kr.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222813" alt="kr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/kr.gif" width="280" height="217" /></a>Mark Stephenson confessed at a <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/middlesbrough-fan-mark-stephenson-ripped-3194631">February 28, 2014, United Kingdom trial</a> “threatening behavior” while watching a <a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/koran-was-ripped-up-birmingham-6406631">December 7, 2013, Birmingham soccer game</a>.  Stephenson’s behavior involved Koran desecration, merely the latest case demonstrating deferential British censorship with respect to Islam’s holy book.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/football-fan-fined-ripping-up-6758913">According to one news account</a>, a woman gave pages of a Koran taken from her handbag to Stephenson and about 20 other soccer fans during the game.  Stephenson ripped the pages and pretended to burn them with a lighter while saying to a stadium worker that he had the “Muslim bible, we hate Muslims.”  Another worker overheard fans shouting “Koran, Muslims and burning.”</p>
<p>Stephenson received a £235 fine for a “<a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/37/section/31">religiously-aggravated public order offence</a>,” a British hate crime that, among things, encompasses “<a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/section/5">threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behavior</a>.”  “We hope that in the future you will not ever, ever participate in any such incident,” Judge Ronald Healey declared in sentencing Stephenson.  It is “considered extremely offensive to some members of the community.”</p>
<p>“It’s disgraceful to allow pure hatred to come to an area like” Birmingham “with a high Muslim population,” Muslim Member of Parliament Khalid Mahmood had said of the incident in his hometown in December.  The “culprits should be dealt with severely and be charged with incitement,” he demanded.  A Middlesbrough Football Club spokesperson also condemned the incident involving the club’s Koran-desecrating fans as violating a desire to “eradicate racism in all its forms.”</p>
<p>Other Britons have also had legal difficulties due to Koran desecration, even when, unlike Stephenson, their behavior has not involved possible questions of property violations or individual insults and threats.  <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8020296/Six-arrested-in-Gateshead-over-Koran-burning.html">Six men faced racial incitement charges in September 2010</a> for their burning of a Koran behind a Gateshead pub on the September 11 anniversary of Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks, a burning filmed and placed on Youtube.  A group spokesman declared the burning a “private joke” and that they were unaware of who filmed the incident.</p>
<p>The men responded “to historical images of Muslim extremists burning American flags and effigies of western leaders,” the spokesman said.  The group was also “sick of British soldiers being killed out in Afghanistan and then being spat at and called baby killers” domestically.  The <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332877/Girl-arrested-Facebook-footage-Koran-burning-school.html">self-professed “English nationalists” also expressed “frustration”</a> over “one law for Muslims” and another for Caucasians.  “Our community is one of mutual respect,” local Gateshead officials stated in condemning the incident.</p>
<p>The following November police arrested a 15-year old Birmingham girl for placing on Facebook a video of her burning a Koran at her school.  “All involved have reacted very positively,” local councilman Robert Badham qualified, however.  The “children at the school know how serious it is.”</p>
<p>Subsequently on January 19, 2011, a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-12848048">former soldier burned a stolen library Koran stolen</a> on a Carlisle street in an event reported as “witnessed by shoppers and schoolchildren.”  Admitting in court theft and “religiously aggravated harassment,” Andrew Ryan expressed being “shocked” by a Muslim burning a memorial poppy on the British equivalent of Memorial Day, Remembrance Day.  <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-13119241">Condemning Ryan’s “theatrical bigotry,”</a> Judge Gerald Chalk noted that Ryan sought “to cause maximum publicity and…distress.”</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/apr/09/bnp-candidate-arrested-quran-burning">following April Welsh police arrested Sion Owens</a>, a senior member of the far-right British National Party, for burning a Koran in his garden, an event filmed in a video leaked to the press and then transferred to authorities.  A Home Office statement said that the “government absolutely condemns the burning of the Qur’an” as “fundamentally offensive to the values of our pluralist and tolerant society.”  Authorities, however, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13032513">withdrew charges</a> against Owens.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13032513">Atheist Peter Crawford came next on May 12, 2012,</a> when he ripped up his own Koran in front of an Islamic information booth in Leicester while telling the booth’s Muslims staffers that Islam was a “load of bollocks.”  Prosecutor James Bide-Thomas questioned whether Crawford engaged in a “legitimate” free speech or violated the law against “harassment, alarm or distress by insulting behaviour, basically upsetting people.”  Crawford’s prosecution <a href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2013/01/jury-dismissed-in-leicester-trial-of-man-accused-of-ripping-up-his-koran--no-retrial-planned?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nssnews+%28NSS+News%29">collapsed with a hung jury</a>.</p>
<p>Yet per famed English political essayist George Orwell, some religions in modern Britain are more equal than others.  A <a href="http://www.mccinglasgow.moonfruit.com/#/made-in-gods-image/4534834837">pro-gay church contributed a Bible to a 2009 exhibit</a> at Glasgow’s <a href="http://galleryofmodernart.wordpress.com/about-2/gallery-of-modern-art-goma-glasgow/">Gallery of Modern Art</a> (GoMA).  Visitors could write their names in its margins, the church explained, to demonstrate how LGBT people “have been marginalised by many Christian Churches and also our desire to be included in the love of God.”  Yet <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/5892500/Art-gallery-invites-visitors-to-deface-the-Bible.html">many visitors wrote in the text</a> what a Christian organization called “<a href="https://defendchristians.org/commentary/defaming-the-bible-as-cruel-and-exclusive/">obscenities and atheist ramblings</a>.”  Would the exhibitors “do the same if it was the Koran?” the Christians wondered.</p>
<p>An <a href="http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/46489">exhibit video</a>, meanwhile, showed the singer Roxanne Claxton ripping pages out of a Bible and stuffing them into her knickers and bra as well as eating them.  As a “bisexual woman,” Claxton declared, “I wanted to celebrate both the masculine and feminine aspects of my identity in relation to my faith as a Christian woman.”  By contrast, the video appeared “disgusting and offensive” to a Pope Benedict XVI advisor, who echoed comments about the defaced Bible in saying that the exhibitors “would not think of doing it to the Koran.”</p>
<p style="text-align: left;" align="center">“[C]omplete indifference” marked official reaction to GoMA in contrast to the schoolgirl Koran burning, an <a href="http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2010/11/on-burning-quran-and-desecrating-bible.html">Anglican blogger noted</a>.  Under this modern British double standard, the Koran, a religious book, enjoys vigorous protection against defilement as a form of racial bigotry, while the Bible, along with other revered items, is subject to criticism like anything else.  In the face of Islam, British justice has sunk even further.</p>
<p><i>This article was sponsored by the</i> <a href="http://www.legal-project.org/"><i>Legal Project</i></a><i>, an activity of the </i><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i>.<br />
</i></p>
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		<title>The Way to Peace: EMET vs. J Street</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/the-way-to-peace-emet-vs-j-street/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-way-to-peace-emet-vs-j-street</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:05:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[demographics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EMET]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[J Street]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oslo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace Process]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Solution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[two-state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=222196</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dueling presentations separate the two-state true believers from the realists. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/130730_israel_palestine_ap_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-222386" alt="Mideast Talks Analysis" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/130730_israel_palestine_ap_328.jpg" width="264" height="196" /></a>Some policymakers “shape policy while intoxicated” when it comes to the Middle East, former Israeli Ambassador </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.theettingerreport.com/C-V----Lectures/C-V--(1)/C-V-.aspx">Yoram Ettinger</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> recently observed at a Capitol Hill briefing. Ettinger’s remarks emphasizing Israeli power undergirding Middle East peace unwittingly contrasted with other speakers the following day who place hardly substantiated hopes in diplomatic agreements.</span></p>
<p>Ettinger addressed issues of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnuYvEitP4&amp;feature=youtu.be">Israel’s Jewish demography</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFTWKuP2R1s&amp;feature=youtu.be">Iran’s nuclear threat</a> at a <a href="http://emetonline.org/index.php?/events/a_luncheon_seminar_on_the_myth_of_the_palestinian_demographic_crisis_and_wh">March 25, 2014, briefing</a> at the <a href="http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/">U.S. Capitol Visitor Center</a> sponsored by the <a href="http://www.emetonline.org/">Endowment for Middle East Truth</a> (EMET).  Drawing upon <a href="http://www.theettingerreport.com/Demographic-Scare.aspx">past research</a> by him and others, Ettinger in particular rejected a “demography of doom” consigning Jews to a minority status in the Holy Land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.  A “maxim oft-cited on Capitol Hill” is a longstanding prediction of an ultimate Arab ascendancy in this area, according to EMET President <a href="http://emetonline.org/index.php?/advisory/sarah_stern">Sarah Stern</a>.</p>
<p>Yet Ettinger calculated that Jews in the combined Israeli and Palestinian territories excluding Gaza formed a 66% demographic majority.  This majority would only grow through what Stern described as “Jewish demographic momentum” and Arab “demographic fatalism,” as measured by birthrate and immigration.  Confidence in such a Jewish majority significantly affected Israeli willingness to make territorial concessions for the sake of an oft-invoked Two State Solution (TSS) to the Arab-Israeli conflict, which would create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.</p>
<p>“The number one interest must not be peace, the number one interest must be security,” Ettinger argued when discussion turned specifically to a peace settlement with Israel during audience questioning.  “There is no such thing as peace-driven security” in the Middle East he elaborated, only “security-driven peace.” Demanding a “realistic” approach to the “two state delusion,” Ettinger declared that in any Middle East peace process the “aim should never be the production of a document.”  While Western society views contracts as binding, in the Middle East “agreements are not carved in stone; they are signed in ice.”</p>
<p>An agreement might last ten, 15, or even 60 years, but can easily fall victim to political turmoil, as events in Egypt and elsewhere indicated during the “Arab Tsunami.”  Particularly in Israel’s case, if “you’ve lost the Golan Heights, the piece of paper you have is worthless.”  A “disastrous impact” would also come from Israeli abandonment of the Jordan Valley heights.</p>
<p>While a desire “to leave behind a legacy” often motivates would-be Middle East peacemakers, Ettinger noted that for 14 centuries Muslims have had “no intra-Muslim comprehensive peace.”  Why, then, would the region’s Muslims make permanent peace with the “infidel Jew” of Israel?  According to the “Iranian and Islamic dictionary,” Ettinger had argued earlier concerning diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, “you engage a party which you cannot vanquish at this time.” This understanding of “engagement” followed from the canonical example of Islam’s prophet Muhammad, not any Webster’s Dictionary definition.</p>
<p>“We are talking about American interests,” Ettinger stressed with respect to any future Palestinian state, noting in an aside that Israel is a “damn good thing for American interests.” After all, “Israeli interests should take a backseat” to American interests for Israel’s American friends who “are not members of the Israeli legislature.”  Russian-speaking Palestinian Authority (PA) President <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/906746/Mahmoud-Abbas">Mahmoud Abbas</a>’s past KGB training, for example, indicated to Ettinger in a <i>lapsus linguae</i> that a Palestinian state would increase “Soviet [read Russian]” regional influence.</p>
<p>A “classic zero-sum game” between Palestinians and Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy also meant a Palestinian state would risk the kingdom’s “demise,” as <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6969">Jordanian officials had previously warned their Israeli counterparts</a>.  “Southern Syria, otherwise known as Jordan,” also could face threats from an Israeli Golan withdrawal, allowing diversion of Syrian military forces facing Israel to turn southwards.  Alternatively, a future Syrian regime could threaten the <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/syriaincrisis/?fa=54340">once-Syrian Turkish Hatay province</a>.</p>
<p>An Israeli “existential need” for a Palestinian state, by contrast, existed for <a href="http://jstreet.org/about/staff">Jeremy Ben-Ami</a> while speaking at a <a href="http://www.thehoya.com/panel-talks-palestine-peace/">Georgetown University panel</a> the day after Ettinger.  Maintenance of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state “absolutely turns on having a national state for the Palestinian people,” the founder of <a href="http://jstreet.org/">J Street</a>, a left-wing alternative to the <a href="http://www.aipac.org/">American Israel Public Affairs Committee</a>, declared.  “The demographics don’t work in Israel’s favor,” Ben-Ami argued, citing an approximate 50-50% split between Jews and Arabs in the combined Israeli and Palestinian territories, including Gaza. “There is no other alternative” to an ultimately evitable TSS, as one or three state proposals “are all illusions.”</p>
<p>“I just do not see any other solution” outside TSS, Ben-Ami’s fellow panelist <a href="http://www.americantaskforce.org/staff/ghaith_alomari">Ghaith Al-Omari</a> from the <a href="http://www.americantaskforce.org/">American Task Force on Palestine</a> (ATFP) concurred.  Yet unsubstantiated “fuzzy warm feelings of hope” were a mistake during the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oslo/negotiations/">1990s Oslo Peace Process</a>, ultimately entailing that “you lose when you hit hard reality.” “We can negate the other,” Al-Omari criticized as the mutually opposed positions of Arabs and Jews stymying peace throughout Israel’s history, apparently forgetting Jewish compromise efforts such as the <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/partition_plan.html">1947 partition plan</a>.  “You have to show that something is different this time” for both Arabs and Jews, longtime American negotiator Ambassador <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/experts/view/ross-dennis">Dennis Ross</a> concurred with reference to Oslo’s legacy.  In particular, unilateral Israeli moves such as withdrawals from <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/lebwith.html">Lebanon</a>, Gaza, and the <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the%20israeli-palestinian%20interim%20agreement.aspx">Judea-Samaria/West Bank</a> “discredited the Israeli peace camp” after Arab hostility continued unabated.</p>
<p>“We vote on the credibility of the candidate” and not just a party platform in an election, Al-Omari conceded when discussing a necessity for reforms in Palestinian governing institutions.  Absent such reform, Israelis would doubt Palestinian ability to implement any peace agreement.  Building the “first Arab democracy” in Palestine had been an aspiration for Al-Omari himself, yet his involvement with Palestinian politics had taught him that Palestinian independence would have to precede democratization. As an aside, Al-Omari might also consider reforms in his own scandal-plagued ATFP (see <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joe-kaufman/the-terror-and-crime-of-the-american-task-force-on-palestine/">here</a> and <a href="http://zoa.org/2011/07/103047-zoa-urges-israel-coalition-on-campus-to-cancel-speaking-event-featuring-anti-israel-propagandist-ghaith-al-omari/">here</a>).</p>
<p>Yet the “greatest thing that can be done to come down on the side of the moderates” against Palestinian extremists such as <a href="http://www.cfr.org/israel/hamas/p8968">Hamas</a>, Ben-Ami argued, would be “to show that there is a payoff” in the peace process.  Hamas “will ultimately be on the losing side” of a “credible peace deal,” Al-Omari agreed.  “I would love to see how Hamas would campaign against it.”  “Gazans are not Hamas,” Al-Omari also argued in describing a Hamas that maintains power through sheer dictatorship, although made somewhat popular by local anger at Israel’s blockade of Gaza.</p>
<p>Comparing the two presentations, Middle Eastern facts provoke questions about what Ben-Ami et al. had been drinking.  Little evidence exists, for example, that PA authorities, <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3794/john-kerry-mahmoud-abbas">just as dictatorial as Hamas</a>, are <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/abbas-the-moderate/">fundamentally less interested in Israel’s destruction</a>.  Israeli concessions might once again simply invite more aggression.  The outcome of any PA power struggle with Hamas among the Palestinians <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3492/radical-moderate-palestinians">is also uncertain</a>.</p>
<p>A Muslim-majority Arab state formed among such parties will hardly be more peaceful domestically and internationally than the 22 other such states.  How Al-Omari intends to propagate democracy under the PA’s <a href="http://www.palestinianbasiclaw.org/basic-law/2003-amended-basic-law">Basic Law</a> declaring Islam the “official religion” and the “principles of sharia” the “principal source of legislation” is anyone’s guess.  Notably, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/20/in-nazareth-christian-arab-priest-seeks-full-integration-into-israeli-society/">Israeli Christian Arabs</a> are increasingly eschewing allegiance to the Muslim-dominated group allegiances of their Arab brethren in favor of a free, pluralistic Israeli state.  Like past and present Chinese inhabitants of Hong Kong and Taiwan, these Arab Christians value personal freedom more than any national political aspiration.</p>
<p>Ettinger’s assessments, moreover, place in question the Arab demographic danger to an Israeli Jewish state and the corresponding need for territorial concessions.  Indeed, growth in Israeli power through an increasing Jewish population and other factors would only deter Arab hostility to Israel, as scholars like <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/no-substitute-for-victory-the-right-path-to-peace-for-israel/">Daniel Pipes</a> have argued.</p>
<p>Prudence for Israel would delay any final consideration of principles concerning competing Arab and Jewish self-determination claims in the Holy Land until Palestinians manifest a practical ability to respect Israel’s security.  After all, post-World War II acceptance of Germany and Japan as sovereign members of the international community required a variety of confidence building measures, not least of which was the development of stable free societies.  Contemplating Gaza’s “giant terrorist entrepôt” in <a href="http://thejstreetchallenge.com/"><i>The J Street </i>Challenge</a>, <i>Wall Street Journal</i> editor <a href="http://www.pulitzer.org/biography/2013-Commentary">Bret Stephens</a> warned against expectations of any future Palestinian polity being a good neighbor to Israel like Canada.   Contrary to Ettinger’s invoked drunkenness, Israel in any peace negotiation should “be very sober and realistic.”</p>
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		<title>Immigration and the Future of American Conservatism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/immigration-and-the-future-of-american-conservatism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=immigration-and-the-future-of-american-conservatism</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 04:06:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[cpac]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221148</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The GOP can either change on immigration or immigration will change the GOP. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/DSC03144.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221155" alt="DSC03144" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/DSC03144-450x344.jpg" width="270" height="206" /></a>“We lose everything if we lose immigration,” bestselling author and columnist </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.anncoulter.com/">Ann Coulter</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> said with respect to conservatives at a March 8, 2014, briefing during the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cpac.org/">Conservative Political Action Conference</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> (CPAC).  Coulter and her fellow panelists convincingly demonstrated that continued mass immigration of largely impoverished individuals would make conservative governance politically and economically untenable. </span></p>
<p>The panel drew upon the <a href="http://www.eagleforum.org/">Eagle Forum</a>’s recent report <a href="http://www.eagleforum.org/immigration.html"><i>How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party</i></a> to demonstrate, in Coulter’s words, that “there is no point in talking about any other issue.”  “Each decade,” distributed copies of the report noted, “current policy adds about 11 million new legal immigrants” to American society who are largely politically liberal.  These numbers entail 5.1 and 8.4 million potential new voters by 2024 and 2028, respectively, numbers that rise in Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections to 9.7 and 17.9 million under the Senate “Gang of Eight” <a href="https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s744/text">S.744</a> illegal immigrant amnesty bill.</p>
<p>“[V]ery similar to the pattern…among immigrants in other Western countries,” America’s immigrants lean left politically, the report notes.  “Being liberal is not a moral failing on the part of immigrants; it is simply reflective of their backgrounds.”  “Most immigrants come from countries where the government plays a larger role in the economy and society.”  Americans likewise “bring their New York values with them” and eventually vote for higher taxes after moving from Gotham to low tax havens like Florida and New Hampshire, Coulter concurred.</p>
<p>“Self-interest matters a great deal in politics,” the report adds, noting how largely poor immigrants often “benefit from affirmative action and welfare.”  This conclusion receives support from a <a href="http://cis.org/2012-profile-of-americas-foreign-born-population">2012 report</a> distributed by fellow panelist <a href="http://www.cis.org/Camarota">Steven Camarota</a> from the <a href="http://www.cis.org/">Center for Immigration Studies</a>.  Even 20 years in America, the detailed CIS study notes, immigrant adults have twice the poverty and medically uninsured rates of natives.  New immigrants and their children account for two-thirds of the increase in uninsured since 2000.  In addition to creating an electorally significant “enormous new clientele for government programs,” poor immigrants “provide powerful justification for new government programs.”  By contrast, about 30% of all past immigrants returned to their countries of origin after failing to establish themselves in a pre-welfare state America, Coulter noted.</p>
<p>Numerous polls cited by the Eagle Forum testify to immigrant liberalism.  “Bigger government, more services” is the preference of 81% of first-generation Hispanic-Americans over “Smaller government, fewer services” in a <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/when-labels-dont-fit-hispanics-and-their-views-of-identity/">2012 Pew poll</a>, a preference that only drops to 58% by the third generation.  Hispanics of all generations favor big government by 75% compared to the general public’s 41%, while Asian-Americans favor the state by 55% in <a href="http://www.pewforum.org/2012/07/19/asian-americans-a-mosaic-of-faiths-overview/">another 2012 Pew poll</a>.  In particular, 66% of Hispanics approved of Obamacare according to <a href="http://www.people-press.org/2012/03/14/romney-leads-gop-contest-trails-in-matchup-with-obama/">Pew in 2012</a> versus 47% of the general public.</p>
<p>Immigrants remain liberal on issues beyond economics such as the environment.  In particular, 70% of Asians consider themselves environmentalists in comparison to 41% of the general public <a href="http://www.naasurvey.com/resources/Home/NAAS12-sep25-issues.pdf">according to a 2012 study</a>.  Asian and Hispanic immigrants, Eagle Forum notes, also come “from countries where firearms ownership is highly restricted” and settle “in cities and the suburbs where hunting and gun ownership are much less widespread.”  Thus the proposition that “it is more important to protect rights of Americans to own guns” only found favor with 29% of Hispanics <a href="http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/4-25-12%20Social%20Issues.pdf">in a 2012 Pew survey</a> as opposed to 57% of whites.</p>
<p>Contrary to some conservative hopes, Eagle Forum’s “survey data show U.S.-born Hispanics and Asians tend to be supportive of abortion and gay rights” and foreign-born divided.  “More importantly, polls show that immigrants and their children do not vote…based on social issues.”  On social issues even “American Muslims are not particularly conservative.”</p>
<p>Predictions that current immigrants will assimilate like their numerous predecessors in the 1900s ignore several factors.  A “national pause and slowdown of immigration from the 1920s to the 1960s” enabled these “Great Wave” immigrants and their descendants “to assimilate, learn our language, and adapt to our unique system of government.”  Nonetheless, “seven decades and Ronald Reagan” were necessary before many of these communities voted Republican.  They meanwhile “provided a good deal of the political support necessary to pass and sustain both the New Deal and the Great Society,” government expansions “never…undone.”  Even today white Catholic immigrant descendants still only slightly favor Republican presidential candidates while Jewish majorities have voted Democratic in every presidential election for which there is data.</p>
<p>Additionally, most “earlier immigrants arrived eager to become Americans,” evening becoming “almost 200 percent Americans, typified by Irving Berlin’s ‘God Bless America.’”  Yet the Eagle Forum cited a 2013 Hudson Institute study entitled <a href="http://www.hudson.org/research/9565-america-s-patriotic-assimilation-system-is-broken"><i>America’s Patriotic Assimilation System Is Broken</i></a>.  Therein to “Teach students to be proud of being part of U.S.” found favor with just fewer than 50% of foreign-born American citizens compared to over 81% of native-born.  Only 37% of foreign-born citizens similarly considered the United States Constitution a higher authority over international law in comparison to 67% of the native-born.  Such is the effect according to Eagle Forum “of multiculturalism and ethnic grievance-based politics…in an America with a racial spoils system and a huge welfare state” upon which many immigrants depend.</p>
<p>Such continued immigration will make it “virtually impossible for Republicans to remain nationally competitive as a conservative party,” a development Democrats are “quite open about.”  For them immigration “is just a way of importing voters,” CIS executive director <a href="http://cis.org/Krikorian">Mark Krikorian</a> stated by phone during an earlier March 6 panel at the <a href="http://homelandthreats.com/event-03-06-14/">National Security Action Summit</a> (NSAS) adjacent to CPAC.  “Immigration has moved the political center to the left” and made California the “Greece of the United States.”   Winning 4 percentage points more of the white vote in 2012 than Reagan in 1980, Coulter noted, Romney would have won an even larger presidential landslide if not for immigration having changed electoral demographics.</p>
<p>Democratic zeal for immigration persists even though “immigration tends to harm those the Democratic Party traditionally has claimed to want to help the most, such as less-educated workers,” the Eagle Forum notes.  Immigrants are “never going to live the American Dream” if successive immigration waves keep wages low, Eagle Forum founder <a href="http://www.phyllisschlafly.com/">Phyllis Schlafly</a> argued.  “Democrats only care about immigrants until they can vote,” Coulter concurred.</p>
<p>No amount of otherwise necessary “bolder and more intensive outreach” to minorities, argued the report, can change the fact that “ethnic voting patterns…tend to endure for decades.”  As George H. W. Bush’s 1988 seven-point Hispanic vote drop from Ronald Reagan’s 37% in 1984 following the 1986 illegal immigration amnesty shows, for example, current amnesty proposals are unlikely to sway Hispanic voters in particular.  Even though the Department of Homeland Security estimates that illegal immigrants are at least three-fourths Hispanic, immigration has a low political priority among Hispanic voters in polls.  Coulter noted that past Barack Obama advertisements hardly mentioned amnesty.  Alternatively, a hardline immigration position also has little effect among Hispanics, as Mitt Romney won the same percentage in 2012 of their vote in California as he did nationwide (27), irrespective of the legacy of the state’s oft-maligned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_187">Proposition 187</a>.</p>
<p>Amnesty, meanwhile, would be “disastrous” for a key Republican base, “working-class white voters with less than a college education,” a voting bloc much larger than immigrant communities.  Between four and six million of these voters stayed home in 2012 compared to 2004.  The Eagle Forum notes “general agreement” that low-skilled immigration “reduces wages for the least-educated American workers.”  Given a recent “massive decline in work” and “very little wage growth” for the past 13 years, Camarota judged that “only in Congress is there a labor shortage.”  The Senate with S.744 has “voted to declare war on the American worker,” <a href="https://www.numbersusa.com/search?term=rosemary%20Jenks&amp;f%5b0%5d=author%3A63087">Rosemary Jenks</a> of the immigration restriction advocacy group Numbers USA stated at NSAS.</p>
<p>Thus supporting amnesty “will only reinforce the perception that Republicans care only about business interests and the rich,” the report noted.  Immigration reduction advocacy, though, “can turn the tables on the Left” as “serving the interests of businesses” with cheap immigrant labor.  The report advocating limiting family immigration to spouses and minor children as opposed to what Eagle Forum’s <a href="http://www.eagleforum.org/about/glyn-wright.html">Glyn Wright</a> called at the CPAC panel a current “immigration system…of essentially no limits.”</p>
<p>Acceptance of immigration changing America “isn’t a natural process,” Coulter argued, any more than a rapist saying to a woman “<a href="http://maroonedinmarin.blogspot.com/2014/03/cpac-blogger-briefing-on-immigration.html">sorry, my penis is inside of you, there is nothing you can do about it</a>.”  Slowing immigration now would allow immigrants to slowly assimilate and become amenable to conservative messages while conservative, religious Americans increased their numbers through birthrates. Otherwise “Republicans are fools” to support measures such as amnesty entailing “suicide” for their party, Schlafly warned.  The Republican Party “can either change its position on legal immigration or it can change its position on almost every other issue,” according to the Eagle Forum report.</p>
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		<title>Preaching &#8216;Islamophobia&#8217; to the Choir at Saudi-Funded Georgetown</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/preaching-islamophobia-to-the-choir-at-saudi-funded-georgetown/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=preaching-islamophobia-to-the-choir-at-saudi-funded-georgetown</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 05 Mar 2014 05:25:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Martin Varisco]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Georgetown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hofstra]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamophobia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[salman rushdie]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=220206</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A jihad cheerleader explains why "colonialism" is the cause of Islamist slaughter in Somalia. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/varisco_daniel.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-220259" alt="varisco_daniel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/varisco_daniel.jpg" width="280" height="240" /></a>“I don’t have any desire to debate </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/about-robert">Robert Spencer</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">….I would never give someone like that a forum,” Hofstra University Professor </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://people.hofstra.edu/daniel_m_varisco/hofdan.html">Daniel Martin Varisco</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> declared at Georgetown University on February 26, 2014.  Addressing the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://acmcu.georgetown.edu/">Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> (ACMCU), Varisco’s equally flawed outlooks on Islam and intellectual inquiry had disturbing implications for modern academia.</span></p>
<p>Prior perusal of the opening pages of Varisco’s 2007 <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=Y9TrODwrIi0C&amp;pg=PA73&amp;lpg=PA73&amp;dq=very+sore+plague+and+Venerable+bede&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=0dLFwgzQRw&amp;sig=6gsZ5oIfWaRn5anCgCeyyXT3Xw4&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=jpkOU8G7FdLcoAT8n4Fg&amp;ved=0CDQQ6AEwAw"><i>Reading Orientalism:  Said and Unsaid</i></a> did not raise hopes for his briefing “<a href="http://georgetown.localist.com/event/briefing_khutba_vs_khutzpa_islamophobia_on_the_internet_with_daniel_varisco?utm_campaign=widget&amp;utm_medium=widget&amp;utm_source=Georgetown">Khutba vs. Khutzpa:  Islamophobia on the Internet</a>.”  In this book, Varisco analyzes leftwing intellectual <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/palestine/resources/edwardsaid.html">Edward Said</a>’s <i>Orientalism</i> and its legacy, expressing agreement “with most of Said’s political positions on the real Orient.”  Varisco reveals his discipleship of Said with condemnations of post-World War II United States having “become by stealth and wealth the neo-colonial superpower” in which a “neocon clique…engineered the wars” not just “against” Iraq but also Afghanistan. Varisco’s one-sided estimate of historical harms includes a “PhD cataloguing of what the West did to the East and self-unfillfulling political punditry about what real individuals in the East say they want to do to the West.”</p>
<p>Yet, Varisco writes, “Said hardly scratched the surface of the vast sewerage of racist and ethnocentrist writing, art, and cinema that for so long has severed an imaginary East from the dominating West.”  “In particular,” Varisco emphasizes,</p>
<blockquote><p>almost anything that Muslims would consider holy has at one time or another been profaned by Western writers.  Perhaps the frustrated worldwide Muslim anger at <a href="http://www.salman-rushdie.com/">Salman Rushdie’s <i>The Satanic Verses</i></a> was emetic justice for centuries of vicious and malicious verbal abuse from the West, where this controversial best seller incubated.</p></blockquote>
<p>Both matters of principle and practicality deter further reading of Varisco.  “Truth with a capital T does not exist for anyone,” Varisco nonsensically proclaims as one of his “own operational truths,” thereby placing in doubt Varisco’s views. Varisco’s attempts at humor also do not amuse, such as when he describes the book’s “anal citational flow of endnotes” designed to allow a person to “read for entertainment” Varisco’s turgid tome.</p>
<p>Nothing improved during Varisco’s presentation on “Islamophobia,” described in a Powerpoint image referencing a 1991 <a href="http://www.runnymedetrust.org/">Runnymede Trust</a> report as an “<a href="http://crg.berkeley.edu/content/islamophobia/defining-islamophobia">unfounded hostility</a>” towards all things and persons Muslim.  One Powerpoint on “Combatting Islamophobia on the Internet” set a leveling tone with a recommendation of a “[f]ocus on interfaith efforts, noting that all religions have positive and negative aspects.”  This accorded with <a href="http://people.hofstra.edu/daniel_m_varisco/islamism.pdf">Varisco’s prior call for scholars</a> to “be doing all we can to refute the notion that Islam is intrinsically more violent than other religions.”  “I am not saying that these things don’t happen,” Varisco conceded when showing a <a href="http://truthfrequencyradio.com/police-rescue-afghan-woman-from-stoning/">picture of a woman undergoing a sharia stoning to death</a>.  Another Powerpoint, meanwhile, simply dismissed as “fallacy” controversies that “<a href="http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/lawfare-strikes-again-in-germany">Muhammad was a pedophile</a> and Islam is cruel to women.”</p>
<p>Varisco gave a historical overview of longstanding negative Western views of Islam.  He noted, for example, <a href="http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/papers/dai/">Dante’s depiction of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in the <i>Inferno</i></a> and <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36486/36486.txt">unfavorable 19<sup>th</sup> century American comparisons</a> of an <a href="http://www.inplainsite.org/html/smith_and_muhammed.html">emerging Mormon faith with Islam</a>.  Varisco’s bias was evident when observing that <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/john-smith-9486928">John Smith</a> fought Ottoman Turks before coming to America without ever analyzing whether Smith might have been justified to oppose Muslim aggression.  Varisco also reiterated his previously written scorn for an “allegedly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/bede_st.shtml">Venerable Bede</a>, who condemned invading Muslims of his time as ‘a very sore plague.’”  Why this single condemnation of marauding Muslims in France stopped at the <a href="http://www.raymondibrahim.com/islam/today-in-history-the-battle-of-tours/">732 Battle of Tours</a> discredited this pioneering English historian in Varisco’s estimation remained unexplained.</p>
<p>In discussing the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp">1797 American treaty with Tripoli</a>, meanwhile, Varisco bizarrely claimed that “we were doing a lot of trade” with the Barbary States.  As any schoolboy should know, though, this treaty, including a tribute payment, was part of <a href="http://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/first-barbary-war">American trade protection efforts</a> against Barbary pirate depredations scourging the Mediterranean for centuries.  Varisco then noted with a Powerpoint image America’s subsequent Barbary Wars resulting from the failure of diplomacy to dissuade the Barbary pirates from their attacks.  “Economics is always in there somewhere,” Varisco stated in a similarly bizarre fashion when discussing the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4574">United States’ first encounter with jihadists</a>.</p>
<p>Turning to the present, Varisco condemned as “Islamophobic” the <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/">Clarion Project</a> along with its film <a href="http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/"><i>Obsession</i></a>, the website <a href="http://www.answering-islam.org/"><i>Answering Islam</i></a>, and <a href="http://www.samaritanspurse.org/our-ministry/franklin-graham-biography/">Franklin Graham</a> for <a href="http://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/688-frank-graham-claims-islam-is-a-very-evil-and-wicked-religion.html">having called Islam “evil.”</a>  One particular focus of Varisco was the anti-Catholic writer <a href="http://www.catholic.com/documents/the-nightmare-world-of-jack-t-chick">Jack Chick</a> who in his cartoon publications had wildly slandered the <a href="http://www.chick.com/reading/comics/0117/0117_allinone.asp">Catholic Church as Islam’s inventor</a>.  Another emphasis for Varisco was evangelical <a href="http://www.joelstrumpet.com/?page_id=2916">Joel Richardson</a>’s website <a href="http://www.joels-trumpet.com/"><i>Joel’s Trumpet</i></a> with its apocalyptic predictions of an “<a href="http://www.joelstrumpet.com/?p=3455">Islamic Antichrist</a>.”</p>
<p>The little discussed elephant in the room for perceptive “Islamophobia” observers during Varisco’s presentation, though, was “Islamophobe” Number One, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/"><i>Jihad Watch</i></a> website founder Spencer.  Varisco cited a <a href="https://cair.com/press-center/cair-in-the-news/8961-robert-spencer-islam-is-a-false-religion.html">Spencer quotation</a> from his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Islam-Catholics-Questions-Answers/dp/0965922855"><i>Inside Islam:  A Guide for Catholics</i></a> listed at the website <a href="http://spencerwatch.com/spenceritis/"><i>Spencer Watch</i></a>.  Varisco once again failed to explain why Spencer’s condemnations of Islam as an “often downright false revelation” and “threat to the world at large” were unacceptable.  Varisco also noted a <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/02/indoctrinating-the-youth-at-georgetown-university">recent <i>Jihad Watch</i> entry</a> criticizing his very Georgetown briefing.</p>
<p>Audience questions, however, focused on Spencer.  Varisco discussed his refusal to debate Spencer as “someone who just hates Islam,” yet claimed that in any hypothetical encounter he “would beat the whatever out of him.”  ACMCU head <a href="http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/jle2/">John Esposito</a> concurred with the “Combatting Islamophobia in the Internet” assessment of “little value in debating Islamophobic speakers in academic settings since it gives them a forum.”  Such encounters with Spencer “would be enhancing his credibility.”  Yet in discussing partisan websites, Esposito complained that “nobody accepts the other side as objective.” “Cranks” like Spencer, an audience member meanwhile argued, belonged at Hyde Park Corner.</p>
<p>Although Esposito dismissed Spencer as a scholar, he nonetheless sneered that he wrote “best-selling books” while discussing worries about Spencer’s popularity.  Noting the influence of popular culture, Esposito complained that “Islamophobic websites score very, very high.”  Varisco bemoaned that such websites outperformed his own <a href="http://tabsir.net/"><i>Tabsir</i></a> website and without irony cited a need for people like him to create “more books…that people can read.”</p>
<p>The “Vast Rightwing Conspiracy is better at” advocacy “than our lefty friends,” the audience member who had called Spencer a “crank” agreed.  “Lots of money” also appeared as an advantage for “Islamophobic” groups to Esposito. Esposito did not say whether this money outweighed the <a href="http://acmcu.georgetown.edu/about">$20 million Saudi namesake grant to ACMCU</a> or <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6709">George Soros funding</a> and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-splcs-ridiculous-hate-group-list/">six-figure salaries</a> at the likeminded <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/">Center for American Progress</a> and <a href="http://www.splcenter.org/">Southern Poverty Law Center</a>, respectively.</p>
<p>Amidst this uniform opposition to Spencer et al. from fewer than 20 people in the briefing room, one audience member sounded an independent note.  Observing that he was the only black person in the room, the young man discussed how he did not see Spencer’s work as a “race issue” but rather as opposition to Islamic extremism.  Because of this “my country is in ruins now” he said with respect to the Somali homeland of his Muslim father.</p>
<p>Varisco answered by attributing violence in Somalia and other majority-Muslim societies not to Islamic ideology but rather to Somalia’s “colonial experience,” pre-Arab Spring dictators, or Western countries “pumping weapons” into these countries.  Another audience member spoke of Somalia’s “tribal roots.”  “I don’t think you put blame on one individual,” Varisco meanwhile responded to the black man’s query about responsibility for Afghan violence following <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/terry_jones_pastor/">Terry Jones</a> Koran burning.  Absolving Muslim murderers and other criminals at least partly from their individual responsibility, Varisco analogized to an arsonist setting alight a carelessly tended house.</p>
<p>In all, Varisco’s briefing exposed much of modern academia’s shallowness.  True to multicultural shibboleth, Varisco refused to identify any uniquely disturbing aspects of Islam and dismissed all past aversion towards this faith as prejudice.  Varisco’s minimalist treatment of Spencer, meanwhile, accorded with an unwillingness to respect this <a href="http://juicyecumenism.com/2013/07/27/cutting-through-theological-confusion-robert-spencers-not-peace-but-a-sword-distinctly-divides-christianity-from-islam/">lucidly insightful scholar</a>.  Rather, Varisco grouped Spencer with far more lightweight individuals like Chick and Richardson with whom Catholics like Spencer or his colleague <a href="http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/about/leaders/robert-j-muise-esq/">Robert Muise</a> of the <a href="http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/">American Freedom Law Center</a> have little commonality.  The expressed worries of Varisco, Esposito, and others, however, give hope that their efforts to silence their opposition will fail.</p>
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		<title>Georgetown Panel Sides with Muslim Brotherhood</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/georgetown-panel-sides-with-muslim-brotherhood/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=georgetown-panel-sides-with-muslim-brotherhood</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 17 Feb 2014 05:52:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[georgetown university]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Morsi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218953</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Money well spent by the Prince Awaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jk.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-219038" alt="jk" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jk.jpg" width="259" height="194" /></a>Egyptians are “literally split in half” on President <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18371427">Mohammed Morsi</a>’s 2013 downfall, former Obama Administration adviser <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/1904/dalia-mogahed-a-muslim-george-gallup-or-islamist">Dahlia Mogahed</a> stated recently in citing polling data at Georgetown University.  Yet the pro-<a href="http://www.cfr.org/egypt/egypts-muslim-brotherhood/p23991">Muslim Brotherhood</a> (MB) bias of the <a href="http://georgetown.localist.com/event/egypt_the_struggle_for_democracy?utm_campaign=widget&amp;utm_medium=widget&amp;utm_source=Georgetown#.Uvr2SZWPJhg">January 29, 2014, conference</a> at which Mogahed spoke did little justice to the “deep division” facing Egypt, notwithstanding her calls for “pluralism” to overcome the country’s “huge polarization.”</p>
<p>Mogahed addressed the day-long conference “Egypt &amp; the Struggle for Democracy” presented by Georgetown’s <a href="http://acmcu.georgetown.edu/about">Prince Awaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding</a> (ACMCU).  Originally scheduled for <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/egypt-the-struggle-for-democracy-registration-9349712241">December 5, 2013,</a> the conference made headlines even before opening.  <a href="http://freebeacon.com/georgetown-university-to-host-member-of-egypts-nazi-party/">Ramy Jan</a>, one of the rare Egyptian Christians opposing Morsi’s removal, lost his ACMCU conference invitation after his past involvement in Egypt’s neo-Nazi party became known.</p>
<p>Conference participants universally mourned a “new born democracy …assassinated” in Egypt before completing a necessary “trial and error” process, as described by activist <a href="https://twitter.com/NahlaNasser89">Nahla Nasser</a> of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE07UMaHft8">Egyptians Abroad for Democracy</a> (EAD).  A late conference addition, Nasser described visiting Rabia al-Adawiya Square before its bloody clearing by Egyptian forces on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Cairo_sit-ins_dispersal">August 14, 2013</a>.  Nasser found the pro-MB demonstrators there to be the “most respectful people I have ever met in my entire life.”</p>
<p>Making the questionable assertion that revolutionary change is “often from bad to good,” Middle East scholars like <a href="http://maryamjamshidi.co/biography/">Maryam Jamshidi</a> praised a post-<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12301713">Hosni Mubarak</a> “burgeoning of the public square.”  <a href="http://www.liu.edu/Brooklyn/Academics/Faculty/Faculty/F/Dalia-Fahmy">Dalia Fahmy</a> saw emerging during this time “political pluralism within political Islam.”  The MB-affiliated <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15899548">Freedom and Justice Party</a> (FJP) “ultimately played by the rules of the game,” <a href="http://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/directory/70630">Maha Azzam</a> said, only to have the Egyptian military stop the “emergence of moderate Islamist parties.”</p>
<p>Under Morsi, “democracy mattered to” Egypt’s common people for the first time, assessed law professor <a href="http://www.law.utoronto.ca/faculty-staff/full-time-faculty/mohammad-fadel">Mohammed Fadel</a>.  Egyptians “lived a very good year” under Morsi because of a “sense of belonging” after democracy replaced dictatorship, concurred <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3524/mb-charm-offensive-courts-washington">Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery</a>.  “We were sure that our votes meant a lot,” the former Egyptian FJP parliamentarian said.  Egyptians should “respect the process and not change the rules of the game” in contrast to the military overthrow of Morsi, the self-proclaimed <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/apr/6/picket-egyptian-muslim-brotherhood-sharia-law-firs/">supporter of sharia</a> argued.</p>
<p>By comparison, the Georgetown panelists only saw no justification for the military’s intervention against Morsi.  Egyptian security institutions’ “vested interests” in matters such as state-owned businesses were the explanation for Morsi’s deposing given by <a href="https://twitter.com/waelhaddara">Wael Haddara</a>, a <a href="http://pointdebasculecanada.ca/articles/10003096-former-mac-president-wael-haddara-was-senior-advisor-to-ousted-muslim-brotherhood-backed-egyptian-president-mohammed-morsi.html">former Morsi adviser</a>.  The Egyptian military expressed an attitude of Egypt “returned to its proper owners,” the former MB youth leader <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/groundtruth/mohamed-abbas-egyptian-revolutionary-comes-america">Mohamed Abbas</a><b> </b>stated via translation by ACMCU faculty member <a href="http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/brownj2/">Jonathan Brown</a>.</p>
<p>“Hysterical coverage” in the media was a significant cause of Morsi’s downfall, according to the Egyptian media scholar <a href="http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/news/Pages/ElMasry.aspx">Mohamad Elmasry</a>. “Many journalists perceive themselves to be activists” in Egypt, Elmasry criticized.  That “Morsi was fundamentally incompetent” and was “Brotherhoodizing the state” in the name of a “mini-caliphate” were common media themes during Morsi’s presidency described as “myth” by Elmasry.  Although Egypt’s “state-run press” is “historically a mouthpiece of the government,” under Morsi this press was “not the typical mouthpiece.”  While 81% of <a href="http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/"><i>Al Ahram</i></a> articles in 2008 were favorable to Mubarak, they were mostly neutral to Morsi when in power, according to Elmasry’s coding.</p>
<p>Morsi’s overthrow, meanwhile, resulted in returning “military rule with a vengeance,” according to Azzam.  While “power was defuse” under Morsi, according to Jamshidi, now it was “concentrated” again under the new post-Morsi <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/egyptsource/english-translation-of-egypt-s-2013-draft-constitution">constitution</a> approved in a <a href="http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2014/02/12-egypt-constitution-ghanem?rssid=elections&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BrookingsRSS%2Ftopics%2Felections+(Brookings+Topics+-+Elections)">January 14-15, 2014, referendum</a>.  This constitution strengthened “already powerful” state institutions and a “custodial status” to the military in particular, complained Fahmy.  After an <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/egypts-army-chief-general-sisi-to-run-for-president-9110905.html">expected presidential elections sweep</a>, General <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19256730">Abdul Fattah al-Sisi</a>, the officer who brought down Morsi, will influence parliamentary elections and create a “rubber stamp” legislature helpless against the constitution’s executive predominance.</p>
<p>An “anti-Ikwhan [MB] fever” incited by a repressive military meant that “there is now no real civil society” in Egypt, stated former MB member <a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/whitehouse/rifts-in-muslim-brotherhood-mark-egypt-s-political-disarray-20110715">Islam Lotfy Shalaby</a><b> </b>via Brown’s translation.  The military had closed numerous MB social service institutions serving thousands such as 80% of the schools in Egypt and the country’s largest hospital founded in 1924.  Seized MB assets amounted to ten billion Egyptian pounds (about $1.3 billion).</p>
<p>MB suppression also occurred in the media, leaving “essentially a singular voice” in Elmasry words that constantly condemned MB as, for example, a terrorist organization.  This served “to dehumanize the Brotherhood” and “to justify the massacres,” as manifested in a television show on the Rabia clearing with the <i>Rocky</i> soundtrack.  Narratives of MB as terrorist and disloyal to Egypt were “extremely effective” in winning Sisi support according to Jamshidi.</p>
<p>Popular anti-MB sentiment meant that the “line between citizen and state repression has been blurred,” Jamshidi added.  “Popularly sanctioned state violence” stemming from “demonization” of certain Egyptians as “literally subhuman” manifested for Mogahed a “moral and spiritual crisis.”  Fadel, meanwhile, rather unconvincingly discussed how the political Rabia crackdown was religious persecution of Muslims under Article 7 in the <a href="http://www.icc-cpi.int/en_menus/icc/legal%20texts%20and%20tools/official%20journal/Pages/rome%20statute.aspx">Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court</a>.</p>
<p>Yet even the Georgetown panelists could not hide conflicting evidence.  While the anti-Mubarak protests beginning on January 25, 2011, were “very Egyptian,” the anti-Morsi protests beginning on June 30, 2013, were “very sectarian” in Dardery’s estimation.  “Egyptians united” characterized January 25 (82% of Egyptians desired Mubarak’s removal in a March 2011 poll noted by Mogahed) as opposed to “Egyptians divided” on June 30, concurred Shahin.  Egyptian confidence in their military, though, has stayed high at around 95% of those surveyed throughout two years of various upheavals following Mubarak’s resignation.</p>
<p>A “failure to build consensus” thus appeared to the Carnegie Endowment’s <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/experts/?fa=236">Michelle Dunne</a> as causing the post-Mubarak revolution’s failure.  “We knew what we were against, but we did not know what we were for,” concurred Dardery with Dunne in discussing the anti-Mubarak “breadth of social consensus” described by Middle East scholar <a href="http://elliott.gwu.edu/brown">Nathan Brown</a>.  Yet a “basic failure in Egyptian life” noted by Brown is that widely diverse Egyptians are unable “to deal with each other.”  While Dardery spoke of an “Islamic belief” that “Muslim and Christians are brothers,” Brown countered that “you have a got a problem in your camp” concerning sectarianism.</p>
<p>By overlooking key facts in Egypt’s complicated politics, the Georgetown conference if anything hindered developing Egyptian consensus across diversity.  Sisi’s authoritarianism aside, <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE12/005/2014/en">Amnesty International actually judges the 2014 constitution</a> an “improvement over the <a href="http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/egyptsource/unofficial-english-translation-of-egypts-draft-constitution">2012 version</a>” passed under Morsi with its various <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-s-new-constitution-limits-fundamental-freedoms-and-ignores-rights-women-2012-11-30">Islamist rights restrictions</a>.  Egypt’s “strong contrast with Tunisia” in social cohesion noted by Dunne occurred precisely in part because of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/26/us-tunisia-constitution-idUSBRE82P0E820120326">Islamist renunciation of sharia</a> in the new <a href="http://www.tunisia-live.net/2014/01/21/tunisias-draft-constitution-an-english-translation/">Tunisian constitution</a> overwhelming adopted on <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/us-tunisia-politics-idUSBREA0P0P220140127">January 26, 2014</a>.</p>
<p>The Egyptian people might agree as well despite repression muzzling constitution opponents in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/world/middleeast/vote-validates-egypts-constitution-and-military-takeover.html?_r=2">2014 referendum</a>.  Voting for the new constitution was 98.1% of the 38.6% of the electorate voting, about <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/24/four-big-things-to-know-about-egypt-in-2014/">20 million in absolute numbers</a>.  This was eight million more than the <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Comparing-Egypt-s-Constitutions.pdf">63%</a> of roughly a third of the electorate voting for the 2012 constitution under Morsi and six million more than for voted for his presidency that year.  Any criticism of Sisi as a “modern day pharaoh,” moreover, ignores the insight of longtime Egypt resident and scholar Raymond Stock that this “land…has known largely that kind of rule for the past five millennia.”  As ACMCU’s <a href="http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/vollj/">John Voll</a> noted in introducing the conference, many of its themes such as the compatibility of Islam and democracy remained unchanged from Voll’s 1961 graduate student days.</p>
<p>No conciliation was forthcoming from the panelists to their absent opponents.  Support for Sisi’s regime due to Islamist fears by Egyptian democracy organizations<b> </b>“disqualifies them as true and valid organizations” in Nasser’s eyes, for example.  The “political and religious despotism” under Morsi leading to a “Sunni theocracy similar to the Iranian model” <a href="http://eipr.org/en/pressrelease/2013/06/27/1752">denounced by various Egyptian human rights organizations on June 27, 2013,</a> apparently did not concern Nasser.  Nor did Nasser heed the <a href="http://eipr.org/en/pressrelease/2013/08/15/1782">call of many of these same organizations on August 15, 2013,</a> that MB “accept the political outcome of the June 30 uprising” and “return to peaceful politics” rather than spur the country toward a civil war.”  Contrasting with concern for the Rabia dead, meanwhile, ACMCU’s <a href="http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/haddady/">Yvonne Haddad</a> referenced a “quote/unquote massacre of the Copts.”</p>
<p>Dardery wore on his lapel the yellow and black <a href="http://www.r4bia.com/">R4BIA</a> symbol in memory of Rabia, the same symbol featured by the twitter profiles of Haddara and Nasser.  The symbol’s website celebrates the “great Egyptian scholar and thinker Professor <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/01/afghanistan.terrorism3">Sayyid Qutb</a>” of MB executed in Egypt in 1966.  The <a href="http://www.r4bia.com/en/content/what-r4bia">website also proclaims</a> that “R4BIA is…the grandchildren of [MB founder] <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/256466/Hasan-al-Banna">Hasan Al Banna</a>…against rotten Western values…the end of capitalists…the end of Zionists,” and “smiling martyrdom,” among other things.</p>
<p>Such sentiments ominously shade the pro-MB militancy expressed at Georgetown.  Azzam described a “generation in Egypt…not willing to take this lying down,” a generation that “would rather die” in Haddara’s words rather than accept Sisi’s new order.  “I am optimistic that the coup will not stand,” he concluded, “people will fight to bring it down.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Gathering Storms: The Iranian Drive for Nuclear Weapons</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/gathering-storms-the-iranian-drive-for-nuclear-weapons/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=gathering-storms-the-iranian-drive-for-nuclear-weapons</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Jan 2014 05:04:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nuclear bomb]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On the last lap?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Sand-in-Hourglass.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-216966" alt="Sand-in-Hourglass" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Sand-in-Hourglass.jpg" width="346" height="259" /></a>“Iran is now at the last lap of the nuclear marathon,” Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, former Israeli Minister for Congressional Affairs, stated during a <a href="http://emetonline.org/index.php?/emet_tv">January 14, 2014, conference call</a>.  Sponsored by the <a href="http://www.emetonline.org/index.php">Endowment for Middle East Truth</a> (EMET) after a January 8 EMET/<a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/">Center for Security Policy</a> (CSP) <a href="http://emetonline.org/index.php?/events/emet_and_the_center_for_security_invite_you_to_attend_a_symposium_what_are">panel on Iran</a> (video <a href="http://emetonline.org/index.php?/emet_tv">here</a>), the two policy discussions highlighted growing dangers from an uncontained Iranian nuclear weapons program.</p>
<p>Nuclear weapons were part of an Iranian “long term strategic vision” dating from the 1980s, Lebanese-American Middle East scholar <a href="http://www.walidphares.com/">Walid Phares</a> explained at the <a href="http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/visiting/d_three_sections_with_teasers/russel_senate_office_map_page.htm">Russell Senate Office Building</a>.  Along with these “fissiles,” <a href="http://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/irans-ballistic-missile-program">Iran was developing missiles as weapons delivery vehicles</a>, an arsenal currently capable of striking Israel and in the future targets like Moscow.  Iran’s Islamic Republic “perceived itself as a superpower” challenging infidels such as the Israeli “Little Satan” and the American “Greater Satan” with an international revolution analogous to Soviet Communism. The subsequent presentation by <a href="http://www.andrewbostom.org/">Andrew Bostom</a> on canonical Islamic anti-Semitism recurring throughout history emphasized the troubling ideological nature of the Islamic Republic.</p>
<p>There is in Iran currently, however, “nothing to compare” with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms, Phares determined.  Despite contrary hopes, Iran betrays the “opposite of reform.”  Phares dismissed impressions of Islamic Republic moderation as manifesting how this regime is “not predictable on the tactical level” while maintaining a consistent strategic vision.  The Islamic Republic is willing to go “very far” in the name of pragmatism and “sell you anything.”  Iran, for example, is currently claiming to be “part of the war on terror” alongside the United States in opposing Al Qaeda in Iraq, a “narrative” of “common enemies” designed to impress “Ivy League experts.”  Yet “there is no difference” between the infamous Islamic Republic founder, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316812/Ruhollah-Khomeini">Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini</a>, and the current Islamic Republic Supreme Leader, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3018932.stm">Ayatollah Ali Khamenei</a>.</p>
<p>Phares’ fellow panelist, the former Central Intelligence Agency officer and CSP fellow <a href="http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/about-us/fellows/">Clare Lopez</a>, similarly rejected prospects of the Islamic Republic reforming.  Contrary to “people with stars in their eyes,” current Iranian President <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/hassan-rouhani-21313175">Hassan Rouhani</a> is not any moderate but rather a “long term insider of the regime.” Among other things, Rouhani helped plot the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Irans-Rohani-tied-to-AMIA-1994-bombing-317162">1994 Buenos Aires Jewish cultural center bombing</a>.  Ettinger likewise described Rouhani as a “con artist” and “master of taqiyya” who had been “misleading the world community for ten years” as Iran’s nuclear negotiator.  Lopez also dismissed any debates in the Iranian parliament or majlis over the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/23/world/meast/iran-nuclear-deal-details/">November 24, 2013, Iranian nuclear agreement</a> between “hardliner” and “moderate” elements as merely “theater” for foreigners.</p>
<p>Deceit, rather than reform, is far more likely coming from the Islamic Republic, in accord with the canonical saying of Islam’s prophet Muhammad (hadith) cited by Lopez that “war is deceit” (<a href="http://www.sahih-bukhari.com/Pages/Bukhari_4_52.php">Bukhari 4.52.269</a>).  Former Rouhani adviser Mohammad Sadeq Al-Hosseini’s televised description of the nuclear deal as <a href="http://www.aim.org/guest-column/iranians-geneva-is-treaty-of-hudaybiyyah/">emulating the treacherous 628 Hudaybiyya truce</a> made by Muhammad emphasized such calculations for Lopez.  Given past Iranian concealment of nuclear facilities at <a href="http://www.isisnucleariran.org/sites/detail/lavisan-shian/">Lavizan-Shian</a> and <a href="http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/august-22-2013-update-on-the-parchin-site-by-david-albright-and-robert-avag/">Parchin</a> to avoid international inspections noted by her, the Islamic Republic had a proven track record of duplicity.</p>
<p>Phares additionally analyzed how the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi’s failure to acquire nuclear weapons led the Islamic Republic to develop regime defenses before obtaining nuclear weapons.  Thus Iran is seeking to consolidate a “geographic space” from Afghanistan to Lebanon, including a NATO-like alliance formed with “Papa Assad,” Syrian ruler <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/711020/Bashar-al-Assad">Bashar Assad</a>’s father and predecessor <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/39087/Hafiz-al-Assad">Hafiz</a>. While this alliance allows for Iranian penetration of Lebanon through Hezbollah, Iran has also made its influence felt in Africa and Latin America.</p>
<p>Distressing to Phares, President Barack Obama’s administration actually looks to Shiite Iranian influence along with that of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (MB) to stabilize the Middle East.  A key “benchmark” for Phares was Obama’s recognition of continuing Islamic Republic rule by not supporting the 2009 <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66499/michael-singh/iranian-re-revolution">Green Revolution</a> that came “very close” to “shaking off” the Iranian regime. The 2013 nuclear deal now implies “recognition of influence in the region” for Iran in places like Syria, an “undeclared Yalta agreement” in return merely for Iran’s promise to abandon nuclear weapons.  “Why on Earth did we partner with the Ikhwan” or (MB) in Egypt, an astonished Phares asked, while noting Lebanon’s 2005 <a href="https://tavaana.org/en/content/cedar-revolution-lebanon-0">Cedar Revolution</a> and the Green Revolution as examples of pro-democratic movements with which the United States could ally.</p>
<p>“We betrayed them in 2009” and “unfortunately failed to support them in any way,” was also how the Iran expert <a href="http://www.defenddemocracy.org/about-fdd/team-overview/michael-ledeen/">Michael Ledeen</a> described American policy towards the Green Revolution during the conference call with Ettinger.  Yet the Islamic Republic is a “hollow regime…quite clearly terrified” of opposition movements in Ledeen’s judgment, contrary to assessments of the regime as stable.  Islamic Republic repression of public gatherings and intellectuals reminds Ledeen “a lot of the last days of the Soviet Union.”  Indeed, current Iranian opposition movements are “much bigger” than past Soviet dissident groups and Iranian security services are not as effective as their former Soviet counterparts like the KGB. The “Iranian people do not like this regime,” Ledeen concludes, something Rouhani’s ultimately empty “great reputation as a reformer” has not changed.</p>
<p>“Bring it down…support the Iranian people,” is thus Ledeen’s policy recommendation for regime change in Iran.  In fact, this “third option” between eventual acceptance of Iranian nuclear weapons and any military counter-proliferation strike is the only viable long term Iran strategy.  Yet the “folly” of the American government not contacting Iranian opposition figures amazed Ledeen, who himself regularly communicates with them.  “If I can contact them, believe me the American government can contact them,” Ledeen says.</p>
<p>The “same debate” that existed during the Reagan Administration concerning the Soviet Union is replaying for Ledeen now concerning Iran.  “What are you crazy?” was the response to suggestions of greater American public diplomacy pressure upon the Soviet Union from people who considered Gorbachev “reasonable.”  Subsequently released records, however, showed how important support for Soviet dissidents was in the Soviet Union’s fall.  By contrast today, Obama has been “desperate to make a deal” with the Islamic Republic since his election campaign.</p>
<p>While Iran’s “domestic opposition is greatly deterred” since 2009, Ettinger saw the nuclear agreement with Iran transforming a “tactical and controllable threat” into “strategic and apocalyptic threat.”  “Time is the most important resource which the mullahs are looking for at this stage,” Ettinger judged in considering their nuclear ambitions, something which the agreement provides. To think that the Islamic Republic with its “hate education” and (lethal) opposition to American interests globally would live up to the agreement’s nonproliferation goal is a “high form of naiveté” and an “oxymoron.”  Rather, “once again the free world is being taken for a ride by a rogue regime” exploiting American policymakers who have already “failed systematically,” as was previously the case with the now nuclear-armed North Korea.  Suspicions about undisclosed terms in the nuclear agreement (“I would be shocked if there are no such secret clauses,” Ettinger said) only heightened Ettinger’s concern.</p>
<p>The United States is the Islamic Republic’s “number one target,” Ettinger warned.  The Iranian “mega-goal” of Persian Gulf domination required nuclear weapons as “mega-capability” against America as the “mega-obstacle.”  Capitol Hill lobbyists should understand as a “top priority” that Israeli interests are “absolutely disconnected” from this Iranian pursuit of a “meltdown” of America’s strategic position in the Gulf.</p>
<p>The EMET/CSP panelist <a href="http://www.marklangfan.com/Bio.html">Mark Langfan</a>, a Middle East security analyst, also viewed an Israeli context as one of “two faulty prisms” for understanding an Iranian nuclear threat.  The other was application of Cold War Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine to any Iranian arsenal.  Langfan, in contrast, focused on an Iranian “asymmetric nuclear threat” using an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack against a “soft target” like Saudi Arabia as opposed to the Israeli “hard target.”  <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11551">Drawing upon ideas probably obtained from North Korea</a>, an Iranian EMP strike would avoid Islamic theological objections to nuclear weapons in a “fatwa compliant” attack killing few people.  Yet this “very rational” Iranian strategy could result in an “IranPEC” dominating Langfan’s delineated “<a href="http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2013/6/17/mapping-out-the-actual-conditions-of-the-middle-east">Black Gold Triangle</a>” around the Gulf containing 56% of the world’s known oil and gas reserves.  Thirty-thousand American military personnel in the region would also become hostages.</p>
<p>Ettinger considers military preemption the only way to avoid ultimately a “horrible war” with a nuclear-armed Iran.  Economic sanctions “have not left a dent” on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as it is simply a “reflection of gullibility” to believe that a dictatorship cannot subordinate butter to guns.  Even a military strike delaying the Iranian program for a few years would be a “good thing,” Ledeen agreed with Ettinger.  Such delay would provide a window of opportunity for regime change while encouraging the Iranian opposition that the “free world has decided to do away” with the Islamic Republic, Ettinger argued.  With the United States foreseeably refraining from military action, “Israel is left as the only option available.”  Ettinger is confident that Israel can effectively strike Iran, but it is a “question of backbone.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Danish Muslim Apostate Faces Hate Speech Charges</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/danish-muslim-apostate-faces-hate-speech-charges/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=danish-muslim-apostate-faces-hate-speech-charges</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 02 Jan 2014 05:10:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Denmark]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hate Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yahya Hassan]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The death of free speech in Europe. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Yahya_HAssan_788776y.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214413" alt="Yahya_HAssan_788776y" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Yahya_HAssan_788776y-450x338.jpg" width="270" height="203" /></a>“Muslims love to take advantage of” free speech, <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/06/death-threats-against-teen-poet-reignite-denmarks-muslim-debate/">Danish-Palestinian poet Yahya Hassan says</a>, “and as soon as there is someone else saying something critical against them, they want to restrict it.”  In an action <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/many-things-rotten-in-denmark/">previously indicated by this writer</a>, Hassan is now personally facing this double standard in Danish “hate speech” charges for his anti-Islam comments.</p>
<p>Following Danish-Iranian artist <a href="http://www.firoozeh.dk/">Firoozeh Bazrafkan</a>’s conviction under Danish Penal Code Section 266b (in Danish <a href="https://www.retsinformation.dk/Forms/R0710.aspx?id=121398">here</a>) for condemning Islam as misogynist, a <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/yahya-hassan-not-worried-about-racism-charge.7967.html">local Muslim Aarhus politician demanded a similar prosecution of Hassan</a>.  His poetry “says that everybody in the ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don&#8217;t pay taxes and cheat themselves to pensions,” the Somali-Dane <a href="https://denkorteavis.dk/2013/dan-ritto-socialdemokratisk-fusk/">Mohamed Suleban</a> stated after reporting Hassan to the police on November 27. “Those are highly generalizing statements and they offend me and many other people.”  Authorities are currently considering Section 266b charges for, according to <a href="http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2010/12/the-scandal-of-danish-justice/">one English translation</a>, any public “communication by which a group of persons are threatened, insulted or denigrated due to their race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religion or sexual orientation.”</p>
<p>The 18-year-old Hassan’s eponymous debut book contains about 150 poems, “many of which are severely critical of the religious environment he grew up in” according to <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reporters <a href="http://www.weltreporter.net/en/bomsdorf">Clemens Bomsdorf</a> and <a href="http://topics.wsj.com/person/J/ellen_emmerentze-jervell/7659">Ellen Emmerentze Jervell</a>.  Written in all capital letters, Hassan’s poems treat “issues like the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, child abuse, and the interplay between violence and religion” with “[p]rofanity and vivid analogies.”  <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/12/yahya-hassan-poet-denmark-muslim-row"><i>Yahya Hassan</i> has sold 80,000 copies</a> following an October 17 release in the comparatively small Danish market and is expected to exceed 100,000 copies by Christmas.  Hassan’s publisher <a href="http://www.gyldendal.dk/boeger-til-voksne/skoenlitteratur-digte/9788702153521/yahya-hassan?utm_source=gyldendal_dk&amp;utm_medium=stor_slider&amp;utm_campaign=yahya_hassan">Gyldendal</a> reports that Danish poetry books are fortunate to sell 500 copies.  A <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/yahya-hassan-assaulted-at-central-station.7798.html">recent book forum honored Hassan as the debut author of the year and an English translation of his poetry is underway</a>.</p>
<p>Hassan first became prominent with an October 5 Danish newspaper interview entitled “<a href="http://politiken.dk/debat/ECE2095547/digter-jeg-er-fucking-vred-paa-mine-foraeldres-generation/">I F**king Hate My Parents’ Generation</a>.”  In it he blamed poor Muslim parenting for the juvenile delinquency and social maladjustment experienced by many Danish Muslim youth such as Hassan himself.  With more than <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/young-poet-threatened-after-tv-appearance.7282.html">85,000 social media shares</a>, the interview became the most shared <i>Politiken</i> article of the year.</p>
<p>Days thereafter Hassan recited from his “LANGDIGT” or “LONG POEM” before his book’s release on the Danish news program <a href="http://www.dr.dk/tv/program/deadline/"><i>Deadline</i></a>.  Extract:  “between the Friday prayers and the Ramadans/you want to carry a knife in your pocket/you want to go and ask people if they have a problem/although the only problem is you.”  Such verses brought Hassan more death threats than any other previous <i>Deadline</i> guest.  Hassan has subsequently reported <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/charges-filed-for-threats-against-yahya-hassan.7951.html">27 Facebook threats against him</a>, of which the police investigated six as serious and pressed charges in one case of a 15-year old boy.  A subsequent assault against Hassan occurred on November 18 in Copenhagen Central Station by a <a href="http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Young+Danish+poet+Palestinian+origin+Islam+critic+injured/9183727/story.html">24-year old Palestinian-Danish Muslim</a> who had previously received a seven-year terrorism sentence.</p>
<p><a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/event-with-high-profile-poet-cancelled-over-safety-concerns.7862.html">Hassan now wears a bulletproof vest and receives protection</a> from Denmark’s domestic intelligence agency <a href="https://www.pet.dk/English.aspx">PET</a> at speaking engagements.  A <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/million-kroner-poetry-reading-goes-off-without-hitch.7896.html">November 26 reading by Hassan from his book</a> in a school in the Danish town of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odense">Odense</a>, moreover, required an estimated one million kroner in security costs, more than the amount spent on a high-risk soccer game.  Several hundred policemen had observed the school for two days before the event occurred with road checkpoints, a bomb sweep, and a five kilometer no-fly zone around the school.</p>
<p>Police safety concerns had forced the cancellation of an earlier, sold-out reading at a public library in Odense’s troubled district of Vollsmose.  Along with Hassan, Culture Minister <a href="http://www.ft.dk/Folketinget/findMedlem/RVMAJE.aspx">Marianne Jelved</a> and several other Danish politicians <a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/event-with-high-profile-poet-cancelled-over-safety-concerns.7862.html">criticized the Vollmose cancellation</a> as “completely unacceptable.”  Jelved demanded that police in Vollmose “make the necessary precautions” in order “to hold on to what democracy is, or otherwise we reduce it day by day.”</p>
<p>Yet Suleban’s charges might succeed in silencing Hassan where violence has failed.  <a href="http://www.cepos.dk/english/employees/jacob-mchangama/">Jacob Mchangama</a>, legal affairs director at Denmark’s liberal think-tank <a href="http://www.cepos.dk/english">Cepos</a>, sees a “strong case” against Hassan, particularly given a “range of similar preceding cases” like Bazrafkan’s.  Hassan’s media attention and public popularity, though, might make conviction difficult, as “his poems are important social commentary.”  Hassan’s acquittal “for making statements similar to what other people have been convicted for,” Mchangama nonetheless observed, “will expose a random legislation where no-one can be sure of what is legal to say.”</p>
<p><a href="http://cphpost.dk/news/when-hate-speech-begins-free-speech-ends-or-does-ite.7046.html">Calling for Section 266b’s abolition</a>, Mchangama further questions the law’s “arbitrary limits.” What “is sufficiently degrading” and why should, for example, homosexuals receive protection, but not disabled people.  Mchangama also sees no “good science” correlating speech laws with “less hate crimes.”  Other commentators, moreover, have argued that speech trials simply bring more attention to the offending statements.</p>
<p>Hassan’s case presents speech codes functioning not just as a <i>de facto</i> blasphemy, but also as a <i>de facto</i> apostasy law protecting Islam.  How, after all, can an atheist like Hassan, who says that there is “something wrong with Islam,” decide upon his religious views without rigorous testing of all faiths?  For that matter, how could anyone answer Hassan’s call for a “reformation” in an Islam that “refuses to renew itself” without similar scrutiny?  Such questions aside, Hassan remains committed to his criticisms, stating that he does not “care about getting convicted of racism.” Muslims threatening violence can likewise “all come and get me if they want.  I don’t give a s**t about these morons.”  “I know these people,” Hassan adds, “They can’t handle criticism…they’re not interested in dialogue.”</p>
<p><i>This article was commissioned by</i> <a href="http://www.legal-project.org/"><i>The Legal Project</i></a><i>, an activity of the </i><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><i>Middle East Forum</i></a><i>.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Ibn Warraq Takes on Fact, Fiction, and Freedom</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/andrew-harrod/ibn-warraq-takes-on-fact-fiction-and-freedom/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ibn-warraq-takes-on-fact-fiction-and-freedom</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Jan 2014 05:30:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[christianity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crusades]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[England]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enlightenment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ibn warraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sir Walter Scott]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A call for defending the West without apology. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214272" alt="9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/9780988477858_p0_v1_s260x420-232x350.jpg" width="186" height="280" /></a>The world’s free peoples “risk losing all to Islamist thuggery,” the pseudonymous Islam scholar <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Warraq">Ibn Warraq</a> warns in his latest book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Scott-Crusades-Other-Fantasies/dp/0988477858/ref=sr_1_1"><i>Sir Walter Scott’s Crusades and Other Fantasies</i></a>, a collection of essays previously published online.  Analyzing past Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations, the Muslim apostate Warraq insightfully separates historical fact from popular fiction before defending the freedom necessary to distinguish between the two.</p>
<p>The book’s first half analyzes the Crusades and their perception in light of Sir <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/529629/Sir-Walter-Scott-1st-Baronet">Walter Scott</a>’s writing.  Warraq’s first chapter examines the sympathetic treatment of Jews in Scott’s <a href="http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/ivanhoe.html"><i>Ivanhoe</i></a>, a novel set in Crusader-era England.  <i>Ivanhoe</i> shows Scott’s “commitment to religious and racial tolerance, his Enlightenment abhorrence of superstition and fanaticism.”</p>
<p>The subsequent chapter, the book’s longest, compares the presentation of the Crusades in Scott’s novel <a href="http://www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/novels/talisman.html"><i>The Talisman</i></a> with various historical writings.  Contrary to a “characteristically shallow, sneering aside” in <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/516540/Edward-Said">Edward Said</a>’s <a href="http://ebookbrowsee.net/edward-said-orientalism-pdf-d64686549"><i>Orientalism</i></a>, <i>The Talisman</i>’s “overall and overwhelming impression” is of “bickering…barbaric…course…fanatical” Crusaders in a “futile enterprise.”  By contrast, the “Muslims were patient, forbearing, and tolerant of other religions, and simply defending their homelands” while Third Crusade Muslim leader <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/518809/Saladin">Saladin</a> appears “virtuous, calm, refined, and sagacious.”  This Saladin is “much given to uttering what Scott must take to be pearls of Eastern wisdom but which read more like those pseudo-Confucian proverbs to be found in Chinese cookies.”</p>
<p><i>The Talisman</i> reflected that Scott, like other intellectuals, was a “child of the Scottish Enlightenment” with its belief that “non-European civilizations were at least the equal of, and perhaps even superior to, Western civilization.”  Yet Islamophile sentiments extended beyond Scott to 20<sup>th</sup> century Islam scholar Sir <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Alexander_Rosskeen_Gibb">Hamilton Gibb</a> and his “biography—or rather hagiography” of Gibb’s “hero” Saladin.  For Warraq “startling,” Gibb recommended <i>The Talisman</i> to students as a “book from which they could learn much Middle Eastern history.”  Other historians developed a view that “Saladin, in his younger days, was essentially a shy retiring, unambitious youth who preferred a quiet seclusion to court intrigues, politics, and war.”</p>
<p>Yet <i>The Talisman</i> is “<i>wildly inaccurate</i>” as history.  The plot’s depiction of Saladin disguised as a doctor treating English king <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/richard_i_king.shtml">Richard I</a> (“the Lionheart”) is fanciful, given that the two Third Crusade opponents never met.  These two commanders pursued “grim warfare” and “politics all the way” such that “neither of them displayed any clemency if it did not suit them.”</p>
<p>Saladin’s historic “characteristic ruthlessness” is far less appealing, such as when his forces slaughtered 50,000 disarmed Sudanese soldiers in Cairo in 1169 in breach of a surrender agreement.  “Not bad for a shy retiring scholar who preferred the discourse of pious men,” Warraq scoffs.  Saladin likewise had Christian prisoners killed who rejected conversion to Islam, including Crusaders sent in 1183 to Mecca to be “ritually slaughtered by having their throats cut…in the place of goats or sheep.”  <a href="http://blog.templarhistory.com/">Templar</a> and <a href="http://theknightshospitallers.org/history">Hospitaller</a> Knights met a similar grisly end after the 1187 <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/256944/Battle-of-Hattin">Battle of Hattin</a> in a “cruel circus watched by a smiling Saladin.”  Other actions such as church destructions ordered by Saladin indicate that a “true Muslim is not tolerant” but rather pursues the “totalitarian nature of jihad” in world domination.  Yet despite Saladin’s image battling Crusaders, he spent 12 years during his reign as sultan from 1174 to 1193 fighting other Muslims and only five fighting Christians.</p>
<p>Crusaders “are always depicted as barbarians” in histories of the era, Warraq notes.  Nonetheless, the “Crusades were a reaction against over three hundred years of <i>jihad</i> when the Eastern Christians were persecuted, and hundreds of churches destroyed.”   This jihad, moreover, continued following the Crusades when Muslims went on “occupying far more territory in Europe than the Western settlers had ever held in Syria and Palestine.”  Crusades were “never a war of conversion, rather a rightful attempt to recover Christian territory which had been injuriously seized in the past.”  Contrary to modern Crusader colonialism theories, “most crusaders would have laughed at the prospect of material gain,” particularly considering the immense subsidies needed to maintain Crusader kingdoms.</p>
<p>“Two wrongs do not make a right,” Warraq adds concerning excuses for Islamic atrocities referencing crimes committed in Christianity’s name such as during the Crusades.  Moreover, “Islamic intolerance is presently a far more immediate danger to all, whereas Christian intolerance is a thing of the past.”  This real danger contrasts with a Muslim “false idea of a continuing western assault” since the Crusades.  In actuality, the “Crusades had almost passed out of mind” of Muslims, the Crusades’ “outright winners,” by the fourteenth century.  They “only began to take in an interest in the Crusades again in the 1890s” due to “Western imperialist rhetoric.”</p>
<p>After dealing with the Crusader fiction of Scott and others, Warraq turns his attention to the plight of Jews in the Crusader era.  Warraq counterbalances an analysis of the ravages visited upon European Jews by marauding Crusaders traveling to the Holy Land with discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism preceding the Crusades.  “All the persecutions of both Christians and Jews stem directly from the precepts and principles enshrined in the canonical texts of Islam,” Warraq qualifies.  A short book review of Paul Fenton and David Littman’s <a href="http://www.amazon.fr/LExil-Maghreb-condition-lIslam-1148-1912/dp/2840507250"><i>La Exile au Maghreb:  La Condition Juive sous l’Islam 1148-1912</i></a> indicates how this Islamic persecution of Jews continued after the Crusades.</p>
<p>Warraq’s penultimate chapter analyzes British Zionism while rebutting anti-Zionist accusation of European Jews displacing the Holy Land’s Arab population.  Said’s mischaracterizations of Zionism to this effect demonstrate how he as a “nominal, secular Christian…loved parading his internationalism, and yet endorsed an Arab nationalism which, in the end, never managed to break free from Islam.”  Warraq, in contrast, records how both European and Middle Eastern Jews sought security and self-determination in a neglected, largely uninhabited territory.</p>
<p>Distinguishing fact and fiction among Abrahamic faiths demands freedom, and with this Warraq’s fertile intellect concludes in an analysis of Islam and censorship.  Warraq begins his examination with the acquiescence to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/arts/television/23park.html?_r=0">violent demands</a> not to depict Islam’s prophet Muhammad by the cartoon comedy show <a href="http://www.southparkstudios.com/"><i>South Park</i></a>.  This submission occurred even though “Islam is not monolithic” with respect to the propriety of human images such as those of Muhammad or other matters.  “At the very least” Warraq identifies an “Islam 1” in the Quran and an “Islam 2” in “Islamic law and the teachings developed by theologians from the deeds and sayings” of Muhammad.  “Islam 3,” however, namely the “actual behavior of believing Muslims, the things that are actually said and done across Islamic civilization…has behaved quite differently than&#8230;prescribed by Islam 1 and Islam 2.”</p>
<p>Long before <i>South Park</i>, though, the Egyptian, Indonesian, and Pakistani ambassadors to the United States protested in 1955 to the State Department a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/weekinreview/12kifner.html">Muhammad figure on New York state appeals court building in Manhattan</a>.  The court complied with the removal of the Muhammad figure from among the ten historic lawgivers gracing the building despite the resulting architectural awkwardness.  “Muslims living even here temporarily had the temerity to dictate their values on a non-Islamic nation,” Warraq marveled.  They succeeded “despite the small number of Muslims in the USA” and a “minimum of effort or lobbying.”</p>
<p>The “West, in its unwillingness to pass judgments on other cultures,” Warraq laments, “is far too ready to accept as legitimate spokesmen for the entire world-wide Muslim community the most shrill and public-savvy on matters on Islamic doctrine.”  Concerning Islam and Western censorship today, despite individual “acts of courage, the overall picture remains bleak as institution after institution crumbles in the face of Islamic terrorism, real or implied.”  Furthermore, rather than “encouraging the liberals in the Islamic world,” this Western weakness causes them to “look with dismay at us each time we sacrifice one principle after another, in an orgy of self-doubt, cultural masochism, and self-censorship.”</p>
<p>In contrast, some “Muslims are ever ready to take offense, and in fact, Muslims seem to have invented a new right, the right not to be offended.”  As a result, among other things, “modern day Islam is singularly devoid of humor,” befitting the Ayatollah Khomeini’s pronouncement that “there are no jokes in Islam.”  Yet “[c]omedy is an indispensable ingredient in every culture,” particularly as a “form of self-criticism, a defining virtue of the West.”</p>
<p>Amidst such pusillanimity, Warraq sounds a clarion call.  While Islam’s “principles are from clear” concerning Muhammad images, “even if human representation were unequivocally forbidden in Islam, we should still as unequivocally defend our right to freedom of speech.”  “[W]e should unabashedly defend, and if necessary fight for our values without apologies.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>Study: Widespread Islamic Fundamentalism in Europe</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/study-widespread-islamic-fundamentalism-in-europe/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=study-widespread-islamic-fundamentalism-in-europe</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Dec 2013 05:40:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fundamentalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[intolerance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[A new survey reveals the real source of bigotry and intolerance on the Continent. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/sharia-law-uk-new.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213247" alt="sharia-law-uk-new" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/sharia-law-uk-new.jpg" width="258" height="200" /></a>“Religious fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon in Western Europe,” concluded a <a href="http://www.wzb.eu/en/press-release/islamic-fundamentalism-is-widely-spread">December 9, 2013, press release</a> of the <a href="http://www.wzb.eu/en/about-the-wzb">Berlin Social Science Center</a> (<i>Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung</i> or WZB) with respect to European Muslims in particular.  The social survey results from six West European countries supporting WZB’s conclusion present troubling questions concerning Muslim immigrant integration into free societies in Europe and beyond.</p>
<p>As a <a href="http://www.wzb.eu/de/pressemitteilung/islamischer-religioeser-fundamentalismus-ist-weit-verbreitet">WZB Discussion Paper</a> explained, the WZB-funded Six Country Immigrant Integration Comparative Survey (SCIICS) involved a 2008 “large-scale telephone survey.”  Respondents were “Turkish origin” and “Moroccan origin” people “who came during the guest-worker era” pre-1975 or their descendants.  SCIICS surveyed both groups in Belgium, France, Germany, and the Netherlands, while insignificant Moroccan populations limited the survey to Turkish-descent individuals in Austria and Sweden.  SCIICS sought 500 respondents from each group in each country as well as from a control group of non-immigrant descended country citizens, with the exception of Belgium with its “high degree of federalism.”  Here SCIICS surveyed 300 individuals from each group in both Flanders and Wallonia provinces.  Almost 9,000 completed surveys or 3,373 native, 3,344 Turkish, and 2,204 Moroccan origin, resulted.</p>
<p>For WZB study author <a href="http://www.wzb.eu/en/persons/ruud-koopmans">Ruud Koopmans</a> the results revealed unsettling aspects of Islamic belief in Western Europe as discussed in his article “<a href="http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u6/koopmans_englisch_ed.pdf">Fundamentalism and Out-Group Hostility:  Muslim Immigrants and Christian Natives in Western Europe</a>.”  Among other issues, SCIICS sought to remedy the deficiency that “very little is known about the extent of religious fundamentalism among Muslim immigrants” in Europe.  A “large number of studies” on American Protestant fundamentalism, meanwhile, “have shown that it is strongly and consistently associated with prejudices and hostility against racial and religious out-groups, as well as ‘deviant’ groups such as homosexuals.”</p>
<p>For a comparative religious fundamentalism survey, SCIICS employed Bob Altermeyer and <a href="http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/obits/hunsberger.html">Bruce Hunsberger</a>’s “widely accepted definition of fundamentalism” with “three key elements.” These are (1) “that believers should return to the eternal and unchangeable rules laid down in the past;” (2) “that these rules allow only one interpretation and are binding for all believers;” and (3) “that religious rules have priority over secular laws.”  Accordingly, “native respondents who indicated” being Christian (70%) and “Turkish and Moroccan origin” respondents who professed being Muslim (96%) received three questions.  These were (1) “Christians [Muslims] should return to the roots of Christianity [Islam];” (2) “There is only one interpretation of the Bible [the Koran] and every Christian [Muslim] must stick to that;” and (3) “The rules of the Bible [the Koran] are more important to me than the laws of [survey country].”</p>
<p>These questions revealed that “religious fundamentalism is not a marginal phenomenon within West European Muslim communities.”  Almost 60% of surveyed Muslims advocated a “return to the roots of Islam,” 75% accepted following “only one interpretation of the Koran,” and 65% considered “religious rules…more important” than domestic laws.  “Consistent fundamentalist beliefs, with agreement to all three statements,” existed among 44% of the Muslim survey respondents.</p>
<p>“Fundamentalist attitudes are slightly less prevalent among Sunni Muslims with a Turkish (45% agreement to all three statements) compared to a Moroccan (50%) background,” Koopmans noted.  In contrast, only 15% of <a href="http://www.shaikhsiddiqui.com/alevi.html">Alevi</a>, a “Turkish minority current within Islam,” were similarly fundamentalist. The “lowest levels of fundamentalism” among the individually surveyed Muslim communities appeared in Germany, where a nonetheless “widespread” 30% affirmed all three statements.  This result opposed the “idea that fundamentalism is a reaction to exclusion by the host society” given that German Muslims had the least legal recognition as a religious community among all the surveyed countries.  Koopmans discerned “remarkably similar patterns” in other studies of West European Muslims such that 47% of German Muslims prioritized religious rules over democracy in both his and the 2007 Federal Ministry of the Interior <a href="http://www.bmi.bund.de/cae/servlet/contentblob/139732/publicationFile/14975/Muslime%20in%20Deutschland.pdf"><i>Muslime in Deutschland</i></a> study.</p>
<p>By contrast, only 13-21% of Christian survey respondents agreed to the individual statements, with fewer than 4% accepting all three as “consistent fundamentalists.”  Corresponding “with what is known about Christian fundamentalism,” fundamentalism rates were low among Catholics (3%) and “mainstream Protestants” (4%).  A “most pronounced” high of 12% occurred “among the adherents of smaller Protestant groups such as Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Pentecostal believers.”  Thus Christian “support for fundamentalist attitudes remains much below the levels found among Sunni Muslims.”</p>
<p>Such “differences are due to class rather than religion,” a critical observer might object.  The “demographic and socio-economic profiles of Muslim immigrants and native Christians differ strongly,” Koopmans recognized.  Moreover, “marginalized, lowerclass individuals are more strongly attracted to fundamentalist movements.”  Yet “regression analyses controlling for education, labor market status, age, gender, and marital status” refuted this theory.  Such “variables explain variation…within both religious groups,” but “do not at all explain or even diminish the difference between Muslims and Christians.”  Particularly troubling, while Christian “religious fundamentalism is much less widespread among younger people, fundamentalist attitudes are as widespread among young as among older Muslims.”</p>
<p>Given that American Christian fundamentalism research “has demonstrated a strong association with hostility towards out-groups…seen as threatening the religious in-group,” SCIICS investigated “this linkage…in the European context.”   Here SCIICS utilized “three statements that measure rejection of homosexuals and Jews” along with the perception of being “threatened by outside enemies.”  Religious respondents received the statements “I don’t want to have homosexuals as friends” and “Jews cannot be trusted.”  “Muslims aim to destroy Western culture” and “Western countries are out to destroy Islam” were, respectively, the third question for Christian natives and Turkish/Moroccan-descent Muslims.</p>
<p>Such “out-group hostility is far from negligible among native Christians.”  The offered statements revealed that 9% of these respondents were “overtly anti-Semitic” (11% in Germany) and 13% (10% in Germany) rejected homosexual friends.  “Not surprisingly,” the Muslim out-group attracted the “highest level of hostility” from 23% (17% in Germany) who feared Muslims as the West’s destroyers.  Hostility towards all three groups united only 1.6% native Christians. Inclusion of all natives, secular or religious, slightly lowered the “out-group hostility” to respective rates of 8%, 10%, 21%, and 1.4%.</p>
<p>Although “worrisome enough,” these native figures “are dwarfed by the levels of out-group hostility among European Muslims.”  Their hostility towards homosexuals and Jews reach levels of almost 60% and 45%, respectively.  Compared with “Islamophobic” natives, Muslim “phobia against the West” is “much higher still;” 54% of Muslim respondents fearing a Western destruction of Islam.  Koopmans suggested the term “Occidentophobia” for this fear “for which oddly enough there is no word.”</p>
<p>A little more than a quarter of surveyed Muslims were hostile towards all three groups, with Turkish (30% agreeing with all three statements) outscoring in this metric Moroccan Muslims (17%).  Alevi (13% agreeing to all three statements) were significantly less hostile than Turkish Sunni Muslims (31%). Once again “worrying,” Muslim respondents do not replicate the native trend that “out-group hostility is significantly lower among younger generations.”  Likewise once again, “controlling for socio-economic variables hardly reduces group differences.”  In all, “religious fundamentalism…turns out to be by far the most important predictor of out-group hostility” as differences between surveyed Christians and Muslims indicated.</p>
<p>SCIICS’ “findings clearly contradict…often-heard” assertions that “Islamic religious fundamentalism is a marginal phenomenon in Western Europe” similar to the “extent of fundamentalism among the Christian majority.”  “Both claims are blatantly false,” Koopmans concluded.   Not only the “extent of Islamic religious fundamentalism,” but also its hostile “correlates” are “serious causes of concern for policy makers as well as Muslim community leaders.”  While “religious fundamentalism should not be equated with the willingness to support, or even to engage, in religiously motivated violence,” fundamentalism’s “strong relationship to out-group hostility” could “very likely…provide a nourishing environment for radicalization.”</p>
<p>Contrary to politically correct nostrums about Islam’s practical equivalence to all other faiths, WZB has soberly assessed disturbing facts.  WZB’s analysis is even more disturbing given traditional Islamic understandings of aggressive and authoritarian jihad/sharia norms belonging to Islam’s fundamentals, a canonical core apparently ignored by Koopmans but not by <a href="http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article7929697/Mehr-Religiositaet-mehr-Gewaltbereitschaft.html">devout German Muslims-turned-violent</a>.  Europe and the rest of the world ignore these facts at their peril.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Chilling Effect for Me, But Not for Thee</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/chilling-effect-for-me-but-not-for-thee/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=chilling-effect-for-me-but-not-for-thee</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Dec 2013 05:09:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intisar A. Rabb]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law school professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[robert spencer]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Scholars at Georgetown explain why certain speech against jihad just shouldn't be allowed. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/yh.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-213079" alt="yh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/yh.jpg" width="270" height="198" /></a>“I don’t apply the same standards” as in the United States, the Muslim Harvard Law School professor <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2013/09/17_intisar-a-rabb-to-join-hls-faculty.html">Intisar A. Rabb</a> stated at a November 21, 2013, Georgetown University conference with respect to “hate speech” restrictions and Islam abroad.  In connection with her concern about an American Muslim’s terrorism conviction “chilling speech,” Rabb’s acceptance of “just a different legal regime” abroad revealed troubling double standards towards Islam.</p>
<p>Raab addressed the final panel of “<a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/acmcu-20th-anniversary-conference-muslim-christian-relations-in-the-21st-century-challenges-registration-8854631441">Muslim-Christian Relations in the 21st Century:  Challenges &amp; Opportunities</a>,” a controversial conference (see <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/karen-armstrongs-911-british-empire-blowback-thesis/">here</a>, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/georgetown-university-hosts-911-truther/">here</a>, and <a href="http://juicyecumenism.com/2013/12/04/georgetown-universitys-one-way-street-of-christian-muslim-understanding/">here</a>) marking the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Georgetown’s <a href="http://cmcu.georgetown.edu/">Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding</a> (ACMCU).  Rabb opposed a recent appeals court conviction affirmation for <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/4212/mehanna-ruling-draws-line-between-speech">Tarek Mehanna</a>, as elaborated in an <a href="http://www.orrick.com/Events-and-Publications/Pages/default.aspx?SearchType=Both&amp;Keyword=Tarek%20Mehanna">amici curia brief in Mehanna’s appeal</a>.  Therein Rabb and others warned of a “serious chilling effect” on speech from convicting Mehanna for translating the book <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/39WaysToServeAndParticipate/39WaysToServeAndParticipateInJihad_djvu.txt"><i>39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad</i></a> for the website <a href="http://at-tibyan.com/"><i>at-Tibyan</i></a>.</p>
<p>The federal government considered the book, website, and Mehanna’s “disfavored political and religious beliefs” all supportive of Al Qaeda.  The <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/2264.pdf#page=7">appellate opinion</a> noted that Mehanna had a <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment?quicktabs_10=0#quicktabs-10">First Amendment</a> right to praise Al Qaeda, but Al-Qaeda-coordinated advocacy was terrorism support.  “Under the Government’s theory,” amici curia warned, “translating an al-Qa’ida text is lawful, as is espousing beliefs…supporting al-Qa’ida,” but together these “legal acts gives rise to criminal liability,” a particular concern for scholars researching terrorism.</p>
<p>Rabb at Georgetown therefore demanded that action beyond speech underlie any terrorism support conviction.  Yet, unmentioned by Rabb, Mehanna had traveled in 2004 to Yemen, irrespective of any translation work charge.  The appeals court rejected his “rose-colored glasses” presentation as a “devoted scholar…protected by the First Amendment” and found a jury conclusion “virtually unarguable” that Mehanna “went abroad to enlist in&#8230;terrorist training.”</p>
<p>Legal issues aside, amici curiae did not consider Mehanna’s reading and website choices objectionable.   <i>At-Tibyan</i>, for example, “primarily” concerned “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Muhammad_al-Maqdisi">Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi</a>…a theologian and a jurist” who “endorses rebellion against…illegitimate Muslim regimes.”  Among “innumerable mainstream theological texts,”<i>39 Ways</i> also involved “basic…Sunni jurisprudence,” namely the “individual duty (<i>fard ‘ayn</i>) incumbent on all Muslims” to “contribute to wars of self-defense.”  “All collections of the words and deeds of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad (<i>hadith</i>) and all Islamic law books” endorsed this “standard position in all Sunni legal schools.”</p>
<p>The amici curiae cited a <a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/ask-the-scholar/international-relations-andjihad/jihad-rulings-and-regulations/174990.html?Regulations">2003 fatwa</a> from “mainstream Muftis” at <a href="http://www.onislam.net/english/"><i>OnIslam</i></a>, “[o]ne of the most popular websites in the English-speaking world devoted to Islam.”  The muftis considered whether for Muslims it is “necessary to fight alongside Afghans” or otherwise resist American-led forces in Afghanistan.  Citing Quran verses legitimating fighting against non-Muslims, the muftis answered that the “Muslim Ummah (nation) is considered one body, which if a single organ aches all the other organs will share the feelings of agony.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/about-robert-spencer.html">Robert Spencer</a> of the website <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/"><i>Jihadwatch</i></a> could not have explained <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/br0nc0s/managed-mt/mt-srch.cgi?search=fard+ayn&amp;IncludeBlogs=1&amp;limit=20">such doctrines of jihad in a more troubling manner</a>.  Questions in the brief about targeting civilians aside, the cited Islamic doctrine justified the killing of military personnel “attacking” Muslim nations, cold comfort to, among others, beheaded British soldier <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Lee_Rigby">Lee Rigby</a> or the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/f/fort_hood_texas/index.html">13 Americans of the Fort Hood shooting</a>.  Rabb’s brief could only confirm the criticisms of Islam by individuals like Spencer or Holland’s <a href="http://www.geertwilders.nl/">Geert Wilders</a> and incite <a href="http://www.doveworld.org/">Terry Jones</a> to burn another Quran.</p>
<p>Unlike Rabb, though, Spencer has faced <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23064355">exclusion from the United Kingdom</a> and Wilders <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13883331">criminal prosecution in Holland</a> for their comments on Islam, while <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/thrown-in-prison-for-shredding-the-koran/">destroying a Quran is prohibited hate speech in countries like Belgium</a>.  Such domestic legal actions accord with the <a href="http://jonathanturley.org/2011/12/13/criminalizing-intolerance-obama-administration-moves-forward-on-united-nations-resolution-targeting-anti-religious-speech/">longstanding international agenda</a> of majority-Muslim nations in the <a href="http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/home/">Organization of Islamic Cooperation</a> (OIC) to prohibit criticizing Islam.  This agenda has culminated in the March 24, 2011, <a href="http://www.refworld.org/pdfid/4db960f92.pdf">United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18</a> with troubling implications for free speech even after Western-induced modifications.</p>
<p>In this context, Rabb’s invocation of the proverbial “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect">chilling effect</a>” on free speech prompted my question about criticizing Islam.  Rabb’s “each regime is different” response allowed for “dignity laws” as a “prerogative” for other democracies dealing with anti-Islam speech grouped by her with Nazism.  Muslim-majority countries also had such laws, Rabb indicated, a worrying statement in light of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12621225">Islamic blasphemy laws</a>.</p>
<p>Critical issues involving Islam, however, were not absent from the conference.  <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/george-soross-evangelicals">George Soros-financed</a> leftist evangelical <a href="http://www.newevangelicalpartnership.org/?q=node/6">Richard Cizek</a>, for example, recalled during a panel how a fellow evangelical had once told him that “insults in Lynchburg produce riots in Lahore.”  Convicted terrorism financier <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/profile/100">Sami Al-Arian</a>, meanwhile, discussed with me in the audience viewing the conference’s morning segment before going home to comply with his house arrest.</p>
<p>“Islamophobia” critic <a href="http://nathanlean.com/">Nathan Lean</a> was also in the audience.  <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/09/international-islamophobia-conference-promotes-sharia-agenda.html">Called a “stalker” by Spencer</a>, Lean has repeatedly tweeted an article supposedly containing Spencer’s address and wife’s picture, a “clear attempt to intimidate me.”  Addressed by me on this matter, Lean curtly replied that it is “not appropriate” to discuss Spencer at a Christian-Muslim understanding conference and walked away.</p>
<p>Thus Lean, Rabb, and others, concerned about fundamentally necessary anti-terrorism laws infringing intellectual inquiry in the United States, exhibited little principled concern about uninhibited discussion of Islam.  Yet as the conference and Mehanna’s conviction show, the needs of security and liberty demand robust debate precisely with respect to Islam.</p>
<p><i>This article was sponsored by</i> <a href="http://www.legal-project.org/"><i>The Legal Project</i></a><i>, an activity of the Middle East Forum.</i></p>
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		<title>Karen Armstrong’s 9/11 British Empire Blowback Thesis</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/andrew-harrod/karen-armstrongs-911-british-empire-blowback-thesis/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=karen-armstrongs-911-british-empire-blowback-thesis</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Nov 2013 05:10:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Andrew Harrod]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[9/11]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America's fault]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[blame]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jihad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Karen Armstrong]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Left's twisted self-hatred comes to Georgetown University. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/armstrong_karen.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-211872" alt="armstrong_karen" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/armstrong_karen.jpg" width="180" height="261" /></a>“We did this,” popular British religion writer <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/author/834/karen-armstrong">Karen Armstrong</a> said in a November 21, 2013, <a href="http://www.eventbrite.com/e/acmcu-20th-anniversary-conference-muslim-christian-relations-in-the-21st-century-challenges-registration-8854631441">keynote address</a> at Georgetown University in reference to her country’s imperial history and Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  Speaking to Georgetown’s <a href="http://cmcu.georgetown.edu/">Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding</a> (ACMCU) Armstrong clearly showed with bizarre, anti-Western self-accusatory explanations for jihadist violence how “I like to turn the finger against myself first.”</p>
<p>“We have all done terrible things,” Armstrong stated at ACMCU’s 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary conference on “Muslim-Christian Relations in the 21st Century:  Challenges &amp; Opportunities.” Armstrong in particular was “very conscious as a person of the British Empire” about how “we are all implicated” in problems afflicting Muslims globally.  Armstrong referenced Anglo-French involvement during World War I in determining Middle Eastern borders and Pakistan’s “almost impossible” borders derived from Indian partition in 1947.  Armstrong also considered “our Palestinian mess” as a British sin inciting Muslim violence today.</p>
<p>American drone strikes around the world and “new images of Muslim suffering” following America’s military regime change in Iraq added to Armstrong’s anti-Western litany.  “Disgraceful” also for Armstrong was global poverty such as the “people in the world who do not have clean water.”  Reverently referencing “Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him,” Armstrong cited an Islamic hadith about the immorality of sleeping while others hunger.  In light of all this suffering, Armstrong rejected making Islam a “scapegoat” for the “violent sins of the 20<sup>th</sup> century.”</p>
<p>“Muslim pain, Muslim suffering” and the “desire to do something about it” were thus Armstrong’s explanation for violence from groups like Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda videos, for example, presented a “collage of pain” and yet “we don’t see the half of it.”  “Self-interested policies have blown up in our face,” Armstrong concluded, and demanded that people “look at these images of pain.”</p>
<p>“Hiroshima and 9/11” result from deficient personal reflection, Armstrong concluded.  Armstrong compared impersonal killing from the “high altitudes” of World War II bombers to “killing from a helicopter” and criticized Westerners for being a “privileged caste” removed from the world.  In contrast, “weeping together creates bonds between human beings.”  Armstrong argued that the world should have wept for Muslims following 9/11 just as the Greek playwright Aeschylus mourned for his enemies slain at the Battle of Salamis in <a href="http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~clas215/study_guides/aeschylus_persians.htm"><i>The Persians</i></a>.</p>
<p>Armstrong perceived no threat in any given religion such as Islam, for all faiths according to her have a “version of the Golden Rule.”  Armstrong saw religious fundamentalisms “rooted in a profound fear of elimination,” not any aggressive ideology, such that they became “more extreme” under attack by military force and media.  The tearing off of women’s veils by Iranian troops under the Shah, for example, incited a backlash of Shiite fundamentalism.  The present Islamic Republic of Iran, meanwhile, elicited from Armstrong merely the comment that the “Iranian revolution is still continuing.”</p>
<p>None of Armstrong’s mea culpas make any sense upon examination.  Arab state borders are not by any stretch of the imagination the world’s most haphazardly drawn, particularly in comparison to Africa’s colonial borders.  Yet no global terrorism has resulted from sub-Saharan Africa.  Armstrong’s criticism of Pakistan’s borders likewise does not answer why only Pakistan’s Muslims, and not India’s Hindus, engage in cross-border terrorism.  Muslims have also been historically both colonized and colonizers.  Poverty is similarly ecumenical, but individuals in China and elsewhere have responded to deprivation with work, not warfare.</p>
<p>Echoing the various hostilities of the ACMCU’s namesake, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1594483.stm">Prince Alaweed bin Talal</a>, his Saudi compatriot <a href="http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/jan-june98/fatwa_1998.html">Osama bin Laden</a>, and others against Israel, Armstrong seems to see causality for 9/11 in the British “Palestinian mess” supporting Zionism. Yet support for Israel’s right to exist is simply incompatible with the destruction of Israel sought by rejectionist Islamic ideologues like bin Laden or the Iranian ayatollahs.  Presented with this analysis, Armstrong during a coffee break criticized my being “obsessed with Israel…the word never crossed my lips,” as if Britain’s “Palestinian mess” was a reference to Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>Armstrong does not explain why Muslims in Gulf States like Saudi Arabia, never colonized, engage in terrorism and Boko Haram’s Nigerian Muslims massacre Christian Nigerians sharing the same British colonial history.  Sectarian agendas of jihad and sharia, the Golden Rule’s very antithesis, are invisible to her befuddled thinking.  Many “images of Muslim suffering” in places like Iraq, meanwhile, derive precisely from the application of these agendas to intra-Islamic divisions.</p>
<p>In Armstrong’s relativistic reasoning, pilots <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/paul-tibbets-253510">Paul Tibbets</a>, who ended a war over Hiroshima, and <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/mohamed-atta-241184">Mohammad Atta</a>, who began a war in New York, are equal.  Not a vigorous fight for freedom, but guilty mourning for Muslims should result from 9/11.  Such is the analysis of Armstrong, a member of the <a href="http://www.unaoc.org/2011/03/ms-karen-armstrong/">High Level Group</a> at the United Nations’ <a href="http://www.unaoc.org/">Alliance of Civilizations</a>.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Josh Brewster&#8217;s</strong> video interview with <strong>Dr. Jamie Glazov</strong> in which the Frontpage editor sheds disturbing light on why the Left engages in Jihad Denial:</em></p>
<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SNJg6w6CB0o" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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