Yearly Archives: 2017

The Muslim Brotherhood: Peddling Sharia as Social Justice by Judith Bergman

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments

  • Human Rights Watch, an organization that is supposed to look out for victims of human rights abuses, not abusers of human rights is begging US decision makers not to designate the Muslim Brotherhood — which, if it had its way, would take away everyone’s human rights and substitute them with sharia law — a foreign terrorist organization.

  • “Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”. — Muslim Brotherhood motto.

  • Conveniently, Hamas — which according to article two of its charter, is “one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine” — is, it seems, working on a new charter. The new charter would would declare that Hamas is not a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its always having been so. That way, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s “narrative” of newfound “nonviolence” suddenly supposed to become believable?

Left: The emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood. Right: While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington in January 2015, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign.

Gehad el-Haddad, official spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), is on a mission to rewrite the terrorist and radical history of the MB. He seems to be doing this for the consumption of naïve Americans. These seem only too willing to believe — in the name of tolerance, diversity and trying to be non-judgmental — that an organization whose ultimate goal is the supreme reign of Islamic sharia law everywhere — if necessary through violent jihad — could possibly value anything even approximating equality and the rule of (non-sharia) law.

“We are not terrorists,” wrote a political activist for the MB, Gehad el-Haddad, in a recent article in the New York Times.

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Ireland: Undermining Academia, Implementing Anti-Semitism

by Denis MacEoin  •  March 30, 2017 at 4:30 am

  • It has from the beginning been designed to denounce Israel as an illegal state, all under the cover of supposed neutral academic inquiry.

  • It is not, however, in the least surprising that an Irish government would pass a motion like that so wholeheartedly. After all, links with the PLO and other terrorist groups were connived at or even encouraged by the Irish government itself.

  • The conference put itself in the welcoming hands of the city council, a body thoroughly in agreement with the aims of the event, to find spurious legal arguments for the delegitimization and eventual destruction of Israel.

The City Hall of Cork, Ireland. (Image source: Klaus Foehl/Wikimedia Commons)

Readers may remember a controversy reported in January. It was proposed that an international “academic” conference about the legitimacy of Israel would take place in University College Cork in the Republic of Ireland. There have been several developments in this sorry enterprise since then.

What the conference, which goes under the revealing title, “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism”, was about may be summed up in a few sentences. It has from the beginning been designed to denounce Israel as an illegal state, all under the cover of supposed neutral academic inquiry. The organizers had previously tried to hold the event at Britain’s Southampton University and, reportedly, other European universities, each time without success.

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The Bigotry of “Intersectionality”

by Alan M. Dershowitz  •  March 29, 2017 at 8:00 pm

  • There is no more evidence that Jews are responsible for economic or social inequality in contemporary America, than there was for Jews being responsible for any of the other crimes that formed the basis for traditional blood libels. Indeed, Jews disproportionately support racial equality and other liberal causes. Most successful Jews, like most successful people of other religions and ethnicities, earned this success by hard work, not special privilege.

  • The linking of unrelated “victimizations,” despite their tenuous connections, is reflective of a broader trend in hard-left politics, whereby increasingly, radical activists demand that the demonization of “Zionists”—often used as a euphemism for Jews – be included, indeed featured, in the package of causes that must to be embraced by anyone claiming the label of “progressive.” Lumping seemingly disparate groups under the “umbrella of oppression” leads to the forming of alliances between causes that at best, have nothing to do with each other, and at worst, are averse to one another’s stated mission. Their only common feature is that to join, they must demonize the nation state of the Jewish people.

  • The essence of anti-Semitism is the bigoted claim that if there is a problem, then Jews must be its cause. Hitler started by blaming Jews for Germany’s economic downturn. Today, many hard-left activists explicitly or implicitly blame Jews and Zionists for many of the evils of the world. All decent people must join in calling out intersectionality for what it is: a euphemism for anti-American, anti-Semitic and anti- Israel bigotry. Exposing and condemning “intersectionality” for the bigotry that it represents is critical to ensuring that those repressive extremists, who falsely claim the mantle of progressivism, are not able to hijack important liberal causes in support of their own bigoted agenda.

What do the terrorist group Hamas and the anti-violence group Black Lives Matter have in common? What does the democracy of Israel have in common with the anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan? What does the Islamic Republic of Iran, which throws gays off rooftops, have in common with gay right activists? What do feminists have in common with radical Islamic sexists who support the honor killing and genital mutilation of women? Nothing of course. Unless you subscribe to the pseudo-academic concept of intersectionality.

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Palestinians: We Have the Right to Poison the Minds of our Children

by Bassam Tawil  •  March 29, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • The Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas wish to continue teaching children that the conflict with Israel is not over a two-state solution, but the “liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea,” which means the annihilation of Israel. The goal is for the students to believe that Israel is one big settlement that has no place in the Middle East.

  • Along with Hamas, Abbas and his PA plan to continue inculcating Palestinian children with the idea that they should look to terrorists who kill Jews as their role models. It might be illuminating if the conversation between Trump and Abbas were to be informed by these uncomfortable facts.

A girls’ school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. (Image source: UNRWA)

In an ironic turnaround, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) is now the object of intimidation and threats made by many Palestinians.

UNRWA is reportedly planning to introduce some changes to the curriculum in its schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the Palestinians are rather unhappy about it. They claim that UNRWA has “succumbed” to Israeli pressure to make the changes.

The proposed changes are based on leaks to Palestinians and have not been confirmed by UNRWA. Palestinians claim that they learned about the plans to introduce the changes during meetings with senior UNRWA officials.

According to the Palestinians, the changes are intended to “eradicate” their “national identity” and “history” and distort their “struggle” against Israel.

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Europe: Unwilling to Defend Itself

by Giulio Meotti  •  March 29, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • “The problem in Europe is that there are far too many people in uniform, and too few of them able to go into action.” — NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson.

  • “A majority of the German public opposes combat missions, and supports the Bundeswehr [German military] only as a quasi-humanitarian organization, a kind of Médecins Sans Frontières with guns”. — Konstantin Richter, Politico.eu.

  • The relative abundance enjoyed by the Western post-war generations have created a kind of shame instead of pride.

Soldiers of the German army on parade in 2009. (Image source: Włodi/Flickr)

It has been said that when German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the reconstitution of the military in 1955, he proclaimed: “It is crazy, gentlemen, that I have to create a German army, it is just crazy”.

Sixty years have passed, but that sentiment still seems very strong in Germany. A few days ago Sigmar Gabriel, the German foreign minister, said: “We have to be a bit careful here that we don’t over-interpret the 2 percent target.” Gabriel then became clearer: “Maintain perspective, stay focused on the target, but avoid being consumed by the bliss of a new rearmament spiral!”

A few days earlier, Germany had made an announcement: to raise the number of soldiers from 170,000 to 198,000 by 2024 — a modest “rearmament”.

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Islamism’s Culture War Sets Sight on Multi-Billion Dollar Beauty Industry

by Shireen Qudosi  •  March 28, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • The long game of Western Muslims averse to Western values, was largely unaffected by an altered political landscape as they transitioned to a new arena: culture.

  • “[F]ashion is one of the outlets in which we can start that cultural shift in today’s society to normalize the hijab in America.” — Melanie Elturk, CEO of Haute Hijab.

  • Beautiful Nura Afia in an advertising campaign is a far more appealing and consumer-friendly alternative to CAIR’s Nihad Awad or the political complexities of the Muslim Brotherhood. The face has changed but the message is constant.

  • Here you have the two faces of Islamist thought, one which underscores the myth of peace while privately exiling dissenting voices as ignorant, racist or bigoted. Meanwhile, CoverGirl and other brands upholding the hijab as a new standard of beauty, ignore the hijab’s very ugly origins.

Left: Marks & Spencer’s Paisley Print Burkini. Right: An outfit from the Dolce & Gabbana Abaya and Hijab Collection.

As 2016 drew to a close, many people were on the edge of their seats after a defining presidential election between one choice (Clinton) who stood for the status quo and the other (Trump), seen as the harbinger of a resolute victory against radical Islam. For many Muslims, there was a third choice. Unanchored to the changing tides of elections, the long game of Western Muslims who are averse to Western values was largely unaffected by an altered political landscape. They had transitioned to a new arena: culture.

In 2016, the élite fashion label Dolce and Gabbana launched an “Abaya and Hijab Collection.” Months later, at New York Fashion Week, a sartorial Mecca, hosted the first catwalk spotlighting models fully donned in hijabs.

Islamist influence is now using Western culture to solidify Islamist values in society’s more coveted circles: fashion and beauty.

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White Liberals Attack Brown Islamic Dissidents

by Giulio Meotti  •  March 28, 2017 at 4:30 am

  • “[A] section of the Western left has adopted the ideology of the Salafists, Khomeinists and Islamists. It supports their blasphemy codes, and apologias for murder.” — Nick Cohen, The Spectator.

  • “Thus the defenders of liberty are styled as fascists, while the fanatics are portrayed as victims!” — Pascal Bruckner, Perlentaucher.

  • “It is putting bounties on the heads of Muslims like Maajid Nawaz, who are opposed to Muslim extremism (…) The document is simply an enemies’ list, of the kind that fascists, Stalinists, and other totalitarian thinkers can’t help producing.” — Lee Smith, Tablet.

  • “Is the concept of holy war compatible with our ideal of religious toleration? Is it blasphemy—punishable by death—to question the applicability of certain seventh-century doctrines to our own era?” — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wall Street Journal.

  • Most of the solidarity to French cartoonists under threat has come from even braver — but ostracized — Muslim intellectuals.

  • At the time of the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the literary “Left” stood with the Muslim “anger”, not with the persecuted writer — while all around, translators and publishers were being killed and wounded by the Iranian murderers.

  • In the global struggle for the confrontation of ideas between the West and political Islam, too often the Western values are represented by Muslim dissidents and downplayed by the liberals who should be safeguarding them. It is an unpleasant spectacle.

  • “The current situation in Europe is deeply troubling: not only are Muslim women within Europe subject to considerable oppression in many ways, such norms now risk spreading to non-Muslim women who face harassment from Muslim men. One would think that Western feminists in the United States and Europe would be very disturbed by this obvious misogyny. But sadly, with few exceptions, this does not appear to be the case”. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has attacked principled and courageous critics of radical Islamism such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali (left), a prominent ex-Muslim writer, and Maajid Nawaz (right), a moderate practising Muslim writer, radio host and politician. (Images source: Wikimedia Commons)

The French daily Le Figaro captured the tragic condition of Muslim dissidents: “Seen as ‘traitors’ by their communities, they are accused by the elites in the West of ‘stigmatizing'”.

Le Point called it “the malediction of the dissident”: “For the European left, a bright danger threatens humanity. This is not terrorism or religious fundamentalism. But dissident intellectuals in the Muslim world”.

This is the meaning of a recent list of fifteen “anti-Islamic extremists,” published by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Among them are, for example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament and the most famous dissident from Islamic world, and Maajid Nawaz, a British Muslim who founded the Quilliam Foundation to fight radicalism, and who has been a consultant to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

Nick Cohen, in The Spectator, explained:

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When the Law Opposes the Truth Rather Than Protects It

by Douglas Murray  •  March 27, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • Would we be allowed to ask who ISIS are inspired by?

  • Would they be allowed to say that the perpetrator was a Muslim?

  • Would they be allowed to say that there is a tradition of violence within the Islamic religion which has sadly permitted just such actions for a rather long time. Or would they have to lie?

After deliberately driving a car into crowds of people in London last week, Khalid Masood crashed the vehicle into the fence surrounding Parliament, and stabbed a police officer to death. (Image source: Sky News video screenshot)

The Canadian government suffers from many things. Among them is bad timing.

On Thursday of last week, the Canadian Parliament voted through a blasphemy law specifically designed to protect Islam. As Al-Jazeera was happy to report on Friday, the previous day’s vote condemned “Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.” The non-binding motion that the Parliament passed also requested that a Parliamentary committee should launch a study to look at how to “develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia”. The motion passed by 201 votes to 91.

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Muslim Brotherhood Front Group Seeking Removal of Listing as a “Terrorism Entity”

by Thomas Quiggin  •  March 27, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • The application for judicial review made by IRFAN and Majid also attempts to distance themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood. This seems a bit difficult. Hamas itself was founded as the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to Article Two of the Hamas Charter.

  • This support for Hamas goes back to at least 1992.

The International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy (IRFAN) has been listed as a terrorism entity in Canada since 2014. It was also identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group during testimony to the Canadian Senate along with the Muslim Association of Canada, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and Islamic Relief Canada.

The listing as a terrorism entity followed the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) 2011 revocation of their charitable status after a multi-year investigation showed that IRFAN had been funding Hamas, otherwise known as the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian territories. The CRA also made it clear that IRFAN was the successor organization to the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS) which had also been funding Hamas. The CRA also observed that IRFAN was deliberately constructed to circumvent the Government of Canada so that it could fund Hamas after the Government of Canada refused to grant the JFHS charitable status.

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Islam, Not Christianity, is Saturating Europe

by Giulio Meotti  •  March 26, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • Jihadists seem to be leading an assault against freedom and against secular democracies.

  • Sunni Islam’s most prominent preacher, Yusuf al Qaradawi, declared that the day will come when, like Constantinople, Rome will be Islamized.

  • It is Islam, not Christianity, that now saturates Europe’s landscape and imagination.

Hundreds of Muslims engage in a mass prayer service next to the Coliseum in Rome, on October 21, 2016. (Image source: Ruptly video screenshot)

According to US President Trump’s strategic advisor Steve Bannon, the “Judeo-Christian West is collapsing, it is imploding. And it’s imploding on our watch. And the blowback of that is going to be tremendous”.

The impotence and the fragility of our civilization is haunting many Europeans as well.

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Japan: The Grateful Generation

by Amir George  •  March 26, 2017 at 4:00 am

  • “We fought against them [Americans] and instead of harming us, they fed, clothed and rebuilt us. If it had been the Russians who had won the war instead, we would now be like North Korea.” — Owner of a noodle shop, Japan.

  • Now is not the time to withdraw from the world, but to love, support and build a hurting and needy world that simply needs to know there is hope.

Soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 4th Battalion hand out small American flags and gifts to children during a goodwill visit to a village outside of Tikrit, Iraq, on April 1, 2006. (Image source: U.S. Army)

People may be familiar with the term “The Greatest Generation,” now almost past, who fought World War II and rebuilt America in the shadow of the Great Depression.

Now there is “The Grateful Generation” — those who were touched by “The Greatest Generation,” their kindness and love in rebuilding the world after World War II. We in Asia and parts of the Middle East have a special place in our hearts for America.

From the graves of brave Americans at Normandy to freeing East Germany from Soviet domination, the United States has been the major force in leading the world for good.

After the end of World War II, General Douglas McArthur put out a call for 10,000 young men and women to help rebuild postwar Japan. Decades of abuse under a terrible dictator began slowly to heal.

My parents came to Japan, separately, from the West, met in Japan, married there, had their family and served the country for nearly 60 years.

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As a Muslim, I am Shocked by Liberals and Leftists

by Majid Rafizadeh  •  March 25, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • It is the fear of this violence, torture and death, wielded by extremist Muslims, that keeps every person desperate to obey.

  • If liberals are in favor of freedom of speech, why do they turn a blind eye to Islamist governments such as Iran, which execute people for expressing their opinion? And why do they not let people in the West express their opinion without attacking them or even giving them the respect of hearing what they have to say? They seem, in fact, like the autocratic people from whom I was fleeing, who also did not want their simplistic, binary way of thinking to be threatened by logic or fact.

  • As, in Islam, one is not allowed to attack except to defend the prophet or Islam, extremist Muslims need to keep finding or creating supposed attacks to make themselves appear as victims.

  • Finally, a short message to liberals might go: Dear Liberal, If you truly stand for values such as peace, social justice, liberty and freedoms, your apologetic view of radical Islam is in total contradiction with all of those values. Your view even hinders the efforts of many Muslims to make a peaceful reformation in Islam precisely to advance the those values.

Anjem Choudary, a radical British Muslim cleric, was sentenced late last year by a British judge to five and a half years in prison for encouraging people to join the Islamic State. (Image source: Dan H/Flickr)

If you had grown up, as I did, between two authoritarian governments — the Islamic Republic of Iran and Syria — under the leadership of people such as Hafez al Assad, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you would have seen your youth influenced by two major denominations of Islam in the Muslim world: the Shia and the Sunni. I studied both, and at one point was even a devout Muslim. My parents, who still live in Iran and Syria, come from two different ethnic Muslim groups: Arab and Persian.

You also would have seen how the religion of Islam intertwines with politics, and how radical Islam rules a society through its religious laws, sharia. You would have witnessed how radical Islam can dominate and scrutinize people’s day-to-day choices: in eating, clothing, socializing, entertainment, everything.

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Will the West Please Stop Siding with Criminals?

by Khadija Khan  •  March 24, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • What is agonizing is that people either enjoyed or criticized the joyful act of a teenager, but no one seems to be noticing that this public trial and her forced apologies only mean further isolation for the young Muslim women.

  • Most horrifying is that it seems that even the West has started to buy into the version of “modesty” that these extremists in the Middle East have been forcing on women.

  • Why has no one — especially politicized, self-absorbed women’s groups — come to help? Instead, as in the recent Women’s March, they have been advocating for more women’s imprisonment.

  • It is important for as many people as possible, both in Britain and world-wide, to say how much they love her beautiful spirit and that they totally stand by her right to dance, sing, play or have fun.

An image from the video “Right to choose: Spotting the signs of forced marriage – Nayana”, produced by the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office. In 2013, 1,302 victims of forced marriage sought help from the British government’s Forced Marriage Unit.

The growth in systematic abuse of women, especially by Islamists in the West, requires democratic governments to introduce strong measures to stop this abuse, before abusive mullahs start harassing women of all faiths, to force them to submit to their wishes.

The recent threats and harassment of a British “Hijabi girl” by Islamists in Birmingham, England, merely for a video showing her dance, have re-exposed the ugly face of this autocratic mindset that owes its existence to extremist states such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Enslaving women in general and inflicting repressive agendas — such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, segregation, allowing no say in choosing a partner, education or profession, with abysmal living standards often part of the abuse — is just a small measure of the jihad that the Islamists have managed to unleash across the globe.

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The Origin of “Fake News” in Holocaust Denial

by Alan M. Dershowitz  •  March 23, 2017 at 5:30 pm

“Fake news” has become a subject of real news. But there’s nothing new about “fake news.” Holocaust deniers have generated fake news for decades. The deniers have funded “research” “institutes,” “journals,” books, magazines, videos, websites, newsflashes – all designed to provide a patina of academic respectability to demonstrable falsehoods.

This entire enterprise is devoted to proving that the holocaust – the systematic murder of more than six million Jews in gas chambers, mass shootings, mobile killing units and other means of implementing the carefully planned genocide – simply did not occur. It was made up whole cloth out of “The Jews” for financial and political gain.

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Canada: Bring on the Islamization!

by Judith Bergman  •  March 23, 2017 at 5:00 am

  • The mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Linda Jeffrey, was also seemingly unconcerned about the calls in Toronto to murder Jews.

  • The political establishment also does not seem concerned that imams are saying that the Islamic ruling allowing slaves is still in force. Meanwhile, statistics show that when it comes to hate crimes, Jews are by far the most targeted group.

  • No one — neither media, nor politicians — even bothered to ask whether there is a significant connection between the virulent Jew-hatred being preached in mosques and the disproportionately high occurrence of hate crimes against Jews. Instead, the entire Canadian parliament is preoccupied with banning “Islamophobia”.

Ayman Elkasrawy, imam of the Masjid Toronto mosque (front row, wearing white), said on video: “… slay them one by one and spare not one of them… Give us victory over the disbelieving people… Give victory to Islam… Purify Al-Aqsa Mosque from the filth of the Jews!” (Image source: Video screenshot from Masjid Toronto via The Rebel)

Imams in Canadian mosques have been inciting the killing of “infidels”, primarily Jews, for years. This agitation appears to have had no visible impact on Canadian parliamentarians, evidently too busy with petitions and motions banning alleged “Islamophobia”.

In 2009, for example, Toronto-area imam Said Rageah, at the Abu Huraira Centre, called on Allah to “destroy” the enemies of Islam from within and “damn” the “infidel” Jews and Christians.

“Allah protect us from the fitna [sedition, affliction] of these people; Allah protect us from the evil agenda of these people; Allah destroy them from within themselves, and do not allow them to raise their heads” prayed the imam.

In 2012, Sheikh Abdulqani Mursal, imam at Masjid Al Hikma mosque in Toronto, explained that Jews are destined to be killed by the Muslims. Citing text from a hadith, he said:

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The Muslim Brotherhood Connection: ISIS, “Lady al Qaeda,” and the Muslim Students Association by Thomas Quiggin

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • “It should be the long-term goal of every MSA [Muslim Students Association] to Islamicize the politics of their respective university … the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more ‘in-your-face’ association.” — Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government.
  • Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John “Yahya” Maguire and Canada’s first suicide bomber, “Smiling Jihadi” Salma Ashrafi.
  • What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood — as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

In August 2014, ISIS tried to secure the release from a U.S. federal prison of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui — a Pakistani neuroscientist educated in the United States — formerly known as the “most wanted woman alive,” but now referred to as “Lady al Qaeda”, by exchanging her for American war correspondent James Foley, who was abducted in 2012 in Syria. When the proposed swap failed, Foley was beheaded in a gruesome propaganda video produced and released by his captors, while Siddiqui remained in jail serving an 86-year sentence.

Part of an FBI “seeking information” handout on Aafia Siddiqui — formerly known as the “most wanted woman alive.” (Image source: FBI/Getty Images)

ISIS also offered to exchange Siddiqui for a 26-year-old American woman kidnapped in Syria while working with humanitarian aid groups. Two years earlier, the Taliban had tried to make a similar deal, offering to release U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for Siddiqui. These efforts speak volumes about Siddiqui’s profile and importance in Islamist circles.

Her affiliation with Islamist ideology began when she was a student, first at M.I.T. and then at Brandeis University, where she obtained her doctorate in 2001. Her second marriage happened to be to Ammar al-Baluchi (Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali), nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the principal architect of the 9/11 attacks.

During the 1995-6 academic year, Siddiqui wrote three sections of the Muslim Students Association “Starter’s Guide” — “Starting and Continuing a Regular Dawah [Islamic proselytizing] Table”, “10 Characteristics of an MSA Table” and “Planning A Lecture” — providing ideas on how successfully to infiltrate North American campuses.

The MSA of the United States and Canada was established in January 1963 by members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign campus. Since its inception, the MSA has emerged as the leading and most influential Islamist student organization in North America — with nearly 600 MSA chapters in the United States and Canada today.

The first edition of the MSA Starter’s Guide: A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA was released in 1996. A subsection on “Islamization of Campus Politics and the Politicization of The MSA,” written by Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer who served as an adviser on Muslim issues and security for the Canadian government, states:

“It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the politics of their respective university … the politicization of the MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus politics. The MSA needs to be a more ‘in-your-face’ association.”

In early 2015, Canadian Minister of Public Safety Steven Blaney suspended Hamdani from the Cross-Cultural Roundtable on National Security. No reason was given for the suspension, but Hamdani claimed it had been politically motivated — related to his support for Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. The French-language Canadian network TVA suggested, however, that the suspension was actually due to activities in which Hamdani had engaged as a university student, and radical organizations with which he was associated. During the 1998-9 academic year, Hamdani was president of the Muslim Students Association at the University of Western Ontario; in 1995, he was treasurer of the McMaster University branch of the MSA.

Several alumni of the MSA have gone on to become leading figures in Islamist groups. These include infamous al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al Awlaki, Osama bin Laden funder Ahmed Sayed Khadr, ISIS propagandist John “Yahya” Maguire and Canada’s first suicide bomber, “Smiling Jihadi” Salma Ashrafi.

What they have in common (whether members of ISIS, al Qaeda, Jamaat e Isami, Boko Haram, Abu Sayyaf or others) is ideology often rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood — as findings of a 2015 U.K. government review on the organization revealed.

Siddiqui’s involvement in the MSA, her subsequent literal and figurative marriage to al Qaeda and her attempted release by ISIS, perfectly illustrate this ideological connection and path.

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

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The Moral Cost of Appeasing Iran by Mohshin Habib

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • The leaders of both France and Italy set aside their values to appease the president of Iran.
  • In France, protesters demanded that President François Hollande challenge the Iranian president about his country’s human rights abuses. France’s leadership, however, raised no questions of that sort. Instead, Mr. Rouhani was welcomed as a superstar.
  • According to a 659-page report by Human Rights Watch, Iran’s human rights violations under Mr. Rouhani’s governance have been increasing. Social media users, artists and journalists face harsh sentences on dubious security charges.
  • In November, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld a criminal court ruling sentencing Soheil Arabi to death for Facebook posts “insulting the Prophet” and “corruption on earth.”

Right after signing the Iran nuclear deal with itself — Iran still has not signed it, and even if it did, the deal would not be legally binding — members of the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) have been showing their eagerness to establish improved relations with their imaginary partner.

Last month, after the lifting of international sanctions, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, went on a five-day trip to Italy and France.

Officials from the host countries were so enthusiastic to welcome the Iranian president, it was as if they were unaware of Iran’s multiple violations of The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) — which Iran did sign in 1968. They also seemed unaware of Iran’s expansion into Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as Iran’s continuing role in sponsoring global terrorism.

Although both the leaders of France and Italy seemed eager to appease the president of Iran, in Paris, thousands of demonstrators gathered on the streets to protest Mr. Rouhani’s visit, and staged mock executions to highlight Iran’s dire human rights violations. In 2014, for instance, at least nine people were executed on the charge of moharebeh (“enmity against God”).

Even today, dozens of child offenders remain on death row in Iran. According to Iranian law, girls who reach the age of 9 and boys who reach the age of 15 can be sentenced to capital punishment. A recent report by Amnesty International called Iran one of the world’s leading offenders in executing juveniles. Despite the country’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child — which abolishes the use of the death penalty against offenders under the age of 18 — the UN estimates that 160 minors remain on death row.

The Iranian delegation, according to The New York Times, had asked Italian officials to hide all statues leading to the grand hall of the Capitoline Museums — where a news conference between Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and the Iranian president took place — to avoid any “embarrassment” for Rouhani, who casts himself as a moderate and reform-seeker. So on the first stop of Mr. Rouhani’s European visit, statues were encased in tall white boxes. In addition, “The lectern, was placed to the side — not the front — of an equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, apparently to avoid having images of the horse’s genitals appear in news photographs.”

As any kind of image is haram (forbidden) in Islam, any form of statue is considered idolatry.

Many Italians expressed their outrage over the decision to censor the statues. They accused the government of betraying Italian history and culture for the sake of economic interests.

An Iranian women’s rights organization, My Stealthy Freedom, condemned the Italian government’s decision. In a post on their Facebook page, the group wrote:

“Italian female politicians, you are not statues, speak out. Rome covers nude statues out of respect for Iran’s president in Italy and Islamic Republic of Iran covers Italian female politicians in Iran. Dear Italy. Apparently, you respect the values of the Islamic Republic, but the problem is the Islamic Republic of Iran does not respect our values or our freedom of choice. They even force non-Muslim women to cover up in Iran…”

In France, protesters demanded that President François Hollande challenge the Iranian president about his country’s human rights abuses. France’s leadership, however, raised no questions of that sort. Instead, Mr. Rouhani was welcomed as a superstar.

Big business deals were signed. France’s car-maker Peugeot and Iran’s leading vehicle manufacturer, Khodro, are engaged in a €400 million partnership. France’s energy giant, Total, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to buy crude oil from Iran. Total will reportedly begin importing 160,000 barrels of oil per day starting on February 16. Twelve days after the West lifted economic sanctions, Airbus announced that Iran Air had agreed to purchase 118 new planes. The deal is estimated at $25 billion.

Prime Minister of France Manual Valls hailed his country’s trade agreements with Iran. “France is available for Iran,” he said.

During a recent visit to Tehran, Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank Walter Steinmeier, asked the Iranian president to keep Germany in mind as a future stop on his next trip to Europe.

Meanwhile, according to a US State Department report, Iran has pledged to continue its assistance to Shiite militias in Iraq. Many of these militias have poured into Syria and are now fighting alongside the Assad regime. Rouhani’s government also continues to support its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, and Palestinian militants in Gaza.

For many years, the Iranian president has kept up close ties with leaders of Hezbollah, including Abbas Moussavi (the former leader of Hezbollah who was killed in 1992) and Hassan Nasrallah. In March 2014, Mr. Rouhani publicly pledged support for Hezbollah.

Rouhani’s Defense Minister is a former Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer, Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan. He commanded IRGC forces in Lebanon is Syria during Hezbollah’s founding years from 1982-1984.

Last September, Dehghan said that Tehran will continue arming Hezbollah, Hamas and any group that is part of the “resistance” against the U.S. and Israel. Iran, he explained, considers America to be the Great Satan.

“Hizbullah,” Dehghan stated, “does not need us to supply them with rockets and arms. Israel and the U.S. need to know this. Today, Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Hizbullah have the capability of producing their own resources and weapons themselves. Nevertheless, we shall not refrain from supporting them.”

As well as Dehghan, almost all of Rouhani’s appointments are either former members of the IRGC or other revolutionary institutions, such as Iran’s Judiciary and Intelligence Ministries.

Iran’s human rights violations under Rouhani’s governance have been increasing. A 659-page report published by Human Rights Watch concludes that Iranian authorities have repeatedly clamped down on free speech and dissent. “In a sharp increase from previous years, Iran also executed more than 830 prisoners.”

Since Hassan Rouhani (right) became the president of Iran, the surge in executions has given Iran the world’s highest death penalty rate per capita.

Social media users, artists and journalists face harsh sentences on dubious “security” charges. In May 2014, four young men and three unveiled women were arrested after a video showing them dancing to the popular song “Happy” went viral on YouTube. They were sentenced to up to a year in prison and 91 lashes on several charges, including “illicit relations.”

In November, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld a criminal court ruling sentencing Soheil Arabi to death for Facebook posts “insulting the Prophet” and “corruption on earth.”

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The Middle East: The Other Main Sources of Law by Burak Bekdil

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • Apparently what Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal understands of democracy is totally different than what the term means in more civilized parts of the world.
  • If Prince Al-Waleed so passionately defends democracy, he should spend less of his office time in showing solidarity with undemocratic leaders, and more in giving at least a bit of democratic breathing space to his own people.

In the Saudi Kingdom, the primary source of law is the Islamic sharia, based on the principles of a school of jurisprudence (Hanbali) found in pre-modern texts. Ultra-puritanical judges and lawyers form part of the country’s Islamic scholars.

But there is another main source of law: royal decrees. Simple death penalty along with beheading, stoning to death, amputation, crucifixion and lashing are common legal punishments. In the three years to 2010, there were 345 beheadings. But the legal system is usually too lenient for cases of rape and domestic violence.

The common punishment for offenses against religion and public morality such as drinking alcohol and neglect of prayer is usually lashings. Retaliatory punishments are also part of the legal system, such as, literally, an eye for an eye. Saudis can also grant clemency, in return for money, to someone who has unlawfully killed their relatives.

It is not surprising to anyone that Saudi Arabia is widely accused of having one of the worst human rights records in the world — the Kingdom is one of the few countries in the world not to accept the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is capital punishment for homosexuality. Women are not allowed in public places to be in the presence of someone outside the kinship. They are not allowed to drive.

But what makes Saudi Arabia an even uglier country than all of that medieval legal absurdity and systematic and cruel torture of its own citizens combined, is the fact that those pre-modern laws do not apply to all Saudis. One powerful visual evidence of this was a few photographs showing a Saudi prince vacationing on an ultra-luxurious yacht off Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The very strict Quranic ban on all forms of extravagance and the command for modesty are probably not printed in Saudi copies of the Muslim holy book. But there was more than that.

Prince Nawaf al Saud spent four days with his friends and bikini-clad Swedish models on the yacht, which he rented for one million euros for a week, and was photographed partying all day. There were reports of a 4,500-euro dinner on a nearby Greek island and 1,000-euro tips for the waiters. Turkish columnist Ahmet Hakan wrote that the prince could have accommodated at least 80 Syrian refugees with the million euros spent for the chartered yacht:

“You in your country immediately draw your swords if a poor Bangladeshi [laborer] has accidental eye contact with a woman in her full niqab … What does your [holy] book say about your extravagant partying with models in bikinis?”

Good question.

But Turkey saw another Saudi prince recently. Business magnate, investor and, according to some, philanthropist Al-Waleed Bin Talal visited a Turkish resort on the Mediterranean coast shortly after Turkey’s failed coup of July 15.

Al-Waleed is a grandson of Ibn Saud, the first Saudi king, and a half-nephew of all Saudi kings since. Forbes listed him in March as the world’s 41st richest man, with an estimated wealth of $17.3 billion. While in Antalya, the Turkish resort, he was interviewed by the leading Turkish daily, Hurriyet. His messages were:

  • “When the coup took place in Turkey I said to myself I should go to Turkey immediately [in solidarity with President Erdogan].”
  • “Erdogan and I defend a ‘progressive Islamic’ understanding.”
  • “Some say that Islam and democracy cannot cohabit. But the Turkish example shows that this [argument] is totally invalid. Turkey is the best indication that Islam and democracy can cohabit. It is a country that is taken as precedent. We can see how much Turkey could internalize democracy.”

If the honorable prince was not joking, he must have come to Turkey to tell millions of Turks suffocating under Erdogan’s autocratic regime fairy tales from an Arab kingdom. With the third-world democratic culture it features, Turkey can be taken as a precedent only by North Koreans, almost all inhabitants of the Gulf and Arab countries and by Iranians. Apparently, what the prince understands of democracy is a totally different thing than what the term means in more civilized parts of the world.

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara, May 6, 2015.

And if Prince Al-Waleed so passionately defends democracy, he should spend less of his office time in showing solidarity with undemocratic leaders, and more in giving at least a bit of democratic breathing space to his own people.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

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The Lie of “Disproportionality” by Fred Maroun

June 20, 2017   Uncategorized   No comments
  • By making an accusation of disproportionality without defining the meaning of the term, Bernie Sanders and Haaretz betrayed not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also their professions. They made false and unsubstantiated accusations while ignoring the thousands more deaths that the Palestinians are inflicting on their own people — by training toddlers and children for war, using their own people as human shields and failing to provide shelters for them, as the Israelis do for their citizens.
  • In addition to helping Bernie Sanders attract the naïve and anti-Israel vote, and helping Haaretz attract anti-Semitic readers, unsubstantiated claims of disproportionality divert attention from the fact that preventing more wars requires replacing Gaza’s Iranian-backed terrorist regime with a regime that is interested in the well-being of the Palestinians.

As a fourth Gaza war looms on the horizon, we should be aware of the hypocrisy and demagoguery of past Gaza wars: because we are likely to see more of the same.

The Accusation

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a candidate in the Democratic primaries for president, claimed that Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war was “disproportionate,” and Haaretz columnist Asher Schechter agreed. Yet neither Sanders nor Haaretz provided evidence to back that claim.

Schechter made one point worth mentioning: the claim of “extremely permissive rules of engagement during the operation that aimed to protect the lives of IDF soldiers even if the cost was a greater loss of civilian lives.” If true, it simply means that IDF soldiers, as all soldiers, have to make split-second decisions, and when they do so in a situation when confronted with Palestinians who appear to be terrorists, they err on the side of assuming they are terrorists in order to protect their own lives. That is not unexpected, and Israel has no obligation to do otherwise.

Israel has repeatedly demonstrated how much it values the civilian lives of the people it is fighting. No other military force drops leaflets, telephones its adversaries and “knocks on the roof” to warn them of an imminent attack, so that civilians will have time to evacuate. Israel values the lives of Palestinian civilians, but naturally, it values the lives of its own soldiers more. Israel has repeatedly demonstrated how much it values its soldiers, for example when it freed more than one thousand Palestinian criminals. Why would anyone expect Israel to suddenly to value its soldiers less when forced to fight terrorism in Gaza?

What is disgraceful is not that Israel cares about its soldiers, most of whom have families at home — in many cases dependent on them for their livelihood. What would morale in any military be if soldiers felt they were merely regarded as cannon-fodder, not cared about?

What is disgraceful is that the Palestinian government in Gaza cares less about the lives of its own civilians, who themselves have families, than about killing Jews. This is why the terrorists exploit those civilians as part of their “dead baby strategy,” described by American human rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

As Dershowitz has also written, Hamas has a “calculated strategy designed to point the emotional finger of moral blame at the IDF for doing what every democracy would do: namely, defend its civilians from rocket attacks by targeting those who are firing the rockets, even if they are firing them from civilian areas.”

No Credible Evidence

There has been no evidence from an unbiased and credible source that Israel’s actions in Gaza were disproportionate — in the laws of war, not meaning that the number of dead on both sides of a conflict have to be the same (which would be nonsense) — but that the amount of military force to be applied to accomplish a particular military operation may not exceed the amount of force required to accomplish the goal of that military operation: “Loss of life and damage to property incidental to attacks must not be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage …”

This is not a simple concept, especially for a public not versed in military matters.

Among the biased sources that have weighed in is Amnesty International (AI), which made that accusation in July 2015. The Israeli government explained why AI’s conclusion was not valid, but AI’s thoroughly documented record of anti-Israel bias already tainted its report.

AI’s bias against Israel has also been documented by several analysts, in addition to NGO Monitor: Dr. Yvette Alt Miller and Alan Dershowitz himself. AI’s national office denied Alan Dershowitz the right to speak after AI’s Columbia chapter had invited him. AI even co-sponsored the speaking tour of a Palestinian activist who promotes violence and who openly exploits his own children to provoke Israeli soldiers.

In addition to the lack of credibility of the accusations, non-Israeli and non-Jewish sources have also reached the conclusion that Israel committed no crimes of disproportionality. During the 2014 Gaza war, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said, “No other army in the world has ever done more than Israel is doing now to save the lives of innocent civilians in a combat zone”. In April 2016, he reiterated that assessment.

Haaretz‘s Schechter admits that “Hamas, of course, launched rocket attacks against schools, hospitals and houses. It did so deliberately, with the intent of inflicting death and suffering.” Everyone who is not an outright terrorist supporter, including Sanders and Haaretz, agrees that Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks from Gaza. It is, of course, the duty of Israel to use only the force required to stop the attackers and not much more, but how does one determine if Israel went “too far”?

To the naïve observer, it seems that because far more Palestinians died than Israelis, Israel must be using disproportionate force. This conclusion, however, does not take into account that Israel goes to great lengths to protect its civilians while Hamas encourages civilian casualties in order to gain sympathy, as Dershowitz explains. It also does not take into account the actual meaning of proportionality.

A Betrayal of both Israelis and Palestinians

By making an accusation of disproportionality without defining the meaning of the term, Sanders and Haaretz betrayed not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also their professions. They made false and unsubstantiated accusations while ignoring the thousands more Palestinian deaths that the Palestinians are inflicting on their own people — by training toddlers and children for war, using their own people as human shields and failing to provide shelters for them, as the Israelis do for their citizens.

In addition to helping Sanders attract the naïve and anti-Israel vote, and helping Haaretz attract anti-Semitic readers, unsubstantiated claims of disproportionality divert attention from the fact that preventing more wars requires replacing Gaza’s Iranian-backed terrorist regime with a regime that is interested in the well-being of the Palestinians. Sanders and Schechter propose nothing to achieve this. They prefer falsely to accuse Israel of anything that might possibly sound damning, and hope that no one will dig for some truth or ask any questions.

To naïve people, Sanders and Schechter appear thoughtful, compassionate individuals who care about the Palestinians; in fact, they merely are either ignorant themselves or duplicitous. If betraying Israelis and Palestinians equally is what Sanders means by “a more balanced position,” all that is disproportionate is their unjustified hostility towards Israel that is also unhelpful to the Palestinians.

Fred Maroun, a left-leaning Arab based in Canada, has authored op-eds for New Canadian Media, among other outlets. From 1961-1984, he lived in Lebanon.

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