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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; ayaan hirsi ali</title>
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		<title>Imam Joe Biden Schools an Infidel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/imam-joe-biden-schools-an-infidel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=imam-joe-biden-schools-an-infidel</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Dec 2014 05:53:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[But Ayaan Hirsi Ali declines to argue with the vice president. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-247267" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg" alt="6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c" width="301" height="271" /></a>The courageous ex-Muslim human rights activist <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-real-war-on-women/article/2556984"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ayaan Hirsi Ali</span></a> recently recounted that at a speech in Washington not long ago, she met Vice President Joe Biden. Biden seized the opportunity to tell her that “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” Hirsi Ali politely disagreed, whereupon Biden began a lesson in the teachings of the Religion of Peace: “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Hirsi Ali didn’t hear much of Imam Joe’s Islamic wisdom: “I politely left the conversation at that. I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”</p>
<p>This wasn’t just Joe being Joe, saying another foolish thing that, if he were a conservative Republican, would have ended his political career in an avalanche of ridicule long ago. For in confronting Hirsi Ali and assuming he knew more about Islam than she does, Biden was reflecting what virtually every policymaker in Washington believes – on both sides of the aisle.</p>
<p>Even though Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised a Muslim in a Muslim country, and educated in Islam from an extremely early age, and despite the fact that Joe Biden has almost certainly never opened a Qur’an, Biden was sure that what she said about Islam must be wrong – it just had to be. Why? Because her opinion of the religion was negative, and the possibility that such a view could have any merit whatsoever is inconceivable in Washington circles. Those who hold it <i>must</i> be ignorant.</p>
<p>It’s almost certain that Biden would never have confronted Karen Armstrong in a similar way. If Biden is familiar with what Armstrong says about Islam, such as her world-historically ridiculous claim that “Muhammad eventually abjured violence and pursued a daring, inspired policy of non-violence that was worthy of Gandhi,” he would no doubt warmly approve and even applaud. This would not be because Armstrong has done more formal study of Islam than has Hirsi Ali – she hasn’t. <span style="color: #222222;">Nor would it be because Imam Joe himself made a careful and judicious examination of Islamic texts and teachings, and came to the reasoned conclusion that Armstrong’s representation of Islam was more accurate and true to the </span><i style="color: #222222;">ding an sich</i><span style="color: #222222;"> than Hirsi Ali’s.</span></p>
<p>On the contrary, Biden would favor Armstrong’s Islam over Hirsi Ali’s solely and wholly because the former confirms his view of the world and appears to bear out what he wishes were true, and the latter does not. This is likewise the stance of all of Biden’s colleagues in the Obama Administration. John Kerry, like Biden, confidently takes a stand on what he believes Islam is all about, based not on any study of his own or anyone else, but on what he wishes is true and hopes is true.</p>
<p>Indeed, on these fantasies are based numerous foreign and domestic policies. <span style="color: #222222;">The idea that new Israeli concessions will end the Palestinian jihad against Israel and make possible a two-state solution with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace is based on a determined refusal to consider the possibility that the Palestinians really mean the jihadist rhetoric that they pump out endlessly on official Palestinian Authority and Hamas airwaves about destroying Israel utterly.</span></p>
<p>The idea that stable, secular, Western-oriented republics could ever have been constructed in Afghanistan or Iraq was based on a refusal to confront what Sharia really is and to study the degree to which the populations in both countries were attached to it. Ultimately, the United States oversaw the adoption of Constitutions in both countries that enshrined Sharia as the highest law of the land – something that would never have been done had not Washington policymakers been listening to smooth apologists who assured them that Sharia was benign and completely compatible with republican government and Western principles of human rights.</p>
<p>Those policymakers are still entrenched, despite their abysmal track record. There is no accountability for them, for those who would hold them accountable believe in the same fantasies that led to the policy errors. Joe Biden’s interaction with Ayaan Hirsi Ali played out with dreary predictability: it was inevitable that Biden would think his fantasies and wishful thinking to be defensible, established fact, and unthinkable that he would regard the judgment of a Somali ex-Muslim woman with unconscious ethnocentric and chauvinistic paternalism: <i>she is just wounded by her anomalous experiences</i>, he might have thought to himself, while Joe Biden – Joe Biden! – man of the world, savvy political thinker, diplomat, statesman, and humorist, would gently and affably set her straight, and introduce her to the pluralistic open-mindedness that are the hallmarks of what make us great in the West.</p>
<p>That open-mindedness, that openness to non-Western cultures and people, the linchpin of the multiculturalist imperative, is what Biden and Kerry treasure so much and are trying to protect when they assure the world that Islam is a religion of peace and that those who commit violence in its name are violating its core principles. But even as they preen about their open-mindedness, Biden and Kerry and the rest are actually quite close-minded. When he heard Ayaan Hirsi Ali speak, Biden had an opportunity to hear truths that existed outside of his habits of thought. A truly open-minded person would have adjusted his thinking to fit reality.</p>
<p>Instead, Biden placed himself in the preposterous position of attempting to lecture an ex-Muslim, someone who had once revered the Qur’an and studied it deeply, about the true tenets of Islam. In this latest exercise in making himself ridiculous, Biden is a symbol of the entire Western world, staking its life and future on fantasy and wishful thinking. In response to his foolish nonsense, Ayaan Hirsi Ali was polite. If they ever encounter Biden face to face, those pious believers in Islam who know that what she says about their religion is accurate, and hate her for revealing it, will be substantially less so.</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>&#8216;Not Islamic&#8217;?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/not-islamic/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=not-islamic</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 04:20:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241806</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia and Iran also not representative of Islam? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-25-at-2.56.44-PM.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-241807" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Screen-Shot-2014-09-25-at-2.56.44-PM-408x350.png" alt="Screen Shot 2014-09-25 at 2.56.44 PM" width="319" height="274" /></a>President Obama declared in his recent address to the nation that &#8220;ISIL is not Islamic.&#8221;</p>
<p>But how does he know? On what basis did the president of the United States declare the a group of Muslims that calls itself &#8220;Islamic State&#8221; &#8220;not Islamic&#8221;?</p>
<p>Has he studied Islam and Islamic history and concluded that ISIL, Boko Haram, al-Qaida, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba (the group that slaughtered 166 people in Mumbai, most especially guests at the Taj Hotel,and which tortured to death a rabbi and his wife), the various Palestinian terrorist groups (all of which have been Muslim, even though there are many Christian Palestinians), and the Muslim terror groups in Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere are also all &#8220;not Islamic&#8221;?</p>
<p>Has he concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood, which won Egypt&#8217;s most open election ever, is &#8220;not Islamic?&#8221;</p>
<p>And what about Saudi Arabia? Is that country &#8220;not Islamic,&#8221; too?</p>
<p>Oh, and what about Iran? Also &#8220;not Islamic&#8221;?</p>
<p>Isn&#8217;t that a lot of Muslims, Muslim groups, and even nations — all of whom claim Islam as their religion — to dismiss as &#8220;not Islamic&#8221;?</p>
<p>To be fair, these baseless generalizations about what is and what is not Islamic started with his predecessor, President George W. Bush, who regularly announced that &#8220;Islam is a religion of peace.&#8221; And it is equally unlikely that his assertion came from a study of Islam and Islamic history.</p>
<p>The fact is that a study of Islamic history could not lead any fair-minded individual to conclude that all these Muslims and Islamic groups are &#8220;not Islamic.&#8221; Neither Islamic history, which, from its origins, offered vast numbers of people a choice between Islam and death, nor Islam as reflected in its greatest works, would lead one to draw that conclusion.</p>
<p>Killing &#8220;unbelievers&#8221; has been part of — of course not all of — Islam since its inception. Within 10 years of Muhammad&#8217;s death Muslims had conquered and violently converted whole peoples from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to Syria. Muslims have offered conquered people death or conversion since that time.</p>
<p>The Hindu Kush, the vast, 500-mile long, 150-mile wide mountain range stretching from Afghanistan to Pakistan, was populated by Hindus until the Muslim invasions beginning around the year 1000. The Persian name Hindu Kush was proudly given by Muslims. It means &#8220;Hindu-killer.&#8221; At least 60 million Hindus were killed by Muslims during the thousand years of Muslim rule. Though virtually unknown, it may be the greatest mass murder in history next to Mao&#8217;s.</p>
<p>The groups named above are following some dictates of the Quran.</p>
<p>A few of many such examples:</p>
<p>&#8220;I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve.</p>
<p>Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them&#8221; (8:12).</p>
<p>&#8220;When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.&#8221; (9:5)</p>
<p>&#8220;Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth.&#8221; (9:29).</p>
<p>There is also a different admonition in the Quran: &#8220;In matters of faith there shall be no compulsion&#8221; (2:256).</p>
<p>So a Muslim can also cite the Quran if he wishes to allow non-Muslims to live in peace.</p>
<p>The problem is that Muslim theological tradition, affirmed by many scholars, holds that later revelation to Muhammad supersedes prior revelation (a doctrine known as &#8220;abrogation&#8221;). And the Quranic verses ordering Muslims to fight and slay non-believers came after those admonishing Muslims to live with non-believers in peace and without religious compulsion.</p>
<p>The problem is that Muslim history, in keeping with the doctrine of abrogation, has far more often practiced the violent admonitions.</p>
<p>The problem is that more than 600 years after Muhammad, Ibn Khaldun, the greatest Muslim writer who ever lived, explained why Islam is the superior religion in the most highly regarded Muslim work ever written, &#8220;Muqaddimah,&#8221; or &#8220;Introduction to History&#8221;:</p>
<p>&#8220;In the Muslim community, the holy war is religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, Ibn Khaldun boasts, whereas no other religion commands converting the world through force, Islam does. Was Ibn Khaldun also &#8220;not Islamic&#8221;? And so much for the president&#8217;s other claim that &#8220;no religion condones the killing of innocents.&#8221;</p>
<p>None of this justifies bigotry against Muslims. There are hundreds of millions of non-Islamist Muslims (an Islamist is a Muslim who seeks to impose Shariah on others), including many &#8220;cultural&#8221; or secular Muslims. And individual Muslims are risking their lives every day to provide the intelligence needed to forestall terror attacks in America and elsewhere.</p>
<p>It is only a call to clarity amidst the falsehoods coming from the president, the secretary of state, and especially the universities.</p>
<p>As the courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born woman who leads a worldwide effort on behalf of Muslim women and for reforming Islam, asked in a speech at Yale University this month: If Islam is a religion of peace, why is there a sword on the Saudi flag?</p>
<p>If the president feels he has to obfuscate for the sake of gaining Muslim allies, so be it. But the rest of us don&#8217;t have to make believe what he said is true.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Robert Spencer</strong> on this week&#8217;s Glazov Gang discussing<span id="productTitle" class="a-size-large"><strong> The Fog of Jihad-Denial</strong>:</span></em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/S8kxWhX0S50" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><a id="js_10" class="profileLink _5f0v" tabindex="0" href="https://www.facebook.com/annmariemurrell" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1258545911"></a></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>The Buckley Program Stands Up for Free Speech</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/the-buckley-program-stands-up-for-free-speech/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-buckley-program-stands-up-for-free-speech</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 04:43:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Thornton]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim students association]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[William F. Buckley]]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Ayaan Hirsi Ali triumphs over campus hate groups. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240943" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c.jpg" alt="6a00d83451c36069e20168eb9dbef6970c" width="314" height="259" /></a>The William F. Buckley Program at Yale University lately showed bravery unusual for an academic institution. It has refused to be bullied by the Muslim Students Association and its demand that the Buckley Program rescind an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak on campus September 15. Hirsi Ali is the vocal Somalian critic of Islamic doctrine whose life has been endangered for condemning the theologically sanctioned oppression of women in Islamic culture. Unlike Brandeis University, which recently rescinded an honorary degree to be given to Hirsi Ali after complaints from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Buckley Program rejected both the MSA’s initial demand, and a follow up one that Hirsi Ali share the stage with one of her critics.</p>
<p>The Buckley Program is a rare instance of an academic organization staying true to the ideals of free speech, academic freedom, and the “free play of the mind on all subjects,” as Matthew Arnold defined liberal education. Most of our best universities have sacrificed these ideals on the altar of political correctness and identity politics. Anything that displeases or discomforts campus special interest groups––mainly those predicated on being the alleged victims of American oppression–– must be proscribed as “slurs” or “hateful,” even if what’s said is factually true. No matter that these groups are ideologically driven and use their power to silence critics and limit speech to their own self-serving and duplicitous views, the modus operandi of every illiberal totalitarian regime in history. The spineless university caves in to their demands, incoherently camouflaging their craven betrayal of the First Amendment and academic freedom as “tolerance” and “respect for diversity.”</p>
<p>In the case of Islam, however, this betrayal is particularly dangerous. For we are confronting across the world a jihadist movement that grounds its violence in traditional Islamic theology, jurisprudence, and history. Ignoring those motives and their sanction by Islamic doctrine compromises our strategy and tactics in defeating the jihadists, for we cripple ourselves in the war of ideas. Worse yet, Islamic triumphalism and chauvinism–– embodied in the Koranic verse that calls Muslims “the best of nations raised up for the benefit of men” because they “enjoin the right and forbid the wrong and believe in Allah”–– is confirmed and strengthened by the way our elite institutions like universities and the federal government quickly capitulate to special interest groups who demand that we endorse only their sanitized and often false picture of Islam. Such surrender confirms the jihadist estimation of the West as the “weak horse,” as bin Laden said, a civilization with “foundations of straw” whose wealth and military power are undermined by a collective failure of nerve and loss of morale.</p>
<p>This process of exploiting the moral degeneration of the West has been going on now for 25 years. It begins, as does the rise of modern jihadism, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic revolution. The key event took place in February 1989, when Khomeini issued a fatwa, based on Koran 9.61, against Indian novelist Salman Rushdie for his novel <i>The Satanic Verses</i>, which was deemed “against Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran,” as Khomeini said. Across the world enraged Muslims rioted and bombed bookstores, leaving over 20 people dead. More significant in the long run was the despicable reaction of many in the West to this outrage against freedom of speech and the rule of law, perpetrated by the most important and revered political and religious leader of a major Islamic nation.</p>
<p>Abandoning their principles, bookstores refused to stock the novel, and publishers delayed or canceled editions. Muslims in Western countries publicly burned copies of Rushdie’s novel and encouraged his murder with impunity. Eminent British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper suggested Rushdie deserved such treatment. Thirteen British Muslim barristers filed a formal complaint against the author. In their initial reactions, Western government officials were hesitant and timorous. The U.S. embassy in Pakistan eagerly assured Muslims that “the U.S. government in no way supports or associates itself with any activity that is in any sense offensive or insulting to Islam.&#8221;</p>
<p>Khomeini’s fatwa and the subsequent violent reaction created what Daniel Pipes calls the “Rushdie rules,” a speech code that privileges Islam over revered Western traditions of free speech that still are operative in the case of all other religions. Muslims now will determine what counts as an “insult” or a “slur,” and their displeasure, threats, and violence will police those definitions and punish offenders. Even reporting simple facts of history or Islamic doctrine can be deemed an offense and bring down retribution on violators. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, earned the wrath of Muslims in part for her contribution to Theo van Gogh’s film <i>Submission</i>, which projected Koranic verses regarding women on the bodies of abused women. Van Gogh, of course, was brutally murdered in the streets of Amsterdam. And this is the most important dimension of the “Rushdie rules”: violence will follow any violation of whatever some Muslims deem to be “insulting” to Islam, even facts. In effect, Western law has been trumped by the shari’a ban on blaspheming Islam, a crime punishable by death.</p>
<p>The result is the sorry spectacle of groveling and apology we see almost daily from our government, the entertainment industry, and worse yet, universities. Trivial slights and offenses that civilized nations leave to the market place of ideas to sort out are elevated into “slurs” and “hate speech” if some Muslim organization deems them so. A reflexive self-censorship has arisen in American society, one based on fear of violent retribution or bad publicity harmful to profits and careers.</p>
<p>Thus the government officially proscribes words like “jihad” or “Muslim terrorist” from its documents and training materials in order to avoid offending Muslims. Similarly the Muslim terrorist, a fixture in recent history since the PLO started highjacking airliners in the 60s, has nearly disappeared from television and movies, replaced by Russians, white supremacists, and brainwashed Americans. And when a Muslim terrorist does appear, his motivations and violence are rationalized as the understandable response to the grievous offenses against his faith and people committed by the U.S. and Israel. Islam is airbrushed from the plot, as in the recent series <i>Tyrant</i>, a dramatization of a fictional Arab Muslim state that somehow manages to ignore Islam as a political force. More seriously, universities disinvite speakers at the faintest hint of protest from Muslim organizations, even as they accept Gulf-state petrodollars to create “Middle East Studies” programs that frequently function as apologists and enablers of terrorist violence.</p>
<p>“Free men have free tongues,” as the Athenian tragedian Sophocles said. One of the pillars of political freedom is free speech. When the ability to speak freely in the public square is extended beyond an elite to a large variety of people with clashing views and ideals, speech necessarily becomes rough and uncivil. Feelings get hurt, passions are aroused, and language becomes coarse and abusive. That’s the price we pay for letting a lot of people speak their minds, and for creating a process in which truth and good ideas can emerge from all this rambunctious, divisive conversation. But when we carve out a special niche for one group, provide it with its own rules, and protect it even from statements of uncomfortable facts, then we compromise that foundational right to have our say without any retribution other than a counterargument. So three cheers for the Buckley Program. It has stood up against intimidation and defended one of our most important and precious freedoms.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>The War on Former Muslim Women</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/the-war-on-former-muslim-women/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-war-on-former-muslim-women</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nonie-darwish/the-war-on-former-muslim-women/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2014 04:42:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wafa Sultan]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=225114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The high price that heroes like Ayaan Hirsi Ali pay for telling the truth about Sharia. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ayaan-Hirsi.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225133" alt="Ayaan-Hirsi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Ayaan-Hirsi-450x270.jpg" width="315" height="189" /></a>It is a tragedy and a shame that it had to take the mass kidnapping and sexual enslavement of 300 Nigerian girls by Muslim jihadists for the world to finally express its outrage over Sharia’s evil deeds. Similar stories of Christian girls being kidnapped, forcibly married and converted to Islam by their Muslim captors, have been a reality for decades. But unfortunately, and tragically, they have been ignored by our mainstream media. Only a few &#8220;Islamophobic&#8221; journalists have cared enough to report on such atrocities in Egypt, Syria and elsewhere &#8212; until reality exploded to such a great magnitude that it awakened the world&#8217;s conscience.</p>
<p>Former Muslim women like Wafa Sultan, Ayan Hirsi Ali and myself have been writing and speaking about the oppression of women in Islamic society for a long time now. I have written a book dedicated to connecting the dots between Islamic law and such kidnappings, rapes and other forms of oppression of women. But instead of helping our voices be heard, the leftist media and academia have ignored us, called us names and done everything in their power to silence us. They have treated the American people like children who are told they should not be outraged about far away cultural practices &#8212; because all cultures are equal.</p>
<p>Advocates of cultural relativism who are brutal in judging conservative and Christian Americans, and call them slanderous names, have no problem in tolerating Islamic tyranny over women and other minorities.</p>
<p>After 9/11 Americans asked: “Where are the voices of Arab Americans who condemn Islamic terrorism?” This question led a few brave former Muslim women to stand up and speak. But when we did (at our own peril), the leftist media and academia called us &#8220;Islamophobes&#8221; and &#8220;racists.” What is Islamophobic and racist about warning America about the tyranny of the barbaric religious legal system that we lived under and came to America to escape from its vicious clutches?</p>
<p>Muslims have convinced the leftist elites that criticism of Islamic doctrine is a hateful phobia equal to hating all Muslim people. Students who wanted to learn the truth about Sharia and its implications on women, jihad, the Arab Israeli conflict and terrorism, have been intimidated and forced to withdraw their invitation to former Muslim women speakers.</p>
<p>Not only have Muslim Brotherhood front groups and the Left succeeded in silencing speech critical of Islam, but reports about Islamic atrocities around the world have been suppressed &#8212; until now, when one horrifying story of an Islamic crime against humanity could not be contained.</p>
<p>And so now, with the Nigerian kidnapping story, Islam’s dirty little secret has been exposed: <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/islam-slavery-and-rape/">Sharia legalizes</a> the taking of female hostages as sexual slaves in the jihad battle against non-Muslims. And since the jihad battle against non-Muslims is taught as a permanent institution, the kidnapping, rape and enslavement can happen at any time. In fact, the Islamic Nigerian mass kidnappers, who are experts on Sharia, are bragging on camera about their actions because they are told by their books and Islamic education that what they did is holy and legal under Allah.</p>
<p>American students who invite experts on Middle Eastern culture and critics of Sharia, like myself, must endure horrific pressure to cancel our invitations. No matter what horror happens under Islam, we end up being dismissed by the Left as &#8220;Islamophobes.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a result of the suppression of the truth about Islamic oppression of women, the American public is left ignorant about what is going on in the Islamic world. Thus it takes huge acts of violence, such as the Nigeria mass girl kidnapping or 9/11 to wake Americans up. But for how long can the West afford to ignore Islamic tyranny? I hope not until Islamic jihadists do a similar kidnapping of 300 American girls.</p>
<p>Our culture&#8217;s suppression of speech is severely detrimental to the future of this country, which is on its way to embracing Sharia as just another set of laws that must be respected, since, as we are taught, all cultures and religions are equal.</p>
<p>It is high time for American leftist feminists to acknowledge the truth about Islamic oppression of women. Kidnapping of girls, sexual slavery, female genital mutilation, wife beating, legal discrimination against women in the courtroom and other forms of oppression of women, must never be tolerated under the excuse of cultural relativism.</p>
<p>The same leftists who ignore Islamic Sharia tyranny are also the ones who support anti-Semitism also spreading on college campuses.  The offensive annual Israel Apartheid Week must end, otherwise pro-Israel students must be free to invite speakers to counter the anti-Israel propaganda.</p>
<p>Just in the last month, I was cancelled twice after being invited to speak on college campuses due to intimidation by leftists and Islamic groups. Muslim radical groups brag about our cancellation like a badge of honor, the same way the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt brags about silencing the opposition. Suppression of speakers who expose the atrocities of Islamic law has become a shameful chronic condition on American campuses. It is true that Sharia forbids the criticism of Islam, but we should never forget that the US Constitution does not.</p>
<p>The situation in America today is upside down, where we see the American Left tolerating Islamic intolerance and protecting Islam’s dirty little secrets from coming to light. We are not doing Muslims and Islam a favor with this cover-up and appeasement. Blatant atrocities against women by Muslims around the world must be exposed and rejected.</p>
<p>It is time for the West to condemn Islamic Sharia law by name.</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>Daniel Mael on &#8220;Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis and Double Standards&#8221; &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/daniel-mael-on-ayaan-hirsi-ali-brandeis-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=daniel-mael-on-ayaan-hirsi-ali-brandeis-and-double-standards-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 25 Apr 2014 04:00:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Mael]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Easy Meat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gavin Boby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim rape gangs]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A TruthRevolt warrior confronts the leftist Gestapo on his campus.    ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ec.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223853" alt="ec" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ec-450x310.jpg" width="315" height="217" /></a><strong>[<a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf">Subscribe</a> to <i>The Glazov Gang</i> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">LIKE</a> it on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">Facebook</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>This week&#8217;s <em>Glazov Gang</em> was joined by <strong>Daniel Mael</strong>, a junior at Brandeis University and a reporter at <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/">TruthRevolt.org</a>.</p>
<p>He discusses <em><strong>&#8220;Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis and Double Standards&#8221;</strong> </em>and calls out the leftist Gestapo on his campus:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/RPjBtb5Vt8s" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Don&#8217;t miss Frontpage&#8217;s second episode this week with <strong>Gavin Boby</strong> of the <a href="http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/"><em>Law and Freedom Foundation</em></a>. He continues to share his battle against &#8220;<em>Muslim Rape Gangs in the U.K.&#8221;</em> <strong>[To see Part I, <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/gavin-bobys-fight-against-muslim-rape-gangs-in-the-u-k-on-the-glazov-gang/">click here</a>].</strong> This time he discusses his report on this horrifying phenomenon, <a href="http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Easy-Meat-Multiculturalism-Islam-and-Child-Sex-Slavery-05-03-2014.pdf"><em>‘Easy Meat,’</em> </a>and takes us &#8220;<em><strong>Inside the World of Muslim Rape Gangs, Part II&#8221;</strong>:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NWKTTPyK1-o" height="315" width="460" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>To watch previous <i>Glazov Gang</i> episodes, </b><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><b>Click Here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><b>LIKE</b></a><b> Jamie Glazov’s </b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><b>Fan Page</b></a><b> on Facebook.</b></p>
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		<title>Where Does Naomi Wolf&#8217;s Hypocrisy End, Or Does It?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/where-does-naomi-wolfs-hypocrisy-end-or-does-it/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=where-does-naomi-wolfs-hypocrisy-end-or-does-it</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/where-does-naomi-wolfs-hypocrisy-end-or-does-it/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Apr 2014 04:59:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chesler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Naomi Wolf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zionist agent]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223680</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[By calling Phyllis Chesler a Zionist agent, Naomi Wolf shows herself to be a sad emblem of the pathetic state of the Left and of its pseudo feminist wing: ignorant, arrogant, bigoted, anti-Semitic, anti-American and an embarrassing fifth column for the Islamic barbarians of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/nw.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-223685" alt="nw" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/nw.jpg" width="258" height="195" /></a>Naomi Wolf has joined the Hamas chorus by <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/04/17/Naomi-Wolf-Attacks-Me-as-a-Zionist-Agent" target="_blank">attacking</a> feminist hero Phyllis Chesler for being a Zionist agent. How facilely Wolf has adopted the language of Jew-haters the world over &#8212; an even more bitter irony coming from someone who has written an entire book comparing democratic America to Nazi Germany.</p>
<p>And Chesler’s sin? To have dared to challenge the Left&#8217;s party line of defending the Islamic mutilators of adolescent girls, and practitioners of gender apartheid. But then again, this isn&#8217;t anything new for Wolf, seeing that she is on the record for finding <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36177" target="_blank">the burqa sexy.</a></p>
<p>In her recent article, “<a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14856#.U0_7K_ldWoN" target="_blank">Brandeis Feminists Fail the Historical Moment,</a>” Phyllis Chesler criticized Brandeis&#8217; phony feminists for their complicity in the University denying an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  In a response on her Facebook page, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/04/17/Naomi-Wolf-Attacks-Me-as-a-Zionist-Agent" target="_blank">Wolf joined</a> the anti-Semites of the Mearsheimer-Walt-Blumenthal set, claiming that Chesler has no mind of her own but is merely a puppet of the organized Jews:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;She is funded these days by pro-Israel advocacy organizations that support journalists and writers to advocate &#8216;the party line&#8217; in terms of hardline anti-Islam and right-wing policy outcomes regarding Israel.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This is pretty crude even for a brain-dead Marxist.</p>
<div dir="ltr">
<p>Wolf goes on to complain that Chesler:</p>
<blockquote><p>“has made some outlandish, grossly factually incorrect attacks on me whenever I write anything that encourages Western readers to have a deeper understanding of Islam.”</p></blockquote>
<p>What she means is a more groveling, supine attitude of appeasement towards barbaric Islamic attitudes and practices. When Wolf encourages people to have a “deeper understanding” of Islam, she is not alluding to caring more about <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/upload/pamphlets/ViolentOpp.pdf" target="_blank">the horrifying Islamic practices</a> of female genital mutilation, honor killing, forced marriage, veiling and acid attacks carried out against Muslim women in the name of Islam.</p>
<p>Chesler has <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/04/17/Naomi-Wolf-Attacks-Me-as-a-Zionist-Agent" target="_blank">already answered</a> Wolf’s sick attack with a little tongue-in-cheek acidity:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Naomi: Are you on the payroll of the public relations crisis management team Brandeis has reportedly hired? Are you now or have you ever been funded by George Soros? Or merely by the Democratic Party? Is Al Gore, for whom you once consulted, and who sold his cable channel to Al-Jazeera, backing you? Is he supporting your Woodhull Institute? Or are the Jordanian royals helping you? I know you visited with them and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/what-do-muslim-women-want_b_309979.html" target="_blank">wrote</a> about them very favorably.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Wolf’s attack on Chesler is an extension of the collision that occurred between the two a few years back, after <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36177">Wolf went on a political pilgrimage</a> to the Muslim world and returned <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/behind-the-veil-lives-a-thriving-muslim-sexuality/2008/08/29/1219516734637.html" target="_blank">singing the praises</a> of the burqa. <a href="http://aconservativelesbian.com/2009/08/31/phyllis-chesler-punksmacks-naomi-wolf-couldnt-happen-to-a-nicer-girl/" target="_blank">Chesler dismantled Wolf’s embarrassing fairy tales</a> of the female gulag that Islam has constructed for nearly a billion women with such precision that one wonders why Wolf is now even bothering to step back into this mismatch. Unlike Wolf, Chesler is a true scholar of Islam and as the former bride of a Muslim in Afghanistan, she has first-hand experience of the horrors of Islamic gender apartheid.</p>
<p>Naomi Wolf is a sad emblem of the pathetic state of the Left and of its pseudo feminist wing: ignorant, arrogant, bigoted, anti-Semitic, anti-American and an embarrassing fifth column for the Islamic barbarians of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>To get the whole story on why the Left reaches out in solidarity to Islamo-fascists and ignores their victims, watch <strong>Jamie Glazov</strong> discuss Jihad-Denial in the 2-part video series below:</em></p>
<p><strong>Part 1:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SNJg6w6CB0o" height="360" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part 2:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6sBPH589Feo" height="360" width="500" 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>
<p><b>Make sure to </b><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
</div>
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		<title>What the Left Did Last Week</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dennis-prager/what-the-left-did-last-week/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-the-left-did-last-week</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:47:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Dennis Prager]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brendan Eich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Censorship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Charles Krauthammer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Honor Diaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[totalitarianism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223579</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Left's ongoing transformation of America.  ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/censorship-10-5-25.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223580" alt="censorship-10-5-25" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/censorship-10-5-25.jpg" width="280" height="187" /></a>In his column last week, Charles Krauthammer crossed a line. He declared the American left totalitarian. He is correct. Totalitarianism is written into the left&#8217;s DNA.</p>
<p>Krauthammer wrote about a left-wing petition &#8220;bearing more than 110,000 signatures delivered to the [Washington] Post demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming.&#8221;</p>
<p>He concluded:</p>
<p>&#8220;I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian.&#8221;</p>
<p>America is engaged in a civil war — thank God, a non-violent one, but a civil war nonetheless. It is as divided as it was during the Civil War in the 19th century. The issue then was slavery — a huge moral divide, of course. But today, the country is divided by opposite views about much more than one major issue. The left and right are divided by their views of morality, politics, society, religion, the individual and the very nature of America.</p>
<p>The left seeks to, as candidate Barack Obama promised five days before his first election, &#8220;fundamentally transform the United States of America.&#8221;</p>
<p>That is what the left is doing. There is almost no area of American life in which the left&#8217;s influence is not transformative, and ultimately destructive.</p>
<p>Beginning with this column I will periodically, perhaps regularly, devote this space to that transformation and destruction. My reason for doing so is that most Americans, including more than a few Republicans and more than a few Democrats, simply do not know what the left is doing to their country.</p>
<p>So, here is some of what the left has done in the last week or two.</p>
<p>—The left-wing directors of Mozilla, the parent company of the browser Firefox, compelled their CEO, Brendan Eich, to resign after he refused to recant his support for maintaining the man-woman definition of marriage. Even though his gay employees acknowledged how fairly he treated them individually and as couples, the mere fact that he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman rendered him unacceptable as an employee of Mozilla/Firefox. (For more details, see my column of last week, &#8220;Uninstall Firefox.&#8221;)</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal condemned Mozilla. The New York Times has not taken a position.</p>
<p>—Brandeis University rescinded its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, perhaps the world&#8217;s foremost activist on behalf of women in the Islamic world.</p>
<p>Hirsi Ali, an African woman born into a Muslim family and raised Muslim, who now teaches at Harvard, was scheduled to receive an honorary degree at the forthcoming Brandeis graduation ceremony. Brandeis rescinded its invitation after protests led by a Muslim student and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamist organization, erupted over Hirsi Ali&#8217;s criticism of the way women are treated in many parts of the Muslim world.</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal condemned Brandeis. The New York Times has not taken a position.</p>
<p>—The University of Michigan canceled a showing of the documentary &#8220;Honor Diaries.&#8221; The film features nine women who are either Muslim or come from a Muslim country. They speak about honor killings, female genital mutilation, forced marriages at young ages, and the denial of education to women in Muslim communities. They praise moderate Muslims. But the University of Michigan cancelled the film lest a non-moderate Muslim organization, CAIR again, label the university &#8220;Islamophobic.&#8221;</p>
<p>—Six weeks ago, a University of Wisconsin student released a video he had made of a guest lecturer in the freshman general education course &#8220;Education 130: Individual and Society.&#8221; The lecturer, the political and organizing director for Service Employees International Union Local 150, delivered a diatribe, with obscenities, against conservatives, whites and Republicans. Last week. When confronted with the evidence that classrooms at their university were being politicized, the faculty of the University of Wisconsin reacted with indignation — at the student who made the video. And then the faculty passed a resolution demanding that the university ban recording any of its classes.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s hard to blame the faculty. Given the intellectual shallowness and the left-wing politics that pervade so many liberal arts classes, the University of Wisconsin faculty has every reason to fear allowing the public to know what professors say in class.</p>
<p>—Today is the cutoff date for public reactions to the California Supreme Court&#8217;s ethics advisory committee&#8217;s proposal to forbid California judges from affiliating with the Boy Scouts, which the left deems anti-gay. Given the Left&#8217;s animosity to traditional value-based institutions, it is not surprising that it loathes the Boy Scouts. What is remarkable — actually, frightening — is how easy it has been for the left to make it <i>illegal </i>for a judge to be a leader in the Boy Scouts. This is the now case in 22 states. It will soon be the case in California as well.</p>
<p>This was just one week — and only selected examples — in the left&#8217;s ongoing transformation of America.</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>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>Brandeis&#8217; Surrender to the Brotherhood on Ayaan Hirsi Ali &#8212; on The Glazov Gang</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/brandeis-surrender-to-the-brotherhood-on-ayaan-hirsi-ali-on-the-glazov-gang/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brandeis-surrender-to-the-brotherhood-on-ayaan-hirsi-ali-on-the-glazov-gang</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Apr 2014 04:44:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Glazov Gang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surrender]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223287</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Scholar of Islam, David Wood, takes us behind the scenes of a university's shameless surrender to Sharia.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ayaan-hirsi-ali.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223288" alt="ayaan hirsi ali" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ayaan-hirsi-ali.jpg" width="324" height="214" /></a>[<a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong> to <i>The Glazov Gang</i> and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>Facebook.]</b></a></p>
<p>This week&#8217;s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007479062157" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100007479062157&amp;extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D">David Wood</a>, the host of the Trinity Channel’s live talk show, “Jesus or Muhammad?” He has been in more than 40 public debates with Muslims, and he runs the website <a href="http://www.answeringmuslims.com/">AnsweringMuslims.com</a>.</p>
<p>Dr. Wood discusses <strong><em>Brandeis&#8217; Surrender to the Brotherhood on Ayaan Hirsi Ali</em></strong> and takes us behind the scenes of a university&#8217;s shameless surrender to Sharia:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NeM18AWOi08" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe><em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Frontpage&#8217;s second episode this week was with<strong> Gavin Boby</strong> of the <a href="http://lawandfreedomfoundation.org/"><em>Law and Freedom Foundation</em></a>. He shared his fight against <em><strong>Muslim Rape Gangs and Mosque Building</strong></em> in the U.K.:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Y27t01dx9Wg" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><b>To watch previous <i>Glazov Gang</i> episodes, </b><a href="http://jamieglazov.com/"><b>Click Here</b></a><b>.</b></p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><b>LIKE</b></a><b> Jamie Glazov’s </b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jamie.glazov"><b>Fan Page</b></a><b> on Facebook.</b></p>
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		<title>Brandeis, Female Mutilation and the Falsehoods of a Faculty Petition</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jamie-glazov/brandeis-female-mutilation-and-the-falsehoods-of-a-faculty-petition/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brandeis-female-mutilation-and-the-falsehoods-of-a-faculty-petition</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Apr 2014 04:56:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bradeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[faculty petition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[female genital mutilation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223498</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The twisted and callous agenda of those who squeezed President Lawrence to disinvite Ayaan Hirsi Ali.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/fgm.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-223499" alt="fgm" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/fgm.jpg" width="259" height="194" /></a>Last Tuesday, on April 8, Brandeis University <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/brandeis-caves-to-islamic-supremacist-thuggery/">rescinded its invitation</a> to human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to receive an honorary degree from the institution. Brandeis caved in the face of <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/brandeis-caves-to-islamic-supremacist-thuggery/">intimidation from CAIR</a> and other Muslim Brotherhood front groups, as well as a student petition on Change.org and <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/revealed-brandeis-faculty-letter-pressured-president-drop-hirsi-ali">a faculty petition</a> – the contents of which have <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/revealed-brandeis-faculty-letter-pressured-president-drop-hirsi-ali">now become known</a>.</p>
<p>The faculty petition is a textbook case of leftist pathology and of how “progressives” demonize true heroic freedom fighters and push millions of victims of totalitarian regimes and ideologies into invisibility for the sake of their own egotistical and destructive agendas.</p>
<p>A case in point in this ugly leftist narrative is how the signatories of the Brandeis petition have succeeded in banning a woman from their university who is the victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), suffered under an Islamic knife because of Islamic doctrine. Ali represents millions of Muslim females &#8212; mutilated and mutilated-to-be. And yet the signatories of the petition are callously indifferent, because they have their progressive program to attend to and fulfill.</p>
<p>The Brandeis faculty petition, written on April 6 and addressed to President Lawrence, stresses “the horrible message” that inviting Ali to the university “sends to the Muslim and non-Muslim communities at Brandeis and beyond” because of Ali’s “virulently anti-Muslim public statements.” Aside from complaining about Ali’s truth-telling about Islam, the petition also issues a dire warning about the “unnecessary controversy” that the human rights activist’s presence would bring to the campus.</p>
<p>To be sure, who needs nightmarish scenarios like debate and intellectual diversity when the Marxist Left has already lovingly bestowed the peaceful Party Line?</p>
<p>The petition then references the major issues with which Ali is concerned: female genital mutilation, forced marriages, and honor killings. “These phenomena,” the petition flippantly notes, are not “exclusive to Islam.” This is a standard and perpetual tactic of obfuscation and equivocation employed by the Left whenever a monstrous evil is labelled in a totalitarian enemy. It serves as an excuse for inaction by presupposing that if a crime is committed by someone else, somewhere else, that it somehow justifies doing and saying nothing in the face of a crime being perpetrated on a mass scale right before our eyes – and one that we can do something about.</p>
<p>In other words, the sordid logic implies that if a sin or an injustice exist somewhere else on the planet, then one must never fight for &#8212; or defend the victims of &#8212; any one ideology or system (unless it is of the Western variety, of course).</p>
<p>Thus, if one dares to show concern for the millions of Muslim girls who are victims of female genital mutilation, the leftist will reflexively retort: “Muslims are not the only group that practice FGM.” But so what? The bottom line is that Muslims are <i>the principal religious group</i> that practices this sexual violence against women. And if a young girl is a victim of FGM, the chances are that she lives in a Muslim household and in a Muslim culture. And this barbarity is kept alive and legitimized by Islamic theology.</p>
<p>The faculty petition to President Lawrence also expresses a deep concern about the fact that Ali has suggested “that violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam or the Two-Thirds World.” This is intolerable (even though completely true) because, according to the petition, it obscures “such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus.”</p>
<p>This is another consistent tactic that the Left engages in to insert its falsehoods into dialogues about oppressed people under monstrous tyrannies. The plain fact staring everyone in the face is that while violence may exist among non-Muslims, their laws and institutions delegitimize and illegalize such conduct. For instance, if a non-Muslim anywhere in the United States, including on a university campus, engages in violence against a woman and the police are called, <i>he will be charged. </i>In Islam, violence against women is inspired and sanctioned <i>by the institutions themselves</i>, precisely because misogyny, including wife beating, <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2012/05/atlas-exclusive-robert-spencer-as-long-as-men-take-the-quran-at-face-value-women-will-be-at-risk.html/">is embedded in the Qur’an</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, non-Muslims who are violent toward women operate <i>despite</i> and <i>against the laws </i>of their lands; Muslims, on the other hand, are violent toward women <i>because of</i> their laws, and that is why they are, in turn, <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2012/05/atlas-exclusive-robert-spencer-as-long-as-men-take-the-quran-at-face-value-women-will-be-at-risk.html/">protected by those laws.</a></p>
<p>Consequently, in terms of female genital mutilation, millions of Muslim girls are victims of this horrifying crime precisely because <a href="http://pamelageller.com/2012/12/devout-muslims-in-indonesia-push-for-female-genital-mutilation.html/">it is fundamentally Islamic</a> and is integral to <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=852" target="_blank">Islam&#8217;s misogynist structures</a>.  It is rooted in Islamic texts such as <em>Umdat al-Salik</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“Circumcision is obligatory (O: for both men and women. For men it consists of removing the prepuce from the penis, and for women, removing the prepuce (Ar. Bazr) of the clitoris.” Sacred Islamic Reliance: page 59<em>, Umdat al-Salik</em>  (“Reliance of the Traveler”), a manual of the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence, endorsed by Egypt’s very own Al-Azhar University of Cairo — the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world.</p></blockquote>
<p>This explains why one of Sunni Islam’s “Four Great Imams,” Ahmad ibn Hanbal, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/uk-66000-women-and-girls-have-undergone-female-genital-mutilation.html" target="_blank">quotes Muhammed</a> as saying: “Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honor for women?” It is no shock, therefore, that <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/01/uk-66000-women-and-girls-have-undergone-female-genital-mutilation.html" target="_blank">Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi</a> of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University has called circumcision “a laudable practice that did honor to women.”</p>
<p>As a result, in Muslim Egypt, like in Indonesia, the crime of FGM is perpetrated on a massive scale <i>because of Islam</i>. Even when the Egyptian government tried to ban FGM back in 1996, an Egyptian court overturned the ban in July 1997 because of the ferocious uprising it sparked among Islamic clerics, who fervently pointed to Islamic teachings to make sure this crime against women remained firmly in place.</p>
<p>The road to saving millions of Muslim girls from this vicious and barbaric Islamic crime is to do what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is bravely doing, and what the signatories of the Brandeis faculty petition are trying to stop her from doing: to isolate and pinpoint Islam as the main culprit in this context.</p>
<p>And so, this recent shameless story of the faculty petition at Brandeis causing the disinvitation of Hirsi Ali is yet another tragic reminder of Islamic cruelty to women and our own culture’s shameful surrender to it. The signatories of the Brandeis faculty petition conclude that they,</p>
<blockquote><p>“cannot accept Ms. Hirsi Ali&#8217;s triumphalist narrative of western civilization, rooted in a core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, multiculturalism must trump women’s rights. As I have documented in<em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/United-Hate-Romance-Tyranny-Terror/dp/1935071602/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1355001093&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=united+in+hate">United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror</a></em>, the Left cannot reach its hand out in compassion and solidarity to the suffering people under Islam, or under any other tyranny, because doing so would be an admission of the evil of an adversary culture and ideology. Doing so would cast a spotlight on the superiority and goodness of Western civilization, and therefore serve as a reminder of the importance of protecting and saving it. For the Left, such a concept is nightmarish and anathema, because the entire purpose of the Left is to revile and destroy its own host society.</p>
<p>For progressives to admit the dark realities of Islamic jihad and Islamic gender apartheid is to jeopardize their entire cause, identities, social belongings, cultural and material rewards, and their narcissistic cravings for approval and admiration in their “progressive” milieus.</p>
<p>The suffering of millions of Muslim women, therefore, must be ignored. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali must be dehumanized and silenced.</p>
<p>This whole sad and tragic issue is ultimately reduced to one basic question that should be asked of all the signatories of the faculty petition to President Lawrence:</p>
<blockquote><p>Theoretically, if you could take time back and save Ayaan Hirsi Ali from female genital mutilation, and in so doing, you would end up saving all the Muslim female victims of genital mutilation, would you do it? All you have to do is name Islam as the cause of this crime, concede that it is a violent religion, and admit that your own host society and civilization are superior.</p></blockquote>
<p>The obvious answer we would get from the signatories to this question unveils the true nature of the leftist agenda; it exposes what the leftist narrative really is: a long frightening horror story of human blood sacrificed on the altar of utopian ideals.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>To get the whole story on why the Left reaches out in solidarity to Islamo-fascists and ignores their victims, watch <strong>Jamie Glazov</strong> discuss Jihad-Denial in the 2-part video series below:</em></p>
<p><strong>Part 1:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/SNJg6w6CB0o" height="360" width="500" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p><strong>Part 2:</strong></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6sBPH589Feo" height="360" width="500" 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>
<p><b>Make sure to </b><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
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		<title>Brandeis University&#8217;s Disgraceful Act</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jeffrey-herf/brandeis-universitys-disgraceful-act/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brandeis-universitys-disgraceful-act</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 14 Apr 2014 04:54:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jeffrey Herf]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Honorary Degree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kushner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[president lawrence]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223408</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Once a proud alumnus, I now disavow my relationship with Brandeis because of its cowardly treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ji.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-223411" alt="ji" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/ji.jpg" width="242" height="208" /></a><em>Below is a letter written to Brandeis president Fred Lawrence by historian Jeffrey Herf, who received his PhD from Brandeis, in regards to Lawrence&#8217;s decision to withdraw the offer of an honor degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Dear President Lawrence:</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">As a scholar whose 1981 PhD comes from Brandeis, I read the news that you rescinded the offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali with particular disgust and anger. Your decision is an act of cowardice and appeasement to those 85 faculty members who signed their document of intolerance, and it has done deep and long-lasting damage to a university whose very existence is predicated on redressing the damage that discrimination within the academy had done to American Jews for so many years. Unless you can find some way to repair the damage you have done, I will not identify with or support Brandeis as long as you are its President.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Ms. Hirsi has had the courage to say unpopular things about the religion of Islam and the ideology of Islamism. In two of my prize-winning books, <em>Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World</em> (Yale University Press, 2009) and <em>The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust</em> (Harvard University Press, 2006), I have had occasion to address the role of Islam and Islamism in fanning the flames of Jew-hatred. In publishing work that documents the role of the Islamist interpretation of the Koran in promulgating the most absurd and idiotic ideas about the Jews, I have faced intolerance from scholars working on the Middle East. They have denounced well-founded scholarship as “Islamophobia” or “Zionist propaganda” and denied that the Koran or Islamism could possibly have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Like Tony Kushner and Desmond Tutu, to whom Brandeis has given honorary degrees, they have erroneously argued that Arab and Islamist antagonism to Israel is exclusively the result of the alleged sins of Israel. As far as I know, neither has had anything of substance to say about the role of Islam and Islamism in fanning the flames of hatred of the Jews and of Israel. These critics have said that those of us who point to the anti-Jewish elements of the Koran and the Jew-hatred of modern Islamists are guilty of intolerance towards Muslims. I have seen this up close for years now. The last place I expected to find groveling, embarrassing appeasement of this rubbish was from the president of Brandeis University.</p>
<p>No doubt, Hirsi’s comments about Islam offend many believers. The same was true of Sigmund Freud’s <em>Future of an Illusion</em>. Freud, you will recall, dismissed religion as the product of a universal infantile neurosis of humanity. Yet I doubt that if Freud were alive today, those 85 faculty members would have protested his honorary degree. On the contrary, his criticism of religion in general, especially of Judaism or Christianity, would be seen as simply an entry ticket into intellectual respectability.</p>
<p>Your decision reflects a now-widespread double standard of broad criticism of Judaism and Christianity combined with fear—yes it is fear—to write and speak with equal critical spirit about Islam. We historians of modern Germany and Nazism know that the Nazi interpretation of Christianity as well as the core texts of the Christian tradition itself, were used by the Nazis to justify their mass murders. In our own time, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brothers, Al Qaeda and the government of Iran, despite their differences, all draw on phrases from the Koran and in the texts of subsequent Islamic commentaries to find theological justification for antagonism to Jews, Zionism and the state of Israel.</p>
<p>Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been willing  to point this out, something Kushner and Tutu have never done. That the president of a university founded by Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust should have rescinded an honor to a woman who has had the courage to attack the most important source of Jew-hatred in the world today is a disgraceful act and a failure of leadership. Instead of appeasing intolerance in your faculty, you should have taken this moment to reaffirm the values for which Brandeis has stood for so long and reconfirm the place of universities as models of tolerance and enlightenment in our troubled society. Once a proud alumnus, I will be forced to disavow my relationship with Brandeis in the future.</p>
<p>Sincerely,</p>
<p>Jeffrey Herf</p>
<p>Professor, Department of History<br />
University of Maryland<br />
College Park</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss this week&#8217;s episode of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang">The Glazov Gang</a> in which <a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100007479062157" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=100007479062157&amp;extragetparams=%7B%22directed_target_id%22%3A0%7D">Dr. David Wood</a> discusses <strong>Brandeis&#8217; Surrender to the Brotherhood on Ayaan Hirsi Ali</strong> and takes us behind the scenes of a university&#8217;s shameless surrender to Sharia:</em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NeM18AWOi08" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe><em></em></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><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>American Atheists President: &#8220;Brandeis has Caved to Religious Intolerance Masquerading as Political Correctness&#8221;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/american-atheists-president-brandeis-has-caved-to-religious-intolerance-masquerading-as-political-correctness/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=american-atheists-president-brandeis-has-caved-to-religious-intolerance-masquerading-as-political-correctness</link>
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		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2014 13:07:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[brandeis university]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223325</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[" No worldview, political position, and certainly no religion is above criticism."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-005.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-223326" alt="Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-005" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali-005-450x270.jpg" width="450" height="270" /></a></p>
<p>American Atheists President David Silverman <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/atheist-leader-david-silverman-drops-support-for-brandeis-university-over-ayaan-hirsi-ali-controversy-117778/">has written a letter blasting Brandeis </a>for banning ex-Muslim feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali under pressure from Islamist groups such as CAIR and the Muslim Students Association.</p>
<blockquote><p>Ms. Hirsi Ali is not “hateful” as some have claimed, nor does she promote violence. She is an eloquent spokesperson for the millions of women and children worldwide who live under the tyrannical thumb of Islam, as she did as a child. She speaks out in defense of justice, equality, and freedom of expression for all people. She speaks for me.</p>
<p>My education at Brandeis has, in no small way, allowed me to rise to the position of president of American Atheists. My job, and indeed my reason for waking up in the morning, is to fight for the rights of those whose voices too often go unheard in the forum of public debate. Those whose most basic freedoms are crushed by theocratic regimes throughout the world.</p>
<p>Addressing some of the most fundamental questions about human rights, particularly the rights of self-determination and free expression, is complex and difficult. When entrenched religious beliefs are used to justify cruel, immoral actions against hundreds of millions of people, we have an obligation to speak out. The criticism of religious beliefs has, in recent years, become taboo for some. This taboo, perhaps, has grown as a result of the privilege we have to live in places where diversity and the agency of individuals is paramount. Ms. Hirsi Ali’s experiences, however, are different.</p>
<p>Her background allows her to speak with clarity about one of the most challenging questions of our time: whether a robust commitment to equality, diversity, dialogue, and social justice is possible when we look the other way when confronted with the realities of Islamic extremism.</p>
<p>What you have done to Ms. Hirsi Ali is rob her of such an opportunity. You have robbed her of the opportunity to speak to Brandeis students about her lived experiences as a child in Somalia and Kenya. You have ended the “dialogue about these important issues” before it has even begun.</p></blockquote>
<p>Silverman then adds that as a former student, he is cutting ties with his old alma mater.</p>
<blockquote><p>Today, you have done nothing to “safeguard the safety, dignity, and well-being” of the members of our global community. You have only prevented a powerful voice for such action from being heard by your students. And you have done so in perhaps the most cowardly and dishonorable ways possible.</p>
<p>For the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my association with Brandeis University. Accordingly, I am withdrawing my membership in the Alumni Association, ending financial support of the University, and encouraging others to do the same.</p>
<p>I question whether Brandeis is still a place in which all ideas are open for discussion. No worldview, political position, and certainly no religion is above criticism. I will encourage students who value activism, diversity, and freedom of expression to choose educational opportunities other than Brandeis. Until Ms. Hirsi Ali receives an apology from the University, I will continue to question your professed commitment to these values.</p></blockquote>
<p>American atheists have tended to be quieter than their European counterparts in defense of secularism against Islamization. At least at the organizational level. Maybe this is a sign that things are changing.</p>
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		<title>Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Brandeis&#8217; Double Standards</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-brandeis-double-standards/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ayaan-hirsi-ali-and-brandeis-double-standards</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2014 04:56:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Desmond Tutu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Honorary Degree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rescind]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tony kushner]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223153</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A heroic defender of oppressed Muslim women is persona non grata; but pernicious anti-Semites get the red carpet. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ajan-Hirsi-Ali-00000185171.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223155" alt="Ajan-Hirsi-Ali-00000185171" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ajan-Hirsi-Ali-00000185171-316x350.jpg" width="221" height="245" /></a></span>In a pusillanimous capitulation to the jackboot enforcers of political correctness, Brandeis University President Fred Lawrence <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/04/09/brandeis-university-withdraws-planned-honorary-degree-for-islam-critic-ayaan/">announced</a> Tuesday that an honorary degree to be awarded to woman&#8217;s rights champion Ayaan Hirsi Ali at this year’s commencement has been rescinded. &#8220;She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women&#8217;s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world,&#8221; said the university in a <a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2014/april/commencementupdate.html">prepared release</a> on its website. &#8220;That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University&#8217;s core values.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Brandeis’s core values are apparently bankrupt. Ali has been a fierce critic of Islam and its mistreatment of women, which she experienced firsthand. Born in Mogadishu, Somalia and raised in a strict Muslim family, Ali </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://hosted2.ap.org/NMALJ/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2014-04-09-Brandeis-Islam%20Critic/id-0de6719df7094a4ba4c9635fcd38f1b6">endured</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a civil war, genital mutilation and other indignities before escaping to the Netherlands in 1992 to avoid an arranged marriage to a relative. Once there she learned the language and established a new life that included a stint as a member of the Dutch parliament. Much of her work in that country was devoted to helping non-Western immigrants assimilate into Dutch society.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Hirsi Ali made waves when, as part of her efforts to promote women’s rights, she teamed up with friend and film-maker Theo Van Gogh to make the movie “Submission,” which depicted the oppression of women under Islam. Following the showing of the film on Dutch television, both Ali and Van Gogh received death threats over the Internet. On Nov. 2, 2004, Van Gogh was </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.salon.com/2004/11/24/vangogh_2/">murdered</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, shot and then stabbed several times by 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, who pinned a letter to Van Gogh’s chest.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The letter was addressed, not to Van Gogh but to Ali, calling her an “infidel fundamentalist” who “terrorizes Islam” and “marches with the soldiers of evil.” It further stated that her “hostilities,” had “unleashed a boomerang and it’s just a matter of time before this boomerang will seal your destiny.” In capital letters it said: “AYAAN HIRSI ALI, YOU WILL SMASH YOURSELF ON ISLAM!”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Shortly thereafter, Ali fled to the United States. In her book “Infidel,” she explained why. “I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and emancipation. &#8230; I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values,” she wrote.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As far as Brandeis is concerned, those fundamental values take a back seat to the values of those who invariably demonstrate that declarations of diversity, tolerance and understanding are nothing more than empty rhetoric. Bernadette Brooten, a Brandeis professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department, epitomizes such hypocrisy. She used her </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/bernadette.brooten">Facebook page</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to denounce Ali, noting that she is “deeply saddened by all that this selection has meant for Muslim students, faculty and staff at Brandeis, and for your non-Muslim allies.” Brooten further notes that a group of 86 faculty members signed a letter sent to Lawrence, “asking him to rescind the invitation.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Aside from the phoniness, the move to rescind Ali’s honorary degree reeks of a blatant double-standard. Brandeis honored Desmond Tutu who, despite his good work on South Africa’s behalf, was an </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1742/bishop-tutu-is-no-saint-when-it-comes-to-jews">overt anti-Semite</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.  He asserted that the Holocaust’s gas chambers made for &#8220;a neater death&#8221; than did Apartheid, regularly accuses the Jewish State of ethnic cleansing, and insists that Zionism has &#8220;very many parallels with racism.” Playwright Tony Kushner was also honored, despite his equally </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/09/brandeis-universitys-double-standard/">overt contempt</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for Israel. He also accused the Jewish State of ethnic cleansing, and insisted its creation “was a mistake.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Tellingly, both men received honorary degrees despite the reality that Brandeis is a Jewish-sponsored university with historically close ties to Israel. Moreover its namesake, Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis, led the American Zionist movement. Yet when Kushner’s nomination generated controversy, former Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz stood against it:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Brandeis bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Over the years, Brandeis has honored hundreds of men and women of distinction whose personal views, I am sure, span the full spectrum of political discourse, and the University applies no litmus test requiring honorary degree recipients to hold particular views on Israel or topics of current political debate.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Mr. Kushner is not being honored because he is a Jew, and he is not being honored for his political opinions. Brandeis is honoring him for his extraordinary achievements as one of this generation&#8217;s foremost playwrights, whose work is recognized in the arts and also addresses Brandeis&#8217;s commitment to social justice.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">TruthRevolt&#8217;s Daniel Mael, a Brandeis student, wondered why the same standard wasn’t being applied to Ali. &#8220;Hirsi Ali was not being honored for her views on Islam,” he explained. &#8220;She was being honored for her commitment to women&#8217;s rights and real justice. I am appalled by the hypocrisy of the University administration and their inability to distinguish between her view on Islam and her efforts in this world. This highlights their shallow commitment to &#8216;Truth, even unto it&#8217;s inner most parts&#8217; which has been replaced with the empty buzzword &#8216;social justice.’&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The university has gone silent in the wake of the controversy and has refused to offer any specific justification for its decision. </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;We won’t be making any statements in addition to the one we published on our website,” </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ellen De Graffenreid, Senior Vice President for Communications, told FrontPage. Relevant parties are apparently under </span>strict gag orders by the university. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">President Lawrence, the Board of Trustees, and members of the c</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">ommittee that awards honorary degrees would not respond to </span>requests for comments. <span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><br />
</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A statement from Hirsi Ali released late Wednesday reveals that Brandeis was also dishonest in its explanation to the public about its decision.  In its initial press release, the university claimed they &#8220;discussed&#8221; the situation with her before making the decision. Hirsi Ali </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/ayaan-hirsi-ali-speaks_786719.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&amp;utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&amp;utm_medium=referral">says</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> otherwise. &#8220;I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision,” she revealed. &#8220;On the contrary, I was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me—just a few hours before issuing a public statement—to say that such a decision had been made.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Supporters have rallied to Hirsi Ali&#8217;s defense, with watchdog group TruthRevolt announcing a <a href="http://www.truthrevolt.org/petition/fight-anti-free-speech-pc-brandeis-university">petition</a> drive to voice dissent against the decision. Correspondent for the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Jewish Press</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Lori Lowenthal Marcus characterized the move as a &#8220;complete collapse of rectitude&#8221; and said that the students who campaigned against her acted acted &#8220;chillingly.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Faculty member Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter sent to President Lawrence, insisting that Brandeis ought to honer &#8220;such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women&#8217;s rights, who has put her life at risk for those values.” He was echoed by Bernard Macy, a 1979 Brandeis graduate. Macy had sent an email to Lawrence and other faculty members to thank them &#8220;for recognizing Ayaan Hirsi Ali for defending Muslim women against Islamist honor violence.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Regardless, the voices of reason and </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">genuine</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> tolerance have been overwhelmed. As part of the aforementioned statement rescinding Ali’s honorary degree, the university attempted to cover itself. &#8220;In the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis University throughout its history, Ms. Hirsi Ali is welcome to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.” it stated.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ali refuses to play the game. “Sadly, in words and deeds, the university has already spoken its piece. I have no wish to &#8216;engage&#8217; in such one-sided dialogue. I can only wish the Class of 2014 the best of luck—and hope that they will go forth to be better advocates for free expression and free thought than their alma mater.&#8221;</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Once again, a university has shamefully surrendered to a mob of tolerance totalitarians. No one illuminates this travesty better than Ayaan Hirsi Ali herself:</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles. The &#8216;spirit of free expression&#8217; referred to in the Brandeis statement has been stifled here, as my critics have achieved their objective of preventing me from addressing the graduating Class of 2014. Neither Brandeis nor my critics knew or even inquired as to what I might say. They simply wanted me to be silenced. I regret that very much.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" 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"><b>Click here</b></a><b style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</b></p>
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		<title>Forgetting Freedom at Passover</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/forgetting-freedom-at-passover/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=forgetting-freedom-at-passover</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2014 04:53:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BDS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brendan Eich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mozilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[passover]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tyranny]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223273</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What the Jewish community should learn from the attacks on Brendan Eich and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/passover.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223280" alt="passover" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/passover-450x300.jpg" width="315" height="210" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-Forgetting-freedom-at-Passover-348232">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p>Passover, which begins on Monday night, is the festival of freedom.</p>
<p>The holiday reminds us of the brutal enslavement of the Jews by Pharaoh and the Egyptians. We recall their midnight flight from Egypt, pursued by the mighty Egyptian army, and God’s miraculous rescue of the Jews at the shores of the Red Sea. We remember how Moses led them for 40 years in the desert, and taught them what it means to be a nation, and what it means to be free.</p>
<p>We repeat the story of enslavement, flight, redemption and freedom each year at Passover, because our sages wanted to ensure that we never forget the value of freedom, and remain vigilant in our fight for it. In Israel, where our freedom is physically threatened, most Jews understand and live by the lessons of Passover.</p>
<p>But something is happening to the Jews in America.</p>
<p>More and more, every day we see American Jews embracing intellectual bondage. We see American Jewish leaders embracing the intolerant, who seek to constrain freedom, and shunning those who fight for freedom and the rights of Jews and other threatened peoples and groups.</p>
<p>To a large degree, this rejection of the lessons of the Exodus among the American Jewish community reflects the growing intolerance and tyranny of the political Left, to which most American Jews pledge their allegiance.</p>
<p>With increasing frequency, leftist groups and leaders in the US are openly acting to deny freedom of expression to their political and ideological foes, and to destroy the lives of people who oppose their dogma.</p>
<p>For instance, last week we saw the growing tyranny of gay activists. Under assault from homosexual thought police, the Mozilla Corporation of Firefox browser fame fired its CEO Brendan Eich because he once contributed $1,000 to a campaign to block the legalization of homosexual marriage in California.</p>
<p>Eich’s firing was only the latest assault by gay rights bullies on private citizens who oppose their goals.</p>
<p>The aim of these assaults is to silence all opposition to their agenda using the tools of social ostracism and intellectual terror.</p>
<p>Young Americans now embrace intellectual and social tyranny in the name of “liberal” values. In an op-ed in The Harvard Crimson, undergraduate Sandra Korn celebrated the eclipse of academic freedom in favor of what she called “justice.” Korn called for censoring conservative voices for their “offensive” views.</p>
<p>She also embraced the anti-Jewish hate movement popularly known as BDS (boycotts, divestments and sanctions of the Jewish state) as a good way to promote “justice” at the expense of freedom.</p>
<p>In Korn’s conflation of conservative voices with Zionist voices and insistence on delegitimizing and silencing both due to the “offense” they cause to “right thinking” thought enforcers like herself we see the central role that Jew hatred and the denial of Jewish freedom plays in the new wave of mass rejection of reason in favor of passions and hatred.</p>
<p>Sadly, many parts of the organized American Jewish community have embraced leftist tyranny and discrimination.</p>
<p>In 2008, the New York UJA-Federation teamed up with the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and forced the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations to disinvite then-US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin from addressing a rally opposing then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he addressed the UN General Assembly.</p>
<p>To ensure that Palin would be denied the right to speak, the New York UJA-Federation and the JCPA threatened that her appearance would jeopardize the tax exempt status of the Conference of Presidents and other major Jewish organizations.</p>
<p>It may very well be that this threat was the first instance of leftists threatening prejudicial IRS investigations against their political foes as a means of ensuring obedience to their agenda.</p>
<p>The Palin affair was a rarity in the community. This isn’t because voices of staunch Zionists are usually accepted. Rather it is because such voices are ignored and shunned as a general practice by the major American Jewish organizations, in New York and elsewhere.</p>
<p>Palin’s invitation was an oversight.</p>
<p>While fervent Zionists are silenced, post-Zionists and anti-Zionists are legitimized and staunchly defended.</p>
<p>Six years after Palin was brutally disinvited, in the name of cultivating a “wide tent,” the same New York UJA-Federation and JCPA invited anti-Israel organizations that support the boycott of Jewish Israeli businesses to take part in the annual pro-Israel parade.</p>
<p>Three such organizations, Partners for a Progressive Israel, the New Israel Fund and B’Tselem all call for a boycott of Jewish businesses operating beyond the 1949 armistice lines. All three groups have played roles in mainstreaming the BDS movement.</p>
<p>In Israel, the public understands that boycotts are about mainstreaming hatred and bigotry just as much as they are about economic strangulation. That is why in 2011 the Knesset passed the anti-boycott law which allows all Israeli entities to sue groups calling for boycotts against them for civil damages, and bars such groups from participating in state tenders.</p>
<p>But in the American Jewish community, these groups are defended and legitimized.</p>
<p>Disgusted at their community leadership’s double standard of tolerance and support for foes of Israel and intolerance for supporters of Israel, a consortium of organizations and synagogues organized a protest against the inclusion of anti-Israel organizations in the Israel Day Parade.</p>
<p>After weeks of protests in the press and on social media sites, on Tuesday some 200 people demonstrated outside the UJA-Federation building in New York and demanded that the boycott supporters and abettors be shunned.</p>
<p>It was an important act of defiance.</p>
<p>The group includes such stalwart organizations as Americans for a Safe Israel, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, JCC Watch, the National Conference on Jewish Affairs, and the National Council of Young Israel.</p>
<p>These groups have joined together in the past to protest against UJA-Federation funding of institutions such as the 92nd Street Y and the New York JCC, which have provided platforms for Jew-haters and BDS supporters.</p>
<p>Their protest was vital. It would be a tragedy if the thuggish behavior of the Jewish community leaders went unopposed. But it is hard to see how the protesters can change the situation.</p>
<p>The rot runs deep.</p>
<p>Consider Brandeis University’s craven and intolerant administration.</p>
<p>Brandeis was founded as a traditionally Jewish university in 1948, the year that Israel was established.</p>
<p>But whereas Israel has remained faithful to its sovereign duty to cultivate and defend Jewish freedom and engender a liberal democracy, over the years, Brandeis has largely abandoned its mission of standing up to intolerance, and protecting Jewish rights and those of other threatened groups.</p>
<p>Case in point is its obscene treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.</p>
<p>Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim who suffered genital mutilation as a child in Somalia and at age 21 fled to Holland to avoid a forced marriage.</p>
<p>After liberating herself, Hirsi Ali could have settled into a quiet European life. Instead, she dedicated her life to championing the rights of women and girls in Islamic societies.</p>
<p>For the past decade, Hirsi Ali has lived under an Islamic death sentence for her work. She can go nowhere without bodyguards.</p>
<p>In 2006, despite her membership in the Dutch parliament, Hirsi Ali was forced to flee to the US, when the Dutch government refused to continue to protect her.</p>
<p>In the US, as in Holland, she continues to campaign for the rights of women and girls in Islamic society.</p>
<p>Most recently, she was the executive producer of a new documentary film called Honor Diaries, which describes the plight of Muslim women and girls living in societies where they risk murder at the hands of their family members if they refuse to live in abject humiliation and submission to the misogyny of Islamic law.</p>
<p>Several months ago, Brandeis offered to confer an honorary doctorate on Hirsi Ali for her work on behalf of women and girls.</p>
<p>When the leftist and Muslim thought police in the Brandeis student body and faculty got wind of the university’s plan to honor her, they joined forces with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to force the administration to cancel the honorary degree.</p>
<p>CAIR claims to be a Muslim civil rights group. And yet, the group that purports to care about the civil rights of Muslims is waging a nationwide campaign to bar screenings of Honor Diaries, at universities around the country.</p>
<p>When Fox News’s intrepid host Megyn Kelly asked CAIR leaders this week how they can object to a film that seeks to help Muslims, they said they don’t have a problem with its content. They object to the fact that it was produced by Jews (also known as “Islamophobes”).</p>
<p>Far from being a civil rights group, CAIR is a pro- Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood organization. It was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas financing trial against the Holyland Foundation.</p>
<p>And yet, on Wednesday, Brandeis sided with CAIR and the thought police, against Hirsi Ali. Brandeis canceled its plan to confer its honorary doctorate on her.</p>
<p>And just as is the case with the New York UJA-Federation and the JCPA, Brandeis has no problem with double standard. As Daniel Mael, a Brandeis senior, noted in an interview with Andrew Breitbart, in 2006 Brandeis conferred an honorary degree on playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, the outspoken foe of Israel. Kushner has claimed that Israel’s establishment was a “mistake,” and that “it would have been better if Israel never happened.” His work, particularly the film Munich, is replete with demonization of Israel and of the notion of Jewish power.</p>
<p>Mael noted that at the time, then-Brandeis president Jehuda Reinhartz defended his decision to honor Kushner by arguing, “Mr. Kushner is not being honored because he is a Jew, and he is not being honored for his political opinions. Brandeis is honoring him for his extraordinary achievements as one of this generation’s foremost playwrights, whose work is recognized in the arts and also addresses Brandeis’s commitment to social justice.”</p>
<p>In other words, Brandeis’s commitment to “social justice” involves shunning defenders of Muslim women and girls and celebrating foes of the Jewish state, which ensures Jewish freedom.</p>
<p>The work of activists like Mael, and of the trenchant demonstrators in New York is extremely important. But it is hard to be optimistic about the future freedom of America in general or of the Jewish community. Aside from the National Council of Young Israel, no major American Jewish organization agreed to sponsor the protesters’ call for pro-BDS groups to be disinvited from the Israel Parade.</p>
<p>When the leaders of the Jewish American community – like their fellow leftists – side with forces of intolerance and discrimination and against Israel’s stalwart defenders and opponents of the oppression endemic in Islamic societies, it does not bode well for the future.</p>
<p>It is my holiday prayer that on Monday night, they will remember that Passover is not about eating matza. It is about the price of freedom, and why that price is worth paying.</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>Video: CAIR Reacts to Brandeis&#8217; Plan to Honor Ayaan Hirsi Ali</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/video-cair-reacts-to-brandeis-plan-to-honor-ayaan-hirsi-ali/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=video-cair-reacts-to-brandeis-plan-to-honor-ayaan-hirsi-ali</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Apr 2014 04:51:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Frontpagemag.com]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim brotherhood]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sharia]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223221</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new parody depicts CAIR's "strategy session" to intimidate Brandeis. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/fgh.gif"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223222" alt="fgh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/fgh-450x295.gif" width="315" height="207" /></a>Brandeis University recently announced that it would be honoring women&#8217;s rights advocate Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), however, despises Ali for her truth-telling about Sharia and Jihad. It therefore intimidated Brandeis and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/brandeis-caves-to-islamic-supremacist-thuggery/">the university surrendered to Sharia </a>and cancelled its plan to honor Ali.</p>
<p>The following parody, created by David Wood at <a href="http://www.answeringmuslims.com/">AnsweringMuslims.com</a>, provides video footage of CAIR&#8217;s &#8220;strategy session&#8221; to bully Brandeis at one of its recent banquets:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/q66YEncApMI" height="315" width="500" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
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		<title>Brandeis Caves to Islamic Supremacist Thuggery</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/brandeis-caves-to-islamic-supremacist-thuggery/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=brandeis-caves-to-islamic-supremacist-thuggery</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2014 04:55:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CAIR]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Honorary Degree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamophobia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[rescinded]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223096</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hamas-linked CAIR's hate campaign against a courageous champion of women's rights. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223098" alt="Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali.jpg" width="344" height="212" /></a></span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Brandeis University had planned to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali at its commencement ceremony this year, but after a smear campaign led by the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Islamic supremacist groups, on Tuesday the university issued </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2014/april/commencementupdate.html">a statement</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> announcing the predictable result: the honorary degree would not be given.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis assured the world, “is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world.” However, as compelling as Brandeis may have considered that work, ultimately it didn’t matter: “That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.  For all concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.”</span></p>
<p>The Brandeis statement did not mention CAIR, and probably university administrators are unaware of its Hamas ties or its record of opposing any and all counter-terror efforts. Nor did the statement specify exactly what in Hirsi Ali’s past statements was “inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” CAIR, however, did so in its <a title="" href="http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=38145946-fd98-40b5-8e6f-fedef8a27949&amp;c=e8768710-b6b3-11e3-af02-d4ae5284205e&amp;ch=e97113b0-b6b3-11e3-afb7-d4ae5284205e" target="_blank">press release</a> (also issued Tuesday; Brandeis snapped into line quickly) which quoted Hirsi Ali from <a title="" href="http://reason.com/archives/2007/10/10/the-trouble-is-the-west/print" target="_blank">a 2007 interview</a> saying: “I think that we are at war with Islam.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ironically, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/632/cair-portrays-war-on-terrorism-as-malicious-war-on-islam">CAIR spokesmen have said the same thing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">: “The new perception is that the United States has entered a war with Islam itself,&#8221; said then-CAIR Board Chairman Parvez Ahmed in July 2007. The only difference is that Hirsi Ali and CAIR are on opposite sides of this war. Is it unacceptable at Brandeis, a contradiction of its core values, to oppose the global jihad? Apparently so.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In the same interview, Hirsi Ali also called for the closing of Islamic schools in the United States. While that is indeed a severe and questionable recommendation, it should be remembered that Ayaan Hirsi Ali attended Islamic schools in her native Somalia. She no doubt also has seen the reports from all over the world showing hatred and violence being taught in all too many Islamic schools. In that same interview she said: “Asking whether radical preachers ought to be allowed to operate is not hostile to the idea of civil liberties; it’s an attempt to save civil liberties. A nation like this one is based on civil liberties, and we shouldn’t allow any serious threat to them. So Muslim schools in the West, some of which are institutions of fascism that teach innocent kids that Jews are pigs and monkeys—I would say in order to </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">preserve</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> civil liberties, don’t allow such schools.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Is calling for the schools that teach hatred and contempt of an entire group of people against the core values of Brandeis University? Apparently it is.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">CAIR’s press release also smeared Hirsi Ali with the Norwegian neo-Nazi mass murderer whose </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/01/robert-spencer-in-frontpage-mag-english-language-media-ignores-breiviks-coming-out-as-a-nazi">false-flag operation of associating himself with counter-jihadists</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> has proved so useful for Islamic supremacists: “In her acceptance speech for the Axel Springer Award, Ali seemed to express sympathy for mass murderer Anders Breivik, who included her writings in his manifesto.” In reality, in </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.citizentimes.eu/2012/05/11/the-advocates-of-silence/">that speech</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> Hirsi Ali referred to “the neo-fascism of a Breivik” as “abhorrent” and noted that Breivik “may have cited the work of those who speak and write against political Islam in Europe and America – myself among them – but he does not say in his 1500 page manifesto that it was these people who inspired him to kill.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">CAIR, however, has never cared to report the facts accurately and fairly. All it wants is to shut down any and every individual who opposes jihad terror and Islamic supremacism, in any venue. Generously funded and well-staffed, it pounces on anyone and everyone who dares raise a critical word against jihad terror, and mounts a smear campaign intending to get the Islamocritical speaker canceled and discredited.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In acceding to these smear campaigns, event organizers and – in this case, Brandeis University administrators – apparently make no attempt, even a simple Google search, to discover the intentions of the people behind the campaign. They appear indifferent to CAIR’s unsavory connections or its advice to Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. The organization’s own claims that it is merely a civil rights organization are accepted uncritically and without examination. As I show in my new book </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1621572048"><i>Arab Winter Comes to America</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, CAIR routinely blindsides officials and places on the defensive by its attacks, and so simply to avoid controversy they usually gave the “civil rights group” what it wants: the cancellation, demonization and marginalization of every speaker who is remotely critical of Islam.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The cancellation of Hirsi Ali at Brandeis demonstrates yet again that there is </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">no one</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> who opposes jihad terror who is acceptable to CAIR and its allies. </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/islamophobiareport2009-2010.pdf">A report on Islamophobia in the U.S.</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that CAIR produced in conjunction with the Center for Race &amp; Gender at the University of California, Berkeley in 2011 stated: </span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">“It is not appropriate to label all, or even the majority of those, who question Islam and Muslims as Islamophobes. Equally, it is not Islamophobic to denounce crimes committed by individual Muslims or those claiming Islam as a motivation for their actions. ‘A critical study of Islam or Muslims is not Islamophobic,’ former CAIR Research Director Mohamed Nimer wrote in 2007. ‘Likewise, a disapproving analysis of American history and government is not anti-American&#8230; One can disagree with Islam or with what some Muslims do without having to be hateful.’”</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">These were empty words. The report offered no examples of what it would consider to be acceptable and legitimate criticism of Islam and jihad, and neither CAIR nor the University of California Center for Race &amp; Gender have ever done so anywhere else. Nor has any other Leftist or Muslim group. In reality, anyone and everyone who dares to oppose jihad and Islamic supremacism will become a target for a CAIR smear campaign. The real agenda of Islamic supremacist groups in the United States is clearly not to distinguish legitimate resistance to jihad from bigotry and hatred, but to stigmatize all resistance to jihad as bigotry and hatred, and clear away all obstacles to the advance of that jihad.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And they have made great headway, stigmatizing resistance to jihad in the eyes of large segments of the general public, and even of government and law enforcement officials, as “bigotry.” Yet while it has become generally accepted that standing up to jihad terror is “bigotry,” no one has ever clearly explained why. A highly tendentious and politically manipulative perspective has been foisted upon the American people as accepted wisdom, in which opponents of jihad terror are cast as bigots and efforts increased to rule their perspective altogether out of the realm of acceptable public discourse.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The one certain result of this will be more jihad terror in the U.S. – some of it emanating from hate-preaching Islamic schools that Ayaan Hirsi Ali so heinously suggested should be closed.</span></p>
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		<title>An Open Letter to Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/jay-bergman/an-open-letter-to-brandeis-president-frederick-lawrence/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-open-letter-to-brandeis-president-frederick-lawrence</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Apr 2014 04:50:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jay Bergman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayaan hirsi ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brandeis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[criticism]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=223082</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With Brandeis' shameful shunning of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I am ashamed to call the university my alma mater. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/shapeimage_1.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-223089" alt="shapeimage_1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/shapeimage_1-450x346.png" width="315" height="242" /></a>Frederick Lawrence</strong><br />
<strong> President</strong><br />
<strong> Brandeis University</strong><br />
<strong></strong><strong>Waltham, Massachusetts</strong></p>
<p>Dear President Lawrence:</p>
<p>The decision of Brandeis University not to award an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, after first announcing that it would do so, is disgraceful.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The cowardice it reflects contrasts sharply with the courage Ms. Ali has shown in condemning aspects of Islam that she rightly considers cruel, bigoted, and misogynistic, and for which she has suffered grievously.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is yet another example of how arrogant, closed-minded faculty, and students who believe they can prohibit anything on campus that makes them uncomfortable, can intimidate administrators such as yourself to the point where one of the principles essential to higher education &#8212; a tolerance of opinions with which one disagrees &#8212; is dispensed with in the name of preserving &#8220;a welcoming environment.&#8221;  But the very essence of education is being challenged intellectually, and if students cannot endure the discomfort that that often induces, they have no business attending a college or university.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">You say that you are withdrawing the award because Ms. Hirsi Ali&#8217;s views violate what you call &#8220;the core values&#8221; of the university.  But Brandeis saw nothing wrong in awarding an honorary degree to Tony Kushner, who has called the creation of the state of Israel a mistake and falsely accused it of ethnic cleansing; and to Desmond Tutu, an anti-semitic bigot who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany.  From this one could reasonably conclude &#8212; since Tutu&#8217;s anti-semitism did not cause Brandeis to refrain from awarding him a degree &#8212; that anti-semitism is either one of the core values of your university or is not inconsistent with these values.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">It is clear that at Brandeis University Israel can be smeared and those who do so are rewarded, but someone who properly criticizes Islam is unfairly attacked and dishonored.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In short, you have made the sorry record the university has compiled in awarding honorary degrees even worse.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And what makes your shameful capitulation especially regrettable to me is that I am an alumnus of Brandeis University, class of 1970.  Your university is my university.  And right now I am ashamed to call it my alma mater.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sincerely,</span></p>
<p>Jay Bergman<br />
Professor of History<br />
Central Connecticut State University<br />
New Britain, CT 06050</p>
<p>P.S. For your edification I include below the excellent article by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, an alumna of Brandeis, in today&#8217;s Jewish Press, and an article by Toby Young in today&#8217;s Telegraph, published in England and subtitled, appropriately:  &#8220;Cowardly Brandeis University Capitulates to Islamist Pressure.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;-</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/brandeis-caves-to-pressure-withdraws-honor-to-ayaan-hirsi-ali/2014/04/09/">Brandeis Caves to Pressure.  Withdraws Honor to Ayaan Hirsi Ali The Jewish Press</a> (April 9, 2014)</span></p>
<p>by Lori Lowenthal Marcus</p>
<p>In a complete collapse of rectitude, Brandeis University&#8217;s president Fred Lawrence issued a statement on Tuesday evening, April 8, announcing the withdrawal of women&#8217;s and human rights champion Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a recipient of an honorary degree from the school at this year&#8217;s commencement.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">For two days Muslim students and supporters raged against the decision to honor Ali because, they claimed, she is Islampohobic.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia. In 1992 she escaped an impending arranged marriage to a relative, running to the Netherlands, where she learned the language and established a life. She rose to become a member of the Dutch parliament, where she worked to further the integration of non-Western immigrants into Dutch society.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In 2004, Ali made a film with her friend, Theo Van Gogh. That film, &#8220;Submission,&#8221; is about the oppression of women in conservative Islamic cultures.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After &#8220;Submission&#8221; was aired on Dutch television, an Islamic extremist murdered Van Gogh who was enraged by the portrayal of Islam.  A letter pinned to his body contained a death threat to Ali. She eventually fled Holland and Ayaan Hirsi Ali now lives in the United States.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ali evolved from being a devout Muslim to one who questioned her faith, to ultimately and resolutely rejecting it.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values.&#8221; That is a quote from Ali&#8217;s book, &#8220;Infidel.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Ali has been extremely and indeed harshly critical of the Islamic world in which she suffered, both as a child in Africa, and also as a hunted creature, in Holland, from the angry immigrants who brought with them to Europe a profound inability to accept criticism of Islam.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And now, here in America, Ali is still being hounded by those who refuse to live by the standards of the West, of tolerance, of robust confrontations, but ones not knife-edged with intimidation.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Facebook Page denouncing Ali and the decision to honor her at Brandeis&#8217;s 2014 Commencement decried her for her &#8220;hate speech.&#8221; The Muslim Students Association claimed that honoring her &#8220;is a direct violation of Brandeis University&#8217;s own moral code as well as the rights of all Brandeis students.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Most chillingly, while the students acknowledged Ali had experienced &#8220;terrible things in her life,&#8221; their bottom line was &#8220;we will not tolerate an attack at our faith.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>And so they issued a fatwa: the invitation to Ali had to be rescinded. The school newspaper, The Justice (yes, the irony!) ran both a &#8220;news article&#8221; and an editorial denouncing the decision to give Ali an honorary degree.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Brandeis University president Fred Lawrence echoed the students (and a large number of faculty members, including the Women&#8217;s Studies professors) in his statement:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Following a discussion today between President Frederick Lawrence and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ms. Hirsi Ali&#8217;s name has been withdrawn as an honorary degree recipient at this year&#8217;s commencement. She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women&#8217;s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University&#8217;s core values.  For all concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.</span></em></p>
<p><em><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Commencement is about celebrating and honoring our extraordinary students and their accomplishments, and we are committed to providing an atmosphere that allows our community&#8217;s focus to be squarely on our students. In the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis University throughout its history, Ms. Hirsi Ali is welcome to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.</span></em></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In other words, Ali&#8217;s decades of devotion to helping women enslaved by misogynistic practitioners of the Muslim faith &#8211; who dominate the governments of Muslim countries &#8211; was neutered by the pronunciamento by students that they &#8220;would not tolerate an attack on [their] faith.&#8221; And in still other words, on American campuses criticism of religion &#8211; which has been a fixture of campus life &#8211; is no longer permitted. What words, what thoughts will be deemed unacceptable next?</span></p>
<p>And this is a new trend. All manner of people have received honorary degrees from Brandeis, many of whom have been critical of other religions, particularly of Judaism and of the Jewish State.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Need one really trot out the many people who have received honorary degrees from Brandeis, a school founded by the Jewish community as a way to get around the strict quotas on the number of Jews who could attend high quality schools.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">People such as Tony Kushner, who flatly stated that the creation of Israel as a Jewish State &#8220;was a mistake,&#8221; who regularly accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing and of savagery and who blames the existence of the state of Israel for the &#8220;terrible peril in the world.&#8221; Kushner received an honorary degree in 2006.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Then there is Desmond Tutu &#8211; a man widely revered for the work he did on behalf of South Africans, but who also is a rank anti-Semite. Tutu has compared Israel to Hitler, attacked the &#8220;Jewish lobby&#8221; as too &#8220;powerful&#8221; and &#8220;scary,&#8221; he has sanitized the gas chambers of the Holocaust which he said made for a &#8220;neater death&#8221; than one under Apartheid, and he complained of the &#8220;Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.&#8221; He also insists that Jewish Holocaust victims should forgive the Nazis. Bishop Tutu received his honorary degree from Brandeis University in 2000.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The school administration buckled under to the Brandeis contingent of an increasingly entitled and belligerent faction on U.S. campuses who believe diversity, tolerance and justice only apply to positions and people whose views are consistent with their own. This goes not only for the students, as Bernadette Brooten, a Brandeis professof in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department explained on the Facebook page denouncing Ali, &#8220;a group of 86 faculty members has signed a letter to President Lawrence, asking him to rescind the invitation.&#8221;</span></p>
<p>&#8212;&#8212;-</p>
<p><a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100267160/the-case-of-ayaan-hirsi-ali-liberal-brandeis-university-capitulates-to-islamist-pressure/">The Case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Cowardly Brandeis University Capitulates to Islamist Pressure</a> (April 9, 2014)</p>
<p>by Toby Young</p>
<p>I was shocked to learn that Brandeis University, a liberal arts college in Massachusetts, has withdrawn its offer of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the outspoken critic of female genital mutilation and a campaigner on behalf of Muslim women.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;We cannot overlook that certain of her past statements are inconsistent with Brandeis University&#8217;s core values,&#8221; the university said in a statement released yesterday, just eight days after announcing that Hirsi Ali would be awarded an honorary degree.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The change of heart was prompted by a well-organised campaign by various pro-Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations which sent a letter to Dr Frederick Lawrence, the President of Brandeis, referring to Hirsi Ali as a &#8220;notorious Islamophobe&#8221;.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;She is one of the worst of the worst of the Islam haters in America, not only in America but worldwide,&#8221; Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the group, said in an interview with the New York Times.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In addition, a Muslim student at Brandeis started a petition at </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://change.org/">change.org</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> accusing Hirsi Ali of &#8220;hate speech&#8221;. By way of evidence, the petition cited an interview she gave to the Evening Standard in 2007 in which she described Islam as &#8220;a destructive, nihilistic cult of death&#8221;. In the same interview, she also said that &#8220;violence is inherent in Islam&#8221; and that &#8220;Islam is the new fascism&#8221;.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">This is an act of extraordinary cowardice on Brandeis&#8217;s part. To accuse Hirsi Ali of &#8220;hate speech&#8221;, which is defined as &#8220;any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which&#8230; may incite violence or prejudicial action against&#8230; a protected individual or group&#8221;, is almost comically ironic. She was raised as a Muslim in Somalia, underwent circumcision at the age of five and was later forced into an arranged marriage with her cousin. She only escaped this fate by running away to Holland where she subsequently became a member of the Dutch Parliament.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As an MP, she highlighted the hypocrisy of the European Left for aggressively defending the rights of Muslims while, at the same time, turning a blind eye to the disregard for women&#8217;s rights within Muslim communities. She started to receive death threats for her outspoken views from 2002, culminating in a note pinned to the corpse of murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh saying she would be next. &#8220;Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you will break yourself to pieces on Islam,&#8221; the letter said. &#8220;You, oh America, will go down. You, oh Europe, will go down &#8230; You, oh Netherlands, will go down &#8230; You, oh Hirsi Ali, will go down.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Defenders of Brandeis&#8217;s decision will say that Hirsi Ali is guilty of tarring all Muslims with the same brush and that there&#8217;s nothing inherently violent about Islam. Needless to say, she has often answered that charge. &#8220;People who ask me that question assume that geography is more important for Muslims than what is contained in the holy Quran,&#8221; she says.</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Of course the circumstances in which people live in Turkey are different from those in Morocco or Somalia. But when it comes to the relationship between men and women, in all these countries there is a red line of the woman being subordinate to the male. And most Muslim men justify this subordinacy with the Quran. There are so many meanings Europeans miss. We Muslims are brought up with the idea that there is just one relationship possible with God &#8211; submission. That&#8217;s Islam: submission to the will of Allah.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Whether you agree with Hirsi Ali&#8217;s Manichean view of Islam, she&#8217;s entitled to express it without being bombarded with death threats or accused of &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; which, in this context, amounts to &#8220;hate speech&#8221; since it&#8217;s precisely that charge that has led to threats on her life. You would think that an American university would be a staunch defender of Hirsi Ali&#8217;s right to free speech and wouldn&#8217;t capitulate to a mob of politically correct Muslims at the first sign of trouble. If the same institution had offered an honorary degree to Richard Dawkins, it&#8217;s simply inconceivable that it would change its mind after being attacked by Christians.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Everyone involved in this cowardly decision should be ashamed of themselves. As a liberal arts college, it should be a beacon of light. Instead, it has sent a clear message to everyone in the academic community that vigorous criticism of Islam won&#8217;t be tolerated.</span></p>
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		<title>When Secularism Is Not Enough</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/william-kilpatrick/when-secularism-is-not-enough/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=when-secularism-is-not-enough</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:02:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[William Kilpatrick]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Are we sure Islamic jihad can be resisted by reliance on Western secular values alone?]]></description>
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<p>Can Islamic jihad be resisted simply on the basis of Western secular values? Some readers of my posts on the role of Christianity in resisting Islam have objected that bringing Christianity into the debate only muddies the water. As one reader wrote, “the anti-jihad movement can better be served if blatant theocons stay away.”</p>
<p>A number of important individuals in what might loosely be called the resistance movement do seem to believe that secular values are sufficient to rally citizens to a defense of Western civilization. A good example of this belief is the 2006 manifesto, “Together, facing the new totalitarianism,” which was signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Salman Rushdie, and others. The manifesto calls for “resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity, and secular values for all.” The document also speaks of “universal values,” “universal rights,” and “Enlightenment” with a capital “E.”</p>
<p>But how sturdy are Enlightenment values once they are cut off from their Christian roots? Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s own experience provides some perspective. In her autobiography, <em>Infidel, </em>she tells how, after escaping Somalia to the Netherlands, she fell in love with the thinkers of the Enlightenment. At the same time she became an atheist—rejecting not just Islam, but all religions (although she willingly admits that Jews and Christians have a more humane concept of God). Of Holland she wrote, “Society worked without reference to God, and it seemed to function perfectly.”</p>
<p>But the problem with substituting Enlightenment humanism for religion jumps out, if not from every page of <em>Infidel</em>, at least from many pages. On the one hand, Holland is “the peak of civilization,” and “no nation in the world is more deeply attached to freedom of expression than the Dutch.” On the other hand, her colleagues keep warning her to keep her thoughts to herself, and in the end, enlightened Holland forces her out of the Netherlands precisely for freely expressing her opinions about Muslim treatment of women. Ironically, Hirsi Ali’s next port of refuge was the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which numbers quite a few traditionalist Christians among its scholars.</p>
<p>Others, such as Oriana Fallaci, Geert Wilders, and Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff have discovered that “enlightened” but post-Christian Europe is not nearly as friendly to freedom of expression as one might expect to be the case in the birthplace of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an important civilizational advance, but of late it seems to have gone a bit wobbly. Why is that?</p>
<p>One possible answer is that the core Enlightenment values are inextricably tied to Christian values. This view has been put forward most forcefully on the Continent in recent years by Marcello Pera (former President of the Italian Senate, and an agnostic) and by Benedict XVI (not an agnostic). They have argued that the Enlightenment grew out of Christianity organically, as a tree grows from its roots. Cut off from its roots the tree dies.</p>
<p>In this view the rights of man are based on a belief in the importance of man. The belief that ordinary individuals have a value and dignity of their own apart from their membership in a tribe or a society has its origin in the Judeo-Christian declaration that man is made in the image of God. Thus, if you take away God, you take away the foundation of human importance. As Thomas Jefferson undoubtedly discovered while composing the <em>Declaration</em> <em>of</em> <em>Independence</em>, it’s a bit difficult to establish the case for human rights without reference to the Creator.  Purely secular societies can only assume human dignity and human rights as a given. We tend to forget that these concepts are now a given because they were given to the world by Christians. Before Christianity, the idea that all human beings are endowed with intrinsic value was not considered “self-evident,” it was considered ludicrous. Espousing human equality was a good way to get yourself laughed out of polite pagan society. Human dignity may seem self-evident to us now, but that is because the Christian moral view became internalized over the centuries. Gladiatorial combats and slavery didn’t go out of fashion because societies evolved but because people began to see one another in the light of the Christian revelation.</p>
<p>Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Some seem to think that Enlightenment humanism came out of nowhere, thanks to spontaneous advances in science, reason, and ethics. In this view, Enlightenment values can get along fine on their own without reference to God. But then you’re still faced with explaining how it is that these values have fallen on hard times precisely in those places that might legitimately be called post-Christian. Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion are defended much more vigorously in still-Christian America than in post-Christian France or Holland. For that matter, there’s more freedom of speech in Bible-belt America than in your average American university. With their speech codes and “hate speech” rules and their habit of disinviting “controversial” speakers, universities are among the least free institutions in society. And it’s no coincidence that most of them can be described as post-Christian, and in some cases, anti-Christian. There is also, of course, an increasingly anti-Semitic climate on American campuses.</p>
<p>What happened in the universities is essentially what happened in Europe. Both suffered a loss of faith (recall that many prestigious universities began as seminaries or denominational colleges), and in the process of losing their religion both became increasingly uninterested in cultivating or protecting genuine freedoms. Moreover, like post-Christian Europe, the post-Christian university has shown little ability to resist Islamization. Thanks to Saudi money and well-organized Muslim student associations, many universities are beginning to act like apologists for the Wahabbi faith.</p>
<p>Judging by the sorry records of the highly secularized European state and the highly secularized American university, it might not be a good idea to place all your bets on “secular values for all” as the main point of resistance to totalitarian Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves the gratitude of all for calling attention to the abuse of Muslim women, but she’s wrong to think that a rootless Enlightenment is going to bring them liberation. Likewise, we owe a lot to Ibn Warraq for his penetrating critique of Islam, but he’s mistaken to think that the universal values enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights would survive in the thoroughly secularized type of society he seems to favor. If these values are universal and self-evident, why is it that half the world doesn’t subscribe to them? Warraq seems not to have noticed that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was composed for the most part by individuals who had grown up in Christian cultures, and had inherited a social conscience that had been formed by the Judeo-Christian tradition.</p>
<p>Two of the chief framers, Rene Cassin and Dr. Charles Malik, made no secret of the influence Christian and Jewish beliefs had on their thinking.  In a 1969 speech to the Decalogue Lawyer’s Society, Cassin, a Jew, outlined in detail how Jewish and Christian thought had paved the way for the Declaration.  It’s also telling that while drafting the final version of the Declaration he received advice and encouragement from Cardinal Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), then the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris. Malik, who later served as President of the UN General Assembly, was a Greek Orthodox philosopher and theologian from Lebanon and the author of numerous commentaries on the Bible and on the early Church Fathers. While making his arguments to the drafting committee he was in the habit of quoting from Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian. Jacques Maritain, the eminent Catholic philosopher was also actively involved in the work of the committee, as well as the UNESCO committee which laid the groundwork for the Declaration. Eleanor Roosevelt, the Chairperson of the drafting committee later observed that the Declaration reflected “the true spirit of Christianity.” In short, although the Declaration of Human Rights makes no mention of God, the fingerprints of a certain religious tradition are all over it.</p>
<p>Western culture—indeed the whole world—owes a lot to the Enlightenment, but it’s important to remember that at crucial historical junctures it was Christian activists working on Christian principles who did most of the heavy lifting. Christian Evangelicals were at the forefront of the movement to abolish the slave trade; the Civil Rights movement was galvanized by the Reverend Martin Luther King and other Christian leaders; the end of Communism in Eastern Europe was brought about in large part by the work of the Catholic Solidarity Movement, of Pope John Paul II, and of numerous priests and pastors in Poland, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and other countries who kept alive the spirit of resistance.</p>
<p>At the risk of oversimplifying things, it might be useful to think in terms of two Enlightenments: the Enlightenment which remained nourished by the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the Enlightenment which cut itself off from God. The former led to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, the abolition of slavery, and the Civil Rights movement. The latter led to the French Revolution, to the Reign of Terror, to the suppression of church by state, to Marx and Nietzsche, to Socialism, and Communism, and more recently to the Alice-in-Wonderland world of cultural relativism where human rights are looked upon as relative rather than universal.</p>
<p>It’s unlikely that a pure secularism—even a humanistic, enlightened secularism—can be the foundation for resisting an aggressive Islam. It’s precisely “enlightened” secularism that produced the spiritual and population vacuum in Europe which is now being filled by Islam. John Lennon invited us to imagine “no religion”… “nothing to kill or die for.” In Europe they don’t have to imagine anymore. Having lost their religion, many are discovering that post-Christian values may not, after all, be worth fighting and dying for—all the more so for those who are getting on in years, and are hoping the really bad things won’t happen in their lifetimes. The new motto for many middle –aged Europeans seems to be “Apres moi le dhimmitude.”</p>
<p>Which culture is more likely to protect human rights and freedoms against totalitarian movements? A thoroughly secular culture which has cut itself off from a transcendent reference point? Or a culture imbued with the Judeo-Christian belief that human beings possess an inalienable, God-given dignity? It’s one of those non-academic questions to which the wrong answer might prove fatal. And final exam time is fast approaching.</p>
<p><em>William Kilpatrick’s articles have appeared in </em><em>Front Page Magazine</em>, <em>First Things, Catholic World Report, the National Catholic Register, Jihad Watch, World</em>, and <em>Investor’s Business Daily.</em></p>
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		<title>&#8220;Reviving the Islamic Spirit&#8221; or Promoting Islamic Dominance?</title>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:06:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Usher]]></dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[islamic countries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lecture hall]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loud cheers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moderate islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muhammad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim world]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[part]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Radical Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviving]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reviving the islamic spirit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Salim Mansur]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shakir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sherman Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[social implications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Tarek Fatah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tariq Ramadan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uncontrolled anger]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[violence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[vision]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Western]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Zaid Shakir]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zaytuna institute]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Canada's "largest Muslim convention" is silent on jihad and on violent and oppressive cultural traditions within the Muslim world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Imam-Zaid-Shakir.gif"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-48893" title="Imam-Zaid-Shakir" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Imam-Zaid-Shakir-300x225.gif" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>Billed as “Canada’s largest Muslim convention,” <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/">Reviving the Islamic Spirit &#8211; 8th Convention</a> was held in Toronto on December 25 &#8211; 27, 2009. Having heard the reports that 17,000 attendees from Canada and the U.S. <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/popup_2009_media_pressrelease.asp">were expected</a>, I decided to see for myself. I also wanted to know if the convention would stress spirituality, promote moderate Islam, or offer apologias for radical Islam.</p>
<p>The lecture hall, with a capacity of 6,500 people, was completely full and there were still many people outside. The sales area contained around 50 booths selling Islamic clothing and books. I looked for books by reformers such as Salim Mansur, Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to no avail. Similarly, none of the speakers I heard addressed the violence of radical Islam. This gross omission about something so current and important was telling.</p>
<p>While waiting for another session to begin, I caught the tail end of a speech by Zaid Shakir of the <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8787">Zaytuna Institute</a> titled, “The Social Implications of Domestic Violence.” Shakir did not defend the oppressive practices that are pervasive in the Muslim world, but claimed that Islam does not approve of molesting wives and children. Instead, Shakir alleged, it was merely the fault of uncontrolled anger. He urged the community for help and understanding with these anger-related problems. There was no discussion of universal women’s human rights or the actual treatment of women in Islamic countries.</p>
<p>Perhaps as some form of consolation to the women in the audience, Shakir promised that if a man beats his Muslim spouse, Allah might take his vengeance out on him. The crowd apparently found this humorous and laughter ensued.</p>
<p>Near the end of his talk, Shakir veered off course by stating that although the former Soviet Union was bigger than the U.S., Allah destroyed the USSR because of the invasion of Afghanistan. When he warned America to be aware of how they treat Muslims in Afghanistan lest Allah do the same thing to the U.S., loud cheers erupted from the audience. As a Canadian whose country also has troops in Afghanistan, I found this to be most disturbing.</p>
<p>Next up was <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/program_details2.asp">the panel</a>, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society,” featuring University of Michigan Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies <a href="http://www.manrilla.net/shermanjackson/">Sherman Jackson</a> (also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson) and the controversial Swiss Islamic studies academic Tariq Ramadan.</p>
<p>Jackson, an African-American convert to Islam, spoke first. He believes that the Muslim and Western worlds are in conflict and competition, and that only one can end up dominant. Put simply, he wants to replace Western culture with Muslim culture.</p>
<p>He congratulated Muslim women for sustaining this struggle by dressing religiously and thereby taking the brunt of alleged abuse by being targets when out in public. He said that Muslims must prove themselves in each country and that each country requires different tactics.</p>
<p>Jackson expressed a desire to be included in American society—but not if any sort of cultural sacrifice were required. He said that adapting to Western culture would lead to being a Muslim in name only and advocated defining America by Muslim standards and imposing cultural and intellectual supremacy. He urged Muslims not to follow Western cultural authority, but rather to achieve their own cultural authority from the inside, as part of the system.</p>
<p>Muhammad redefined the society in which he lived, Jackson argued, and today nothing less than the future of the <em>Ummah</em> (“community” or “nation” in Arabic) in Western cultures was at stake. Muhammad’s vision was not just for Arabia, but for all humanity, including, presumably, the modern Western world. Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.</p>
<p>His speech was a call to battle. It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1884">Tariq Ramadan</a>, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, spoke next and offered a seemingly more moderate approach. His thrust was that Muslims are already part of Western society and must contribute positively to their adapted countries.  Ramadan encouraged Muslims to integrate into Western society and to distinguish friends from enemies. Although Muslims have criticisms of the West and moral values to offer, he argued that they must respect the laws of the countries in which they are living.</p>
<p>But Ramadan relied upon the template of Islam to encourage this progress, urging Muslims to work through the universal values of Islam to make things better for everyone. He encouraged Muslims in the West to adapt in order to create a broad vision and an intellectual revelation. He claimed that Muslims are reforming their understanding of Islam and that they should experience the dominant Western culture, which may, according to Islam, be correct in many cases.</p>
<p>Ramadan’s sentiments were laudable on the surface, but his history of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Brother-Tariq-Doublespeak-Ramadan/dp/1594032157">doublespeak</a> – depending upon the audience at hand – made me wonder if he was truly the reformer he made himself out to be or a stealth Islamist instead. Considering his <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8174">troubling background</a>, including being <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3Asmatd4mj-v4&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=tariq+ramadan&amp;sa=Search#919">barred from entry</a> into the U.S. under the Bush administration for contributions to Hamas-connected groups (a ban <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/12/tariq-ramadan-gives-up-then-tries-again#latest">now lifted</a> by the Obama administration), a weekly <a href="http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510523">television program</a> on the Iranian government network PressTV, <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/04/tariq-ramadan-calls-for-a-moratorium-on-stoning-in-the-islamic-world.html">ambiguous statements</a> on <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4787">stoning</a> women for adultery, and a history of <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5075">anti-Israel invective</a>, the latter seems the most likely.</p>
<p>While I did not attend any of the other sessions, I left the conference with mixed feelings about what I had witnessed. The atmosphere in the convention hall was friendly and welcoming, and as an obvious non-Muslim I was treated with nothing but politeness.</p>
<p>But the speakers’ silence on violent and oppressive cultural traditions within the Muslim world was troubling. So too were the bellicose statements of Sherman Jackson, particularly as a prominent and active academic in the field of Middle East studies.</p>
<p>According to the brochure and <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/sponsors.asp">website</a>, the conference was co-sponsored by a number of Muslim Students Associations (MSA) from universities across Canada. Leaving aside the MSA’s <a href="http://www.meforum.org/603/islamisms-campus-club-the-muslim-students">Islamist predilections</a>, taxpayer dollars used to fund universities and campus groups should not be funneled into off-campus, ideologically skewed events such as this conference. Promoting radical speakers such as Jackson, who advocated nothing less than the overthrow of Western liberal democracy, is hardly in the public interest.</p>
<p><em>Jonathan Usher wrote this article for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
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