<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; islamic studies</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/islamic-studies/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 13:47:27 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Centers for Islamic Studies: a Cold-War-Style Influence Operation?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/centers-for-islamic-studies-a-cold-war-style-influence-operation/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=centers-for-islamic-studies-a-cold-war-style-influence-operation</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/centers-for-islamic-studies-a-cold-war-style-influence-operation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Oct 2014 04:18:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Oleg Atbashian]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[active measures]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Esposito]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KGB]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242453</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new generation of Islamic supremacists employs the KGB's "active measures."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hj.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242457" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hj.jpg" alt="hj" width="298" height="255" /></a>The launch of a new Center for Global Islamic Studies at the extremely leftist University of Florida in Gainesville may have been planned as a purely academic affair, but the announcements in the local and national media, including <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/09/01/university-florida-to-launch-islamic-study-center/">AP and Fox News</a>, exhibited more than a purely academic interest in this event. To compare, one doesn&#8217;t often see national media announcements about, let&#8217;s say, a local center for the study of viruses &#8212; unless the virus is Ebola. And just like with any news about Ebola studies, any news about studies of Islam attracts attention from the general public, who want to know if there&#8217;s a hope for the cure, containment, and safety from danger.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, these may not be the kind of Islamic Studies that answer those hopes. The Center opened on September 18th with a <a href="http://www.bobgrahamcenter.ufl.edu/event/global-islam-and-quest-public-space-john-l-esposito">conference</a> on &#8220;Global Islam and the Quest for Public Space,&#8221; headlined by none other than Georgetown professor John Esposito, a known <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/09/john_esposito_takes_islam_out_of_isis.html">apologist for radical Islam</a> and founding director of the Saudi-sponsored Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the Walsh School of Foreign Service.</p>
<p>A small group of protesters picketed the event outside the Pugh Hall on the university campus, with a dozen creative posters and a vinyl banner pointing out that John Esposito and the leader of ISIS both hold PhDs in Islamic Studies: &#8220;Same goal, different tactics.&#8221; The <a href="http://youtu.be/F9YQwTfROW0">video of the protest</a> can be seen online.</p>
<p>The protest organizer, Randy McDaniels of <a href="http://www.actforamerica.org/">ACT for America</a> and the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CTAG.USA">Counter-Terrorism Advisory Group</a>, stated that our students certainly need to study Islam, as long as such studies are based on scientific objectivity and critical analysis. But the presence of John Esposito as the keynote speaker indicated that the new Global Islamic Studies Center was likely to <a href="http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/esposito/">go the way of many other universities</a>, opening their doors and exposing our children to political Islam under the guise of education, with programs funded by Saudi Arabia, <a href="http://www.stopqatarnow.com/">Qatar</a>, and other state sponsors of Islamic fundamentalism.</p>
<p>While many among the leftist faculty and the students were visibly upset with the protest, complete with occasional angry obscenities, a few others were interested in the message and asked for a flyer. Some of them asked, &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong with having an Islamic Studies Center, even if it&#8217;s financed by foreign money?&#8221;</p>
<p>The short answer would have been to compare such a project to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures"><em>active measures </em></a>undertaken in America by the KGB during the Cold War &#8212; except that, unfortunately, most American students aren&#8217;t familiar with this term. Their knowledge of the Cold War has been thoroughly sanitized by the leftist faculty, especially if the professors are Marxists who used to root for the other side. The resulting perceived absence of the Soviet subversion, propaganda, disinformation, and other influence operations inside the U.S. and around the world creates the impression of an ideologically neutral world, in which America&#8217;s response to protect liberty can very easily be misconstrued as imperialist aggression against the innocent.</p>
<p>Ignorance about the enemy leads to confusion about one&#8217;s own nation&#8217;s role in the world, regardless of the historical era or the current adversary. Whether we admit it or not, we are now in a new global conflict that has many parallels with the Cold War; it is often fought by similar means and sometimes even by the same actors.</p>
<p>Now, just as it was then, we&#8217;re up against a supremacist collectivist ideology whose goal is to establish a totalitarian utopian society on a global scale. The two deadly pipe dreams &#8212; global communism and the global caliphate &#8212; may have their differences, but in practical terms they both view the United States as the main obstacle in their quest of world domination. There is no reason why one can&#8217;t learn from the other&#8217;s vast experience in subverting this country.</p>
<p>Both foes have made claims that they stand for peace. The problem is that Marxists understand peace as the absence of opposition to socialism, just as the Islamist supremacists understand peace as the absence of opposition to Islam. Eventual peace will theoretically ensue once they subjugate the rest of the world to their totalitarian rule.</p>
<p>In both cases, tolerance is a one-way street: everyone must be tolerant of <em>their</em> &#8220;superior&#8221; views, while they retain the right to self-righteous intolerance of the &#8220;inferiors.&#8221; Both ideologies generate a variety of wild-eyed conspiracy theories as a means to retain loyalty, boost morale, recruit new members, and demoralize their opponents.</p>
<p>The Soviets didn&#8217;t necessarily hate Americans or wanted to kill them off; they only wanted to &#8220;convert&#8221; our economic and political system for our own good. Likewise, the Islamists feel morally justified: they don&#8217;t view terrorism as the murder of innocents, but rather as a collective punishment for being foolish in resisting Islam. This makes mass murder a moral virtue, absolving them of all sins and encouraging them to keep punishing us, &#8220;the inferior fools,&#8221; until we see the light and either convert or accept their supremacy. They&#8217;d rather convert than kill, so if we force their hand, it&#8217;s &#8220;our own fault.&#8221;</p>
<p>Now, just as it was then, the U.S. is being drawn into fighting regional proxy wars while maintaining a semblance of dialogue with the main instigator, who remains visibly uninvolved but is pulling the strings of a vast network of loosely affiliated non-governmental groups, from registered non-profits to armed gangs of cutthroats. The seeming lack of affiliations, in both cases, is usually a cover for a centralized, coordinated effort.</p>
<p>Cold War spy thrillers may show some exciting action, but the fact is that espionage wasn&#8217;t even the main focus of the KGB operations in the U.S. According to retired KGB Maj. Gen. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Kalugin">Oleg Kalugin</a>, the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence was &#8220;not intelligence collection, but subversion: active measures to weaken the West.&#8221;</p>
<p>The KGB maintained an extensive, sophisticated network of agents in the media, academia, government, and the cultural establishment. Acting on strategies designed in Moscow, they led a relentless, coordinated attack on this country&#8217;s institutions, often quite effectively demoralizing the population, undermining people&#8217;s confidence in America&#8217;s political and economic systems, spreading rumors, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories, influencing politicians, swaying public opinion, promoting some public figures and discrediting others, creating a positive image of the USSR, and so on.</p>
<p>Fast forward to the fall of the USSR. What happened to these strategies, this system, its networks, and its methods? Did they just disappear? Not really. The KGB was never dismantled; it was renamed into FSB and one of its former lieutenant colonels, Vladimir Putin, is now running the country, using the old KGB network just as effectively to spread disinformation and to promote his imperial agenda.</p>
<p>Even more disturbingly, this system has now replicated itself, producing an even more dangerous and aggressive clone.</p>
<p>In 1960, the Soviet government had set up the so-called Patrice Lumumba People&#8217;s Friendship University in Moscow, offering free higher education to students from the Third World, many of them from Muslim countries. In addition to regular student curriculum, the goal was to train and recruit agents who would then spread the ideas of Marxism in their home countries, and if possible, conduct <em>active measures</em> designed by their Moscow handlers.</p>
<p>To be exact, the university received its African name in 1961. <a href="http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/lumumba.htm">Patrice Lumumba</a> was a pro-Soviet Congolese prime minister who earlier that year was removed from power in a coup d&#8217;état and shot by a firing squad. The international Left quickly made Lumumba into a martyr of anti-imperialist struggle; what they won&#8217;t mention is that the coup and the execution were a drastic response to Lumumba&#8217;s plans of bringing the Soviet troops to the Congo and potentially staging a major military conflict in Africa, similar to the wars that the USSR fought in Korea, Vietnam, and later in Afghanistan. In this regard, the school&#8217;s name was rather symbolic.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Was-Going-Our/dp/B0017HSXXQ">KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin</a>, who defected to the West, &#8220;The University&#8217;s first vice-rector and a number of its staff were KGB officers who used the student body as a recruiting ground for Third World agents.&#8221; The students were trained in the art of propaganda, infiltration, and influence operations. More specialized training, such as terrorist activities, was provided at locations in Baku, Odessa, Simferopol, and Tashkent.</p>
<p>Carlos the Jackal, the notorious Marxist terrorist from Venezuela, who joined Palestinian terrorists and later converted to Islam, was one of the graduates, even though the school insists that he was expelled. A BBC News article titled <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/42244.stm">Carlos the Jackal &#8212; three decades of crime</a> puts it this way:</p>
<blockquote><p>He began acting in the name of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine after leaving Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, a notorious hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the Soviet Union.</p></blockquote>
<p>Grand Ayatollah and the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, is listed among <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples'_Friendship_University_of_Russia#Notable_graduates">notable graduates</a> on the University&#8217;s Wikipedia page, although he <a href="http://www.aim.org/aim-column/cnns-iranian-propaganda-campaign/">vehemently denies it</a>. Another graduate is Timoleón Jiménez, the leader of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FARC">FARC</a> &#8212; a communist guerrilla army in Colombia, which is funded by drugs, kidnappings and extortion.</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples'_Friendship_University_of_Russia#Notable_graduates">Other notables</a> include the President of Honduras, the President of Namibia, the President of the Central African Republic, a former President of Guyana, a former Jamaican MP, a leader of the Sudanese Socialist Democratic Union, and &#8212; of all people &#8212; Anna Chapman, a Russian intelligence officer.</p>
<p>Most importantly, the list of graduates includes today&#8217;s Palestinian leader <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=29207">Mahmoud Abbas</a>, Chairman of the PLO and President of the Palestinian National Authority, who received his Ph.D. in Moscow in 1982 after completing a thesis partly based on Holocaust denial.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=13975">2004 interview with FrontPage Magazine</a>, Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania&#8217;s espionage service, described the KGB role in setting up terrorist networks around the world and particularly in the Middle East, as well as persuading Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi to join the terrorist war against the US, with the added benefit of using Iraq&#8217;s and Libya&#8217;s huge intelligence services that were being run by the KGB advisers and extended their tentacles to every corner of the earth.</p>
<p>Says Pacepa:</p>
<blockquote><p>The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for &#8220;liberation&#8221; organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto &#8220;Che&#8221; Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the &#8220;Palestinian territories&#8221; occupied by Israel.</p></blockquote>
<p>&#8220;In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter &#8212; a document that had been drafted in Moscow,&#8221; Pacepa continues.</p>
<blockquote><p>The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman.</p></blockquote>
<p>The entire story of the Palestinian &#8220;liberation,&#8221; which has provoked a tidal wave of global Islamic extremism, has recognizable marks of a manufactured influence operation. That includes media coverage in the Western press, which regurgitates regularly produced and coordinated disinformation. A lot of this dirty work was done initially by the Middle Eastern graduates of Patrice Lumumba People&#8217;s Friendship University in Moscow, many of whom are still active in the field.</p>
<p>The school still functions today, having dropped Lumumba from its name and calling itself <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples'_Friendship_University_of_Russia#Notable_graduates">The Peoples&#8217; Friendship University of Russia</a>. Its page claims that as of now, more than 97,000 of its graduates work in approximately 170 countries around the world.</p>
<p>Granted, not all of the graduating engineers, doctors, or agricultural experts have become KGB agents or even Marxists, but how many of them have? Even a small percentage of the total 97,000 means that thousands of agents with the knowledge of propaganda, infiltration and influence operations are currently active in the world today, particularly in the Middle East. If in the past some Muslim students may have embraced Marxism, they no longer do now. Even Carlos the Jackal has now <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/26/world/americas/carlos-the-jackal-fast-facts/index.html">converted to Islam</a>. Today&#8217;s Next Big Thing is the Muslim Brotherhood, and that&#8217;s where all the action is.</p>
<p>The astounding sophistication and effectiveness of the Muslim Brotherhood in setting up networks of various front groups, infiltrating the Western establishment, spreading disinformation, swaying public opinion, promoting some public figures and discrediting others, creating a positive image of their ideology, and other influence operations are the evidence that the thousands of trained experts in these fields didn&#8217;t just disappear. Even if they aren&#8217;t being run from Moscow today (some may still be), they are still using their knowledge and skills, as well as teaching a new generation of Islamic supremacists the intricacies of <em>active measures</em>. If the methods and techniques are effective, they don&#8217;t get abandoned.</p>
<p>Given the history, what are the chances that the new Center for Global Islamic Studies at the Florida University, &#8220;christened&#8221; by a Saudi-financed, PLO-loving Georgetown professor, won&#8217;t be turned into yet another center for the Muslim Brotherhood&#8217;s influence operations on American soil?</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><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"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf"><strong>Subscribe</strong></a><strong> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <em>The Glazov Gang</em>, and </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>LIKE</strong></a><strong> it on </strong><a href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang"><strong>Facebook.</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/oleg-atbashian/centers-for-islamic-studies-a-cold-war-style-influence-operation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>10</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Veracity, Mendacity – and Islam</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/veracity-mendacity-%e2%80%93-and-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=veracity-mendacity-%25e2%2580%2593-and-islam</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/veracity-mendacity-%e2%80%93-and-islam/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 Oct 2011 04:06:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islamophobia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religion of peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=110615</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Imagine all the people telling the truth about the religion of peace.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/islam34.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-110621" title="islam34" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/islam34.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="297" /></a></p>
<p>The recent arrival in my mail of a book entitled <em>Islam: Critical Essays about a Political Religion </em>has prompted a number of thoughts.  Edited by Sam and Wim van Rooy and published late last year, it is a massive compendium, just under 800 pages long.  It is in Dutch.  (The title is actually <em>De Islam: Kritische Essays over een Politieke Religie.</em>)  And it is richly comprehensive, with thirty-four essays on such subjects as the Islamization of Europe, Islam in India, the term “Islamophobia,” jihad in Africa, dhimmitude, apostasy, the myth of Andalusia, taqiyya, Islam and the West, sharia law, Islam&#8217;s “fellow travelers,” Jews under Islam, Christians under Islam, Islam and women, Islam and slavery, Islam and fascism, and Islam <em>vs. </em>democracy.</p>
<p>The authors are mostly Dutch and Flemish writers with considerable expertise in their subjects, plus a sprinkling of well-known international figures as Ibn Warraq and Bat Ye&#8217;or.   I have not yet read every word of the book – and given my spotty Dutch I may never do so – but one thing is absolutely clear: this is most definitely not a product of the Islamic Studies propaganda factory.  It is not the sort of book, in other words, in which you would be likely to find the work of John Esposito, the king of Islamic Studies in the U.S., who is a reliable apologist for Islam and whose Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University is, in fact, funded by (and named for) his good friend and benefactor, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal of Saudi Arabia.  Nor is this book the sort of soft-focus feel-good material churned out by popular writers like Karen Armstrong, who (it must be admitted) does a truly brilliant job of soft-pedaling the darker sides of Islam and emphasizing its warmly spiritual aspects, so that when you think of the religion you don&#8217;t picture a jihadist lopping off somebody&#8217;s head but a beautiful woman in a sensuously loose veil meditating at sundown under an olive tree while sipping coffee and nibbling on delicious figs.</p>
<p>No, the writers of this book are not propagandists for Islam.  Instead, they are mostly generalists, journalists, independent scholars, or professors in non-Islamic disciplines who have developed an expertise in certain aspects of Islam.  And they tell the truth about it.  No, women are <em>not </em>equal under Islam.  Yes, apostasy from Islam <em>is </em>a capital crime.  No, Jews and Christians in medieval Andalusia did <em>not </em>live in perfect harmony with their Muslim overlords, but were systematically treated as inferiors, afforded limited rights, and subjected to a special tax.  As Sam van Rooy writes in his introduction, the overarching purpose of this book is to dispel myths, dissolve naïveté, and challenge the absurd and historyless notion of Islam as a religion of peace.  In short, this book is the real thing – a substantial education in the hard facts of Islam written by people who are free of the kind of institutional and ideological restraints that keep many a certified “expert” in the subject from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about Islam.</p>
<p>The first of the two important points to be made here is that this book is far from alone.  In the years since 9/11, while Islamic Studies professors have continued to whitewash the religion of peace, responsible-minded men and women outside of the Islamic Studies racket have taken up the job of truth-telling, publishing a number of substantial, and in some cases encyclopedic, volumes about Islam.  Some of these authors have educational and professional backgrounds in areas entirely unrelated to Islam, but after the outrage of 9/11 felt driven to engage in a fast-track process of self-education about the belief system that had motivated bin Laden and his operatives.  One thinks, for example, of Andrew Bostom, a physician and professor of medicine at Brown University who in the last few years has somehow found the time to produce massive, definitive books about the history of jihad and the legacy of Islamic anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>The second of the two important points to be made here is that while books like the van Rooys&#8217; and Bostom&#8217;s do indeed exist – not only in English but in a number of major Western languages – ignorance and outright duplicity about the basic facts of Islam still reign supreme throughout the West.  That insipid cliche about Islam as the religion of peace persists.  An assortment of inane claims about the Koran – for example, that it forbids killing and that it prohibits compulsion in religion – persists.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/veracity-mendacity-%e2%80%93-and-islam/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>32</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Ingrid Mattson: A Case Study in Stealth Jihad</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/ingrid-mattson-a-case-study-in-stealth-jihad/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=ingrid-mattson-a-case-study-in-stealth-jihad</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/ingrid-mattson-a-case-study-in-stealth-jihad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:16:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Bruce Bawer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dr. Ingrid Mattson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Huron College]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic society of north america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Holy Land Foundation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=109548</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Western delusions over Islam helped a terror-supporter glide into positions of power.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/mattson.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-109550" title="mattson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/mattson.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="411" /></a></p>
<p>In a recent column for Canada&#8217;s National Post, the invaluable Barbara Kay <a href="http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/18/barbara-kay-taking-a-closer-look-at-islamic-studies/">writes</a> about one Ingrid Mattson, a Catholic who was raised in Kitchener, Ontario, converted to Islam, and went on to become a major figure in the North American Islamic establishment.  Until recently she taught Islamic Studies at Hartford Seminary, where, as Kay puts it, citing an account by Andrew Bieszad of his experiences as a student there, “Islam and other faiths were held to very different standards in classroom discussions.”</p>
<p>In one “interfaith dialogue” class, for example, Bieszad said, “I am Catholic and I do not believe in Islam.” Following this, according to Bieszad’s account, “one of the Muslim students spoke. She said that she was Muslim, and then she addressed me directly. In a soft, Arabic accented voice, she told me, ‘You are an infidel because you do not accept Islam’ and that ‘according to Islam you do not deserve to live.’ A second Muslim student heartily agreed.’ ”</p>
<p>Bieszad reports that when he brought such incidents to the attention of the administration, he was told that he was “intolerant of Muslims,” and that the best solution was a better “understanding of Islam.”</p>
<p>“Not a single classmate, Muslim or non-Muslim, ever spoke up in support of my opinion, even on the principle that different views should be respected,” Bieszad writes.</p>
<p>Mattson was not just a teacher at Hartford Seminary.  Until last year she was also head of the Islamic Society of North America, a leading national organization which, at the 2007 trial in Dallas of a now-defunct Islamic charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was named an unindicted co-conspirator on charges of aiding Hamas. The trial proved to be an explosive event, uncovering a great deal of vital information about the unsavory connections of supposedly innocuous Muslim organizations in the United States.  Yet it was almost entirely ignored – and, when not ignored, whitewashed – by the mainstream American media.</p>
<p>In a sane world, one would expect that revelations of links to terrorist groups would have something of a negative impact on an organization&#8217;s or individual&#8217;s reputation.  But that is not the way things work nowadays when it comes to Islam.  Writing about the ISNA in the <em>New</em> <em>York</em> <em>Times </em>shortly after the Holy Land trial, Neil MacFarquhar, as I <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Surrender-Appeasing-Islam-Sacrificing-Freedom/dp/038552398X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1236856853&amp;sr=1-4">noted</a> in my 2009 book <em>Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, </em>“completely ignore[d] damning information about ISNA that came out during the trial, including such things as its foundations in the Muslim Brotherhood, and its multiple financial contributions to Hamas through its subsidiary, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).”  As I pointed out, “MacFarquhar didn’t settle for just whitewashing the ISNA”; he also went on the attack against two members of Congress who had been critical of the ISNA, Pete Hoekstra and Sue Myrick.  Gretel C. Kovach, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/32751">writing</a> about the trial in <em>Newsweek, </em>seemed determined to dismiss the whole thing as an exercise in Islamophobia.</p>
<p>Only days after the Holy Land trial, <em>USA Today </em>ran a <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-08-20-mattson-islam_N.htm">profile</a> of Mattson by Cathy Lynn Grossman that was nothing less than glowing.  Amazingly – or not – Grossman didn&#8217;t even mention the trial.  Gushing over Mattson as the “face of Islam in America,” Grossman poured out the kind of prose that is to be found in American newspapers these days only when the subject is Islam.  Mattson, we learned, was a convert who had “found her spiritual home in Islam,” a “faith she chose at age 23, drawn in, she says, by Islam’s beauty, its ethos of service and its synthesis of life and faith in which every act relates to God.”  (When was the last time you read anything like that in a major American newspaper about Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion?)</p>
<p>The profile was a classic puff piece, and then some.  Every charming detail was in place (the “tiny, bookstuffed office” and “snug black headscarf”).  Grossman took at face value Mattson&#8217;s determination to build “a strong religious and civic institutional life for Muslims in America.” And Grossman was careful not to include any details of Mattson&#8217;s theology that might ruin the perfect picture, simply saying (in a formula that has become <em>de rigueur </em>in such profiles) that Mattson was “too liberal for some, too conservative for others.”</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/bruce-bawer/ingrid-mattson-a-case-study-in-stealth-jihad/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>37</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Professor’s Islamist Call to Battle</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-professor%25e2%2580%2599s-islamist-call-to-battle</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Mar 2010 04:06:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cinnamon Stillwell]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acceptance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali Mazrui]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aminah Beverly McCloud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Antonio Gramsci]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beginning of islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Binghamton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[canada]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chicago]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[God]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[innocent peoples]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jonathan Usher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[louis farrakhan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslim culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[northern Nigeria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[outspoken proponent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reviving the islamic spirit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[september 11 2001]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sherman Jackson]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[South Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Toronto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S. Constitution]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western civilization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[western culture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=55348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why University of Michigan’s Abdal Hakim Jackson wants the end of liberty in the United States.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-55350" title="D_Jackson" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/D_Jackson.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="413" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.manrilla.net/shermanjackson/">Sherman Jackson</a>, also known as Abdal Hakim Jackson, is <a href="http://www.umich.edu/%7Eneareast/faculty/jackson.htm">a professor</a> of Arabic and Islamic studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>Jackson specializes in Islamic law and has written and spoken extensively on the subject. Soon after the</p>
<p>September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorist attacks, Jackson took the line popular among apologists, stating at a September 2001 University of Michigan <a href="http://www.michigandaily.com/content/teach-takes-muslim-profiling">Teach-in</a> titled, “Terrorism: A Perversion of Islam,” that “the killing of innocent peoples is forbidden by the law of Islam and it has been from the beginning of Islam.”</p>
<p>But it turns out that not only is Jackson an apologist, he an outspoken proponent of the Islamist subversion of Western civilization.</p>
<p>Jackson made this abundantly clear at the <a href="http://www.convention.revivingtheislamicspirit.com/">Reviving the Islamic Spirit – 8th Convention</a> in Toronto, Canada in December 2009, as a participant in the panel, “The New We: Muslims in Future of Western Society.” Jonathan Usher, who attended and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9101">wrote about the conference for Campus Watch</a>, described Jackson’s speech as nothing less than “a call to battle.” As he put it, “It had little to do with peaceful co-existence with the West, but was an exhortation for Islam to dominate the West.” According to Usher, Jackson</p>
<blockquote><p>…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></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>&#8230;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></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>…Lastly, to cheers, he said that his primary commitment was to Allah, not to America.</p></blockquote>
<p>Moreover, Jackson has a history of making such radical statements.</p>
<p>He co-authored a 2000 online book titled, <em><a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy.html">American Public Policy and American-Muslim Politics</a></em> and published by the Chicago-based <a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/index.html">International Strategy and Policy Institute</a>, whose mission is to “promote the correct understanding of Islam and Muslims in the United   States.” Jackson’s coauthors were DePaul University Director of Islamic World Studies <a href="http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=8627">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a> and State University of New York at Binghamton professor and director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies Ali Mazrui. McCloud  is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html">a former board member</a> of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/17/arts/an-islamic-scholar-with-the-dual-role-of-activist.html?pagewanted=2">a follower</a> of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, while Mazrui’s <a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/ali-mazrui">bio</a> notes that he is “one of the first to try and link the treatment of Palestinians with South Africa’s apartheid” and has also “argued that sharia law is not incompatible with democracy and supported its introduction in some parts of northern Nigeria.”</p>
<p>In the chapter, “<a href="http://www.ispi-usa.org/policy/policy4.html">Muslims, Islamic Law and Public Policy in the United States</a>,” Jackson cites the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s influential theories about altering societies not through politics, but through cultural and educational institutions. Jackson proposes that American Muslims approach the “difficult task of penetrating, appropriating and redirecting American culture” in order to “influence the legal order in America.” As he puts it:</p>
<blockquote><p>…it should be understood that once this is done, there are no Constitutional impediments to having these laws applied in the public domain. Muslims must be vocal and confident in articulating the public utility underlying the rules on things like <em>riba </em>[usury], adultery, theft, drinking, contracts, pre-marital sex, child-custody and even polygyny. This should all be done, however, in the context of an open acceptance of American custom (<em>urf</em>) as a legally valid source in areas where the shari’ah admits the reliance upon custom.</p></blockquote>
<p>As for the gradual acceptance of the more horrifying aspects of Sharia law, Jackson notes that “it would be foolish to deny that the prospects for American acceptance of such institutions as stoning, or flogging or amputation are virtually nil, at least for the foreseeable future.” But he concludes on a note only an Islamist could find comforting:</p>
<blockquote><p>…notions of what is cruel and unusual, of what is barbaric, of what is draconian (which is the real basis upon which America rejects these punishments) are a function of culture, not law. It is only through changes in American culture that American attitudes towards such things are likely to change. Thus, in the end, as in the beginning, we are brought face to face with the inextricable connection between American culture and Muslim self-determination. May God grant us the courage and the vision to rise to the task before us.</p></blockquote>
<p>This call to gradually replace the liberties enshrined in the U.S. Constitution with seventh century notions of justice is both frightening and morally repugnant.</p>
<p>Despite a record of expressing such extreme views, Jackson has made a name for himself as a moderate and a reformer. His success in this charade stems in part from his willingness to break from his peers and  publicly discuss Islamic terrorism, its theological underpinnings, and the need for related reform. An <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4426">article</a> in the <em>Wesleyan Argus</em> quoted a November 2007 Jackson speech on “Jihad, Terrorism, and Modern Violence” at Wesleyan University:</p>
<blockquote><p>‘Muslims in the West must be active and vocal in their condemnation of current violations of <em>hirabah</em>,’ he insisted, referring to the Sharia law that outlaws any act of publicly directed violence that spreads fear and helplessness. According to Jackson, <em>hirabah</em> more than covers today’s conception of terrorism. He discussed the moderate Muslim unwillingness to publicly decry acts of terrorism and attributed it to the desire to not be seen as ‘Uncle Toms.’</p></blockquote>
<p>But Patrick Poole, <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/09/whats_in_a_name_jihad_vs_hirab.html">writing for the <em>American Thinker</em></a> in September 2007, calls Jackson’s reasoning and motives into question. He describes Jackson as one of the <a href="http://users.tpg.com.au/dezhen/jackson_terrorism.html">earliest proponents</a> of the “Islamic lexicon” and, in particular, an advocate for replacing the term <em>jihad</em> with <em>hirabah</em> in discussing Islamic terrorism. Poole and other skeptics allege that, in practice, this is nothing more than a semantic sleight of hand that serves to obscure the legitimization of terrorism within Islam and to further the Muslim Brotherhood’s <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/columnists/rdreher/stories/DN-dreher_09edi.ART.State.Edition1.4235f88.html">civilization-jihadist process</a>.</p>
<p>Poole notes that Jim Guirard of the Truespeak Institute is the “foremost advocate for this approach,” and that Sherman Jackson is among the scholars he relies upon for his findings. Poole points to an unclassified memo from Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Coughlin in which Jackson is cited as one of Guirard’s contributors, along with fellow Middle  East studies professors <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/07/georgetowns-john-esposito-a.html">John Esposito</a> of Georgetown University and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4788">Muqtedar Khan</a> of the University of Delaware. Summarizing Coughlin’s findings, Poole concludes that,</p>
<blockquote><p>…as Walid Phares and Stephen Coughlin have already revealed, many of the Western Muslim advocates of this new approach are directly tied to known Muslim Brotherhood front groups operating in the US. As Coughlin itemizes, Sherman Jackson is a “trustee” to the North American Islamic Trust, and affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Student Association, the first two of which were named as unindicted co-conspirators in the current Holy Land Foundation terror financing federal trial underway in Dallas, and the last was the original organizational wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. The hiraba-jihad terminology has also been endorsed by the Wahhabist Council for Islamic Education and the extremist mouthpiece Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That is telling in and of itself.</p></blockquote>
<p>Jackson is also considered an expert on the intersection of Islam and African-Americans (he is himself an African-American convert to Islam). His 2005 book on the subject, <em>Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection</em>, was <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Islam/%7E%7E/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE4MDgxNw==">reviewed favorably</a> by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/john-esposito-shills-for-another">radical Islam apologist</a> John Esposito, James H. Cone (the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-Theology-Liberation-Ethics-Society/dp/0883446855/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1239212793&amp;sr=1-2">originator</a> of black liberation theology and stated <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/knowing_obama_by_the_company_h_1.html">inspiration</a> for controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s former “spiritual mentor” in Chicago), and DePaul professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/10/depaul-prof-aminah-beverly-mccloud">Aminah Beverly McCloud</a>. Beyond McCloud’s aforementioned affiliation with CAIR and the Nation of Islam, she played a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2007/04/depaul-university-director-of.html">pivotal role</a> in influencing Washington, D.C. PBS station WETA’s decision to cancel its airing of the laudable documentary on moderate Muslims, <em>Islam vs. Islamists,</em> in early 2007.</p>
<p>Jackson’s career may be peppered with associations and endorsements from some of the worst apologists and radicals from the field of Middle East studies—and his involvement in the obfuscating “truespeak” movement points to even more troublesome ties with Muslim Brotherhood front groups—but, ultimately, it is his own words that prove the most damning. His stated agenda clearly has nothing to do with moderation or reform; it is quite simply that of an Islamist.</p>
<p><em>Cinnamon Stillwell is the West Coast Representative 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>. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:stillwell@meforum.org">stillwell@meforum.org</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/cinnamon-stillwell/the-professor%e2%80%99s-islamist-call-to-battle/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>36</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 594/639 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 09:17:48 by W3 Total Cache -->