Muslims living in the United States likely have little to fear from the Trump Administration and the 115^th Congress. By contrast, Islamists living in the United States have grounds to be worried.

A bill introduced by Senator Ted Cruz to have the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist group could have far-reaching implications, many of which have received little public attention. The bill, if acted upon, would be the single greatest blow stuck against Islamist extremism in the USA. It would also have far reaching impact in Canada and elsewhere.

Islamists are those who have the desire to “impose any interpretation of Islam over society by law.” A variety of groups ascribe to the Islamist objective of imposing their politicized beliefs on others. Included in these are ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, the largest and best organized of all the Islamist groups is the Muslim Brotherhood. They are the well-spring from which the Islamist ideology flows. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, stated that “It is in the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”

The emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its founder, Hassan al-Banna.

The Muslim Brotherhood operating in the United States made it clear that:

“their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

The producer of the memorandum from which this statement is derived was Mohamed Akram (A.K.A. Mohammad Akram Al-Adlouni). He is now the Secretary General of al-Quds International, the international think tank of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today, according to a 2015 report, Mohammed Akram Adlouni is the General Secretary of the Al Quds International Foundation, a Special Designated Global Terrorist entity, accused by the U.S. Treasury Department of financing Hamas. The Treasury Department notes:

“Hamas’s leadership runs all of the foundation’s affairs through Hamas members who serve on the Board of Trustees, the Board of Directors, and other administrative committees. All documents, plans, budgets, and projects of Al-Quds are drafted by Hamas officials. Several senior Hamas officials, including Specially Designated Global Terrorists Musa Abu-Marzuq and Usama Hamdan, served on Al-Quds’ Board of Trustees. Representatives at an Al-Quds conference were told to consider themselves unofficial ambassadors for Hamas in their respective countries.”

The chairman of the board of trustees of the Al Quds International Foundation is identified as Qatar-based Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leadership figure of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi is the subject of an Interpol Red Notice.

The Senate Bill – S.68

Senate Bill S.68, would not only have the effect of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity, but it would also list three Muslim Brotherhood front groups: The Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT).

CAIR has already been identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front organization, founded to advance the cause of Hamas, and it was listed as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates in 2014. CAIR functions as the public relations and legal arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and it regularly launches lawsuits against those who speak out against extremist Islam. Its designation as a terrorist group would severely damage the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

ISNA was the first of the major Muslim Brotherhood groups formed out of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), itself formed by Muslim Brotherhood adherents. Its loss would undermine the Muslim Brotherhood on multiple levels.

The Major Impact

The most important issue in Bill S.68 may be the inclusion of the NAIT – the North American Islamic Trust. Formed in 1973, it can fairly described as a waqf, which is the Islamic finance equal to a trust or endowment fund.

The property and cash holdings of the NAIT have never been made completely clear. CAIR itself stated that the NAIT holds the title of some 27% of the 1200 mosques in the USA. The NAIT website states that it “holds the title of approximately 300 properties.” This means that the Muslim Brotherhood controls a large number of mosques and other properties in the U.S. where the message of the Brotherhood is spread.

Former FBI Agent Robert Stauffer led a 1980s investigation into the NAIT, including its role in the ideological takeover of moderate mosques. At that time, he assessed that the ISNA received millions of dollars from the NAIT, which he says “served as a financial holding company for Muslim Brotherhood-related groups.” This money was wired into the U.S. from countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Egypt, Malaysia and Libya.

Like CAIR and ISNA, NAIT would have its assets frozen if it is designated as a terrorist group. This would include property such as real estate, as well as cash and other assets held in bank accounts. The responsibility for this would mainly fall to the Department of the Treasury, the Justice Department and the integrated inter-agency strategy known as National Money Laundering Strategy (NMLS).

In addition to stripping the Muslim Brotherhood of its assets, Bill S.68 would also have the effect of silencing the extremist voice of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., along with its extensive network of collaborators. The financial inflow from other countries would be stopped (think Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey), while funding to Muslim Brotherhood front groups in other countries would be halted as well (think Canada).

This bill would be a most helpful first step in countering what seems to be on the part of many a purposeful global jihad.

Tom Quiggin, a court qualified expert on terrorism and practical intelligence, is based in Canada.

This Thursday, February 25, 2016, the city of Ottawa will be holding a public event celebrating the hijab, Islam’s physical repression of women.

The City for All Women Initiative (CAWI) organization, backed by the City Council of Ottawa, is hosting the Ottawa Hijab Solidarity Day celebration, also called “Walking with Our Muslims Sisters,” at City Hall. According to CAWI, the main purpose of this event is to encourage non-Muslim women to wear a hijab to understand life as a Muslim woman.

The outrage is that such an event will be taking place under the auspices of the City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Under Islamic Shari’a law, the hijab is an expression of the suppression of women and is used as a tool to persecute women by their male counterparts.

For many secular and former Muslim women, the hijab is anything but a symbol of freedom. The hijab serves as a physical daily reminder that they, women, are second-class citizens in the eyes of Islam.

Proponents of the hijab threw me into an Iranian prison for 18 months when I was 16, for protesting Islamic extremism. My family and I were forced to flee; we finally found refuge in Canada.

I have since worked to expose the truth about the Shari’a-guided regime of Iran, as well as advocating for the emancipation of minorities and women.

While critics of CAWI’s event, including myself, have been wrongfully characterized as “Islamophobes,” this could not be further from the truth. A woman in Canada has the right to wear what she chooses — but why celebrate the hijab, any more than the crucifix or a skullcap? It is not the place of government to do that.

In Iran, where I was born, women are slowly beginning to stand up against the regime’s Shari’a-minded repression. One group, My Stealthy Freedom, describes itself as “an online social movement where Iranian women share photos of themselves without wearing the hijab.”

The fact that Muslim women in Iran go to such dangerous lengths, risking arrest and even death, to take a stand against their own religion’s oppression is in itself a significant act.

Forcing women to wear a hijab is not unique to Iran. In Afghanistan and some parts of Saudi Arabia, women face beatings, fines and even worse outcomes for showing their hair. In 2002, in Saudi Arabia, “religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress… the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.” Fifteen girls died in the fire and more than 50 others were injured.

In a practice inaugurated by Muslims, purdah, women are shut away from society, literally imprisoned by their own families.

While one may assume that the persecution of Muslim women by Muslims does not take place within Canada’s borders, facts state otherwise. In 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim living in Toronto, was strangled to death by her father. Her crime was that, as a free woman in Canada, she chose not to wear a hijab.

In another case in Canada, in 2012, Afghan-born Mohammad Shafia, his wife and their son were found guilty for the honor killing of the Shafia’s three daughters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — as well as Mohammad’s second wife, Rona Mohammad Amir, 50. All four women were murdered by their own family for refusing to wear a hijab and preferring Western clothing.

In 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim living in Toronto, was strangled to death by her father. Her crime was that, as a free woman in Canada, she chose not to wear a hijab.

The government’s acceptance of an Ottawa Hijab Day amounts to accepting a radical legal system that is completely contrary to Canada’s democratic values, and crosses the line that separates Church and State. Endorsing the wearing of the hijab is endorsing the first step of an extremist ideology that leads to and condones honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM) and the oppression of women.

When this author wrote an open letter written to Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, by way of response, his spokesman told the Ottawa Sun that the mayor will not intervene “in this difference of opinion between this individual and the event organizers” since the event “conforms with relevant policies… It is not my role to tell people what they should wear.” And it is not the role of a democratic government to celebrate religious symbols or to help religions proselytize.

Perhaps the Ottawa government would like to hold celebrations for “Ottawa Crucifix Solidarity Day,” “Ottawa Kippah Day” and “Ottawa Parsi Turban Day”?

The City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada seriously needs to reconsider its support for CAWI’s event.

Shabnam Assadollahi, who had to flee from Iran for protesting Islamic extremism, is a human rights activist based in Canada.

There is a “French Question” question today about identity that the French have in common with the Germans and British: What does it mean to be French?

Two recent controversies illustrate the way the question of French identity has become a topic of public interest.

The first is connected to the commemoration of the centenary of the Battle of Verdun (in the First World War); the second is connected to France’s national soccer team.

Verdun, in 2016, remains the symbol of a bygone era, when European countries were fighting one another. In Verdun, more than 700,000 French and German soldiers were killed. Today, for the Germans and the French, Verdun has become the symbol of reconciliation between two nations and a justification for constructing a new political area, the European Union.

The basic reason for setting up the EU was to have no more wars among Europeans. This special 2016 commemoration of the Battle of Verdun was also a political message to Great Britain: Europe needs you, stay with us, do not “Brexit” (Britain exiting the EU).

But the French government, less than one year away from a presidential election, added a third message to this commemoration: The socialist president, François Hollande, dreamed of closing this day of silence, remembrance and speeches for peace with a huge party for the young. At the end of the centenary, the rap singer Black M (M for “Mesrine”, a famous outlaw of the eighties) was supposed to brighten the podium at Verdun.

As soon as the presence of Black M was known, disturbing information surfaced in the social media networks: especially “right wing” ones. Black M is certainly a “people’s artist,” popular among the young, especially in the suburbs — but he sings with a French rap group, Sexion d’Assaut, whose name is almost exactly the same as the French translation (“Section d’Assaut“) of Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s pre-1934 Nazi militia (better known as “the SA”).

In one song, Sorry, Black M calls France a nation of “kuffars,” a pejorative Arabic term for “unbelievers and infidels.” In another song, It Humbled, Black M sings: “I think it’s high time the fags died. Cut off their d**ks.” In yet another song, Black M tells the young people to “get a Smith and Wesson” and “shoot the school.” And in a very recent song, Black M sings about “the Yids who have a lot of fun going shopping.”

The choice of Black M to perform at the Verdun commemoration sparked a controversy. Marine Le Pen, Leader of the Front National (FN), the populist anti-mass-migration party, declared that Black M “has no place in an official commemoration of a battle in which so many French families have been wounded.”

Florian Philippot, a vice president on the FN and an advisor to Le Pen, said the choice of the rap singer was like “spitting on a war memorial.”

Many people from the “left” were also uneasy with the choice of Black M. Elisabeth Levy, the editor of the news magazine, Causeur, said, “This idea of inviting Black M to Verdun was shocking far beyond the right and the extreme right: all my friends from the left are against it. They think the idea is totally insane.”

In a classic scenario, the political “left” has counterattacked by denouncing the “racism” of the “far right” party. The association SOS Racisme wrote: “In this controversy, yesterday the danger was in black. Tomorrow it will be Arabic. The day after tomorrow it will be a Muslim, and in one of the following days, a Roma.”

The mayor of Verdun defended himself by saying that the choice of Black M had been imposed by “the state” and that everybody understood that it had been the choice of the president himself.

The final blow for the concert came fast: the French state commission for centennial commemorations decided not to pay its share of €67,000 out of a total budget for the concert of €150,000.

The following day, the city announced that the concert had been cancelled. The mayor blamed “racism” and “hate.”

Minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay denounced the move: “An unbridled voice, in the name of a nauseating and uninhibited moral order, caused the cancellation of a concert.”

Immediately after the Verdun Controversy, the Benzema controversy erupted. At the end of May, it became official that Karim Benzema, a French soccer star of Algerian descent, would not be part of the national soccer team in the UEFA Euro 2016 championship. For most of the population in France, the reason for this exclusion lies in a sex-tape extortion scandal in which Benzema is apparently involved, targeting his colleague, Mathieu Valbuena. But on May 26, Eric Cantona, the former star of the Manchester United soccer team, in an interview with The Guardian, accused the French team’s coach, Didier Deschamps, of having “left out French players on racial grounds.”

“Benzema is a great player. Ben Arfa is a great player. But Deschamps, he has a really French name. Maybe he is the only one in France to have a truly French name. Nobody in his family mixed with anybody, you know. Like the Mormons in America.

“So I’m not surprised he [Deschamps] used the situation of Benzema not to take him. Especially after Valls [France’s Prime Minister] said he should not play for France. And Ben Arfa is maybe the best player in France today. But they have the same origin. I am allowed to think about that.”

The interviewer from The Guardian repeated the question. Was Cantona “really suggesting that Deschamps had been guilty of discriminating against Benzema?”

Cantona replied:

“Maybe no, but maybe yes. Why not? One thing is for sure — Benzema and Ben Arfa are two of the best players in France and will not play in the European Championship. And for sure Benzema and Ben Arfa are of north African origin. So, the debate is open.”

A lawyer for Deschamps said he would sue Cantona for his comments.

On May 30, Jamel Debbouze, a very popular comedian and humorist, wrote in France Football,

“Two important guests are missing. How can we not include these two extraordinary soccer players?… These boys [Benzema and Ben Arfa] represent so much, especially in the suburbs. It is so disappointing having no representatives ‘of ours’ in France’s soccer team….”

By “ours,” Debbouze means the Arab and Muslim youths of the suburbs.

Benzema himself rushed through the open door. On June 1, he declared, in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca, that he did not believe Deschamps is a racist, but that France’s coach had “bowed to the pressure of a racist part of France.” Benzema added that the political arena in France, where the anti-immigrant Front National has been gaining ground during the past five years, played against him.

This controversy targeted French audiences, but reverberated throughout Europe. British and Spanish newspapers were involved — both countries that have large Muslim communities and where soccer is popular.

In France, a poll published on June 6 by Le Parisien revealed that 95% of the population think that Benzema was not included in France’s national team because of his “personal behavior.” Only 4% think his absence was due to “his [ethnic] origins.” The mere 1% expressing “no opinion” signifies the public importance of soccer in France. When it is question of soccer, everybody is concerned.

Two recent controversies, one involving the French rap singer Black M (left) and the other involving French soccer star Karim Benzema (right), illustrate the way the question of French identity has become a topic of public interest.

Much may be inferred from these controversies.

• Issues relating to ethnic Arabs and Islam situation are now daily controversies in France.
• Criticism of Islam, usually brought by white, “far right” French people, is certainly taboo. But hate speech against “kuffars” is also a public issue, brought by many French Muslims who often, it seems, introduce themselves as permanent “victims.” Black M and Benzema are examples of Arabs or Muslims who do not want to be judged on their individual acts (anti-French and homophobic songs, for Black M) or illegal behavior (the sex-tape extortion scandal, for Benzema), but only on the grounds of the minority group to which they belong. And because many regard their ethnic groups as permanent victims, they may well see themselves as belonging to a community of victims, to be exonerated from individual responsibility for whatever they say or do.
• A large part of the “left” apparently thinks the same way.
• A large part of the youths from the suburbs, most of whom are from Arab or African descent, seem to be divorced from the traditional perception of what it means to be French in France. Like Black M or Benzema, many, it seems, do not want to be part of France as individuals, but as members of a group that, they claim, is always discriminated against: Arabs or Muslims. In a certain way, a silent secession is taking place in France — an ethnic and religious secession.
• The polls reveal a growing fear of Islam in France. And the more the anti-Islamist sentiment grows among the non-Muslims, the more French Muslims feel victimized and discriminated against. Black M might possibly not even think that in his songs he is spreading “hate speech.” He appears instead to think that he has been the victim of native French “hate speech.”
• There is a new division in French politics: a struggle between so-called racists and antiracists is replacing the traditional contest between right and left.

What good can come from this situation? We shall find out.

Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.