Shades of Denmark! A cartoonist named Molly Norris, who satirically called for a "Draw Muhammad Day" is now in the federal witness protection program. Anwar al-Awliki, the American-born Islamist cleric who inspired the Christmas underwear bomber's failed attempt to blow up a plane, called for the cartoonist to be sent to Hell. (Yes, that cleric, now hiding in Yemen trying to avoid Predator drones, on whose behalf the ACLU has filed a lawsuit calling the hunt for him a violation of federal Constitutional due process.)
WSJ's James Taranto asks if President Obama defends the First Amendment rights of anyone besides Muslims. An NY Post story notes that a New York State Congressman scolded federal agencies for pulling aside at JFK Airport for added questioning an imam who has ties to a group Canadian authorities are investigating for ties to Osama bin Laden.
Herbert London debunks the "religion of peace" trope applied to Muslims since 9/11:
Ignorant opinion is unquestionably on the rise and, from my perspective; there are dozens of examples daily that prove my claim. However the most absurd of these examples, the one employed by government officials, academics, and political candidates, is “Islam is a religion of peace.”
Let me parse this remarkable statement. It is agreed by people who know nothing about Islam that most Muslims do not commit violent or terrorist acts, ergo the religion is peaceful. But that is a classic non sequitur. Most Germans in the 1930’s did not embrace the excesses of Nazism. Most Chinese did not subscribe to the slaughter of millions during Mao’s Long March. Most Russians did not support Stalin’s purges.
It usually takes a minority to start a revolution or “killing fields.” The key feature of radicalization in any religion or political movement is the silence or seeming acquiesce of the majority who are mainly moderate.
When the moderates say I didn’t realize what was happening or it is not any of my business, problems result. A minority controls a majority when the minority acts and the majority waits. It may indeed be true that the majority wants to go about its business without resort to extremism, but that is irrelevant. It is the meaningless fluff that makes us feel better and is meant to diminish a vision of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is the fanatics influence history more than the moderates and, at the moment, the fanatics rule Islam.
Here is a suggestion: Why doesn't President Obama--and Mayor Bloomberg as well--call upon"moderate" Muslim clerics to issue a fatwa (decree) anathematizing clerics who issue assassination fatwas? But as Abe Greenwald at Commentary Blog notes, President Obama blames hard economic times & his fellow citizens for rising anger at Muslims. He could do worse than to read "Assessing the Terrorist Threat" (Sept. 10, 2010, 40 pages). Authored by C-Ex-CNN star Peter Bergen (who once interviewed bin Laden) & terror expert Bruce Hoffman, the report concludes that Europe's Islamism problem of homegrown radicalism reached America's shores in 2009:
The conventional wisdom has long been that America was immune to the heady currents of radicalization affecting both immigrant and indigenous Muslim communities elsewhere in the West.120 That has now been shattered by the succession of cases that have recently come to light of terrorist radicalization and recruitment occurring in the United States. And while it must be emphasized that the number of U.S. citizens and residents affected or influenced in this manner remains extremely small, at the same time the sustained and growing number of individuals heeding these calls is nonetheless alarming.
Given this list of incidents involving homegrown radicals, lone wolves, and trained terrorist recruits, the U.S. is arguably now little different from Europe in terms of having a domestic terrorist problem involving immigrant and indigenous Muslims as well as converts to Islam. The diversity of these latest foot soldiers in the wars of terrorism being waged against the U.S. underscores how much the terrorist threat has changed since the September 11, 2001, attacks. In the past year alone the United States has seen affluent suburban Americans and the progeny of hard-working immigrants gravitate to terrorism. Persons of color and Caucasians have done so. Women along with men. Good students and well-educated individuals and high school dropouts and jailbirds. Persons born in the U.S. or variously in Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, and Somalia. Teenage boys pumped up with testosterone and middle-aged divorcees. The only common denominator appears to be a newfound hatred for their native or adopted country, a degree of dangerous malleability, and a religious fervor justifying or legitimizing violence that impels these very impressionable and perhaps easily influenced individuals toward potentially lethal acts of violence.
So how do we identify & support moderate Muslims in America? Alas, determining who is a moderate cleric may prove a daunting task. Witness this episode at a mosque - cultural center in Boston, in which non-Muslim students are led to pray Islam-style, and are "educated" about the glories of Islam, including a risible claim that women in 7th-century Arabia had voting rights that American women did not get until less than a century ago. The practice of jihad is sanitized to mean solely personal struggle within oneself, rather than making holy war against all unbelievers.
Watch the video (10:09) embedded in the article. The video includes interior mosque footage (taken by one concerned mother who attended the session), but also includes correct history that counters the fairy tales told to the students. At about 2 minutes into it you will learn of an anti-Semitic slur against Jews; at about 4 minutes you will hear how Islam was "actually very advanced" re women's rights. The school's permission slip sent parents did not inform them that their children would actually be led to participate in prayer, only that they would observe prayers.
The moderate group Americans for Peace and Tolerance exposed this fraud, and further explains what is happening by reveal the terrorist pedigree of the Saudi-funded mosque that, nonetheless, is strongly backed by state liberal political leaders:
For the past three years we’ve been sounding the alarm about the radical leadership and Saudi funding of the Boston mega-mosque and the organization that runs it, the Muslim American Society, which has been labeled by Federal prosecutors as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving 23 years in jail on terror charges. For years, its board of trustees included Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was banned by Bill Clinton from the United States in 1999. Qaradawi now chairs the Muslim American Society’s university, which offers classes inside the mosque. Over half the mosque’s $15.5 million price tag was funded by wealthy Saudis and since it opened, several of its leaders, donors and members have been implicated in Islamic extremism.
Oussama Ziade, a big donor to the mosque, is now a fugitive in Lebanon after being indicted in 2009 for dealing in the assets of an Al Qaeda financier. Ahmad Abousamra, the son of the Boston Muslim American Society’s former vice-president Abdulbadi Abousamra, is now a fugitive in Syria, fleeing the country before being indicted in 2009 on charges of aiding Al Qaeda. One of the mosque’s imams, Abdullah Faaruuq, was captured on tape in 2010 telling followers to “pick up the gun and the sword” and to defend another local terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from the U.S. government. Siddiqui, who was one of the imam’s congregants, is an MIT graduate and Al Qaeda member awaiting sentencing for attempting to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan while shouting “death to America.” (LINK)
The mosque leadership continues to be embraced by top Massachusetts political and religious leaders. These include Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, as well as a group of local progressive rabbis and Christian clergy, who all insist despite evidence to the contrary that the mosque is moderate and its critics are just bigots.
The Texas Board of Education has passed a resolution calling for removal from school textbooks of pro-Islam & anti-Christian propaganda. And the Center for Security Policy has published a second study on "Shariah: the Threat to America" at its website.
Claudia Rosett updates us on the Ground Zero mosque imam's New Jersey real estate troubles. The mayor of Union City, NJ called out Imam Rauf as one of his city's worst slumlords. At Hudson Institute NY, Stephen Schwartz detail's Imam Rauf's "repellent record" as property developer. Schwartz's article is short, but wait until, at the end, you hear what Imam Rauf said about rats in his dwellings.
This NY Post mini-piece on a Muslim cleric gathering to discuss Islam under siege raises a Danish cartoon red flag:
Concerned Muslims plan to hold a summit at a hotel near Kennedy Airport today to discuss how to stem what they say is a rising anti-Islamic tide.
"We'll begin the conversation," said Shaik Ubaid of the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York. He said extremists had forced US Muslims to support the Ground Zero mosque even if they initially had doubts about the idea. "Once it became a rallying cry for extremists, we had no choice but to stand with Feisal Rauf," he said.
Where are the authorities here? If we cannot create free speech space for moderate Muslims in America, how much freedom will we succeed in spreading abroad?
A bright note is sounded by Mideast maven Fouad Ajami: most Muslims have a positive view of America & a negative view of the GZ mosque. He notes that until the last generation Arabs & Muslims came to America with moderate views; since then the Islamists have taken over.
Bottom Line. More milestones in the annals of the Religion of Peace i America. Separating truly moderate Muslims from the others begins with a proper definition of who is a moderate. Merely being non-violent must not suffice. Only Muslims, if free to speak with safety, who actively and openly oppose the militants, and do not attempt to brainwash non-Muslims as to Islam and its history, truly qualify as moderates.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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