My head is spinning

Even for someone like me with little faith in the Obama administration's foreign policy, today is exceptional:

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces the resumption of "limited contacts" with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to "emphasize the importance of non-violence, democratic freedoms, and the rights of women and minorities in such contacts." Whaddya think, will this be as successful as our outreach to Iran?

Somehow I doubt we can influence the thinking of the man rumored to be the Brotherhood's secret candidate for president, Mohamed Selim al-Awa. He's reportedly close to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the famous 'spiritual' leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who prayed in Tahrir Square for Muslims to reconquer Jerusalem. But, hey, maybe we can persuade him to break off ties with Hamas. Al-Awa has also claimed that the Egyptian Copts are storing weapons in their monasteries to use against the Muslims, so he'd be equally good at restoring inter-religious amity within Egypt. How open do you think he'd be to guaranteeing the rights of minorities?

-- Israel has been added to our list of 36 specially designated countries believed to "have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members." What does this mean? Israelis will now be subjected to a special security screening if they are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing the immigration laws. I don't know how many Israelis are usually detained by ICE, but I'm glad to know we're safe now. And I wonder if CAIR, ISNA, or other U.S. groups linked to the Muslim Brotherhood had any influence on this decision.

Seriously, I can understand the need to have contact with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, especially if they are among the winners in the September elections. But I'm willing to bet that our "limited contacts" will only serve to enhance their credibility, while bringing us nothing.

Indeed, we'll be boosting the group seen by the 'good guys' - secularists, democrats, all those young people you saw demonstrating - as the biggest threat. According to one of the Youth Coalition's leaders: "The Brotherhood is tyrannical in its opinions and views, and I think they will take the side of the Islamist businessmen who fund it and have strict Islamic ideologies ... Whatever constitution they might form would not fulfill the demands of Egyptians for civil rights and democracy."

Shariamerica

One of my faithful blog-readers just sent me the link to this video showing how Muslim sharia law is already being implemented by the U.S. government. (For some reason the link jumps to minute 3:15, so you'll need to restart it at the beginning.)

The video documents the ways in which our senior political leaders are violating the Establishment Clause by offering Islam a privileged position above all other religions, and are already attacking free speech if it includes criticism of Islam.

Among other things, it compares the condemnations of Pastor Terry Jones Koran burning by President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Graham, and General David Petraeus with the decision by the U.S. Army to burn Bibles confiscated in Afghanistan.

Only a fool would think that our Islamist enemies will be mollified by such pronouncements. They'll be emboldened instead - appeasement is a sign of weakness, not wisdom.

CAIR is soooo lucky!

Some organizations have all the luck - take the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), for example.

-- For several years, they were classified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case in which an Islamic charity was eventually convicted of funding Hamas terrorism.

-- Unbeknownst to the public or the Congress, last year the Justice Department dropped the case against CAIR. This despite a 2009 finding by a federal judge that the "Government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR ... with the [Holy Land Foundation] ... and with Hamas." For more details, see this letter from Rep. Peter King to Attorney General Eric Holder. Apparently political appointees at Justice overruled the career professionals working the case.

-- Today, CNS News reported that CAIR has written to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to call for an agency-wide investigation of whether the people in charge of training national security personnel are 'Islamophobic.'

So now the organization that Holder and his senior staff saved from an indictment for its terrorist links wants to vet the people training national security personnel on terrorism issues. If your head is spinning, you should take that as a sign of mental health. You still retain some instinct for self-preservation.

The new Nashville

You may have thought of Nashville as a fun place and the home of Grand Ole Opry (when it isn't flooded as it was last year). Unfortunately, that's not all it is:

It has a radical Islamic Center of Nashville; one of the men who set it up came to Nashville from Brooklyn, NY, where he was the imam of the mosque linked to the first World Trade Center bombing. For more details on the mosque and its proselytizing mission, watch this disturbing video made by a group of concerned citizens. (Thanks to Rachel.)

Among the students radicalized at Tennessee State University was Carlos Bledsoe, who subsequently murdered a soldier as an act of jihad. His father testified before the House Homeland Security Committee about the danger posed by Islamists recruiting students: how radical Islam destroys not only its murder victims, but the jihadis themselves and their families.

You can also measure the threat level in Nashville by the fact that Dutch politician Geert Wilders just gave a speech there (thanks to Atlas Shrugs). His message:

"My dear American friends, you cannot imagine how we envy your First Amendment. The day when America follows the example of Europe and Canada and introduces so-called 'hate speech crimes' which is only used to punish people who are critical of Islam, that day America will have lost its freedom ... Multiculturalism made us tolerate the intolerant, and now intolerance is annihilating tolerance."

Read the whole speech - he's thought about this problem a great deal and expresses his ideas very clearly. And he's right: if we lose our right to free speech, both the hearer and the speaker lose. You can't fix a problem that you can't even talk about in public.

Ellison at the King hearings

The hearing on radicalization of American Muslims held by Peter King (R-NY) included a sobbing presentation by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) about Mohammed Salman Hamdani, an American Muslim killed on 9/11 while trying to rescue others.

Ellison said Hamdani had been smeared by people who accused him of conspiring with the terrorists. Problem is, the story was completely false. Here's how Matthew Schaffer describes the true situation:

"... six weeks after the September 11 attacks — before Hamdani’s remains were identified, which Ellison implies to be the turning point of public perception — Congress signed the PATRIOT Act into law with this line included: 'Many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans have acted heroically during the attacks on the United States, including Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old New Yorker of Pakistani descent, who is believed to have gone to the World Trade Center to offer rescue assistance and is now missing.' That is, Hamdani was actually singled out for particular high honors among the thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks."

So why would Ellison invert the truth like that? Presumably because that was his strongest argument. Truly pathetic.

The power of a blog

Dear Readers, you should know that this is one powerful blog - within 24 hours of my last posting, NPR CEO Vivian Schiller stepped down and NPR executive Rob Schiller pre-emptively resigned from the job he was about to take at the Aspen Institute.

So beware of my probing analysis!

Seriously, I suspect that what really caused the turmoil was Ron Schiller's statement that NPR would be better off with no government funding. I can't imagine any House bill including NPR funding at this point; NPR's only hope is to get the Senate to sneak it in as part of some larger deal. But we shall see!

NPR and the Muslim Brotherhood

Here, thanks to the vigilance of Joe, is a video in which two journalists pose as members of the Muslim Brotherhood and offer funding to two NPR executives.

At just over 11 minutes, the video is a bit long, but watch it until the end.

Then you can reflect over whether taxpayers' money should go to NPR. If you agree that tea partiers are gun-toting racists, that Zionists control the media, and that calling NPR National Palestinian Radio accurately reflects its reporting (all ideas apparently shared by the NPR execs), then this is the organization for you.

As Libby said, the congressional hearings should be fun.

Interesting times

It looks like public awareness of Islamism in America is finally growing - and not a moment too soon.

Remember radical UK Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, who announced a pro-sharia demonstration in front of the White House on March 3? Well, it fizzled, perhaps because of the counter-demonstrators ready and waiting for him. In fact, Choudary may never have left the UK.

And now New York Rep. Peter King will hold the first hearing on Muslim radicalization in the United States this Thursday. Predictably, he's getting a lot of flak, but recent attacks by home-grown Islamist terrorists make his argument for him. If he calls good witnesses and puts reliable data into the public domain, he will have performed a true public service.

Seeing the silver lining

Joe convinced me that there is a silver lining to yesterday's Supreme Court's decision in favor of the Westboro military funeral protesters. The fact that the Court upheld the First Amendment in this case, he pointed out, makes it very unlikely that it would side with Islamists who argue that Americans shouldn't say anything that offends Muslims.

It's also true that the Supreme Court decision leaves intact the laws of 43 states requiring the protesters to remain at a certain distance from mourners. So I guess I'll just have to go on gnashing my teeth when I see those protesters on TV.

Shame on the ABA

The Executive Council of the American Bar Association (ABA) has released a statement saying that it will set up a task force to back-stop those opposing anti-sharia laws in the United States. According to the statement: “The goal of the task force is to have a Report and Recommendation against such legislation as well as an informal set of 'talking points' that local opponents of these initiatives could use to make their case in each of these states.”

The ABA has since attempted to distance itself from this statement.

No, I am not making this up! If the ABA supports applying sharia law in America, I think it's time for a rival association to speak for American lawyers. If a majority of American lawyers don't agree with me, we're in even deeper trouble than I thought. (Thanks to CNS News.)

Go, Allen, go!

Allen West, newly elected Congressman from Florida and retired Army lieutenant colonel, is my hero. In this video, watch him eviserate a representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

West knows enough about the Koran and history to defend his point; he knows who attacked whom on September 11 and afterwards, and what they said as they did so; and he's fought overseas to defend Muslims from other Muslims. Also note that the crowd at this meeting is highly sympathetic to him.

A new face at the Mega Mosque

The group that wants to erect the Mega Mosque near Ground Zero in New York has a new senior adviser, Imam Abdallah Adhami. So what does he stand for? Pamela Geller, at the blog Atlas Shrugs, has researched that question and the answers are unsavory:

Among other things, he's an admirer of Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. As Wahhaj put it: "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam."

Meanwhile, Imam Rauf, the man most associated with the Mega Mosque, is going on a speaking tour to raise money. First stop: Keynote speaker in Detroit at the "Diversity Forum Banquet" of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

As WorldNetDaily points out: "ISNA is known for its enforcement of Saudi-style Islam in mosques throughout the U.S. It was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in its case against the Holy Land Foundation in Texas, which was found guilty in 2008 of raising money for the Hamas terrorist organization."

These are not 'moderate' Muslims. Let me repeat that: these are not 'moderate' Muslims. Mayor Bloomberg needs to wake up to this fact.

Islamophobia, Shislamophobia

David Russin of Islamist Watch reports here on the latest statistics for hate crimes in the United States. The numbers refute all those claims that attacks on Muslims will surely increase if people criticize various aspects of Islam. Some startling facts for 2009, courtesy of the FBI:

• Incidents of hate crime driven by anti-Jewish bias (931) were 8.7 times as numerous as those driven by anti-Islamic bias.
  
• Incidents of anti-Islamic hate crime were dwarfed not only by anti-black incidents (2,284), but also by anti-white incidents (545).
  
• There were nearly as many anti-Christian hate crimes (89 anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant incidents) as anti-Islamic hate crimes.
  
• There were more hate crimes motivated by bias against "other religion" (109 incidents) than by bias against Islam.
  
• People were killed ("murder and nonnegligent manslaughter") for being black, white, Native American, Hispanic, and gay, but nobody was killed for being Muslim.

Especially when you remember that 2009 saw several attacks and attempted attacks by radical Muslims on innocent civilians, this is an astonishing record.

American Nazi-hunters

Before he died in May 2009, my friend Mark Richard worked hard to get the Department of Justice to release a detailed history of its Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the office set up in 1979 to pursue Nazi war criminals. The Justice Department had repeatedly blocked publication of the report; a private group, the National Security Archive, in November 2009 submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the report that was denied.

The Archive then filed a lawsuit in May 2010. In response to that request, according to the its website: "The Department of Justice censored dozens of pages of a candid history of Nazi-hunting (and Nazi-protecting) by the U.S. government to such a self-defeating extent that former officials leaked the entire document to the New York Times this week, instead of fulfilling the Freedom of Information request and lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and its counsel David Sobel."

This is an incredible story, in and of itself quite shameful. The good news, however, is that Mark's report is now in the public domain. It's over 600 pages, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I look forward to doing so. (You can access it through either of the above links.)

Mark, who pushed so hard to get the report compiled and served as its editor, was an individual of great integrity and, as a result, his 'warts and all' approach seems to have irritated Justice potentates. Many, many thanks to Sheila for telling me about this latest turn of events.

You gotta read this

I've been reading Stanley Kurtz' new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, thinking I'd post a review of it on this blog. But I decided I can't wait until I finish it. Here's why. I got to pp. 45-49, to a section describing the ideas of Peter Dreier, a long-time prominent socialist who served as an advisor to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.

Way back in 1979, Dreier recommended a two-part strategy for turning the United States socialist. First, groups like ACORN must worm their ways into various sectors like the banking system, public utility commissions, etc.

Then, according to Kurtz: "The second part of the strategy involves 'injecting unmanageable strains into the capitalist system, strains that precipitate an economic and/or political crisis.' ... Dreier's plan is to gradually expand government spending until the country nears fiscal collapse. At that point, a public accustomed to its entitlements will presumably turn on its capitalist masters when they propose cutbacks to restore fiscal balance." (p. 47)

If any of this sounds familiar, think back to what Obama has done since elected. Radical-in-Chief has made me wonder if those huge surges in deficit spending were intentional. The only good news in this story is that Dreier and Obama never thought average Americans would demand fiscal discipline. Long live the Tea Party! And read Kurtz' book!

More on airport security

No, unfortunately this entry isn't a joke like the last one; it links to thoughtful pieces on airport security by Barry Rubin and Patrick Poole.

Rubin argues (and I agree with him fully) that all the fancy airport screening, before and after this latest 'junk' escalation, is wasteful and irrelevant. As he puts it, "Basically, it can be described as follows: Let's intensively search fifteen million at random--worse, using silly profiling guidelines--in hope of finding one or two terrorists who, if they exist at all, are almost certainly using an innovative tactic that will get by our procedures." He argues that the only real requirement is profiling and checking for terrorists entering on international flights - but of course, profiling is a dirty word.

Meanwhile, Poole has produced a study of ten failures of U.S. domestic intelligence: Islamists who were given positions of trust and access to government at various levels. It's a quick but sobering read, and he includes sources, in case you want to check for yourself.

Bismarck allegedly said (Wikiquotes says it's apocryphal) that God provides special protection for three categories: drunks, idiots and the United States of America. We'd better be careful because we're using up our special dispensation at an alarming rate.

More on Murfreesboro mosque

You may have noticed some news items about resistance to building a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Those same reports probably implied -or said outright - that this resistance was a sign of Islamophobia, racism, or some other equally awful thing.

In fact, the lawsuit filed against construction of the mosque attacks the ideology likely to be preached at the mosque. "[B]uild a mosque, and pray all you want—but don’t offer support or refuge for anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, terrorism in our community," its press release stated.

What evidence is there to support this charge? According to an article by Ryan Mauro:

-- One of the mosque's board members, Mosaad Rawash, "had a MySpace page that celebrated terrorism. A pledge was posted that called for Muslims to engage in violent jihad against Israel, as was a poem celebrating the people in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq who have been, in his mind, incorrectly called terrorists. The page also had a photo exalting two founders of Hamas above a crowd of armed terrorists. When attention was brought to this page, Rawash was suspended but he has since returned to his post."

-- In addition, "the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s reading list included works by several extremists including Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, the top Muslim Brotherhood theologian who regularly calls for the violent destruction of Israel, armed jihad and implementing Sharia governance. This reading list was deleted after it resulted in negative press attention.

Sounds to me like this Islamic Center, with its mosque, should never/never receive a permit from any American government entity at any level. The bad news is that our government officials appear not to have understood this basic point; the good news is that ordinary American citizens (probably the ones President Obama says are too angry to think straight) have figured it out.

Hang in there, Oklahoma!

CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, has filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the Oklahoma referendum banning sharia law, and U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange on Monday granted a temporary restraining order.

CAIR argued that the referendum stigmatized Islam; she apparently agreed: "CAIR says the ballot measure would infringe on the constitutional rights of ordinary Oklahomans — including the right to wear religious head scarves in driver’s license photographs, choose Islamic marriage contracts, implement Islamic wills, or to be buried according to one’s religious beliefs."

Some 70% of Oklahomans voted to ban sharia law and CAIR has numerous documented ties to Hamas and jihad but hey, she's a nice lady, isn't she? Too bad she isn't a state judge, or Oklahomans could perhaps follow in the footsteps of Iowans and recall her.

Since Judge Miles-LaGrange thinks Islamic marriage is such a great thing, maybe she should compare notes with British officials. They just closed down Islam Channel for broadcasts promoting marital rape and violence against women, among other things. Gee, isn't Islamic marriage a great institution?

Going bankrupt

To those of you who think tea partiers are exaggerating when they worry about our federal deficits, here's some informed analysis:

"John Allison, who for two decades served as chairman and CEO of BB&T, the nation's 10th largest bank, told CNSNews.com it is a 'mathematical certainty' that the United States government will go bankrupt unless it dramatically changes its fiscal direction."

Questions, anyone?

'Moderate' Muslims

Jon Stewart, as part of his recent Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Keep Fear Alive to celebrate 'moderation' and 'sanity', asked Cat Stevens to perform as the person who 'pulls us back to sanity'. Cat Stevens converted to Islam years ago and took the name Yusuf Islam. He supported the call to assassinate Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, and more recently said he agrees with stoning women to death for adultery.

'Right wing' bloggers attacked Stewart for including Islam, but they weren't the only ones. Salman Rushdie complained to Jon Stewart about his choice of performer. Rushdie reports: "I spoke to Jon Stewart about Yusuf Islam's appearance. He said he was sorry it upset me, but really, it was plain that he was fine with it. Depressing."

Apparently the 200,000 people who showed up for the rally also thought it was fine. But featuring Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam was disgraceful, nevertheless. Freedom of speech is a right guaranteed to all by the Constitution and should be defended across the political spectrum. Shame on the left for failing to do so.