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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; North Africa</title>
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		<title>The Islamic State Widens its Bridgehead in North Africa</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/the-islamic-state-widens-its-bridgehead-in-north-africa/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-islamic-state-widens-its-bridgehead-in-north-africa</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2014 05:05:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ISIS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Africa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=246553</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An impotent Obama watches as the ISIS cancer spreads from Algeria to Egypt.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isis.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-246554" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/isis-450x300.jpg" alt="isis" width="365" height="243" /></a>As ISIS continues its brutal occupation of large swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq, effectively blurring the border between those two pseudo nations, a new, if not more menacing threat is emerging in North Africa where the Islamic State is looking to plant its cancerous roots.</p>
<p>In Egypt, the Sinai based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Islamist organization responsible for dozens of terror attacks throughout the country <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29993183"><span style="color: #0433ff;">announced</span></a> on its Twitter account that it had forged a union with ISIS and swore allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed Caliph. ABM has mimicked the Islamic State’s macabre methods and has made use of social media to publicly broadcast <a href="http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2014/08/28/Sinai-militants-claim-beheading-of-4-Egyptians.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">grisly beheadings</span></a> the group videotaped. ABM has also taken responsibility for the murder of America oil worker, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/american-oil-worker-said-killed-by-islamic-state-in-sinai/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">William Henderson</span></a> and was believed to be behind a <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-hands-behind-sinai-attack-say-egypts-leader/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">deadly bombing</span></a> attack in Sinai that killed over thirty Egyptian soldiers.</p>
<p>In Tunisia, the birthplace of the so-called Arab spring, ISIS has found a virtual recruiting ground for eager volunteers. Tunisia boasts the dubious distinction of being the nation that has contributed the most foreign fighters to Islamic State’s ranks, at least 3,000 according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tunisia-after-igniting-arab-spring-sends-the-most-fighters-to-islamic-state-in-syria/2014/10/28/b5db4faa-5971-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">published reports</span></a> and many more have been prevented from joining by Tunisian authorities.</p>
<p>Algeria, a nation that experienced 10 years of brutal civil war between Islamists and government forces that claimed the lives of 150,000, is witnessing a resurgence of Islamic militancy. A group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah (&#8220;The Caliphate&#8217;s Soldiers&#8221;) has also recently sworn allegiance to al-Baghdadi. The newly formed group, which splintered from its al-Qaida affiliate, was responsible for <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/09/24/islamic-state-linked-group-beheads-french-national-in-algeria/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">beheading</span></a> a French national in September after ISIS issued a call for the killing of nationals belonging to countries contributing to US led coalition strikes against the Islamic State.</p>
<p>As evidenced by the Iraqi and Syrian experience, ISIS thrives in an environment where lawlessness and chaos prevail and Libya, which saw the overthrow of Kaddafi in 2011, has provided the Islamic State with fertile ground to carry out its objectives and spread its ideology. Libya’s central government is weak and has been unable to exercise any meaningful authority over the country, which has witnessed the rise of a plethora of militia groups with various Jihadist affiliations.</p>
<p>The Libyan town of <a href="http://www.distance.to/Crete/Darnah"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Darnah</span></a>, situated on the Mediterranean coastline just south of Crete and east of Benghazi is currently under the <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/islamic-state-expanding-into-north-africa-a-1003525.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">complete control</span></a> of a Jihadist militia that has sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. It is also first town known to be under ISIS rule in North Africa. The allure of ISIS in the Muslim world coupled with the lawlessness that characterizes the current state of affairs in Libya makes it a near certainty that other Libyan enclaves will sooner or later come under Islamic State influence.</p>
<p>President Obama has yet to publicly address the growing threat of ISIS in North Africa and given his past foreign policy fiascos, the prospects of this administration forming a coherent strategy to deal with this looming crisis just south of Europe’s vulnerable underbelly is in serious doubt.</p>
<p>It has widely been acknowledged that the emergence of ISIS as a growing and influential force in the Muslim world is largely due to Obama’s failed policies in the region.</p>
<p>Despite the urging of congressional leaders and other intelligence officials, Obama stubbornly refused to provide aid to moderate groups opposed to Assad until it was too late. His risible “red line” threat after Assad’s usage of chemical weapons against his own populace proved to be nothing short of a colossal foreign policy embarrassment. Faced with a loss of hope, Syrians opposed to Assad gravitated to extremes. In Iraq, Obama continued to provide assistance to Nouri al-Maliki’s government despite the fact that Maliki instituted discriminatory policies against Iraq’s Sunni population which exacerbated already heightened sectarian tensions.</p>
<p>A confluence of events in Syria and Iraq created the ISIS Frankenstein and Obama was instrumental in its creation. He then compounded his error by dismissing the threat posed by ISIS, pejoratively referring to the group as the “<a href="http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/20/obama-dismisses-al-qaeda-resurgence-theyre-jv/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">JV team</span></a>.” To make matters worse, the ISIS offensive prompted a panic-stricken Obama to <a href="http://www.jpost.com/International/Report-Romney-slams-Obama-for-legitimizing-Irans-Khamenei-with-letter-381176"><span style="color: #0433ff;">send a letter</span></a> to the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Leader” Khamenei, suggesting that the two nations cooperate in their fight against a common foe. Khamenei incidentally, is the same man who authored a <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-supreme-leader-touts-9-point-plan-to-destroy-israel/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">step-by-step instruction guide</span></a> on how to destroy Israel and this is the man Obama wishes to do business with.</p>
<p>In 1942, American and British troops landed in French North Africa in an invasion that would ultimately culminate in a pincer action that would see the defeat and ejection of fascist forces from North Africa. Seventy-two years later, fascism is once again rearing its head in the region. Unfortunately, the leader who presides in the White House today is paralyzed with fear, indecision and incompetence and prefers to appease and accommodate evil rather than obliterate it.</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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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>North Africa Is the New Afghanistan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/north-africa-is-the-new-afghanistan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=north-africa-is-the-new-afghanistan</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jan 2013 04:58:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al Qaeda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[France]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Africa]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=174229</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The real war is just beginning.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/north-africa-is-the-new-afghanistan/aqim_afp-4/" rel="attachment wp-att-174236"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-174236" title="AQIM_AFP" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/AQIM_AFP3-450x339.jpg" alt="" width="270" height="203" /></a>When Obama took office four years ago, North Africa wasn’t keeping CIA analysts up at night. There were known trouble spots in the region, but no one thought that it was likely to turn into the next Afghanistan. Then along came the Arab Spring.</p>
<p>Egypt, the great regional power, has since fallen into the hands of the Islamists and has become part of the pipeline for Islamist fighters moving weapons from Libya into Gaza and Syria. Islamists have won elections in Tunisia and Morocco. With the Muslim Brotherhood in ascendance in Libya, Algeria is the only large North African country to have beaten back the Islamists. Now it’s also under attack.</p>
<p>Islamist ambitions had led to a brutal civil war in Algeria that the country is still recovering from. With Libya and Egypt to the West and Mali to the south, it is now more vulnerable than ever. And if Algeria sinks into another civil war, then North Africa really will be reduced to the level of another Afghanistan. And that may be exactly what the Gulf oil tyrants behind the Arab Spring really want.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister David Cameron is already speaking of a North African conflict that could last for decades. It is a more sober assessment than the earlier claim by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius that the fighting in Mali would be over in a matter of weeks.</p>
<p>By the time French President François Hollande got around to naming a timeline, it was the familiar one to most people from Afghanistan and Iraq. &#8220;We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory.&#8221; It was the Afghanistan timeline all over again.</p>
<p>When Mitt Romney brought up Mali in the presidential debate, the reference was met with sneers from the left and bewilderment from the media. “Despite Romney Claims, Mali is No Afghanistan, Expert Says,” is how US News and World Report headlined the rebuttal. Three months later, it’s become increasingly clear that not only is Mali turning into Afghanistan, but North Africa is sliding down the same muddy slope.</p>
<p>It took French military intervention to keep a local Al Qaeda franchise from threatening Mali’s capital. And that was followed by a hostage crisis in Algeria. The common denominator for the violence in both Mali and Algeria is Libya.</p>
<p>The Algerian attackers reportedly came out of terrorist camps in Southern Libya. While the Libyan government claims that there are no terrorist camps in Southern Libya, it has almost no authority or power outside Tripoli, and it is heavily infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists.</p>
<p>While Gaddafi could promise the United States that he would end the sponsorship of terrorists and had the authority to be held to it, the new Libyan government is a fragile arrangement of factions that can offer nothing and will offer nothing. It has already disavowed French intervention in Mali. And it is likely that elements in the Libyan government were aware of the impending attack in Algeria, just as they were reportedly aware of the attack on the Benghazi mission.</p>
<p>The new Libyan government is the Karzai government all over again; a collection of shifting factions that offers no support to the West, instead undermining it at every turn.</p>
<p>The only thing that Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy had learned from the wars fought in Afghanistan and Iraq was to avoid the public turning on them by minimizing their casualty footprint. By avoiding troops on the ground, the trio thought that they had dodged all the problems that Bush and Blair had with Iraq. It never occurred to them that the reason Bush and Blair opted for occupation and reconstruction was to try and tamp down the resulting chaos. Despite their best efforts, their own people are coming back in body bags from Libya and Mali. And the killing has only begun.</p>
<p>The new war in Mali began when Tuareg nationalists fighting in Libya teamed up with Islamists to refight an old civil war in Mali. The new civil war would have ended like the old one did if not for the ridiculous amount of weapons that Qatar and France had shipped to the Libyan Jihadists which made it possible for them to rampage across Mali.</p>
<p>The good news in Mali is that the Jihadists are not particularly popular with the native population. But then neither were the Taliban. The Judo trick of occupation is that once there are enough foreign troops within reach; the Jihadists can make way for local fighters looking to make some money or expand their influence with a few attacks here and there. And this isn’t a non-profit enterprise.</p>
<p>Building Islamist Emirates in North Africa is about more than just being able to chop off the hands of thieves or flog women for not wearing the Burqa. It’s about the flow of money and drugs from the east to the west and all parts in between. Before Al Qaeda put in its bid for Mali, the country’s lawless reaches had already become a mecca for Latin American drug cartels moving their product to Europe.</p>
<p>The intersection between drugs and Jihad in Afghanistan and Mali are no coincidence. There are two substances that fund Islamic terrorism: oil and drugs. The alliance between Islam and the Left is built on the interlinked drug networks of Marxist regimes and guerrilla groups in Latin America and their Islamist counterparts in Asia and the Middle East.</p>
<p>Bosnia gave the Islamists access to the lucrative European markets for human trafficking and Afghanistan cut the Islamist groups in on a piece of the Golden Triangle. North Africa gives them something even better, the interface between Europe and Africa with a Latin American connection. Fracking may be on the verge of turning the oil market upside down, but drugs aren’t going anywhere and the Islamists are betting on drugs to keep them going when the oil money trickles away.</p>
<p>North Africa’s close connections to Europe make it the ideal stepping stone for the conquest of Europe that the Islamists look forward to. With the carnage growing in North Africa, it remains to be seen whether Obama, Cameron and Hollande will be able to succeed in North Africa where they failed in Afghanistan.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		</item>
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		<title>The World’s Oldest Sickness</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-solway/the-world%e2%80%99s-oldest-sickness/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-world%25e2%2580%2599s-oldest-sickness</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jun 2010 04:02:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Solway]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Albert Camus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anthony Julius]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62138</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Gaza flotilla incident reminds us that the destiny of the Jew is to be eternally unsafe in this world.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/anti.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62242" title="anti" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/anti.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="409" /></a></p>
<p>The world is sick again with an old disease for which no cure has ever been found. It tends to go into remission here and there at various times but it invariably reappears, as virulent as ever, developing new strains as the bacillus adapts to the antibiotics of reason, shame or distraction. The disease is called anti-Semitism and it can afflict even those who would seem best prepared to resist it. Few are immune.</p>
<p>It can assume racial forms, the Jew regarded as a quasi-human deformity, as rodent, monkey or <em>untermensch</em>. International jurist Jacques Gautier, who finds it “<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uug1x_OTyr4">shameful</a>” that under the dispensation of the Human Rights community it is understood that Arabs will have legal and political rights in Israel while it is accepted that Arab countries can be <em>judenrein</em>, concludes that Jews do not enjoy human rights because they are not reckoned as <em>human</em>. Why extend the norms and principles that presumably govern human behavior and the relations between states to a people and a state tacitly considered as beyond the pale, as not quite “like us”? This is how double standards are implicitly justified. Judaism has also been condemned as a cultural and economic perversion that contorts the structure of society. This is a very old story. Indeed, whatever manifestation it assumes, anti-Semitism has been with us almost as far back as human memory goes. What historian Robert Wistrich has called the world’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/ANTI-SEMITISM-LONGEST-ROBERT-S-WISTRICH/dp/041365320X">longest hatred</a> is also the world’s oldest sickness.</p>
<p>It is, in fact, best construed as a universal epidemic, the emotional and intellectual equivalent of the Black Death that decimated Europe in the fourteenth century. The difference is that those who have contracted this septicemia of the mind do not die, except inwardly. Ironically, their victims are precisely those who do not suffer from the plague that has contaminated its bearers—except, of course, for those apostate Jews who are sick with the same morbid distemper. The list of such despicables would fill the devil’s Rolodex. But they too must eventually succumb to the fury of the demented carriers of the pathology. Unfortunately, the Israeli pharmaceutical firm <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/business/global/19drugs.html">Teva</a>, one of the world’s largest suppliers of antibiotic medicines, has no psychic or endocrinal equivalent to treat the malady.</p>
<p>In <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Semite-Jew-Exploration-Etiology-Hate/dp/0805210474/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269178463&amp;sr=1-1">Anti-Semite and Jew</a></em>, Jean-Paul Sartre argues that anti-Semitism is not an idea but “first of all a passion” that is akin to hysteria. This passion connects schematically with “the idea of the Jew” to which individual Jews are made to conform irrespective of their personal attributes. For Sartre, anti-Semitism is founded in the “fear of the human condition”—of solitude, responsibility for oneself, and the terror of contingency. The Jew is made responsible for the inescapable distress of being human along the entire spectrum from the empirical to the ontological—an excuse for failure, a means of false absolution and a convenient repository of all we are unwilling to acknowledge about ourselves. As such he has been zoned for apartheid, whether metaphysical or social. Sartre concludes that “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.”</p>
<p>For all his innovative phrasing, Sartre is really playing variations on the grizzled notion of the Jew as scapegoat, derived from <em>Leviticus</em> 16, which is true enough—witness the current U.S. administration’s treatment of Israel which, as historian Moshe Dann <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-obama-using-israel-as-a-scapegoat-for-his-foreign-policy-failures/">suggests</a>, is a species of <em>collective</em> scapegoating to cover its own foreign policy failures. Philosopher René Girard adds a certain twist to the etiology of this recurrent sickness and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Violence-Sacred-Ren%C3%A9-Girard/dp/0801822181/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269178277&amp;sr=1-3">proposes the concept</a> of “ritual mimesis” or “mimetic victimage,” an ironic conflict-management elucidation of the scapegoat philosophy. In Girard’s thinking, the violence <em>between groups</em> in a given society is resolved by projecting it upon a third party—the Jew—who is then expelled.</p>
<p>In <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eliot-Anti-Semitism-Literary-Form-Second/dp/0500282803/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1272197911&amp;sr=1-3">T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism, and Literary Form</a></em>, Anthony Julius suggests an interesting comparison/contrast between Homeric mythology and anti-Semitism. They both “offer explanations intended to make sense of puzzling misfortunes in human life, the one by the intervention of the gods, the other by the intervention of the Jews.” The trouble is that “Jews are not malign Olympians who dispose of humankind by manipulative wizardry.” But tell that to the anti-Semite, who craves an easy explanation for what he does not comprehend in the larger world or cannot resolve in his own circumscribed life. By making the Jew responsible for all he cannot clarify, come to terms with or vanquish, the anti-Semite forfeits both courage and morality. What will he do when the Jew is no longer there? He would be like the parasite that has devoured its host and now faces starvation.</p>
<p>This suggests another definition of anti-Semitism. <em>Anti-Semitism is a form of spiritual parasitism</em>, the always tempting resort of the human leech who feeds his appetite for security, justification and self-acquittal from the life-blood of others—in this case, of course, from the body of the Jewish people. Put less offensively, anti-Semitism is blind ignorance, both of the world and the self. Psychologists like to call this psycho-reflex “projection” or “cathexis,” but these terms don’t even begin to cover the malice inherent in so invidious an emotional investment or to parry what Wistrich in his recent book, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Obsession-Anti-Semitism-Antiquity-Global/dp/1400060974/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1272987204&amp;sr=1-1">A Lethal Obsession</a></em>, has identified as a “Judeophobic virus.”</p>
<p>Today, anti-Semitism has adopted a new expression, dubbed by Robin Shepherd in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/State-Beyond-Pale-Europes-Problem/dp/0297856642/ref=sr_1_1/180-7579365-3343620?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1272987899&amp;sr=1-1">A State Beyond The Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel</a></em> as “neo-anti-Semitism” which is “virulently anti-Israeli”. The Neurozone is gravely compromised, but the syndrome is making significant inroads on this side of the Atlantic as well. While not entirely ridding itself of its racial and socioeconomic baggage, neo-anti-Semitism converges on the Jew-as-Zionist, associated with the state of Israel as the modern embodiment of a discredited colonial enterprise. The purveyors of this claim affect not to be anti-Semitic, but their protestations are not convincing. It looks more like lying by ancillary focus.</p>
<p>The proof resides not only in the fact that Israel is unfairly and disproportionately singled out for opprobrium while flagrant and undoubted human rights offenders are generally given a free pass. It is also evident in the fact that Israel is conceived as no ordinary colonialist power. Israeli Jews are regarded as reviving the pestilence of Nazism, cleansing, or approving of the cleansing, of ethnic populations, aka the Palestinians—which is nothing short of a gross misreading of the historical archive and a wrenching misrepresentation of the present circumstance. For despite the fictions of a perjurious world, there can be no question that the Jewish people enjoy a religious, historical and <em>legal</em> right to their homeland, as Jacques Gautier, who spent twenty years studying the issue of ownership, as attorney and legal specialist Howard Grief in his <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Legal-Foundation-Borders-Israel-International/dp/9657344522/">The Legal Foundation and Borders of Israel under International Law</a></em>, and as many others have established beyond the slightest doubt. The effort to deny what is the cadastral address of the Jewish people is a pattern of what Melanie Phillips has called, in her new book of that title, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/World-Turned-Upside-Down-Global/dp/1594033757/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1271700557&amp;sr=1-1">The World Turned Upside Down</a></em>.</p>
<p>Interestingly, the accusation that Israel is the new SS is the contemporary distortion of the theme of Albert Camus’ <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Plague-Albert-Camus/dp/0679720219/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269197629&amp;sr=1-1">The Plague</a></em>, an obvious allegory of the Nazi invasion of Europe and North Africa. The wrinkle added to this fabric of defamation is that Jews <em>have no right to any kind of power or authority</em>. As Bernard Lewis writes in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Semites-Anti-Semites-Inquiry-Conflict-Prejudice/dp/0753800330/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269183330&amp;sr=1-1">Semites &amp; Anti-Semites</a></em>, Jews have no business being anything other than, at best, “a tolerated subject minority.” Therefore, “by appearing as conquerors and rulers the Jews have subverted God’s order in the universe.” This calumny, says Lewis, is both the Muslim and “the fashionable leftist or progressive line.” But it is only a symptom or manifestation of the same old sickness. To paraphrase Stephen Toulmin in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolis-Modernity-Stephen-Edelston-Toulmin/dp/0226808386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1273011114&amp;sr=1-1">Cosmopolis</a></em>, it is, in effect, “the narrative of a past episode reflected in a more recent mirror.”</p>
<p>And yet the mystery persists. But whatever theory we advance to decrypt what may be largely unfathomable or at least not wholly explicable, one thing is certain. Anti-Semitism is here to stay. Jessica may elope with Lorenzo but she or her children or grandchildren will one day be forced to accept the indelible fact of origins. Anti-Semitism is not a contagion that, like Daniel Defoe’s description in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Journal-Plague-Written-Citizen-Continued/dp/1151166510/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1269197558&amp;sr=1-1">A Journal of the Plague Year</a></em> of the catastrophe that visited London in the year 1665, will ever be “enervated and its malignity spent.” This is because anti-Semitism is unlike other forms of irrational hatred and operates under a different set of laws, which appear to be immutable.</p>
<p>Indeed, today once again, as we confront a new world-generation of venomous and commissurotomized anti-Semites, we might plausibly conclude that anti-Semitic sentiments and irruptions, in virtue of their millennial repeatability, have become entrenched in human consciousness as a <em>natural</em> inevitability. As I have <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hear-O-Israel-David-Solway/dp/0973406534/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1272375783&amp;sr=1-1">written before</a>, “It is something that it is perceived in the depths of the psyche to have moved from the dimension of history over into the structure of nature. It is as if anti-Semitism has now become part of our synaptic equipment.”</p>
<p>As a result, the destiny of the Jew is to be eternally unsafe in this world, despite the narcotic of assimilation or the illusion of self-rejection. The time seems invariably to come when the Jew is thrown back on his identity and regarded not as a human being or as an ordinary citizen but as, <em>ab ovo</em>, a Jew. After which, measures are adopted. Of no other people can this be said. And this is why the Jewish people cannot afford the luxury of historical amnesia, self-betrayal or the hallucination of ultimate security, but must remain vigilant, conscious and always prepared for the resurgence of the plague.</p>
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		<title>9/11 Sacrilege</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/steven-bernstein/911-sacrilege/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=911-sacrilege</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 31 May 2010 04:00:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Bernstein]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Who is funding the mosque to be built at Ground Zero? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/groundzero.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61526" title="groundzero" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/groundzero-300x225.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="225" /></a></p>
<p>The morning of September 11, 2001 dawned clear and crisp over New York City, as tens of thousands of commuters made their way to work. Around mid-morning, this mundane scene was marred by the unbelievable sight of a huge airliner flying into one of the World Trade Center towers, followed shortly thereafter by another airliner flying into the second tower. The wrenching scenes that followed &#8212; of people jumping out of the burning buildings to their deaths a thousand feet below, of a huge smoke cloud obscuring the World Trade Center, of the twin towers burning and collapsing in pancake fashion to the ground &#8212; will never leave us.</p>
<p>Many terrorist attacks on the U.S. have been attempted since 9/11; nearly all have been thwarted. Yet less than 9 years later, less than 600 feet from where 19 radical Islamists flew two airliners into the World Trade Center, killing 3,000 innocent Americans, the Islamic assault on America is being ratcheted up. The American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), and its sister organization, The Cordoba Initiative, purchased the old Burlington Coat Factory building at Park Place and Broadway last December for $4.85 million. ASMA was founded, and is led by, New York City <a href="http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/05/mosque-at-ground-zero-muslim-view.php">Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf.</a> The Cordoba Initiave was founded by Rauf and former Aspen, Colorado Mayor and Aspen Institute CEO, John S. Bennet. Their goal is to raze the building, replace it with a 15 story mosque to look down on the site of Ground Zero and to hold the grand opening on September 11, 2011, 9/11&#8242;s 10th anniversary.</p>
<p>ASMA and the Cordoba Initiative presented the strangely named Cordoba House Project (after the supposed Golden Age in medieval Cordoba, Spain where Jews and Christians allegedly lived harmoniously with their oppressive Muslim rulers) on May 5th at a public meeting to the Community Board of Lower Manhattan (CB1) whose 12 members unanimously approved it. Committee Chairman Ro Sheffe<a href="http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp"> </a>summed up the bizarre thinking of CB1&#8242;s members stating, &#8220;I think [the Cordoba House] will be a wonderful asset to the community.&#8221; Even more troubling, it was <a href="http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.6177/pub_detail.asp">reported</a> that &#8220;not one person from the community [who] came to the meeting was in opposition&#8230;.&#8221;  Daisy Khan, Cordoba Initiative board member and Rauf&#8217;s wife, has stated that the project has received little opposition. The project is expected to cost about $100 million. [1]</p>
<p>However, support for the Cordoba House goes well beyond CB1, right to the office of New York <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/why_the_ground_zero_mosque_mus_1.html">Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg</a>. Strangely, the Mayor&#8217;s Office of Immigrant Affairs supports the project. What&#8217;s the connection between &#8220;Immigrant Affairs&#8221; and the project? It&#8217;s also been reported that there have already been numerous illegal construction complaints at the site which have been ignored. Nevertheless, the site already serves as a mosque; every Friday afternoon, an Imam leads prayers in the building. Should the project be completed, between 1,000 and 2,000 Muslims are expected for prayer every Friday. [2]</p>
<p>The funding for the project is the key element in the mystery. Where is the money to construct a $100 million mosque going to come from? On the ASMA web site, under &#8220;Financial statements&#8211;Year Ending 06/30/09,&#8221; under the category &#8220;Temporarily Restricted Net Assets,&#8221; various organizational donors are listed. They are: the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) &#8212; $53,664, Millennium Development Goals (MDG3) &#8211;$481,942, Hunt Alternatives Fund &#8212; $15,000, Carnegie Corp. of New York &#8212; $122,000, Rockefeller Brothers Fund &#8212; $50,000 and Qatar Government Fund &#8212; $576,312 for total donations of $1,298,918. On <a href="http://www.minbuza.nl/en/Key_Topics/Millennium_Development_Goals_MDGs">the MGD3 Fund website</a>, it states, &#8220;The MGD3 Fund invests in equality and in improving rights and opportunities for women and girls&#8221; and &#8220;on property and inheritance rights for women; gender equality in employment and equal opportunities on the labour market; participation and representation of women in national parliaments and political bodies; and combating violence against women.&#8221; Given these goals, why is the MGD3 Fund supporting a project designed to strengthen a religion that offers very few rights to women?</p>
<p>In addition, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is listed as supporting the project to the tune of $50,000. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was begun in 1940, by David, Winthrop, Nelson, Laurance, and John D. Rockefeller III, and it has a long history of supporting the leftist agenda. At the beginning of WWII, Nelson Rockefeller leased naval fueling stations in Venezuela to the Nazis; in 1942 his actions were described as treasonous by Senator Harry Truman.</p>
<p>However, the funding listed above is only about 1.3% of the project&#8217;s total cost. Where is the remaining $98-$99 million going to come from? Neither ASMA nor the Cordoba Initiative has divulged this information. Nevertheless, &#8220;&#8230;a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but from the UAE, Qatar, and Iran.&#8221; The Qatar Government Fund is listed above as a contributor, and its likely that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Malaysia (with a large Muslim population where a Cordoba Initiative office is located) are contributing substantial amounts. [3]</p>
<p>The driving force behind the project is Feisal Abdul Rauf. In a calm and reassuring voice, Rauf has stated that all religions are welcome at Cordoba House, and that interfaith understanding and tolerance are, and will be fostered. Don&#8217;t believe it.</p>
<p>Rauf&#8217;s father, Dr. Muhammad Adbul Rauf, was a contemporary of <a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-ground-zero-mosque-developer-muslim-brotherhood-roots-radical-dreams/">Muslim Brotherhood founder</a> Hassan al-Banna and was a radical Islamist. He became the head of the Islamic Cultural Center in Washington DC and founded three Malaysian Islamic Studies programs, including the International Islamic University of Malaysia. Feisal has followed his father&#8217;s plan for Islamic expansion in the United States. He is currently the Imam at Masjid Al-Farah Mosque at 245 W. Broadway, New York City, a scant 12 blocks from Ground Zero. Masjid Al-Farah is <a href="http://pibillwarner.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/imam-feisal-abdul-rauf-of-masjid-al-farah-nyc-laughs-about-building-mosque-near-world-trade-center-on-hizbut-tahir-ht-website-the-u-s-constitution-under-shariah/">located between two bars</a>. Why? Recently, the New York State Liquor Authority has notified three businesses on W. Broadway that it will revoke their liquor licenses based on the state&#8217;s alcohol beverage control law. After local residents told the State Liquor Authority of the existence of Masjid Al-Farah last May, the SLA began investigating local bars. One bar owner&#8217;s bid for a liquor license has been denied and he has claimed a loss of $13,000 per month as a result. Rauf is also the Imam of the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury, New York which includes the Crescent School at 835 Brush Hollow Road. Anti-Christian and anti-Semitic textbooks were used at the school. When pressured about their hateful content, Rauf stated that the use of the books would be discontinued. As of 2007, the books were still in use.  [4]</p>
<p>Presently, Rauf has written a slick, disingenuous book, <em>What&#8217;s Right with Islam: A New Vision of Muslims and the West</em>, in which he blames the West for the Islamic assault on America and has also stated that the West must act to end jihad. He tries to equate the freedom that Americans have in the United States with life under Sharia law. For example, he calls America &#8220;a Sharia compliant state,&#8221; and says that &#8220;the American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law&#8221; and that &#8220;for America to score even higher on the &#8216;Shariah Compliance&#8221; scale, America would need to&#8230;allow religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws.&#8221; [5]</p>
<p>However, America is in no way &#8220;a Shariah compliant state.&#8221; Sharia law has always denied the rights of women and non-Muslim minorities, while non-believers are given a choice of death or conversion and Jews and Christians are treated as dhimmis &#8212; second classs citizens. In the so-called &#8220;Golden Age&#8221; of Muslim-ruled Spain, Jews and Christians were required to pay <em>jizya </em>&#8211; a poll tax &#8212; often collected in a humiliating manner for the right to live and worship behind closed doors. In stark contrast, in 1790, George Washington told the congregation of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI that every man and woman in America has the right to worship under their own &#8220;vine and fig tree&#8221; free from the fear of persecution. America ended slavery in 1865; Islam still allows it. In addition, Rauf conveniently fails to mention that in 1805, President Thomas Jefferson sent an American Naval squadron to the Mediterranean to protect American merchant ships from Muslim pirates sailing from North Africa.</p>
<p>Under Sharia law, individuals are not at liberty to think for themselves. Women are inferior to men to the point of being counted as half a man in matters of evidence and inheritance. As dhimmis, non-Muslims &#8220;must wear distinctive clothing, and must mark their houses, which must not be built higher than those of the Muslims&#8230;they must yield the way to Muslims; they must not scandalize the Muslims by openly performing their worship or their distinctive customs, such as drinking wine; they must not build new churches, synagogues, and hermitages, they must pay the poll tax under humiliating conditions&#8230;.&#8221; [6]</p>
<p>In <em>What&#8217;s Right with Islam</em>, Rauf doesn&#8217;t acknowledge the cruel conditions Islam imposes on dhimmis and further states, &#8220;Core Islamic values overlap with core American values.&#8221; No, they don&#8217;t. He also criticizes America for not always living up to its ideals. Okay, America isn&#8217;t perfect &#8212; but when has Islam ever changed?</p>
<p>Rauf further betrays his hostile intentions towards America when he states, as quoted above, &#8220;America would need&#8230;to allow religious communities more leeway to judge among themselves according to their own laws.&#8221; Is Rauf implying that American Muslims be allowed to change U.S. law to suit themselves or be allowed to ignore it entirely? Thoughtful readers will conclude that he is.</p>
<p>Building a mosque close to Ground Zero is entirely in keeping with the Islamic ideals of conquest, domination, and humiliation. It is also entirely unacceptable and unnecessary. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg needs to withdraw his support for the project, and respect those who were murdered, those who lost loved ones, and all those who suffered and sacrificed at Ground Zero on 9/11. Not surprisingly, some 9/11 families are offended by the proposed mosque. As Rosemary Cain of Massapequa, Long Island, whose son, firefighter George Cain, was killed on 9/11, stated, &#8220;I think its despicable. That&#8217;s sacred ground. How could anyone give them permission to build a mosque there? It tarnishes the area.&#8221; [7]</p>
<p><strong>Footnotes </strong></p>
<p>1. Jackson, Joe &amp; Hutchinson, Bill. &#8220;Plan for mosque near World Trade Center site moves ahead.&#8221; <a href="www.nydailynews.com">New York Daily News</a>. May 6, 2010.</p>
<p>2. Ibid.</p>
<p>3. &#8220;Pittsburgh&#8217;s Key Role in Israel&#8217;s Birth,&#8221; article by author, <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, April 30, 1998; &#8220;Exclusive: Spitting in the Face of Everyone Murdered on 9/11,&#8221; by Gadi Adelman</p>
<p>4. Rauf, Feisal Abdul. &#8220;What&#8217;s Right with Islam: A New Vision of Muslims and the West.&#8221; Harper Collins, 2004.</p>
<p>5. Schacht, Joseph. &#8220;An Introduction to Islamic Law.&#8221; Oxford University Press, 1983.<br />
<strong></strong></p>
<p>6. Wariq, Ibn. &#8220;Why I am Not a Muslim.&#8221; Prometheus Books, 2003.</p>
<p>7. Jackson, Joe &amp; Hutchinson, Bill. &#8220;Plan for mosque near World Trade Center site moves ahead.&#8221; <a href="www.nydailynews.com">New York Daily News</a>. May 6, 2010.</p>
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		<title>Is There a Moderate Islam?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/robert-spencer/is-there-a-moderate-islam/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=is-there-a-moderate-islam</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:06:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[Where is the version that instructs believers not to wage war on  unbelievers?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/muslimsr.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-54804" title="muslimsr" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/muslimsr.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/">Newsreal</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Over at the NewsReal blog they’ve been arguing for several days, while I was flying through the air in a tin can, giving a talk, flying elsewhere in another tin can, etc., over whether or not I am right about the non-existence of moderate Islam. And so now it is time for a Marshall McLuhan moment. If you don’t know what I mean by that, watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpIYz8tfGjY&amp;feature=player_embedded">this clip</a>.</p>
<p>Here’s the latest: “David Swindle’s Complaint is a Diversion,” by John R. Guardiano at <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/15/david-swindles-complaint-is-a-diversion/" target="_blank">NewsReal</a>, March 15. In it, Guardiano takes issue with Swindle, a fellow NewsReal Blog writer, for saying that he “‘viciously’ and ‘harshly’ attacked Robert Spencer” by apparently calling me “ignorant,” “caricaturing,” and “right-wing.” And Guardiano says:</p>
<blockquote><p>The bottom line is this: Robert Spencer is a big boy and an accomplished scholar. Surely, he can handle a little mild-mannered criticism. I certainly have nothing against him.</p>
<p>In fact, I respect Mr. Spencer and his work, even if I think (as I do) that he is ultimately and profoundly wrong or mistaken about Islam and the war against radical Islam.</p></blockquote>
<p>And he adds: “My hope is that we can discuss substantive issues without all this Sturm und Drang over hurt and bruised feelings.”</p>
<p>Absolutely, Mr. Guardiano. My feelings are not now and never have been hurt. I appreciate David Swindle’s defense of my work, but I don’t care what anyone calls me, and I’ve been called far worse than anything John Guardiano has said here. If such things bothered me, I would never have lasted so long doing this work publicly, especially given the viciousness, dishonesty, and taste for ad hominems of the Leftist/jihadist attack machine.</p>
<p>Anyway, to the point: does a moderate Islam — by which I mean a version of Islam that does not teach that believers must make war against unbelievers and subjugate them under the rule of Islamic law — exist at all?</p>
<p>Perhaps Mr. Guardiano would take issue with that definition of moderate Islam. He says <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/03/14/anti-muslim-ignorance-and-caricatures-are-conservative-problems/" target="_blank">here</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>But the idea that Islam is inherently threatening and irredeemable also isn’t true. This charge, in fact, is a dangerous and malicious lie. In reality, as Dinesh D’Souza observes in his excellent (albeit much misunderstood) book, <em>The Enemy at Home: the Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Koran, like the Old Testament, has a number of passages recommending peace and others celebrating the massacre of the enemies of God.</p></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>D’Souza doesn’t mention, of course, and probably doesn’t know, that the Qur’an’s violent passages are presented as open-ended commands for believers to wage war against unbelievers, while the Old Testament’s violent passages are specific to particular individuals and situations, and are never presented as open-ended commands to all believers.</p>
<p>Nor does D’Souza ever manifest any awareness of the fact that the Qur’an is not simply a book containing passages with different emphases that are more or less up for grabs as to how believers interpret them. In reality, in stark contrast to the Jewish and Christian traditions that have worked to spiritualize in various ways the violent passages of the Bible, the literal understanding of the violent Qur’anic passages has always held sway in Islamic theology — and they have been considered binding. They are also considered to take precedence over the Qur’an’s more tolerant passages.</p>
<p>Don’t take my word for it. Let’s see what Muslim authorities say:</p>
<p>1. Muhammad’s earliest biographer, a pious Muslim named Ibn Ishaq, explains the progression of Qur’anic revelation about warfare. First, he explains, Allah allowed Muslims to wage defensive warfare. But that was not Allah’s last word on the circumstances in which Muslims should fight. Ibn Ishaq explains offensive jihad by invoking a Qur’anic verse: “Then God sent down to him: ‘Fight them so that there be no more seduction,’ i.e. until no believer is seduced from his religion. ‘And the religion is God’s’, i.e. Until God alone is worshipped.”</p>
<p>The Qur’an verse Ibn Ishaq quotes here (2:193) commands much more than defensive warfare: Muslims must fight until “the religion is God’s” – that is, until Allah alone is worshipped. Ibn Ishaq gives no hint that that command died with the seventh century.</p>
<p>Question for John Guardiano: I take it you believe that Ibn Ishaq was wrong, and misunderstood the true, peaceful teachings of the Qur’an and Muhammad?</p>
<p>2. According to a 20th century Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh ‘Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, “at first ‘the fighting’ was forbidden, then it was permitted and after that it was made obligatory.” He also distinguishes two groups Muslims must fight: “(1) against them who start ‘the fighting’ against you (Muslims) . . . (2) and against all those who worship others along with Allah . . . as mentioned in Surat Al-Baqarah (II), Al-Imran (III) and At-Taubah (IX) . . . and other Surahs (Chapters of the Qur’an).”</p>
<p>Question for John Guardiano: I take it you believe that the Chief Justice of Saudi Arabia also was wrong in thinking that warfare against unbelievers was obligatory, and that he misunderstood the Qur’an?</p>
<p>3. The great medieval scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292-1350) outlines the stages of the Muhammad’s prophetic career: “For thirteen years after the beginning of his Messengership, he called people to God through preaching, without fighting or Jizyah, and was commanded to restrain himself and to practice patience and forbearance. Then he was commanded to migrate, and later permission was given to fight. Then he was commanded to fight those who fought him, and to restrain himself from those who did not make war with him. Later he was commanded to fight the polytheists until God’s religion was fully established.”</p>
<p>The idea that one must fight the “polytheists” until “God’s religion was fully established” was understood throughout Islamic history as referring to a responsibility Muslims had as an umma to wage war against unbelievers until Sharia was established over them. This was the impetus for the jihadist incursions into North Africa, Europe, Persia, India and elsewhere. Question for John Guardiano: I take it you think that all that was wrong, and was based on a mistaken understanding of the Qur’an and Islam?</p>
<p>4. Al-Suyuti says that the Verse of the Sword (9:5) abrogates no less than 124 more peaceful and tolerant verses of the Qur’an. <em>Tafsir al-Jalalayn</em> asserts that the Qur’an’s ninth sura “was sent down when security was removed by the sword.” Ibn Kathir declares that Qur’an 9:5 “abrogated every agreement of peace between the Prophet and any idolater, every treaty, and every term….No idolater had any more treaty or promise of safety ever since Surah Bara’ah [the ninth sura] was revealed.” Ibn Juzayy agrees: the Verse of the Sword’s purpose is “abrogating every peace treaty in the Qur’an.”</p>
<p>None of them say that the Verse of the Sword applies only to the seventh century.</p>
<p>Question for John Guardiano: I take it that you believe that all these Islamic scholars misunderstood the Qur’an and formulated Islamic teaching incorrectly as a result?</p>
<p>5. A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law that in 1991 was certified by the highest authority in Sunni Islam, Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, as conforming “to the practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.” This manual, <em>‘Umdat al-Salik</em> (available in English as <em>Reliance of the Traveller</em>), spends a considerable amount of time explaining jihad as “war against non-Muslims.” It spells out the nature of this warfare in quite specific terms: “the caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax.” It adds a comment by a Jordanian jurist that corresponds to Muhammad’s instructions to call the unbelievers to Islam before fighting them: the caliph wages this war only “provided that he has first invited [Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians] to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya) . . . while remaining in their ancestral religions.” Also, it says if there is no caliph, Muslims must still wage jihad.</p>
<p>Question for John Guardiano: I take it you believe that the imams of Al-Azhar were wrong and misunderstood Islam when they certified this book as a reliable guide to the true teachings of Sunni Islam?</p>
<p>But perhaps Mr. Guardiano will dislike those questions, for he goes on to say this:</p>
<blockquote><p>This is not to say that Islam is a religion of peace. Rather it is to say that Islam is far more rich and complicated than the simple caricature of Islam created by vehement right-wing critics like Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch, Andrew McCarthy at National Review Online, and yes, my colleague here at NewsReal Blog, John L. Work. [...]</p>
<p>A better approach would be to follow the counsel of Islamic scholar Daniel Pipes. Pipes urges Western leaders to encourage and promote moderate Islamic thinking and scholarship. This to help promote a moderate reformation of Islam.</p>
<p>But to follow this approach, you first have to believe that Islam has an inherent truth which is worth explicating and developing. I believe that it does; my right-wing critics believe otherwise; and therein lies the crux of our dispute.</p></blockquote>
<p>Islam has an “inherent truth”? I can’t see anyone but a believer in Islam affirming that, so Mr. Guardiano and I do indeed part company on that one. But in any case, he seems to be saying that Islam is not a religion of peace, but that he thinks it can change, and that I think it cannot change. Actually, I have never said that it cannot change, but any realistic appraisal of the prospects for Islamic reform has to take into account such impediments to change as the content of the Qur’an and Sunnah, its traditional interpretation by the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, the death penalty for those who engage in heresy or innovation, and the closure of the gate of ijtihad.</p>
<p>For example, Guardiano quotes Daniel Pipes invoking the Sudanese reformer Mahmud Muhammad Taha, but fails to add that Taha was executed for heresy. In fact, all of the quotations he uses from Pipes show Pipes arguing that moderate Islam <em>can</em> exist, not that it exists now. Guardiano also apparently doesn’t know that <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/69097" target="_blank">Pipes has said</a>: “Robert Spencer and I have discussed the perceived differences in our view of Islam. He and I concluded that, although we have different emphases – he deals more with scriptures, I more with history – we have no disagreements.”</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope Mr. Guardiano can handle a little mild-mannered criticism, and look forward to his substantive response to these points.</p>
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		<title>The Homegrown-Terrorist Threat &#8211; Commentary</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/the-homegrown-terrorist-threat-commentary/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-homegrown-terrorist-threat-commentary</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jlaksin/the-homegrown-terrorist-threat-commentary/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 07:05:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jacob Laksin]]></dc:creator>
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		<description><![CDATA[If 2001 was the year when international terrorism hit American soil, then 2009 was the year when Americans became the targets of domestic terrorism. In November, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, born in Virginia to Palestinian Muslim parents, killed 13 and wounded 30 in his one-man attack on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas. [&#8230;]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If 2001 was the year when international terrorism hit American soil, then 2009 was the year when Americans became the targets of domestic terrorism. In November, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, born in Virginia to Palestinian Muslim parents, killed 13 and wounded 30 in his one-man attack on fellow soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas. The massacre, which Senator Joseph Lieberman properly labeled “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11,” capped a year of terrorist plots or conspiracies inside the United States, most of which were stopped by law enforcement in their planning stages. The notable fact about all these cases is that they are examples of so-called homegrown terrorism—meaning that they were planned by individuals either born or raised in the United States and executed without significant assistance from overseas networks.</p>
<p>In October, the American-born David Coleman Headley, who had changed his name from Daood Sayed Gilani to disguise his half-Pakistani origins, was arrested for planning an attack on the Danish newspaper that published cartoons depicting Muhammad in 2006 and for providing assistance to the Pakistan-based terrorist group that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 170 were killed. Two days after Headley was charged, Pakistani authorities arrested five Muslim men born and raised in and around Washington, D.C., for planning to take up arms against coalition forces in Afghanistan. The Washington Five were all college students, “fun-loving, career-focused children that had a bright future for themselves,” in the words of a youth coordinator who knew them.</p>
<p>On June 1, 2009, a 23-year-old Army recruiter in Little Rock was shot and killed by an African-American convert to Islam who, upon his arrest, began complaining about American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. A week before that, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which coordinates some 40 local and federal law-enforcement agencies, arrested four men for attempting to shoot down military planes based at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, and detonate bombs at two synagogues in the Bronx.</p>
<p>Of the 30-odd attempted terrorist plots against the United States or American installations abroad that have been foiled since 9/11, roughly a third have been uncovered in the past year alone. What is new, and particularly frightening, about these recent attempts is that the budding perpetrators were initially indoctrinated inside the United States, with help from extremist websites or Islamic preachers. It was only after they had been brought some ways along the road to holy war that at least some of these would-be jihadists sought training and logistical support from al-Qaeda and others overseas.</p>
<p>This development has come as a surprise. It had become accepted wisdom that the openness of the United States and its acceptance of minority faiths and communities had helped to prevent the spread of the kind of Islamic radicalism that has gripped Western Europe over the past decade. Whereas European Muslims, many of them descendants of manual laborers imported from North Africa and the Middle East, comprise a ghettoized underclass and face great difficulty adapting to the rigid notions of European national identities, Muslims in the United States are, on average, better educated than most Americans and earn about the same amount.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-homegrown-terrorist-threat-15345">The Homegrown-Terrorist Threat</a>.</p>
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		<title>Joseph Massad at UCLA: Gay-Bashing 101</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/eric-golub/joseph-massad-at-ucla-gay-bashing-101/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 01 Feb 2010 05:04:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Golub]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=48326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A Columbia professor claims that homosexuality is an imperialist plot against the Arab and Muslim worlds. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-48328" title="massad" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/massad.jpg" alt="massad" width="450" height="300" /></p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=7892">lecture</a> last week at the UCLA <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4420">Center for Near Eastern Studies</a> (CNES) offered a mixture of intellectually deficient material mixed with a dash of bigotry. It was delivered by Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University.</p>
<p>The topic of Massad’s lecture was “<a href="http://www.international.ucla.edu/calendar/showevent.asp?eventid=7892">Pre-Positional Conjunctions: Sexuality and/in Islam</a>.” While <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7386">past CNES lectures</a> resulted in <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/8648">Israel-bashing</a> and <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6835">anti-Semitism</a>, UCLA finally decided to honor its commitment to diversity by attacking another minority group. This time, homosexuals had their turn in the multicultural bile wheel.</p>
<p>From inception to completion, Massad’s lecture was nothing more than gay-bashing. This was on par with the thesis of Massad’s 2007 book, <em>Desiring Arabs,</em> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/4253">which posits</a> that gay sexuality among Muslims does not exist. Rather, it is a Western plot designed to undermine the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Massad echoed many of these bigoted themes in his lecture. He explained that “Queer is about resistance to Islam.” Similarly, he said that “There is no Arabic transliteration of queer. It is a judgmental notice of deviance.” In a particularly striking claim, Massad insisted that, for Muslims, concepts like “hate and sexuality are only translatable to English-speaking people.” Muslim honor killings, presumably, are only a figment of non-Muslims imagination.</p>
<p>Massad also used the occasion to present a novel – and decidedly homophobic – conspiracy theory. “Queer is an imperialist term,” he announced. “It is part of the Anglo-American gay agenda.” Indeed, according to Massad, “queer is an example of cultural imperialism.” It followed, by his perverse logic, that the “use of ‘gay’ in Iran is imperial politics.” The claim called to mind Mahmoud Ahmadinejad notorious speech at Columbia University, in which he assured the audience that there are no gay people in his country. It’s notable that the views of a theocratic despot should find such staunch backing in the hear of supposedly progressive academia.</p>
<p>Most bizarrely, Massad admitted he was “very interested in talking to people about their sexual experiences if they want to tell me.” Ostensibly, Arabs and Muslims would have been excluded from that discussion, since Massad also claimed that “there is no such thing as Iran/Arab/Muslim sexuality. Sexuality is an English notion.”</p>
<p>During a question and answer period, an audience member brought up Massad’s apparent discomfort behind the word “queer.” What word should be used instead, the questioner wanted to know? Challenged on his views, Massad offered up an answer that revealed much about the close-mindedness of modern academia. “I am not sure any discourse is necessary,” he said.</p>
<p><em>Eric Golub is the publisher of the <a href="http://www.tygrrrrexpress.com/" target="_blank">Tygrrrr Express</a> blog. He wrote this article for <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/" target="_blank">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/" target="_blank">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
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		<title>Muslim Europe &#8211; by Jamie Glazov</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jamie-glazov/muslim-europe-by-jamie-glazov/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=muslim-europe-by-jamie-glazov</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Jan 2010 05:04:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jamie Glazov]]></dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=44479</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The secret plan to flood the EU with mass Muslim immigration.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44822" title="GERMAN-MUSLIMS" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/GERMAN-MUSLIMS.jpg" alt="GERMAN-MUSLIMS" width="450" height="329" /></p>
<p>Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog <em>AtlasShrugs.com</em>. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign.. Her op-eds have been published in <em>The Washington Times</em>, <em>The American Thinker</em>, <em>Israel National News</em>, <em>Frontpage Magazine</em>, <em>World Net Daily</em>, and <em>New Media Journal</em>, among other publications. She is the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of the soon to be released, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-Presidency-Obama-Administrations-America/dp/1439189307/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1260121208&amp;sr=8-2">The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration&#8217;s War on America</a> (forward by Ambassador John Bolton).</p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-44824" title="pamkeller" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pamkeller.jpg" alt="pamkeller" width="250" height="308" /></p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong><strong> </strong>Pamela Geller, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.</p>
<p>I would like to talk to you today about a mass Muslim immigration plan that is going into the works in Europe and not too many people know about it. Can you enlighten us please?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Thanks, Jamie.</p>
<p>The disastrous and suicidal pact called the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership is in the process of going into effect, with little fanfare or examination. It boggles the mind that such a consequential and seismic cultural shift could be mandated and put into play without so much as a murmur from the mainstream media.</p>
<p>The European human rights group called Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) has been working tirelessly to expose the mass Muslim immigration plan of the Euro-Med Partnership. A statement on the SIOE website criticizes the secrecy of the process:</p>
<p>&#8220;It was shocking to hear about the plans and at the same time knowing that Danish politicians and a [cowardly] Danish press &#8212; who is otherwise proud to be critical &#8212; has told nothing to the Danish people about this project which begins already in January next year [2010]. This also showed clearly at the conference. Only very few politicians showed up and no media. Those politicians who showed up had obviously never heard about the Euro-Mediterranean project.”</p>
<p>The goal of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is to create a new Greater European Union encompassing both Europe and North Africa, with the Mediterranean Sea becoming a<strong> </strong>domestic Eurabian sea. The goal is to establish a “comprehensive political partnership,” including a “free trade area and economic integration”; “considerably more money for the partners&#8221; (that is, more European money flowing into North Africa); and &#8220;cultural partnership&#8221; &#8212; that is, importation of Islamic culture into post-Christian Europe.</p>
<p>According to the SIOE, in the Euro-Med plan, &#8220;Europe is to be Islamized. Democracy, Christianity, European culture and Europeans are to be driven out of Europe. 50 million North Africans from Muslim countries are to be imported into the EU.&#8221;</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>Who exactly is behind this agenda? Why is it being done so secretly and how come it is allowed to happen this way?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Jamie, this agenda is being pushed at the highest levels of the European Union. The official EuroMed Partnership website says it’s an initiative of “the EU and its southern neighbors.” And it’s huge in scope. Recently in Brussels there was a summit meeting of trade ministers from 43 countries in Europe and the Mediterranean. And it’s being done secretly because the European governing elites know the people of Europe wouldn’t go along if they knew what was happening.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>How does this effect<strong> </strong>America and Americans?</p>
<p><strong>Geller: </strong>Americans have to care about this for a number of reasons. Short term the most obvious reason presented itself on Christmas day, when a jihadi from Amsterdam attempted to blow up a passenger jet carrying 278 people as it was landing in Detroit. A flood of Muslims into Europe, many of them &#8220;devout,&#8221; would increase the security risks to America.</p>
<p>And the destruction of national identity also bodes ill for us. This internationalism is already destroying what has made Europe free and great. And now Barack Obama seems to want to do the same thing to America.</p>
<p>Longer term, a Euro-Arab partnership would put control of the oil in the hands of the new Eurabians, leaving America at a distinct disadvantage. Oil is power, and we would be at their mercy.</p>
<p>More troubling is that we seem to be following the same European model of Muslim immigration. We have opened up Islamic immigration via diversity visas and religious visas to countries that are hotbeds of jihadist activity.</p>
<p>The European model is in play.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong> So is all of this taking effect now?</p>
<p><strong>Geller:</strong> Indeed it is. EuroMed agreements have already begun to take effect. The British newspaper the Daily Express reported back in October 2008 about “a controversial taxpayer-funded ‘job centre’ “that opened in Mali at that time as “just the first step towards promoting ‘free movement of people in Africa and the EU.’ Brussels economists claim Britain and other EU states will ‘need’ 56 million immigrant workers between them by 2050 to make up for the ‘demographic decline’ due to falling birthrates and rising death rates across Europe.”</p>
<p>To offset this decline, a “blue card” system is to be created that will allow card holders to travel freely within the European Union and have full rights to work &#8211; as well as the full right to collect welfare benefits.</p>
<p><strong>FP: </strong>What can be done to block this project?</p>
<p><strong>Geller: </strong>Europeans and Americans must become aware of what is going on and fight it. The EuroMed Partnership will destroy what is left of European civilization, and ultimately shake the foundations of this country. Free people must not allow that to happen. We must stand up and demand that our leaders protect our civilization and take our countries back.</p>
<p><strong>FP:</strong><strong> </strong>Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.</p>
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