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Please read just a few of the headlines that World Net Daily has published.
April, 2008
LAW
OF THE LAND
Church battles for property
lost to bake sale tax dispute
'To put lien on worship facility over resale
activity is ludicrous'
The city of Chicago has been handed another defeat in its effort to take over a church's property in order to use in it a redevelopment project, according to officials with the Alliance Defense Fund.
Government officials took title to the property after they first claimed the organization had failed to pay sales taxes on fundraising bake sales, even though such activities are exempt from sales tax requirements, and then sending notifications of the taxes due as well as the tax lien sale to the wrong address.
Officials with Beth-El All Nations Church now have gone to court to regain title to their facility, and yesterday a judge rejected an effort by city officials to have the action thrown out.
"The government should not demonstrate hostility toward religion by penalizing churches when there's clearly no reason to do so," said ADF Senior Counsel Joe Infranco.
"To put a lien on a church's property for the invented reason that the church somehow engaged in some undefined 'resale activity' and didn't collect and pay sales tax is simply ludicrous," said ADF-allied attorney and lead counsel Andy Norman of the Chicago law firm Mauck & Baker. "The court was right to allow the church's case against the city to proceed."
The long-running dispute dates back to shortly after the church acquired its property in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood in 1976 and rehabilitated the location to begin worship services.
While there were no complications at first, about 1986 Cook County officials decided that the church no longer was exempt, and started assessing property taxes, totaling more than $100,000 between the period 1986 to 1995.
The law firm said the issue was that county officials had decided the church was engaging in an unspecified "resale activity," but church officials said the only such event that could be described that way – even remotely – would be its fundraising bake sales, which in Illinois are not subject to sales taxes.
Then because of "numerous procedural errors" by government officials, the church never was informed of the taxes, or the government's later decision to put a lien on the property, or the eventual tax sale through which the county obtained a title to the church. The county later re-assigned that to the city of Chicago.
According to documents in the case, among other mistakes that happened, was a notice to the church about its right to redeem its property.
"An employee of the city of Chicago mistakenly addressed a notice to Beth-El All Nations Church at 1534 East 63rd Street, instead of Beth-El's true address, 1534 West 63rd Street," court records note. "The notice was pretty important: it advised the church of its right to redeem title to the 63rd Street property after the parcel was sold for delinquent taxes."
Similar mistakes had happened with earlier tax notifications, the court documents confirmed.
"Despite the misaddressed notice, the city acquired a tax deed to the 63rd Street property in 1998. … The city sought to oust Beth-El from the property in 2006," but a federal complaint was filed to correct the government employees' mistakes.
According to the ADF, the site long has been desired by government officials to be used in a redevelopment project there.
The documents in the case reveal that the not only did the city use the wrong address, it then represented to the court "that all required notices had been served."
The church said the 1998 proceedings should be set aside because "the tax deed had been procured by fraud or deception."
Bishop Edgar Jackson, the pastor since 1995, testified the church never was located at 1534 East 63rd Street, and that he hadn't been told of any disputes over what he assumed was the church's tax-exempt status.
A state court ruling sided with the city, concluding the
city's mistake should be overlooked and it could take over the
property, but in federal court, the church alleged violations of the
Fourth Amendment for "unreasonable search and seizure" and other
violations.
A judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan, at one point scolded the city for its actions. Ordering the church to shut down, he said, could cause "severe harm" and result in "losses to the community that could not be quantified in dollars and cents … In fact, it is entirely unclear why the city would desire such an asset to the community to cease its operations…"
World Net Daily
April, 2008
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Teacher keeps Bible, cites God-given rights
Principal ordered Good Book hidden from students
An Ohio school teacher has refused an order from his public school principal to hide his personal Bible, which he's kept on his desk for 18 years, from his students.
The teacher, John Freshwater, held a news conference today to respond to questions from local reporters about the issue as the deadline set by school officials for him to hide his Bible passed.
No formal action was taken immediately by officials in the Mount Vernon, Ohio, School District in response to Freshwater's move, according to Coach Dave Daubenmire of Pass The Salt Ministries and Minutemen United, who was acting as a spokesman for Freshwater.
Daubenmire has had his own experience with such perspectives, having been sued by the American Civil Liberties Union in 1999 for praying with his football teams while coaching in Ohio.
Freshwater has been a middle school science teacher for 20 years in the Mount Vernon School District. Recently the principal visited his classroom, and then notified him of several changes he would be required to make.
One was a demand to remove a copy of the Ten Commandments from a collage of historic information in one location in his classroom, a demand Freshwater agreed to fulfill.
But he said the district must prove to him how it can order him to remove his personal Bible from his desk without infringing on his God-given and First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion.
"John Freshwater has sounded the alarm and we have hope that his cause will not die for a lack of a second from the church leadership in Mount Vernon," said Jim Harrison, national director of Minutemen United.
He said the hope is the community churches will rally behind Freshwater's desire to keep his Bible handy.
"This is an incredible opportunity to right some historical misconceptions about the church and state relationship in our great nation," Harrison said.
Daubenmire, who said he "has a deep appreciation and understanding for what John is doing," told WND Freshwater is not yet represented by counsel, but hasn't been subjected to any sanction by the school yet either.
"Today at noon he informed them he would not comply with the order to remove his personal Bible from where it's sat for 18 years," Daubenmire told WND. "It's his personal Bible. He draws great strength from it."
He also said Freshwater has not, and does not, use the Bible in his interaction with students, but he also believes he does not forfeit his own rights just for being a teacher.
Such a school demand, he said, amounts to an ongoing viewpoint discrimination, since a Muslim woman would not be ordered to hide her head covering from students' views.
"The Mount Vernon Schools today directed one of its middle school science teachers to remove from his classroom the 10 Commandments he had displayed and to remove his Bible from his desktop while students were in his room. The Mount Vernon Schools has not taken this action because it opposes religion, but because it has an obligation under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution to protect against the establishment of religion in the schools. As a public school system the district cannot teach, promote or favor any religion or religious beliefs."
Daubenmire said, however, the school's demands go far beyond making sure it doesn't "establish religion" and reaches the level of a "continuous purging of Christianity."
In an earlier commentary for WND, Daubenmire framed the issue as a rampant attack singling out Christianity.
"Please notice that the attack on religious freedom in America is on Christianity. No one is trying to silence the religious freedom of Muslims or atheists or humanists. Quite the contrary. We are told to 'understand' Muslims, to be sensitive to the atheists and to tolerate the humanists and their various denominations of 'isms' (environmentalism, feminism, secularism, socialism, communism), which we teach openly in our schools," he said.
"Our rights are God-given rights. They are not 'constitutional' rights," he continued. "Take some time and read the U.S. Constitution. You will see that it does not grant any rights to anyone. Instead, while setting up the federal government, the document (the first 10 amendments) also prohibits the government from interfering with various aspects of human freedom. The first 10 amendments limit what the government can do. They shouldn't be called the Bill of Rights; they should be called the Bill of Limitations."
Instead of claiming constitutional rights, citizens
of the U.S. should proclaim their God-given rights, he said.
World Net Daily
April, 2008
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FAITH UNDER FIRE
Face of Olympic spirit: China threatens Christian with death
'Leading up to the Olympic Games, we actually see things getting worse'
A Chinese man has been taken into custody and faces a possible sentence of death for charges alleging "subversion of the national government and endangering national security." But several Christian organizations that monitor human rights activities in China say Alimujiang Yimiti could face the penalty simply because he is a Christian.
While much headline space has been devoted during recent days to China's crackdown on residents of Tibet, such attacks are more-or-less everyday experiences for Christians in the communist nation, according to officials with three of the largest organizations monitoring China: International Christian Concern, China Aid Association, and the Voice of the Martyrs.
"In the months now leading up to the Olympic Games, we actually see things getting worse," said Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs. "There are more raids, foreign Christians are not having their visas renewed and are being forced to leave the country. There are numerous circumstances where the churches are under attack by the government."
China had assured the international community when it was awarded the 2008 Summer Games that it would address concerns that have been raised about its human rights record. However, the three organizations see no evidence yet.
"Christians who refuse to come under the communist control are subject to arrest, imprisonment, harassment by the police at any time," Nettleton said. "There are places where Christians are facing very serious persecution."
He cited the case of Alimujiang. "He possibly could be executed for what the government says is subversion of the national government. What he's facing a penalty for, in reality, is he's a Christian."
He said the Chinese government believes, perhaps naively, that in 2008 it can clean up its international image by simply repressing those who disagree.
"I think there is an element of sort of keeping things under the rug until the Olympics are over, making sure there's no disturbances or embarrassment during the Games," he said.
Since visitors supposedly will be allowed to travel as they wish in China during the Olympics, the one place to keep dissidents is in prison, since those still will be off-limits to visitors, he said.
"China has thousands of Internet policemen," he continued. "Their job is to monitor information and keep in the information they want to keep in, and keep out the information they want to keep out. I think they do have a little bit of a naïve sense they can control the message and information."
Ashley Dingler, regional manager for East Asian for International Christian Concern, said her organization sees evidence routinely that human rights violations in China are getting worse as the Olympics approach.
"I think it has a large part to do that they could lose face on such a world stage," she said, "when everyone is looking at China.
"Christians and others might stage protests, reveal information," she said. "I think the manner of going about it is counterintuitive, but they are trying to save face by imprisoning more and more.
"We've seen a huge increase in the numbers of house churches that are being raided, especially the leaders of the house churches are being taken into custody," she said. "In early March, there were 70 [leaders] taken at one time."
A few are released occasionally, but the arrests are so many it's hard to keep track, she said. Some of those taken into custody simply have vanished, she said.
Bob Fu, founder of China Aid Association, said the deterioration in human rights started getting worse as soon as China was awarded this year's competition.
"From all measures we can find in terms of religious freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, it all shows it's becoming much worse," he told WND.
"In the past two years, we found more than 3,000 underground pastors were arrested, detained, some sentenced," he said. Those sentences were up to and including the death sentence.
All three of the organizations obtain reports regularly from within China, and it was Fu's organization that documented the case of Alimujiang.
"We should call upon the democratic country leaders including President Bush to withdraw from the opening ceremonies," he said, "and not become part of the showcase.
"We're not calling for a boycott of the athletic events, but for these political leaders to go there and be part of the Chinese government's propaganda machine, it's simply wrong," he said.
Alimujiang, a Uyghur Christian, Muslim convert and father of two, is expected to be sentenced before the end of April, China Aid's report said. He had been accused last year of "illegal religious activities," but then was arrested in January on claims of "subversion."
"Alimujiang is neither a separatist nor a terrorist, local sources say. He has told officials many times during interrogation that as a Christian he loves and supports the Chinese government, something many young Uyghurs struggle with as Han Chinese culture becomes increasingly dominant in Xinjiang. As a loyal Chinese citizen and business entrepreneur, Alimujiang has held to high standards, paying his taxes faithfully and avoiding a common local custom of paying bribes for business favors. He has also done his best to assimilate into Chinese culture, making the unusual decision to send his children to a Chinese language school in a predominantly Uyghur area," the report said.
"Friends say Alimujiang simply wants the freedom to quietly express his faith, a right guaranteed to him in the Chinese constitution. Currently however, it is illegal for Alimujiang to own a Uyghur Bible," the report continued.
Even his lawyer is not being allowed to meet with officials with the Bureau of State Security, because of a so-called "national secret" reason, China Aid said.
According to officials with the persecution monitors, anti-Christian efforts broke out in China in 1922, three years after communism emerged. When the Communist Party took control in 1949 it started expelling missionaries immediately, and the arrests and torture of Christian leaders was begun.
A brief respite arrived in the 1970s when Deng Xiaoping released some Christians from prison to demonstrate to the West its "religious freedom," but with a few years the arrests had returned by the thousands. In the 1990s, a number of church organizations were labeled "evil cults."
Among recent cases was one in which four people were arrested in Taizhou for distributing Gospel flyers at a bus station.They each were sentenced to several days in jail.
The work of the government, however, has failed to stop the interest in Christianity, with one organization estimating 3,000 people are joining Christian churches in China on a daily basis.
According to International Christian Concern, China ranks fourth in the world, behind only North Korea, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in its persecution of Christians.
"Chinese Christians, wary of state-controlled religious organs, have increasingly turned to the model of 'house churches,' which have helped spark a once unthinkable revival across the Middle Kingdom, as estimates now number Chinese believers at more than 100 million," the group's annual report said.
That, in turn, has triggered more and more government repression, the report said.
"Their fingers bleed, but they press on, for if they don't make the day's quota – 5,000 bulbs – they are beaten. The Christmas lights that decorate the trees of Christian believers around the world are often made by inmates like these. Their crime? Preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. House church pastors are sent to work camps after their arrest, and in some respects, these are the lucky ones, for they survived the standard interrogations that greet most Christian leaders after they are detained; several are killed or 'disappear,' never to be seen or heard from again. …," the report said.
President Bush, meanwhile, believes it will be better to be "calling on" China to reach out and work with dissident factions rather than give in to growing pressure to formally protest that nation's human rights abuses by boycotting the opening ceremonies of this year's Beijing Olympic Games.
Following up on an announcement by Bill Donohoe, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, that Sen. Hillary Clinton is right to suggest such a boycott because of China's record, Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House, recently asked about the possibility of such plans.
"Since we presume the president is as devoted to human rights as any world leader, why has he failed to join the president of France, the chancellor of Germany, and now the prime minister of Canada in their announced refusal to appear at China's Olympic Games?" he asked at today's news briefing.
"The president's position on this has been very clear. But the key part of what the president can do as the president of the United States is before, during and after the Olympics, push very hard for increased human rights, press freedoms, and political freedom in China," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
World Net DailyApril, 2008
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Terror suspects planned family sacrifice
|
A gang of Muslim fanatics discussed "sacrificing" their wives and babies by taking them on an alleged suicide bombing mission to blow up transatlantic jets, a court has heard. The alleged "martyrdom" plot, which was just "a couple of weeks" from fruition, also included plans to attack nuclear power stations, oil refineries and the skyscrapers of London's Canary Wharf, it is alleged. Excerpts from six "chilling" alleged suicide videos were played to a jury, in which the defendants said they would "scatter body parts" over the streets in revenge for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Wearing headscarves and posing in front of black flags with white Arabic writing, the defendants were filmed saying they would unleash "volcanoes of anger and revenge" and "rain terror and destruction" down on "non-believers". They said the deaths of "so-called innocents" were justified because British taxpayers, who funded the Army, did not care about the fate of Muslims, as they were more interested in drinking, watching EastEnders and "complaining about the World Cup". The court has already been told that up to 18 suicide bombers were allegedly to be used to simultaneously bring down seven or more flights bound for the US and Canada from Heathrow Airport. If successful, the alleged bombings would have killed hundreds and possibly thousands of people in what would have been the worst terrorist atrocity since the September 11, 2001 attacks on America.The defendants are Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 26, and Waheed Zaman, 23, all from Walthamstow, east London; Tanvir Hussain, 27, of Leyton, east London, Mohammed Gulzar, 26, of Barking; and Assad Sarwar, 27, and Umar Islam, 29, both of High Wycombe, Bucks. All eight deny conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to commit an act of violence likely to endanger an aircraft, between January 1 and August 11, 2006. Before their arrests in August 2006, the alleged conspirators were covertly recorded discussing their plans, the prosecutor, Peter Wright QC, told Woolwich Crown Court. When one of the men, Abdulla Ali, was asked "how long 'til the event?" he replied: "A couple of weeks."Another, Umar Islam, added: "This is really going to happen, isn't it?", the court heard. The discussion is then said to have turned to whether the men should take their wives and children on the alleged suicide missions. Umar Islam was asked whether his wife might consider going with him on the "operation". He allegedly said: "I think if I was to say to her that this was a significant operation she might even find it in herself to do that." Ali asks: "What about the babies?... Maybe she taken them with her?" Islam replies: "Maybe, you know what I mean. She'd like to do it though." Mr Wright said: "Such a sacrifice is beyond contemplation for those who are the target of an attack such as this but not those who are about to carry them out."As the full scope of the alleged terror plot was revealed for the first time, the jury heard that information had been gathered on the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, the world's worst nuclear disaster. The plotters may also have intended to bring down the internet by hitting Britain's main web server, according to information seized at the home of Assad Sarwar. Mr Wright said: "The horizons of Mr Sarwar in respect of his terrorist ambitions were, we say, limitless." On a computer memory stick found at Mr Sarwar's home, said Mr Wright, was: "Information about one of the largest gas stations in the UK, oil refineries, the National Grid, and power stations including nuclear power stations. "There was also information on Chernobyl and UK airports, including Heathrow's new control tower." The memory stick also included information on Canary Wharf. A diary found in Mr Sarwar's home included the names of oil refineries at Fawley in Hampshire, Kingsbury, Warwicks., Coryton, Essex, and a gas terminal at Bacton, Norfolk. The alleged plotters bought a flat in Walthamstow, East London, to use as a "bomb factory", Mr Wright told Woolwich Crown Court, and had bought all the materials they needed to assemble liquid-based bombs which could be "smuggled" on aircraft disguised as soft drinks. The jury was shown a video of a test explosion carried out in a police laboratory using a similar bomb, which was so powerful it shattered thick protective glass set up around the bomb. During raids on Ali's home, police found a letter which talked about his "beautiful wife" and nine-month-old son. It said: "It is more dear to my heart that I am waiting in a tent in the cold, dark, chilly wind waiting for dawn so that I may attack the enemy." A CD found at another address allegedly linked to him, titled "ha ha ha!", contained footage of the beheading of an American hostage by Islamic extremists. Gang's possible other targets identified in court The alleged plotters had considered other targets in the UK, the court heard. They were: • Canary Wharf • The National Grid • A gas pipeline between Britain and Belgium • UK airports, including Heathrow's new control tower • Oil and gas refineries at Bacton, Fawley, Correton and Kingsbury • Several UK power plants, including nuclear stations • Companies which store and process hydrogen peroxide |
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Report: Non-Muslims Deserve to Be Punished
A report posted on Islam Watch, a site run by Muslims who oppose intolerant teachings and hatred for unbelievers, exposes a prominent Islamic cleric and lawyer who support extreme punishment for non-Muslims — including killing and rape.
A question-and-answer session with Imam Abdul Makin in an East London mosque asks why Allah would tell Muslims to kill and rape innocent non-Muslims, including their wives and daughters, according to Islam Watch.
"Because non-Muslims are never innocent, they are guilty of denying Allah and his prophet," the Imam says, according to the report. "If you don't believe me, here is the legal authority, the top Muslim lawyer of Britain."
The lawyer, Anjem Choudary, backs up the Imam's position, saying that all Muslims are innocent.
Click here to watch the interview with Islamic lawyer Anjem Choudary.
"You are innocent if you are a Muslim," Choudary tells the BBC. "Then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are not a Muslim, then you are guilty of not believing in God."
Choudary said he would not condemn a Muslim for any action.
"As a Muslim, I must support my Muslim brothers and sisters," Choudary said. "I must have hatred to everything that is not Muslim."
Click here to read the report from Islam Watch.
FOX News
April, 2008
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NORTHERN EXPOSURE
Dobson editing radio show to avoid 'hate crimes' laws
Focus working to meet demands of 'human rights laws'
"Hate crimes" laws were defeated in Congress just a few months ago. Just a few weeks ago, Frank Wright of the National Religious Broadcasters Association warned, "We must be one in Christ to face the days ahead" because "hate crimes" laws would create untold new liability for Christians.
Now a major Christian ministry has confirmed that such "hate crimes" laws already are setting limits on what it can broadcast.
The issue is "hate crimes" laws in Canada, and they are affecting U.S. Christian ministries that broadcast into that nation.
WND reported just a week ago on a Christian ministry based in Canada that essentially was ordered shut down under that nation's "hate crimes" laws which prevent Christians from expressing Biblical opinions on a wide range of issues.
So what used to be called MacGregor Ministries with offerings in how to recognize and eliminate "faulty fads" in Christian churches has been re-created in the United States, and now operates under the name MM Outreach Media Ministries, according to spokeswoman Lorri MacGregor.
"Canada has very strong hate laws," she told WND.
She said the ministry points out the differences between Christianity and various cult beliefs, but also with respect, and never as a proponent. She said the work always is in response to a question or issue.
"When a group such as Jehovah's Witnesses said of our doctrine we're worshipping a freakish three-headed God (the Trinity), we should be able to respond," she said. "We say, 'Here's the doctrine of the Trinity and here is where it is in the Scripture.'"
That, however, violates Canada's hate crimes laws, and the ministry was ordered to either make wholesale changes in its presentations, or shut down.
"There was nothing we could do that would please them," she said. "They wanted us every time we criticized something to say, 'So Christianity is equal to Buddhism, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses… Just decide for yourself.'"
"We cannot do that," she said of the work she and her husband, Keith, have spent their lives assembling.
Now comes confirmation from the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, one of the largest Christian publishing and broadcasting organizations in the nation, that it has been reviewing, and if necessary editing, its broadcasts to avoid complications with Canadian "hate crimes" laws.
In a statement attributed to Gary Booker, director of global content creation for Focus, the organization confirmed that broadcast standards have a "dynamic nature."
"Our staff at Focus on the Family Canada works proactively to stay abreast of the dynamic nature of broadcast standards, Canadian Revenue Agency legislation and both national and provincial human rights laws," the statement said.
"Parameters regarding what can be said (and how it should be said) are communicated by Focus on the Family Canada to our content producers here at Focus on the Family in the U.S. To the best of our ability, programming is then produced with Canadian law in mind," Focus continued.
"In particular, our content producers are careful not to make generalized statements nor comments that may be perceived as ascribing malicious intent to a 'group' of people and are always careful to treat even those who might disagree with us with respect. Our Focus on the Family content creators here in the U.S. are also careful to consult with Focus on the Family Canada whenever questions arise. Focus on the Family Canada, in turn, monitors the content produced in the U.S. and assesses this content against Canadian law," the group said.
"Occasionally, albeit very rarely, some content is identified that, while acceptable for airing in the U.S. would not be acceptable under Canadian law and is therefore edited or omitted in Canada," Focus said.
Focus broadcasts programs on thousands of radio stations across the continent, publishes dozens of magazines and newsletters and provides a wide range of other resources to Christian families and churches.
Wright had told the NRB that the U.S. version of "hate crimes" that was blocked from the 2008 Defense Authorization Bill last year originally would have made religious broadcasters liable for various criminal acts.
The subject of homosexuality, specifically, was provided protections in the U.S. proposal, and is one of the issues that Canadian law addresses.
WND previously reported when the the Canadian Family Action Coalition confirmed activists who claim they have "hurt feelings" are demanding and getting penalties imposed against those who oppose the homosexual lifestyle.
"We today have a major national magazine, a federal political party leader and a registered political party, a major Catholic newspaper (Catholic Insight) and an internationally renowned journalist all of whom are being investigated by appointed 'hate speech therapists' from the commissions," the group said.
The journalist is Mark Steyn, according to CFAC spokesman Brian Rushfeldt, and the newest case involves Canada's national Catholic magazine of news, opinion and analysis.
The publication has been told it is being targeted by a complaint from Edmonton resident Rob Wells, who alleges the publication has offended homosexuals. But Rushfeldt confirmed the result of any such dispute is up in the air, because ordinary courts don't handle such complaints, they are taken on by various Human Rights Commissions in Canada.
They are set up to take action if anything "indicates discrimination" or "is likely to expose to hatred or contempt."
Rushfeldt noted that Alberta's provincial law, for example, orders: "No person shall publish, issue or display or cause to be published, issued or displayed before the public any statement, publication, notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that (a) indicates discrimination or an intention to discriminate against a person or a class of persons, or (b) is likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt bcause of the race, religious beliefs, colour, gender, physical disability, mental disability, age, ancestry, place of origin, marital status, source of income or family status of that person or class of persons."
"You see if my feelings are hurt and I feel discriminated against due to my 'religious orientation' then surely I must have a right and entitlement to have an appointed group of people in the Human Rights Commission at taxpayers' expense, intervene and force the activist to pay me compensation for my feelings. This is really not bullying is it? Or is it more like extortion?" said a commentary by the Family Action organization.
"How can I prove my feeling are hurt? I don't need to prove it. I just say it is so and it is so. Do I need to provide truth? No, not under the functions of the Human Rights Act. … Section 3(1) states that if something 'indicates discrimination' and 'is likely to expose to hatred or contempt' is a basis for action."
Similar restrictions have been found valid for broadcasting, officials said. And websites and books also will have to be edited, since those were the primary issue affecting MMOutreach when it used to operate in Canada.
"They said if we were just preaching our own Gospel, and weren't criticizing anybody else, we could continue," Mrs. MacGregor told WND in the earlier case. "If you're going to defend the Gospel, you've got to criticize sometimes."
For example, the ministry addresses the issue of "fads," including a "creeping Eastern mysticism" appearing in some churches, "turning meaningful prayer meetings into mind-emptying rituals called contemplative prayer promising experiences of a spiritual nature."
"Feelings have often replaced the solid word of God," their website warns.
Mrs. MacGregor told WND the government ultimatum was that she would have to preach that "all religions are equal," but she could not work within such restrictions.
"We wrote on Feb. 7 and voluntarily revoked our [license] ourselves," she said. "We said this auditor requires us to compromise our Christian faith, which we cannot do."
"You're not allowed in Canada to speak in a persuasive way about your own faith," she said.
The U.S. proposal was launched in the House of Representatives as H.R. 1592 and would have punished crimes based on the "actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability…"
The immediate concern – and still unresolved worry –
expressed by Christian radio broadcasters, ministers and others was: If
someone attacks a homosexual, will those speaking against homosexuality
also be charged for inciting violence?
World Net Daily
March, 2008
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MEDIA MATTERS
Dutch MP's anti-Quran film debuts on Web
17-minute 'documentary' juxtaposes images of Islam's holy book with terror attacks
Defying the wishes of the government of the Netherlands, a Dutch MP has posted his 17-minute documentary on the Quran, juxtaposing images of Islam's holy book with terror attacks and bombings by Muslim extremists.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, released "Fitna," an Arabic word meaning strife, on the political party's website today, but it disappeared a short time later due to "technical difficulties," reported the London Times.
The film is currently viewable on the British video-sharing website, LiveLeak.com, in Dutch and English.
Wilder, an outspoken critic of the "Islamization" of the West, released the film after weeks of debate couched in terms of free speech and religious bigotry as well as fears of violence like that following the Danish publication of cartoons depicting Muhammed.
Wilders said he understood Muslims could be upset by the film but said that was not his purpose in producing it.
"It remains widely within the framework of the law ... My film was not made to provoke violence," he said.
Plans to put the film on the Internet were briefly stalled earlier this week when the domain registrar, Network Solutions, refused to host Wilder's Internet domain.
That controversy, as well as threats by Muslim groups to seek an injunction, did not deter LiveLeak.com, which issued the following statement:
"LiveLeak.com has a strict stance on remaining unbiased and allowing freedom of speech so far as the law and our rules allow. There was no legal reason to refuse Geert Wilders the right to post his film and it is not our place to censor people based on an emotive response."
The film has been condemned by Wilder's government. The Dutch foreign minister, Maxime Verhagen, called it irresponsible after rioting Muslims killed over 50 people following publication of the Danish cartoons."The film equates Islam with violence. We reject that interpretation," Jan Peter Balkenende, the Dutch prime minister, said.
"We believe it serves no purpose other than to offend," he added.
Early critics had expressed fears Wilder would show a copy of the Quran being destroyed in his film but the ending offered a slight surprise.
As someone leafs through the Quran, a sound of tearing is heard.
"The sound you heard was from a page [being torn out] of the phone book. It is not up to me, but up to the Muslims themselves to tear the spiteful verses from the Quran," the screen text read. "Stop Islamization. Defend our freedom," it concluded.
World Net Daily
March, 2008
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GLOBAL JIHAD
Bold ex-Muslim threatened by top sheik
Wafa Sultan shocks Islamic TV audience again, Al Jazeera apologizes
Wafa Sultan – the Syria-born psychiatrist whose Al Jazeera interview two years ago sent shockwaves throughout the Islamic world – reportedly is the target of a serious tacit death threat from an influential Muslim scholar in the wake of a second interview with the Arab satellite television network.
Al Jazeera issued an apology after Sultan's interview earlier this month, pointing to "offensive remarks" but never specifying anything she said. Since then, however, the prominent Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi of Egypt "has directed his rage against Sultan," writes author and Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer in FrontPage Magazine
Qaradawi said Sultan, a former Muslim, uttered "unbearable, ghastly things that made my hair stand on end." Specifically, "she had the audacity to publicly curse Allah, his prophet, the Quran, the history of Islam and the Islamic nation."
Spencer concludes, "These are serious charges, and Qaradawi states them in terms that his jihadist minions will understand as meaning that she must be killed.
"Given that Qaradawi has justified suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and American soldiers in Iraq, it is clear that he has no distaste for violence, and thus law enforcement officials should take his latest fulminations against Wafa Sultan very seriously indeed," Spencer writes.
In her Al Jazeera appearance this month, she defended the Danish cartoons of Muhammad that have sparked violence by Muslims around the globe.
"The reactions of the Muslims, which were characterized by savageness, barbarism, and backwardness, only increased the value of these cartoons and gave them more importance than they merited, simply because they proved that these cartoons were true, and that the message they were conveying was true." Sultan said.
"The Muslim is an irrational creature ruled by instincts," she declared. "Those teachings have deprived him of his mind, incited his emotions and reduced him to the level of an inferior creature that cannot control himself or react to events rationally."
An Egyptian Islamist, Tal'at Rmeih, who debated Sultan on the March 4 Al Jazeera show, replied: "God help me. First, Islam is too great to be harmed by the publisher of the cartoon, or by that woman who is talking over there. The truth is that everything she said is 100 percent false, I'm sad to say. It seems to me that the American and Zionist intelligence agencies have begun to produce people who are hostile to their own nation."
Spencer points out that Qaradawi – who was praised by Saudi-funded U.S. academic John Esposito as a "reformist" – in 2006 exhorted Muslims to fight against Israel by invoking the traditional saying of Muhammad, that on the Day of Judgment "even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: 'Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there's a Jew behind me, come and kill him.'"
Sultan first drew attention worldwide in a February 2006 Al-Jazeera interview that spread across the Internet through a video clip produced by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
In her interview this month, Sultan charged that if Islam "were not the way it is, those cartoons would never have appeared. They did not appear out of the blue, and the cartoonist did not dig them out of his imagination. Rather, they are a reflection of his knowledge."
"Westerners who read the words of the Prophet Muhammad, 'Allah has given me sustenance under the shadow of my sword,' cannot imagine Muhammad's turban in the shape of a dove of peace rather than in the shape of a bomb," she said. "The Muslims must learn how to listen to the criticism of others, and maybe then they will reexamine their terrorist teachings."
Qaradawi fired back, saying her statements are "all based on ignorance," contending she has no knowledge of the Quran or Sunna, the body of customs based on the acts of Muhammad. The sheik also
Spencer says Qaradawi falsely charges – "with stinging irony in light of his support for suicide attacks" – that Sultan "sanctions the killing of Muslims in Gaza and elsewhere, claiming that they deserve to be killed."
Sultan, says Spencer, has "yet again shown up the hollowness of the denial, obfuscation, and finger-pointing that all too many Islamic leaders engage in rather than embarking upon the searching self-reflection" she urges along with and other "defenders of universal human rights and human dignity."
"Wafa Sultan is a national and international treasure," Spencer says. "The American government should be rushing to protect her against any who might be motivated to act by the distortions of the thuggish Qaradawi."
Named to Time Magazine's list of 100 influential people in the world, Sultan told WND in 2006 Bush's insistence Islam is a religion of peace has been "empowering" to Muslim leaders whose ultimate aim is for Islamic law to govern the world.
In her February 2006 Al-Jazeera appearance, which first brought her death threats, she asserted the world is witnessing "a battle between modernity and barbarism which Islam will lose."
The video clip is estimated to have been viewed at least 1 million times, according to the New York Times.
Sultan's 2006 interview found her squaring off with Al-Jazeera host Faisal al-Qasim and Islamic scholar Ibrahim Al-Khouli about Samuel P. Huntington's "clash of civilizations" theory. The exchange took place on the 90-minute discussion program "The Opposite Direction," with Sultan speaking via satellite from Los Angeles.
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations," she said. "It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete."
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March, 2008
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MEDIA MATTERS
Savage lawyers aim at CAIR paymasters
Muslim group bankrolled by Arab states tied to 9/11
Preparing an appeal of a dismissed lawsuit against the Council of American-Islamic Relations, talk radio host Michael Savage and his legal team have taken a new tack, investigating CAIR's foreign financial backers, WND has learned.
CAIR is registered as a nonprofit organization recognized as tax-exempt under IRS code section 501(c)(3), which restricts "lobbying on behalf of a foreign government." CAIR's website claims that it receives no foreign government support.
However, CAIR's headquarters near the U.S. Capitol until recently was owned by the ruler of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the ruler's foundation has pledged $50 million to capitalize a long-term CAIR public-relations campaign.
"This should start to get interesting," said a member of Savage's legal team.
The UAE formally recognized the Taliban, and Dubai acted as the transit point for cash for the 9/11 hijackers and the staging ground for the entire plot. Two of the hijackers were Emirates, and one served in the UAE military.
Before 9/11, the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, requisitioned (as then-UAE defense minister) C-130 military cargo planes to supply Osama bin Laden's former camps in Kandahar, Afghanistan, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Sheik Mohammed and other members of the UAE royal family joined bin Laden and Taliban leaders on hunting parties there.
His Al Maktoum Foundation – which until 2005 held the deed to CAIR's headquarters just three blocks from the Capitol – has held telethons to raise money for families of Palestinian "martyrs" during the intifada against Israel. It recently pledged a $50 million endowment for CAIR.
Despite enjoying major support from the UAE government, CAIR is not registered as a lobbyist or agent for a foreign government. Savage's lawyers are investigating whether the group has legal standing to boycott his radio show and attack his advertisers as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
"CAIR would have to register as a foreign agent if their activities were not hidden under the false claim that they are a civil-rights organization that enjoys tax-exempt status," said Daniel Horowitz, Savage's lead attorney in the case.
Meantime, WND has learned that the Republican leadership in Congress is seeking hearings to also investigate CAIR's foreign financing.
CAIR argues that any assertions that it receives money from foreign governments is "disinformation."
"This is yet another attempt to invent a controversy," it said. "CAIR's operational budget is funded by donations from American Muslims."
Even so, CAIR has never publicly acknowledged the $1 million controlling interest that the ruler of Dubai's foundation took in its national headquarters just one year after 9/11.
The group also received $500,000 from Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the sheik whose $10 million relief check after 9/11 was rejected by then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani after he blamed U.S. policy toward Israel for the attacks.
"There is nothing criminal or immoral about accepting donations from foreign nationals," CAIR asserted. "The U.S. government, corporations and non-profit organizations routinely receive money from foreign nationals.
"Bin Talal is not a member of the Saudi Arabian government," the group added in a statement. "He is a private entrepreneur and international investor."
This may be a distinction without a difference, Savage's lawyers argue, since bin Talal is a member of the Saudi ruling family.
"CAIR is proud to receive support of every individual," CAIR argued, "as long as they are not an official of any foreign government and there are no strings attached to the bequest."
The group remains silent about donations from Sheik Mohammed, however, the ruler of Dubai and the prime minister of the UAE, who suggested after 9/11 that Israel and America are the real "terrorists."
UAE has supported Hamas "martyrs," while CAIR recently was named by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terror scheme to funnel more than $12 million to Hamas suicide bombers and their families. Federal prosecutors in a more recent case said in court documents that CAIR is a radical front group working with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas "to support terrorists."
The UAE's $50 million endowment, pledged in 2006, puts in jeopardy CAIR's current IRS status, Savage's lawyers argue. They say CAIR more resembles a foreign-controlled lobbying group – "a paid agent for an Arab state tied to 9/11" – and the UAE may be working through CAIR to shut down debate about Islam on the American airwaves through the intimidation of media and their advertisers.
According to federal law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act requires registration as an agent of a foreign principal when an organization acts on the order, request or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed by a foreign principal when that person engages in political activities for or in the interest of such foreign principal, or acts in a public-relations capacity for a foreign principal.
The UAE endowment to CAIR was earmarked for public-relations efforts to repair the image of Arabs and Muslims in America after public outrage doomed a Dubai bid to run U.S. ports.
Lawyers now argue that CAIR, in turn, may have used UAE funds and other foreign support to attack "The Savage Nation" show for criticizing Islam, and to target its advertisers, including Wal-Mart, GEICO and Sprint Nextel.
"If the image of Islam and Muslims is not repaired in America, Muslim and Arab business interests will continue to be on a downward slide in the U.S.," CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmad was quoted in the Arab press as saying after meeting with the UAE minister of finance in Dubai and receiving the funding pledge.
What's more, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a UAE press release: "The endowment will serve as a source of income and will further allow us to reinvigorate our media campaign projecting Islam and its principles of tolerance."
In addition, the press release stated that UAE also "endorsed a proposal to build a property in the United States to serve as an endowment for CAIR."
The Arab press said CAIR was acquiring land for a new $24 million seven-story building.
A federal judge in California earlier this week dismissed Savage's lawsuit seeking damages against CAIR, which was originally filed late last year. Savage is appealing the case.
As part of its background check of CAIR, Savage's California-based lawyers and investigators have been "looking into the CAIR headquarters in D.C."
CAIR claims it receives no foreign support, but land records contradict that claim. In fact, the Al-Maktoum Foundation of Dubai held the deed to its property from 2002 to at least 2005.
"According to records made public by (investigative journalist and author) Paul Sperry, CAIR purchased its national headquarters in 1999 through an unusual lease-purchase transaction with the United Bank of Kuwait," said Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes. "The bank was the deed holder and leased the building to CAIR; yet despite not owning the building, CAIR recorded the property on its balance sheet as a property asset valued at $2.6 million."
"This arrangement changed in September 2002 when CAIR bought out the Kuwaiti bank with funds provided, at least in part, by Al-Maktoum Foundation, based in Dubai and headed by Dubai's (former) crown prince and defense minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum," Pipes continued. "The markings on the deed indicate that the foundation provided 'purchase money to the extent of $978,031.34' to CAIR, or roughly one-third the value of the property."
Here is the first page of the document filed with the District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds as a "Deed of Trust," or mortgage agreement, between CAIR and the Al-Maktoum Foundation, as posted by Sperry, author of "INFILTRATION: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington." Sperry details the real estate transactions in the chapter of his book called, "The Dark Lair of CAIR."
CAIR's then-chairman Omar Ahmad's signature appears on page four of the document. Ahmad recently was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Hamas terror-fundraising case.
What's more, CAIR lists the Zahara Investment Corp. as a "related organization" on its IRS tax form 990. Curiously, Zahara was listed as a tax-exempt entity in 2002, but the next year it became a non-tax-exempt entity, which raises the question how a tax-exempt nonprofit like CAIR can be "related" to a for-profit investment firm.
"One only wonders what a more complete investigation of its real estate transactions would turn up," Pipes said.
Savage's legal team hopes to do just that with the help of a
court-ordered discovery process.
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March, 2008
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MEDIA MATTERS
WorldNetDaily
CAIR seeks dismissal of Savage lawsuit
Judge to issue ruling soon in case linking organization to terror
A judge in California has taken under advisement a request by the Council on Islamic-American Relations to dismiss a lawsuit filed by radio talk show host Michael Savage.
The San Francisco-based talker originally accused the organization of copyright violations, but later amended the action to include allegations the group "has consistently sought to silence opponents of violent terror through economic blackmail, frivolous but costly lawsuits, threats of lawsuits and abuses of the legal system."
The action in U.S. District Court in Northern California also charges CAIR with using extortion, threats, abuse of the court system, and obtaining money via interstate commerce under false and fraudulent circumstances – calling it a "political vehicle of international terrorism" and even linking the group with support of al-Qaida.
The federal government, in fact, recently named CAIR, based in Washington, D.C., as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged scheme to funnel $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas.
The lawsuit was the subject of court hearing today, and according to a report from the Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston said she was "leaning toward tossing out" the action.
She did say she likely would allow Savage's lawyer to submit a revised complaint to keep the case alive, the report said.
Savage's attorney Daniel Horowitz said the copyright claim was valid because CAIR used Savage's material "for purely commercial purposes," but the judge said she found free speech arguments persuasive.
"Groups like CAIR have a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either imprisoned or deported from the United States," said U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., co-founder of the House Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus.
Savage and Horowitz, a celebrity civil rights attorney, are trying to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to make the case that "CAIR and its co-conspirators have aided, abetted and materially sponsored al-Qaida and international terrorism."
CAIR launched a campaign against "The Savage Nation," as the program is called, using extended audio clips of the show to make the case that advertisers who supported the talker were actually endorsing "hate speech" against Muslims.
Savage turned the tables on the activist group by initially suing for copyright violation of the show's material, then expanding the case.
Among the charges is that CAIR is "part of a deliberately complex and deliberately confusing array of related organizations" and that its "organizational structure is part of a scheme to hide the illegal activities of the group, funding, the transfer of funds and to complicate investigation of the group."
Other highlights of the suit:
- "CAIR is not a civil rights organization and it never has
been. - CAIR was and is a political organization that advocates a
specific political agenda on behalf of foreign interests."
- "The copyright infringement was done to raise funds for
CAIR so that it could perpetuate and continue to perform its role in
the RICO conspiracy set forth in Count Two and to disseminate
propaganda on behalf of foreign interests that are opposed to the
continued existence of the United States of America as a free nation."
- "CAIR would have to register as a foreign agent if their
activities were not hidden under the false claim that they are a civil
rights organization that enjoys tax-exempt status."
- "CAIR was tied to terror from the day it was formed. The
group was incorporated on or about 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad.
Both men were officers of a terror organization known as the 'Islamic
Association of Palestine.'"
- "CAIR's parent group, IAP, was founded in or about 1982 by
Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook was IAP's ideological leader and controlling
director from the date of its founding until shortly after his
deportation from the United States in 1997. At all time relevant,
Marzook was an operative of, and/or affiliated with, the 'Harakat
al-Muqawamah al-Islamiyyah,' or 'Hamas.' Hamas is an international
terrorist organization."
- In 1998, "CAIR demanded the removal of a Los Angeles
billboard describing Osama bin Laden as 'the sworn enemy,' asserting
that this depiction [was] 'offensive to Muslims.'"
- In 1998, "CAIR denied bin Laden's responsibility for the
two al-Qaida bombings of American embassies in Africa. CAIR's leader
Ibrahim Hooper claimed the bombings resulted from 'misunderstandings on
both sides.'"
- "On October 5, 2001, just weeks after 9/11, CAIR's New York
office sent a letter to The New York Times arguing that the paper had
misidentified three of the hijackers and suggesting that the attacks
may have been committed by people who were impersonating Arab Muslims."
- "CAIR further exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a
picture of the World Trade Center in flames and below it a call for
donations that was linked to the Holy Land Foundation website." The
Holy Land Foundation, the suit charges, is "a terror organization."
March, 2008
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HOMELAND INSECURITY
Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West extremism
Secret survey exposes widespread radicalism
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
"So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist," an official familiar with the project said.
Many of the Islamic centers are operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt.
Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that "the vast majority" are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.
The project, headed by David Yerushalmi, a lawyer and expert on sharia law, has finished collecting data from the first cohort of 102 mosques and schools. Preliminary findings indicate that almost 80 percent of the group exhibit a high level of sharia-compliance and jihadi threat, including:
- Ultra-orthodox worship in which women are separated from men in the prayer hall and must enter the mosque from a separate, usually back, entrance; and are required to wear hijabs.
- Sermons that preach women are inferior to men and can be beaten for disobedience; that non-Muslims, particularly Jews, are infidels and inferior to Muslims; that jihad or support of jihad is not only a Muslim's duty but the noblest way, and suicide bombers and other so-called "martyrs" are worthy of the highest praise; and that an Islamic caliphate should one day encompass the U.S.
- Solicitation of financial support for jihad.
- Bookstores that sell books, CDs and DVDs promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom.
Though not all mosques in America are radicalized, many have tended to serve as safe havens and meeting points for Islamic terrorist groups. Experts say there are at least 40 episodes of extremists and terrorists being connected to mosques in the past decade alone.
Some of the 9/11 hijackers, in fact, received aid and counsel from one of the largest mosques in the Washington, D.C., area. Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center is one of the mosques indentified by undercover investigators as a hive of terrorist activity and other extremism.
It was founded and is currently run by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. Imams there preach what is called "jihad qital," which means physical jihad, and incite violence and hatred against the U.S.
Dar al-Hijrah's ultimate goal, investigators say, is to turn the U.S. into an Islamic state governed by sharia law.
Another D.C.-area mosque, the ADAMS Center, was founded and financed by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and has been one of the top distributors of Wahhabist anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma.
Even with such radical mosques operating in its backyard, the U.S. government has not undertaken its own systematic investigation of U.S. mosques.
In contrast, European Union security officials are analyzing member-state mosques, examining the training and funding sources of imams, in a large-scale project.
Some U.S. lawmakers want the U.S. to conduct its own investigation.
"We have too many mosques in this country," said Rep. Pete King, R-N.Y. "There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully."
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February, 2008
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HOMELAND INSECURITY
Islamist 'Trojan horse' in Pentagon, say experts
FBI: Top defense advisers linked to radical Muslim Brotherhood
Federal authorities say a high-level Muslim Pentagon aide, who led a campaign to silence a Pentagon intelligence analyst for taking a hard line against Islam, is running an "influence operation" on behalf of U.S. Muslim groups fronting for the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Hesham H. Islam, a special assistant to Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, recently criticized Maj. Stephen Coughlin, one of the military's leading authorities on Islamic war doctrine, for making the connection between the religion of Islam and terrorism.
After Islam lodged complaints, Coughlin's contract with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon was not renewed.
Islam also was upset with briefings Coughlin recently prepared for the U.S. military warning that major U.S. Muslim groups were fronting for the Muslim Brotherhood, a worldwide jihadist movement based in Egypt.
Islam, who was born and raised in Egypt, is heavily involved with one of the groups – the Islamic Society of North America, which U.S. prosecutors last year named as a member of the U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror-funding case.
Islam has persuaded his boss, England, to conduct various outreach with ISNA, including hosting the group's leaders in the Pentagon and speaking at its annual convention.
Speaking during ISNA's 2006 opening ceremonies, England proclaimed, "There is no contradiction between the peaceful religion of Islam and America's values and principles."
Coughlin reached the opposite conclusion in a 329-page report submitted to the National Defense Intelligence College, in which he warns that Islamic law sanctions violence. That finding, among others, has put him at odds with Islam, whom England describes as "my personal close confidante."
"I take his advice," England said, "and I listen to him all the time."
WND has learned that Islam is closely associated with a Muslim military chaplain trained at a radical Islamic school that federal agents raided after 9/11 in connection with terror-financing.
As WND reported, the chaplain, Abuhena M. Saifulislam, studied Islam at the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia.
Recently declassified FBI documents reveal its sister organization, an Islamist think tank known as the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, is involved in a Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy to wage a cultural and political jihad to eventually take over America from within – most notably, through infiltration of government agencies.
Islam works closely with Saifulislam (Arabic for "sword of Islam") on Pentagon outreach projects involving Middle Eastern embassies and the so-called Wahhabi lobby in Washington.
"He's a Muslim brother," an FBI official said of Islam. "He's a bad actor. He's well-positioned to be where he is, and that doesn't do us any good."
He also said Saifulislam is "definitely Muslim Brotherhood," while noting that Islam "is a lot smoother than Saifulislam," who as a chaplain at Gitmo lobbied for special meals and other privileges for al-Qaida detainees.
The official hastened to add that, at this point, belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood is not criminal, and neither Defense Department employee is the subject of a formal counterterrorism or counterespionage investigation. Both men have refused interviews, and the Pentagon had no comment.
However, the FBI official warned that the Muslim aides are part of a conspiracy by Muslim Brotherhood fronts to run "influence operations" against the U.S. government.
"Their M.O. is to make nice for the very purpose of penetrating us," he said, "and we just roll over for them, at least at the top levels."
He says England, who also recently dedicated an Islamic prayer center at Quantico on the advice of Saifulislam, is blind to the threat.
"England doesn't know it's an influence operation that's been laid at his door," he said. "His lack of awareness is irresponsible."
A senior U.S. official who has met with England says he was not even aware that a convicted terrorist and al-Qaida fund-raiser created the Pentagon's Muslim chaplains corps.
Adurahman Alamoudi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader and founder of the American Muslim Council, placed Muslim chaplains throughout the military. He is now in jail on charges of terrorism. However, most of the chaplains he trained and sponsored are still in their current positions.
"The Islamic chaplains who serve were trained by a known terrorist," said terrorism expert Steve Emerson.
Emerson says Islam, like Alamoudi, has invited "subversive" elements into U.S. military headquarters.
"Hesham Islam is an Islamist with a pro-Muslim Brotherhood bent who has brought in groups to the Pentagon who have been unindicted co-conspirators," he said.
Emerson said a "Trojan horse" of subversives and potential spies have penetrated deep inside the Pentagon, and they are now bearing fruit with the ouster of Coughlin. Sources say Islam has high security clearance.
A former Pentagon colleague of Coughlin described Islam as a "gatekeeper," who at a minimum, is blocking candid discussion of the religious nature of the threat posed by Muslim terrorists. Such action, William Gawthrop says, thwarts the U.S. war effort, because it denies military brass and rank-and-file the information they need to effectively fight the Islamist enemy.
"We still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war-fighting doctrine laid down by (the Muslim prophet) Muhammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered," Gawthrop told WND.
He says Coughlin was trying to bridge that gap before being pushed out.
Supporters of the respected contractor say Islam had a direct hand in his firing. They say that on Jan. 3 Coughlin was told his contract, which ends in March, would not be renewed because his message had become too "politically hot."
They say that in a meeting late last year between Coughlin and a member of England's staff, which Islam unexpectedly attended, Islam asked Coughlin to "soften his message" regarding Islamic war doctrine. Coughlin refused.
Islam was heard referring to Coughlin as a "Christian zealot with a poison pen." The conflict resulted in his contract being terminated.
A well-placed Pentagon insider described it differently, however. Islam and Coughlin were present at the briefing, but there was no direct confrontation between the two. It was not until Hesham returned to England's office suite that he remarked that Coughlin had a "poison pen."
"He clearly doesn't like him," the source told WND.
Also, Coughlin was let go in part because his contract was up, and at $440,000, it was too steep to justify renewing, the insider says. And though he had written a 329-page thesis on the subject, he was not effective at briefing the J-2 intelligence staff of the Joint Chiefs.
"He's brilliant, and he knows his stuff, but he couldn't teach it," the source said. "It went over everybody's head."
Still, England has not properly vetted his long-time aide,
Islam. "Gordon is so trusting of this guy because he's worked for him
for so long," the same official said. "But he's got questionable
contacts, and he (England) needs to have his antennae up."
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TESTING THE FAITH
'No one leaves Islam,' judge rules
Egyptian court bans convert to Christianity from changing ID card
No one ever leaves Islam, according to a judge in Egypt who has cited Islamic religious law in rejecting a request from a Muslim convert to Christianity to be allowed to change his religious affiliation on his national identification card.
In a decision that forecasts more and more decisions being based on Shari'a, Islam's religious law, Judge Muhammad Husseini has concluded it violates the law for a Muslim to leave Islam.
According to a report from Compass Direct News, the judge found that the convert, Muhammad Hegazy, "can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can't convert."
The report said Husseini cited Article II of the Egyptian constitution, making Islamic religious law the "source" of Egyptian secular law, as the basis for his conclusion.
Since Islam is the "final" and "most complete" religion, Muslims already have full freedom of religion and are not allowed to return to the "less complete" Christianity or Judaism, the ruling said.
It's a new peak in the rise of Islam in Egypt, which The Middle East Review of International Affairs said began with Anwar Sadat's tenure in power.
"He then initiated what one could, in hindsight, term 'the Great Islamic Transformation' of Egypt. The first step was to stipulate in the Second Article of his new Constitution, promulgated in 1971 (long before Khomeini embarked on his Islamic revolutionary campaign), that the Principles of Islamic Shari'a were 'a main source' of legislation. In May 1981, the 'a' was replaced with 'the,' making Shari'a the term of reference for the entire constitution, meaning all other articles were to be interpreted in that light," the organization said.
"The curricula of public schools, established by the Ministry of Education, ignore the Coptic era in Egypt's history. Courses glorifying Islam (the 'Only True Religion') and its history, while vilifying the crusaders (i.e. Christians) and the Jews, are imposed on all students," the group said.
"In the case of a father of a Christian family converting to Islam, his minor children are forced to follow suit: The mother's custody rights – a well established legal principle – are ignored in this case, as children, according to typical court rulings, are supposed to follow the 'better (or 'more noble') of the two religions,'" the group said.
On the pro-freedom website called Sons of Apes and Pigs, a commentary noted that the Egyptian court decision "went on and issued a very explicit warning to Muhammad Hegazy, his wife and their lawyer, that going against the tide would provoke civil unrest and exacerbate emotions in the Egyptian society."
"Freedom of religion doesn't mean getting in and out of Islam to another religion, but only means that each person is free to practice his own religious rites, and not playing games with Islam or contradicting Shari'a law," the website said the judge concluded.
The website, which said it took its name from Quranic descriptions of Christians and Jews, said Westerners don't realize the significance of having a national ID card listing the carrier as Muslim.
"If you get caught going to a church while your religion on your ID is Muslim, that could get you arrested, questioned and tortured," the commentary said. "The latest victim was a 27-year-old woman, Mrs. Sherreen, mother of two children from Alexandria, Egypt. She died at the police station on Jan. 3, 2008, after five hours of torture for refusing to renounce her Christian faith and come back to Islam."
The website noted in Egypt, children of parents with Muslim IDs automatically are Muslims, and they are required to follow mandatory Islamic indoctrination classes, and Muslims cannot marry non-Muslims.
It also said to apply for any job, an applicant must provide the state-designated religious affiliation.
The website also noted according to multiple media reports, Hegazy's father issued a statement that, "when I'll meet my son, I will discuss with him the reasons and circumstances that 'forced' him to leave Islam, and will offer him the opportunity to come back to Islam, but in case he refuses, I will kill him immediately."
Press reports say Hegazy's case was the first time someone had sought to make a change from Islam in the religious designation on an official national ID card.
Hegazy has reported he was studying various religions, and found he was not consistent with Islam.
"The major issue for me was love. Islam wasn't promoting love as Christianity did," he said.
As a result of his conversion he's reported being arrested and tortured several times, but it's opened wide the eyes of observers, the Apes and Pigs website said.
"Muhammad Hegazy's case dynamited the Islamic mountain of lies, propaganda and false pride," the commentary said. "Not only in Egypt, but all over the Arab world. Exposed to the world [was] the deception of the Islamic governments, Egypt in particular … [of] 'no compulsion in religion.'"
According to the Compass Direct report, Gamal Eid, head of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, whose lawyers have been representing the convert, said that he was disappointed with the verdict.
"The judge didn't listen to our defense, and we didn't even have a chance to talk before the court,” Eid said.
Meanwhile, death threats have forced the couple, whose new daughter is only a month old, into hiding.
Compass also reported that at least partly because of the case, lawyers in Egypt now are trying to force the government to outlaw conversion from Islam in secular law as well as religious law.
WND previously has reported on a ruling from a U.S. federal court that an Egyptian Christian who had fled his home nation "most assuredly has a right not to be tortured." The ruling allowed the Egyptian Christian to remain in the United States.
The court pointedly concluded that "diplomatic assurances" of his religious rights "by a country known to have engaged in torture" weren't reassuring.
A report from the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights concluded Coptic Christians in Egypt have been harassed, tortured and killed by Muslims for 1,400 years.
"They have been subjected to all kinds of hate crimes including, the abduction of young Coptic girls, the killing of Coptic women and children and the destruction of their places of worship," the report said.
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, an agency created by Congress, also lists Egypt on its watch list of countries, noting it had "a poor overall human rights record."
In addition, Egyptian authorities have
threatened two young boys who were ordered to take training to be
Muslims, but refused, stating they are Christian.
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VIDEONETDAILY
Christian warriors to eat 'Muhammad'
Political TV hosts fed up with PC Islam will devour cookie with face of prophet
A new, cutting-edge, political TV show will challenge Islam with biting humor tomorrow night, placing the face of the prophet Muhammad onto a cookie and then having it eaten on camera.
"We're going to take a stand and say Muhammad's face is delicious," said Molotov Mitchell, the 28-year-old incendiary creator and host of "Flamethrower," a program described as a low-budget, gritty cross between the "The Daily Show," "The Colbert Report," and "The View" if Ann Coulter were the producer. "This is religious and culinary history in the making."
The theme of this week's episode is "All Things Islam," as panelists take on the faith of Muslims in a no-holds-barred fashion.
"Islam is not even a religion," Mitchell told WND from a location somewhere in Eastern North Carolina. "It's an ideology of 'might makes right' disguised as a religion. We're going to show that Allah was with us when we baked this cookie and ate it. Deal with it!"
Mitchell and his fellow panelists – all of whom are Christians in their 20s and whom he calls the next generation of conservatism – are trying to make the point that America is still a free country, and there's no need to cower in fear from Islamo-fascism. He laments the frequency of Islamic suicide bombings, giving a new twist to a famous line from "It's a Wonderful Life," by stating, "Every time a bell rings, a Muhammad gets his wives."
In recent years, European cartoons featuring Muhammad have caused a tidal wave of violent protests and death threats, as Islamic tradition bans depictions of the prophet.
"What were doing is exercising our freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the fullest in order to challenge a tyrannical, oppressive system that has doomed the cultures and countries of the Middle East for centuries," Mitchell told WND. "Now it's trying to invade our borders, and somebody has to speak up about it."
In its two previous episodes, "Flamethrower" has
taken on subjects including "Is it ethical to kill abortionists?" and
"Let's invade Mexico" – not to stay, but just to get rid of the drug
cartels.
There's also a regular segment titled, "WWMD? (What Would Muhammad Do?)"
In it, cast members dress in traditional Muslim clothing and deliver "totally atrocious" real news items, recounting, says Mitchell, "what some jerk named Muhammad did this week."
"I'm not going to be hurt and insulted. I'm going to ask people to ignore this," said Iftekhar Hai, president of United Muslims of America Interfaith Alliance in South San Francisco. "They would dare not do it to any Jewish person, saying 'the Jews killed Jesus.' The Jewish lobby would slaughter the Christians if they did that."
"I don't think this is part of the American character," Hai added, "but it has become part of the American tradition to only pick on Muslims."
Mitchell says politics is the driving force of his show, saying, "The [Christian] church really doesn't seem to get it when it comes to politics. The church likes to ask, 'What would Jesus do?' But it often suggests Jesus would hug somebody for every situation, and that's not what Jesus would do. I'd rather ask, 'What would George Washington do?'"
A video teaser for the program offers a sample exchange between Mitchell and Fox News host Alan Colmes.
"Muhammad murdered people and he married a 9-year-old. That makes him a murdering pedophile," said Mitchell. "I don't think that we should burn the Quran. I'm a Christian environmentalist. We should put that thing to use. I mean, at least get some toilet paper out of it."
"Your kind of attitude is a really despicable attitude," responded Colmes.
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FIRST AMENDMENT ON TRIAL
City sued for arresting pastor on public sidewalk
Police take just 195 seconds to detain 'peaceful' Christian leader
A lawsuit has been filed against the city of Wichita, Kan., and several of its police officers on behalf of a Christian pastor arrested just for being on public property.
The civil-rights suit was filed by the Alliance Defense Fund, an advocacy organization that defends constitutional rights, on behalf of Mark Holick, pastor of Spirit One Christian Center.
Spirit One is the worship center also has been threatened by the Internal Revenue Service with an audit for posting messages on its marquee dealing with the value of human life, based on dozens of Bible references.
Holick's arrest happened last summer when a homosexual festival was being held in a public park in Wichita. He went to share his Christian faith on public property, and it took only a little longer than three minutes after his arrival for police officers to arrest him.
The trespassing charges later were dropped, but that doesn't solve the issue, according to the ADF.
"Exercising your First Amendment rights is not a crime," said Joel Oster, ADF senior legal counsel. "Arresting Christians simply because they choose to exercise those rights in a public place is unconstitutional."
The law firm noted that Holick was "attempting" to express his faith on a public sidewalk outside of an event in a public park that was celebrating homosexual behavior.
According to the records in the case, Holick had contacted the police department a week before the event and expressed his desire to communicate his religious views on the date of the homosex-fest. He was told he couldn't go into Heritage Square Park where it was being held, but was told the sidewalk would be his "friend."
Then on the day of the event, Holick and other church members arrived at the sidewalk outside the event and "immediately" were confronted by about 10 officers. He was ordered to leave the sidewalk or be arrested.
He asked where he could go, and he was told the public sidewalks were off-limits to him, and he could go into a nearby privately owned parking lot, the lawsuit said.
Since that was unreasonable, he refused, and was arrested, the lawsuit said.
The trespassing count later was dismissed at the city's request after officials watched a videotape that revealed the pastor was conducting himself peacefully on a public sidewalk. But when ADF lawyers sent a request to the city asking for assurances that Holick would not be "similarly harassed" at future events, the request was ignored.
"Cities should not be able to silence Christian speech by arresting the speaker, only to later drop the charges after the event is over," said Oster. "Such actions only serve to threaten future speakers and silence the Christian message."
The claim alleges violations of the First and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution. WND calls to the city went unanswered yesterday.
"Plaintiff seeks a permanent injunction and a declaration prohibiting Defendants from arresting him, or from otherwise restricting his speech, on traditional public fora due to the content and viewpoint of his speech, or because of his religion beliefs," the lawsuit said.
It describes how he "wanted to communicate the gospel message to those persons participating in and attending the Event" and "wanted to attend the Event to build connections with attendees so that he might be able to share the gospel with them later."
However, he never was allowed even to express his beliefs, because he was confronted by police officers "immediately," and within three minutes, 15 seconds had been arrested.
The lawsuit alleged the city's policies and actions were arbitrary and capricious and denied Holick's fundamental rights.
"By forcing plaintiff to choose between abandoning his religious beliefs in order to gain access to speech in the traditional public forum, or abiding by his religious beliefs only to be arrested and prosecuted, defendants have imposed a substantial burden on plaintiff's sincerely held religious beliefs," it said.
WND has reported on a series of such cases, in which Christians are arrested for praying at a homosexual festival, or when they are arrested for nothing more than having a protest sign that is "wider than their torso."
It was in Elmira, N.Y., where police arrested seven Christians who went into a public park where a "gay" fest was beginning and started to pray, faces down, while holding their Bibles.
They were cited for "disturbing the peace," and Assistant Police Chief Mike Robertson told WND that the seven are accused of a "combination" of allegations under that statute, which includes the "intent" to cause a public inconvenience, any "disturbance" of a meeting of persons, obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic, or taking part in "any act that serves no legitimate purpose."
Another case developed when police in St. Petersburg, Fla., arrested five Christians for carrying signs "wider than their torsos" outside an officially designated protest area at that city's homosexual festival.
St. Petersburg officials, following disturbances at a previous homosexual pride festival, implemented rules governing outdoor events that set aside "free speech zones," where protesters are allowed.
The notice he got from the IRS warned him about putting his Christian beliefs on the sign, and he responded that he would continue to preach the Word of God. Attorneys said the church has responded to the IRS demands, and has not had further contact yet.
In that case, Holick explained the signs all "are
spiritual messages that communicate God's truth, or are directly
related to messages in the Bible." He also provided the IRS with a list
of dozens of biblical instructions, "to lift up Jesus, to rebuke sin,
to save babies, to be honest, to take a righteous stand" and others.
World Net Daily
January, 2008
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ELECTION 2008
Family leaders call Romney 'disaster'
Letter criticizes 'deceptive rhetoric' around candidate
A coalition of leaders on family issues has released a letter warning about what they describe as the deception being assembled around former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
"Most of us are not allied with any presidential candidate," the letter says. "But we are troubled by the unethical and Orwellian cover-up of Mitt Romney's role in catastrophic events in Massachusetts, once the cradle of American liberty.
"Actions he took as governor were beyond the pale," the letter continued.
Signers include William Greene of RightMarch.com, Ted Baehr of the Christian Film and Television Commission, Linda Harvey of Mission America, Gary Glenn of American Family Association of Michigan, Michael Heath of Christian Civic League of Maine, Ray Neary of Pro-Life Massachusetts and others.
The letter cites seven issues seen as problematic in the Romney campaign, including a "phony pro-life 'conversion.'"
"Mitt Romney established abortion as a 'healthcare benefit' in his own government-run healthcare plan at $50 per abortion – after his supposed 'pro-life conversion,'" the letter said. "He created a permanent, official government role for an unelected Planned Parenthood representative on the health care board."
Second, according to the letter, "Romney told Catholic Charities' adoption and foster agency they had to give children to homosexuals even when normal mother-father families were lined up to give them a home," the letter said.
Third, "Though Romney pretends he opposed homosexual 'marriage,' he did the opposite," the letter said. "Since the notorious Goodridge court opinion discovering a constitutional right to 'gay marriage,' Romney has methodically lied about the judges' legal authority and his own legal duty to enforce the Constitution. As professor of jurisprudence Hadley Arkes pointed out, under the state Constitution, the court has no jurisdiction over marriage law.""Mitt Romney created homosexual 'marriage.' His 'conservative' legal experts are aggressively covering up both his role and the plain language of the Supreme Law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," the letter said.
The letter also said Romney opposed a citizen's drive to remove the "four rogue judges," he personally "issued more than 190 special one-day certificates to allow homosexual 'marriages,'" and boosted government funding for homosexual indoctrination.
"The truth is this: Mitt Romney's fictional defense of natural marriage, childhood innocence, life in the womb and constitutional governance is sustained only by our silence in the face [of] overwhelming propaganda," the letter said.
Other signers include John O'Gorman of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Peter LaBarbera of Republicans for Family Values, Diane Gramley of American Family Association of Pennsylvania, John Haskins of The Parents' Rights Coalition, Gregg Jackson of the "Pundit Review," William Cotter of Operation Rescue Boston, Brian Camenker of MassResistance, Mark Charalambous of CPF-Father Coalition Massachusetts, Judge Ned Kirby, the former assistant minority leader in the Massachusetts Senate and Edgar Kelley, former assistant U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts.
The letter also criticized those in the conservative community who are supporting Romney, accusing them of "gross malpractice, ruthless ambition and dishonesty."
"Behind the empty gestures and deceptive rhetoric, Romney was not pro-life or a defender of marriage by any stretch of the imagination. He was a disaster," said O'Gorman, of the board for Massachusetts Citizens for Life.
He said Romney "deceptively" claims to have been awarded a pro-life award from the group.
"The award Romney arranged for himself with the local Pioneer Valley Chapter was the Mullins Award for Political Leadership, not a pro-life award and not approved by MCFL's state board of directors," he said. "We're blowing the whistle to warn voters…"
"For some bizarre reason the mere fact that Romney's never been divorced and goes to a temple regularly is supposed to negate the fact that he's extremely liberal," said Harvey. "He used his Republican and Mormon identity to push through radical policies on gay marriage, abortion and pro-homosexual school programs that Ted Kennedy always dreamed about."
The
Romney campaign repeatedly has declined to respond to WND requests for
comment on such issues, including a failure to respond to multiple
requests for a one-on-one interview in which the candidate would have
been allowed to give his definitive perspective of the issues being
raised.
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January, 2008
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Michael Savage lawsuit
links CAIR to 9/11 plot
Talker amends
lawsuit against organizer of Muslim boycott to include RICO charges
Now the radio talk
star is going for the legal jugular in his battle with the group that
bills itself as a Muslim civil rights organization.
The San
Francisco-based talker has amended his lawsuit against CAIR for
misusing audio clips of his show as part of a boycott campaign against
his three-hour daily program to include charges the group "has
consistently sought to silence opponents of violent terror through
economic blackmail, frivolous but costly lawsuits, threats of lawsuits
and abuses of the legal system."
The amended lawsuit,
filed in U.S. District Court in
The federal government
recently named CAIR, based in
"Groups like CAIR have
a proven record of senior officials being indicted and either
imprisoned or deported from the
Savage and celebrity
civil rights attorney Daniel Horowitz are attempting to use the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to make the case
that "CAIR and its co-conspirators have aided, abetted and materially
sponsored al-Qaida and international terrorism."
CAIR launched a
campaign against "The Savage Nation," as the program is called, using
extended audio clips of the show to make the case that advertisers who
supported the talker were actually endorsing "hate speech" against
Muslims.
Savage turned the
tables on the activist group by initially suing for copyright violation
of the show's material. This week the suit was expanded with some of
the strongest allegations ever made against CAIR publicly.
Among the charges is
that CAIR is "part of a deliberately complex and deliberately confusing
array of related organizations" and that its "organizational structure
is part of a scheme to hide the illegal activities of the group,
funding, the transfer of funds and to complicate investigation of the
group."
Other highlights of
the suit:
- "CAIR is not a civil
rights organization and it never has been. … CAIR was and is a
political organization that advocates a specific political agenda on
behalf of foreign interests."
- "The copyright
infringement was done to raise funds for CAIR so that it could
perpetuate and continue to perform its role in the RICO conspiracy set
forth in Count Two and to disseminate propaganda on behalf of foreign
interests that are opposed to the continued existence of the
- "CAIR would have to
register as a foreign agent if their activities were not hidden under
the false claim that they are a civil rights organization that enjoys
tax-exempt status."
- "CAIR was tied to
terror from the day it was formed. The group was incorporated on or
about 1994 by Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad. Both men were officers of a
terror organization known as the 'Islamic Association of Palestine.'"
- "CAIR's parent group,
IAP, was founded in or about 1982 by Musa Abu Marzook. Marzook was
IAP's ideological leader and controlling director from the date of its
founding until shortly after his deportation from the
- In 1998, "CAIR
demanded the removal of a
- In 1998, "CAIR denied
bin Laden's responsibility for the two al-Qaida bombings of American
embassies in
- "On October 5, 2001,
just weeks after 9/11, CAIR's
- "CAIR further
exploited 9/11 as it put on its website a picture of the
- "CAIR receives
significant international funding. For example, in 1999 the Islamic
Development Bank gave a $250,000 grant to CAIR to purchase land for a
national headquarters. In 2002, the World Association for Muslim Youth,
a Saudi government-funded organization, financed distributing books on
Islam free of charge and an advertising campaign in American
publications. This included a quarter page in USA Today each Friday,
for a year, estimated to cost $1.04 million. In 2003, Saudi Prince
Alwaleed bin Talal donated $500,000 to distribute the Koran and other
books about Islam in the
- "The role of CAIR and
CAIR-Canada is to wage PSYOPS (psychological warfare) and
disinformation activities on behalf of Wahabbi-based Islamic terrorists
throughout
- "The Council on
American-Islamic Relations is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization.
It works in the
- "CAIR has links to
both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson
has stated before Congress that CAIR is a front for Hamas."
Savage's case also
cites another ongoing suit against CAIR filed by the estate of John P.
O'Neill, the former head of security for the
"Throughout this
period," the Savage suit alleges, "CAIR conspired to support terrorism
and to obfuscate the roles of the various participants and conspirators
in Radical Muslim Terrorism, and/or al-Qaida and/or the International
Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders, which
conspiracy culminated in the 9/11 attack."
It continues: "The
pattern of racketeering activity conducted by CAIR is separate from the
existence of Radical Muslim Terrorism, and/or the al-Qaida, and/or the
International Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders,
but was a necessary component of the 9/11 attack. The RICO enterprise
conducts terrorism all over the world; the racketeering activity
conducted by CAIR funds that activity, which activity culminated in the
9/11 attack."
CAIR has refused to
comment on Savage's suit to date. But it has claimed a host of
companies have stopped advertising on Savage's show as a result of its
boycott campaign.
However, an
investigation by WND shows some of those boycott victories are
questionable. In one announcement claiming Universal Orlando Resorts
"drops 'Savage Nation' ads," CAIR stated: "Advertisers
that have already stopped airing, or refuse to air commercials on
'Savage Nation' include AutoZone, Citrix, TrustedID, JCPenney,
OfficeMax, Wal-Mart and AT&T."
But AutoZone told WND
the CAIR campaign had nothing to do with its advertising decision, and
it had chosen not to advertise on any radio talk shows – of
all parts of the spectrum – years before the CAIR effort.
CAIR officials
declined to respond to WND queries about why it is listing companies as
part of its boycott campaign that say they have not participated in the
boycott.
Officials of Talk
Radio Network, Savage's syndicator, confirmed to WND that companies
including AutoZone and JCPenney never advertise on such programs.
"We do not sponsor
syndicated radio talk shows," AutoZone spokesman Ray Pohlman told WND.
"We have customers of all shapes and sizes and political persuasions.
For us to sponsor [any radio talk shows] wouldn't make any sense."
But that policy is
years old, and wasn't changed at all by CAIR's effort, he said.
"What I will tell you
is the CAIR organization did, in fact, contact the marketing department
[of AutoZone.] We responded with our full advertising policy which
clearly states that we do not advertise on radio talk shows," he told
WND.
The announcement about
Universal was made by the Hate Hurts America Community and Interfaith
Coalition, of which CAIR is a prominent member.
It said Universal
Orlando Resorts "has joined a growing list of advertisers that have
stopped advertising or refuse to place their ads on Michael Savage's
'Savage Nation' Radio program."
The campaign also has triggered a lawsuit by
Savage against CAIR over its alleged misappropriation of Savage's
radio broadcast material. In the lawsuit, Savage depicts CAIR as a
"vehicle of international terrorism."
CAIR says it is
challenging Savage's "hate speech," and referenced Savage comments such
as:
"I'm not gonna put my
wife in a hijab. And I'm not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I'm
not getting' on my all-fours and braying to
The Savage suit says
comments like that are taken out of context.
Another major company
CAIR claims has joined the boycott of Michael Savage is JCPenney. But
as with AutoZone, JCPenney officials told WND readers they were not
making any special provision in their advertising policy that would
make them part of a protest campaign, but officials did not respond
directly to WND inquiries.
"JCPenney did not
'pull' advertising from the show. JCPenney has had a long standing
policy about not advertising on any show that can be construed as
controversial. An error in upholding this policy was made by a few
local stations, and it has now been clarified," the company told a WND
reader.
"Wal-Mart does not
sponsor or advertise on the Michael Savage show. We have asked radio
networks to ensure that Wal-Mart ads do not run in programming that we
deem controversial and are sending out content guidelines reminders to
radio networks and stations," said that company.
Savage's
lawsuit alleges copyright infringement by CAIR, which the lawsuit
says seeks to do "material harm to those voices who speak against the
violent agenda of CAIR's clients."
Filed in U.S. District
Court in California, the suit seeks damages equal to the ongoing
donations from CAIR supporters "who expect CAIR to act in this manner
in exchange for continuing financial support" as well as "actual
damages according to proof."
A spokesman for Savage
indicated the top-rated talk show host would have no further comment,
saying the text of the lawsuit itself would answer questions.
The focal point of the
lawsuit is a series
of audio clips CAIR has been using in its promotions and
fundraising efforts.
Those comments from
Savage's show include his criticisms of Islam and Muslims. The lawsuit
maintains such comments, taken in context, are Savage's verbal
expression of the feelings of many Americans.
"The audience of 'The
Savage Nation' expects this type of from-the-heart outrage and when it
is directed at a murderer such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ilk, the
piece is far more understandable and far more American mainstream.
While the strength of the outrage is remarkable and a hallmark of 'The
Savage Nation,' the sentiment is shared by a huge number of Americans,"
the lawsuit says.
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Net Daily
December, 2007
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FAITH UNDER FIRE
Church shootings on rise in U.S.
'Leaders must be prepared to defend congregations'
Church shootings, in the headlines because of the attacks by Matthew Murray, 24, of Englewood, Colo., on two Christian groups last weekend, are on the rise across the United States, even though they're not yet at epidemic proportions.
Murray killed two people at a Youth With A Mission missionary training center in Arvada, Colo., early last Sunday morning, then apparently posted some rantings on the Internet, and drove to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs where he killed two teen girls. He also wounded half a dozen others before he was confronted by a church member volunteering as a security guard, and was shot.
A tabulation of church shootings, or those closely related to a church setting, was done by Gary Cass, chairman of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, and include 10 such attacks over the last four years, including Murray's two attacks.
"The tragic events in Colorado this past weekend underscore the fact that anti-Christian hostility is reaching a new, more violent level," Cass told WND. "Churches used to be sanctuaries that were regarded as sacred, now all church leaders must be prepared to effectively defend themselves and use deadly force if necessary to protect their congregations from violent acts."
He said a brief search found the following shootings, before last weekend's attacks:
- August 12, 2007: A lone gunman, Eiken Elam Saimon, opened fire in a Missouri Micronesian church, killing a pastor and two other churchgoers.
- May 20, 2007: A standoff between police and a suspect in the shootings of three people in a Moscow, Idaho, Presbyterian Church ended with three dead, including one police officer.
- Although not at a church building, the Oct. 2, 2006, attack in Lancaster County, Pa., by a gunman who killed five girls and then himself at an Amish school targeted a religious site.
- May 21, 2006: Louisiana. Four were killed by a man at Jesus Christ Church.
- Feb. 26, 2006: Michigan. Two people were killed at Zion Hope Missionary Baptist Church by a man who reportedly went to the church looking for his girlfriend. He later killed himself.
- April 9, 2005: A 27-year-old airman died after being shot at a church in College Park, Ga., where he had once worked as a security guard.
- March 12, 2005: A man walked into the services of the Living Church of God in Milwaukee and open fired immediately, killing seven people.
- Oct. 5, 2003: A woman opened fire in Turner Monumental AME church in Kirkwood, east of Atlanta, killing the pastor and two others.
- Sept. 16, 1999: Seven young people were killed when a man opened fire during a prayer service for teen-agers at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
"Self-defense is not just a right, but a Christian duty. Jesus told his followers, 'if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one,'" said Cass. "Christians are not to be a soft target for the hateful and deranged. Church leaders have a duty not to allow a crazed gunman to come and shoot up their congregation. Thank God for security officer Jeanne Assam and for New Life Church's security preparations."
As WND reported earlier, weeks before Murray armed himself with enough weaponry and ammunition to kill hundreds and staged the two attacks, he apparently boasted in an e-mail that he had discovered and practiced the teachings of controversial British occultist Aleister Crowley, called during his lifetime "the wickedest man in the world."
Murray is believed to have been the gunman who shot and killed Tiffany Johnson, 26, and Philip Crouse, 24, at the Youth With A Mission campus in Arvada, Colo., early last Sunday morning. Then, about 12 hours later, Murray died when confronted by armed security officer Jeanne Assam at New Life Church after he shot and killed sisters Stephanie Works, 18, and Rachael Works, 16, in the church parking lot. Half a dozen others were wounded in his attacks.
WND reported at the time on the disturbing rantings Murray apparently left on several websites before – and even between – the attacks, including those reported by National Terror Alert, which documented a series of postings by "nghtmrchld26," which said, "You Christians brought this on yourselves … All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world."
"It is a sad reality of our times, but Christians must take up arms to protect themselves at church," said Cass. He cited the postings by Murray, including the following:
"I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. …," a statement also attributed to Murray's Internet postings.
"Mathew Murray was obviously a very troubled young man, but unfortunately he is not the only one," Cass said.
The pastor behind the Good Fight website, which documents reports from rock stars themselves of their encounters with the occult and satanic influences through their experiences with rock music, says he believes an e-mail he got weeks ago was from Murray, and indicated trouble.
Pastor Joe Schimmel told WND he recalled the October e-mail when he read the postings, included in WND stories, attributed to Murray. He said he thinks it's important for people to know what the attacker himself was feeling and thinking prior to his homicidal attack, especially since he's been described in the media as a homeschooled student from a religious family.
The e-mail, although it came from a man who identified himself as "Brian," most probably was from Murray, Schimmel says, because of long list of similarities. The e-mail notes the writer has "studied and practiced the teachings of Aleister Crowley/Thelema/The Golden Dawn, Qabbalah, H.P. Blavatsky/Theosophy, Manly P. Hall, Alice Bailey, and others."
Crowley, who lived during the late 1800s and first half of the 1900s, was a bisexual, drug-addicted occultist practitioner and author who almost reveled in the media description of him as "the wickedest man in the world."
During a court case in the 1930s, Crowley was described by a judge as dreadful. "I thought that everything which was vicious and bad had been produced at one time or another before me," the judge concluded. "I have learned in this case that we can always learn something more … I have never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff as that which has been produced by [Crowley.]"
Crowley also founded Thelema, a religious belief that was drawn from his book, "Liber Al Vel Legis," or Book of the Law, which gives only two commands: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" and "Love is the law, love under will."
Crowley espoused a wide range of occultist activities and practices, and one of his compatriots reportedly died from drinking the blood of a cat during one ceremonial episode, according to documents on Crowley's life. Many believe Crowley was a forerunner to Anton LeVay, who formalized his beliefs in "The Satanic Bible" and established the Church of Satan.
While Crowley dabbled in the occult, magic, trances, drugs, sex and blood rituals, Schimmel told WND the writer apparently had sold his soul to another devil: rock music.
The e-mail noted that "music is a very powerful thing," and then continued with writings that appeared to have been assembled in the form of an article titled, "My Secret Drug Addiction":
I have a powerful addiction to a powerful drug that most people in my life don't know about. … I have found this drug to truly be a force to be reckoned with. This drug can completely alter blood pressure, heart rate, brainwave patterns and other bodily functions. … This drug will completely control a person's mind, what thought's (sic) they think and their emotions and how they feel. I found that this drug has the power to completely alter a person's religious beliefs, their morality, and their values and their entire lifestyle. … I found this drug to be a powerful driving force and easy gateway into a world of sex, other drugs, rebellion, homosexuality, alcoholism and many other dark things. … The drug … is commonly known in our culture as … Rock Music.
Schimmel said his organization specifically documents and warns about the occult influences in rock music and modern society, and this rang an alarm when he first received it.
Schimmel said the writings line up with what he knows about Crowley, and his influence, which sparked multiple references during the rock era of the 1960s, when some songs even included a tribute to "Mr. Crowley," he said.
He said his ministry has worked to show how Satanism can influence youth through music, and this was a factor not included in many media reports about the Colorado shootings.
But he said if the author had "practiced" Crowley's teachings, "he's opened himself up to a spiritual drug addiction."
"What he really is, is a Satanist, subscribing to the
teachings of Aleister Crowley," said Schimmel, who told WND other
leaders in the Crowley image have included Timothy O'Leary and Alfred
Kinsey.
World Net Daily
December, 2007
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New campaign debate: Is Satan Jesus' brother?
Mormon church weighs in on Huckabee suggestion
WASHINGTON – Satan has reared his ugly head in the 2008 presidential campaign – literally.
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has prompted angry denunciations of religious bigotry by rival Mitt Romney as well as an official retort from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for speculating in a New York Times Magazine interview this weekend that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan were brothers.
Stirred by the debate, the Associated Press sought clarification from Kim Farah, a spokeswoman from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She said the question is usually raised by those who wish to smear the Mormon faith, but she evaded a direct answer to the question: "We believe, as other Christians believe and as Paul wrote, that God is the father of all. That means that all beings were created by God and are his spirit children. Christ, on the other hand, was the only begotten in the flesh and we worship him as the son of God and the savior of mankind. Satan is the exact opposite of who Christ is and what he stands for."
"On first hearing, the doctrine that Lucifer and our Lord, Jesus Christ, are brothers may seem surprising to some – especially to those unacquainted with latter-day revelations," says the statement. "But both the scriptures and the prophets affirm that Jesus Christ and Lucifer are indeed offspring of our Heavenly Father and, therefore, spirit brothers. Jesus Christ was with the Father from the beginning. Lucifer, too, was an angel "who was in authority in the presence of God," a "son of the morning." (See Isa. 14:12; D&C 76:25–27.) Both Jesus and Lucifer were strong leaders with great knowledge and influence. But as the Firstborn of the Father, Jesus was Lucifer's older brother. (See Col. 1:15; D&C 93:21.)"
But Romney interprets the question from Huckabee – rhetorical or not – to be a display of religious bigotry.
"But I think attacking someone's religion is really going too far," he said on NBC's "Today" show. "It's just not the American way, and I think people will reject that."
The exchange is setting up tonight's GOP presidential debate, the final showdown before the Iowa caucuses, as a potentially fiery denouement in the first major contest of the 2008 primary campaign.
Will the Satan card be played?
Are theological questions fair game?
Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former Arkansas governor, has surged in public opinion polls and is now ahead of Romney in polls in Iowa, which holds its caucus Jan. 3.
He made the comment before Romney gave a major speech last week
trying to dispel fears about his church, particularly among
conservative Christians, an important voting bloc. Romney said he
believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God and savior of mankind, and that
his White House would not be controlled by his church.
World Net Daily
December, 2007
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LAW OF THE LAND
City told: Stop prosecuting 'annoying' Christian
Court says 1st Amendment trumps ban on religious warnings that upset bar patrons
A federal judge has ordered a Louisiana city to stop enforcing an ordinance that banned a Christian man from warning bar patrons about the consequences of their actions, concluding the First Amendment trumps the local law.
"Zachary (La.) has no legitimate governmental interest in restricting speech that is too 'annoying' or 'offensive' to listeners," said U.S. District Judge James Brady, who issued a preliminary injunction preventing the city from continuing to enforce its restriction.
The case was brought by the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of John Netherland, a man who had been targeted by authorities in the city of Zachary when he was warned he would be arrested if his verbal message in any way "annoys" someone else.
The ADF lawsuit sought a preliminary injunction to halt enforcement of the city's challenged ordinance while a trial on the case moves through the system. Brady agreed, finding that Netherland, when he loses First Amendment freedoms, "even for a minimal period of time … has suffered irreparable injury, and a court may grant injunctive relief."
Specifically, city officials "have not removed the threat of arrest against Mr. Netherland. They continue to violate his constitutional rights by prohibiting his religious message on the public easement near (the bar) and on other traditional public fora in Zachary. As long as Mr. Netherland is threatened with arrest, the harm suffered by him continues to grow," the judge said.
The judge's ruling outlined the circumstances that generated the dispute: Netherland owns a tree-trimming service and lives near Zachary. "He is a professing Christian, who found his faith while battling alcoholism and drug addition. He desires to share his religious views with others, as part of his sincerely held religious beliefs. Mr. Netherland shares his faith with others by speaking in public areas, just as he did near Sidelines Grill … in the city of Zachary on the evening of Nov. 18, 2006."
Netherland went onto a public easement about 75-100 feet from the bar's entrance that evening and began to spread his message, quoting from the Bible, including statements such as, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God? Neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, revelers, none of these shall inherit the Kingdom of God," the court said.
He did not use a megaphone or other amplification, but spoke loudly because of traffic on the nearby street, the court said.
Bar worker Ty Stevens then called police to complain Netherland was upsetting patrons.
Two police officers responded but found Netherland wasn't doing anything illegal. An hour later, Stevens called police again, and this time Lt. Troy Eubanks ordered Netherland first to the street edge of the easement, then told him he would be arrested if he continued to express his religious message.
The judge noted that the defendants admitted the crackdown was because of the "religious messages" from Netherland. One officer testified it was the "message" that was upsetting patrons of the drinking establishment.
But the judge said such censorship isn't allowed.
"Here, it is clear that Zachary has placed an undue burden on Mr. Netherland because he is prohibited from exercising his sincerely held religious beliefs. … The ordinance uses vague terms and there are less restrictive means to ensure public order."
He continued, "An enforcing officer must rely on his own subjective views of what constitutes 'annoying' or 'offensive' speech, or he must consider what he believes others might find 'annoying' or 'offensive.' The result of this reliance leads an officer … to act under the ordinance in a manner based on his or her own arbitrary judgment."
"Mr. Netherland's religious speech cannot be silenced because someone claims the Gospel message is 'annoying,'" said Joel Oster, ADF senior legal counsel. "We hope as this case moves forward that the constitutional right of Mr. Netherland and other Christians to share their religious faith in Zachary will be affirmed."
World Net DailyDecember, 2007
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ELECTION 2008
CAIR's Islamist quizzers featured at prez debates
Activists posing as ordinary citizens influencing national security dialogue
Radical Islamist groups are planting activists posing as ordinary Muslim Americans to ask candidates questions at the presidential debates.
Most recently, the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, several of whose leaders have been prosecuted on terror-related charges, sent the executive director of its Chicago chapter to take part in the Democratic presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa, which was supposed to be an opportunity for "ordinary people" to ply candidates with questions.
At Saturday's debate, aired on C-Span, CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab stood up and asked Sen. John Edwards if he would help Muslims fight "prejudice" and other "abuses" such as hate crimes.
"It seems we're facing a culture of fear-mongering," Rehab complained.
"Senator, in the '60s, Malcolm and Martin gave up their lives fighting for justice for all," he added. "The civil rights movement is not over. It's not done yet. We're still fighting.
"Senator," he continued, "we would like to know if you will fight with us if elected president."
A number of Muslim activists around Rehab erupted into applause and cheers.
"You've got some fans," Edwards remarked, before vowing to end "profiling" of and "spying" on Muslim terrorist suspects. He also promised to "close Guantanamo" and stop the "torture" of terrorist detainees.
Despite Rehab's assertion that Muslims are victims of hate crimes and other abuses on a "regular basis," the FBI last month released 2006 data showing anti-Islamic crimes have fallen 68 percent since 2001, and represent just 11 percent of all religiously motivated attacks. According to a report in Investor's Business Daily, the overwhelming majority of such crimes – 66 percent – target Jews.
Also, at last month's Republican debate in St. Petersburg, Fla., a former CAIR intern was selected by host CNN to challenge GOP presidential hopefuls about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and complain about the anger they've created in the Muslim world.
Wearing a hijab, Yasmin Elhady complained they've created anger in the Muslim world. "My question has to do with the current crisis in Iraq, as well as the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan," she said.
"After living abroad personally in the Middle East for a year, I realized just how much damage the Iraq war and the perception of invasion has done to the image of America," Elhady added. "What would you do as president to repair the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world?"
CNN, which claimed to pick questioners at random from a pool of "undecided voters," did not cite Elhady's activist background with CAIR. The network simply identified her as "Yasmin from Huntsville, Ala." (She actually lives in Los Angeles, where she attends college at UCLA.)
Federal prosecutors have named CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing terror fund-raising case. Moreover, as WND first reported, no fewer than 14 CAIR officials – including the Washington-based group's founder and its executive director – have either been convicted or named in terrorism investigations.
Earlier, at CNN's Democratic debate in Las Vegas, another Muslim activist associated with CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood was handed the microphone.
Again, CNN failed to identify him as anything but an average American Muslim.
"Our next questioner is – Khalid Khan, if you would please stand for a moment," CNN host Suzanne Malveaux said. "You and I spoke very briefly, and you said you have some concerns about racial profiling."
"Yes, I do," Khan said, sternly. "I am an American citizen and have been profiled all the time at the airport. Since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of Americans have been profiled. And, you know, it is like harassment."
Edwards, who fielded the question first, responded that the Patriot Act needs to be "dramatically changed," to which Khan nodded in agreement.
But Khan, an immigrant from Pakistan, is no ordinary American citizen. He's president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, which has its roots with the radical Muslim Student Association. MSA, which was founded by members of the notorious Muslim Brotherhood, is the forerunner of the Islamic Society of North America, an unindicted co-conspirator in the same terror case with CAIR.
Khan runs the largest mosque in Las Vegas, and hired its controversial imam, Aslam Abdullah, former vice chairman of MPAC in Los Angeles.
In June 2004, Abdullah, who heads an Islamic "seminary" in Pakistan, accused President Bush of engaging in "a religious and racist agenda and prejudice against Islam, Muslims and Arabs." He also has likened Marines in Iraq to the 9/11 terrorists, and publicly questioned whether videotapes showing Osama bin Laden gloating over the attacks were authentic.
Abdullah claims to be moderate, even "progressive," but terror expert Steve Emerson says he is in fact an Islamic extremist.
"The record of Aslam Abdullah's comments during the past few years demonstrates an ideology of militant Islamic extremism," Emerson said. "Pretending to be moderate, his radical agenda typifies the deception of groups that falsely assert to be non-extremist."
Khan, who runs several businesses registered at his home address in Henderson, Nev., had his access badge revoked in 2004 by officials at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
The FBI suspects several of the 9/11 hijackers, who met in Vegas before the attacks, may have visited Khan's mosque, Jamia Masjid. The mosque's website links to CAIR's website.
World Net Daily
December, 2007
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GLOBAL JIHAD
U.S. evangelist launches swine attack on Muslims
Outraged by Muhammad teddy bear flap, minister names pig after Islamic prophet
An American evangelist has jumped into the fray over the fate of a British teacher facing calls for death over a teddy bear named "Muhammad."
Bill Keller, host of LivePrayer, has posted a video on YouTube featuring a pink, toy pig named Muhammad after the Muslim prophet.
"Indeed Muhammad was a man of murder," the pig, voiced by Keller himself, states in the video. "He was a pedophile, having a wife at the age of six. And I came to find out that the Quran really is nothing more than a book of fairy tales."
Keller, a vocal critic of Islam, made the video in response to the case of Gillian Gibbons, who was sentenced to 15 days in a Sudan jail after being convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her student to call a teddy bear "Muhammad."
Gibbons was moved to a secure location in Khartoum last week after street demonstrators called for her death.
If Gibbons had been found guilty of inciting religious hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs, her sentence could have been 40 lashes and up to six months of prison.Muhammad is the most popular boys' name in Sudan, and it has since been revealed the teddy bear was actually named by one of Gibbons' students.
In his latest devotional being sent to his subscribers, Keller states:
Of course there will be Muslim apologists who say that these are only the extremists, just like they try to distance themselves from their brothers in this "peaceful religion" who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the one intended for the Capitol building that was crashed in a Pennsylvania field by some real American heroes. ...These people are not about love or peace or unity. They are about one thing. Converting the world to their false religion and those who get in their way or who refuse to follow their lies will be silenced and killed. The word "Islam" literally means "submission." Maybe you don't understand what it means when their "holy book" says "death to all infidels."
"Bill Keller's pink pig is a terrific tribute to Muhammad!" said WND reader Stephen Mayfield. "If only we could load B-52's with a week's take of Farmer John's swine intestines, and bombs-away them over Khartoum."
Another WND reader, Clay Hestilow of Houston, Texas,
took the opposite view, stating, "Senseless. Ignorant. Hateful. This
'minister' is a poor representation of the love that Christ has for all
of mankind."
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December, 2007
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HOMELAND INSECURITY
CAIR backs film praising convicted terror supporter
Group urges Muslims to buy tickets to al-Arian premiere
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is co-sponsoring the premiere of a documentary film that canonizes convicted terrorist supporter Sami al-Arian.
Tomorrow, CAIR will host the screening of "USA vs. Al-Arian" at the AMC/Loews Uptown 1 Theater in Washington, D.C., according to an action alert the Muslim group posted on its website urging Muslims to buy tickets to the premiere.
The screening, co-sponsored by the Muslim American Society, an Islamist group tied to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, will be followed by a "panel discussion" involving al-Arian's lawyer, his son, Abdullah al-Arian, and a constitutional lawyer from Georgetown University, whose Islamic studies program is funded by the Saudi royal family.
Last year, al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison followed by deportation. In a plea deal, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of "conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods or services to, or for the benefit of, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad," a federally designated terror group.
Al-Arian, an Egyptian citizen of Palestinian descent, had hoped for early deportation, but prosecutors and the federal judge in the case argue he has not cooperated in related terror cases.
He remains in federal prison in Virginia on a contempt citation after he refused to testify in front of a Virginia grand jury investigating a network of Islamic businesses and charities known as the Safa group.Critics say the film portrays al-Arian in a sympathetic light by suggesting the U.S. government used the "draconian" Patriot Act to railroad an innocent Muslim professor.
The film's website juxtaposes photos of al-Arian in handcuffs with one of him and his wife posing with President Bush and Laura Bush during the 2000 campaign. It calls al-Arian "one of America's most prominent political prisoners."
"What we have is a man found innocent who is still harassed by the justice system," said Norwegian filmmaker Line Halvorsen, the film's director. "He's a man of principle. He fights for what he believes in and he's not afraid to speak his mind."
Critics say the film whitewashes the federal terror case, failing to mention that al-Arian pleaded guilty to providing material support to an officially designated terrorist group. The home page instead says he pleaded guilty to one count of supporting "immigrants" associated with an "illegal organization."
It also fails to reveal how, in a speech at a Cleveland mosque, al-Arian once thundered: "Let's damn America, let's damn Israel, let's damn their allies until death."
Court exhibits also show letters written by al-Arian praising Palestinian suicide bombers.
Publicly, al-Arian has maintained he doesn't support any kind of violence.
"I am a very moderate Muslim person," he said. "I also condemn violence in all its forms."
The film's website decries what it calls the "harsh" treatment of the confessed terrorist supporter.
"Currently Al-Arian is held under severe conditions in a
prison about 1,000 miles away from his family, making it extremely hard
for them to keep in touch with him," it said. "Al-Arian recently went
through a 60-day hunger strike to protest the government's treatment."
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December, 2007
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MEDIA MATTERS
CAIR: Civil rights advocates or radical Islamists?
Muslim lobby group has troubling record of terror arrests
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, says its aim is "to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."
Maybe so, but federal prosecutors have also named the group an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a plot to fund the terrorist group Hamas, several of CAIR's leaders have been convicted on terror charges since 9/11, and one of its founders has reportedly declared that America should be governed by Islamic sharia law.
Adding to the controversy over the high-profile lobby group, CAIR is now being sued by radio talk show host Michael Savage over CAIR's attacks on him and what he says constitute illegal use of his broadcasts.
The lawsuit alleges CAIR is a "political vehicle of international terrorism" that seeks to do "material harm to those voices who speak against the violent agenda of CAIR's clients." Filed in U.S. District Court in California, the suit seeks damages equal to the ongoing donations from CAIR supporters "who expect CAIR to act in this manner in exchange for continuing financial support" as well as "actual damages according to proof."
The focal point of the lawsuit is a series of audio clips CAIR has been using in its promotions and fundraisings.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, told WND the group would not comment on the action until the document had been reviewed.
Although the news media generally have portrayed CAIR as a legitimate civil rights group, the organization has had a hard time maintaining its squeaky clean image.
For instance, as WND has reported, Ghassan Elashi, a board member of CAIR's Texas chapter, was convicted in 2005 of channeling funds to a high-ranking official of Hamas – which the U.S. government officially designates a terrorist organization.
As WND reported in October 2006, Elashi was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for financial ties to a high-ranking Hamas terrorist and for making illegal computer exports to countries that back terrorism.
Other CAIR figures convicted since 9-11 are Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, a former communications specialist and civil rights coordinator, and Bassem Khafagi, former director of community relations.
Royer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges he trained in Virginia for holy war against the United States and sent several members to Pakistan to join Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri terrorist group with reported ties to al-Qaida.
In a plea bargain, Royer claimed he never intended to hurt anyone but admitted he organized the holy warriors after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
After his arrest, Royer sought legal counsel from Hamas lawyer Stanley Cohen, who said after 9-11 he would consider serving as a defense lawyer for Osama bin Laden if the al-Qaida leader were captured.
Khafagi was arrested in January 2003 while serving with CAIR and convicted on fraud and terrorism charges.
Current CAIR leaders also have made statements in support of Hamas and the domination of the U.S. by Islam.
As WorldNetDaily reported, CAIR's chairman of the board, Omar Ahmad, was cited by a California newspaper in 1998 declaring the Quran should be America's highest authority.
He also was reported to have said Islam is not in America to be equal to any other religion but to be dominant.
Just this past June, CAIR itself was named, along with two other prominent U.S. Islamic groups, as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a plot to fund Hamas. Federal prosecutors also cited the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust as participants in a plot with five officials of the defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.
CAIR is a spinoff of the defunct Islamic Association for Palestine, launched by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and former university professor Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Last March, the House Republican Conference urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to cancel an event hosted on Capitol Hill by CAIR, calling the group "terrorist apologists."
And the group's regular meetings with the Justice Department and FBI have prompted complaints from case agents, who say the bureau rarely can make a move in the Muslim community without first consulting with CAIR, which sits on its advisory board.
CAIR has even conducted "sensitivity" and cultural training with federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and with the military. In June of last year, a senior Department of Homeland Security official from Washington guided CAIR officials on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.
Last year, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., withdrew an award she gave to a local CAIR official, saying she was concerned about some statements by CAIR leaders.
Savage's lawsuit follows a CAIR campaign to influence advertisers to abandon the popular talker's program. CAIR's recent announcement said OfficeMax, a leading office products retailer, had joined "a growing list of companies" withdrawing advertising from Savage's program because of his opinions regarding Islam.
That prompted the group ACT for America to launch an alert suggesting people call OfficeMax to encourage the company to reverse its decision.
"Call the OfficeMax office headquarters … and when you get an operator, in a polite but firm manner, tell the operator you have heard about the company's decision to stop advertising on the Michael Savage program because of the pressure from CAIR. Tell them you will no longer shop at OfficeMax until OfficeMax reverses this ill-advised decision," the advisory said.
"If CAIR can succeed in this effort to silence Michael Savage, consider the chilling effect this will have on every talk radio host in America," wrote American Congress for Truth founder Brigitte Gabriel in the alert.
World Net DailyDecember, 2007
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FAITH UNDER FIRE
Pastor hospitalized after attack by police
Authorities pressure leader to finger other believers
A prominent leader in the exploding house church movement in China is living under constant harassment from police, who are trying to force him to finger other Christian believers, and a recent beating by officers in his house left him hospitalized, according to a new report from Voice of the Martyrs, the worldwide ministry to persecuted Christians.
Hua Huiqi, who was jailed early in 2007 – along with his elderly mother – for the apparent offense of walking near a site under construction for the 2008 Olympics, is recovering from the latest attacks in his home, VOM reported.
However, the persecution level remains high. "Public Security Bureau (PSB) police officers attacked and beat up Hua again after refusing to allow him to use the bathroom next to his bedroom," according to the VOM update.
He had been released from Tiantan Hospital a short time earlier, a medical facility to which he was admitted after police officers beat him for "reading his Bible at his home," VOM said.
He lost consciousness from those "repeated beatings," the ministry said.
He had been placed under house arrest, with officers apparently actually occupying his home with him, recently as part of the government's apparent campaign to force him to reveal the identities and other information about other Christians.
VOM said Hua's mother, Shuang Shuying, 77, remains very ill in prison, serving a two-year sentence for the "trespassing" offense. "VOM contacts say she is being held hostage by police in order to put pressure on Pastor Hua to reveal names and information of believers," the report said.
"Pray for Pastor Hua's recovery and thank God for His faithfulness as Hua endures these recent attacks. Pray for the healing of his mother and that her testimony will draw non-believers into the knowledge of Jesus Christ," VOM asked constituents.
As WND reported, Hua had been released after serving about six months in prison on charges similar to his mother's case.
VOM said Hua was arrested in February by the Beijing Public Security Bureau Chaoyang Branch and his mother arrested by Beijing Security Bureau Chongwen Branch. They had been injured in January when seven police officers attacked them while they were walking near the hotel construction site in Beijing, and were taken into custody when they ventured there a second time.
China Aid Association officials told VOM that Hua has been very active in trying to help persecuted Christians and others who are oppressed by local officials who travel to Beijing trying to obtain justice from the central government.
He and his mother were attacked, and while on the ground, kicked. Then later they were taken to a police station for questioning, according to reports. "When Hua asked the police to release his sick mother and explain the legal ground for the detention, he was beaten repeatedly. While the temperature in Beijing was in the 20s, cold water was poured on him. He was later taken to a detention center," the organization said.
"The Chinese government says they ensure freedom of religion, but this case clearly shows the truth," Todd Nettleton, a VOM spokesman said. Police from the Olympic Sports Stadium Police Station also threatened to arrest Hua's brother, officials reported.
Authorities in China said Hua was put under criminal detention on the charge of "intervening public affair," essentially damaging public and private property at the construction site.
But Bob Fu, who works with Hua, said the charge was baseless and clearly "revenge" for his ministry work.
Co-workers told China Aid Association that they believe the aggressive actions in the arrest of Hua and his mother could be because of instructions from high government officials to send a message to those who present a message during the Olympics that does not fit the government's formal statements.
As WND reported, China appears to be mounting a campaign specifically aimed at chasing foreign Christians out, and suppressing the voice of indigenous Christians, in order to present the image it wants to the world during the 2008 Olympics.
The campaign has gotten the attention of several other organizations, and Human Rights Watch said Chinese police also have cracked down on "subversive Internet users" who have been censored in their efforts to post information that contradicts the government's public relations statements.
Also, at the current time, hundreds of thousands of Chinese are being evicted from their homes just so that the redevelopment projects in preparation for the Games can continue, the HRC said.
"The IOC has … invested the Chinese regime with a task it will carry out zealously: host safe Olympics. This means arrests of dissidents, social 'cleansing,' and censorship against 'critical' elements…," HRW said.
"The Olympic movement was discredited in 1936, when it allowed the Nazis to make the Games a spectacle to glorify the Third Reich. In 1980, in Moscow, the IOC suffered a terrible defeat when more than 50 countries boycotted the Olympics…," the group said. The 2008 Games should not be allowed to advance the restrictions China imposes, it said.
However, WND also has reported that Christian organizations inside China are reporting that up to 3,000 Chinese are being added daily to the Christian house church movement, which rejects government control over issues of faith.
Voice of the Martyrs is a non-profit, interdenominational ministry working worldwide to help Christians who are persecuted for their faith, and to educate the world about that persecution. Its headquarters are in Bartlesville, Okla., and it has 30 affiliated international offices.
It was launched by the late Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, who started smuggling Russian Gospels into Russia in 1947, just months before Richard was abducted and imprisoned in Romania where he was tortured for his refusal to recant Christianity.
He eventually was released in 1964 and the next year he testified about the persecution of Christians before the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee, stripping to the waist to show the deep torture wound scars on his body.
The group that later was renamed The Voice of the Martyrs was organized in 1967, when his book, "Tortured for Christ," was released.
World Net DailyOctober, 2007
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Tossed from a car and shot in cold blood
IT WAS just after 11pm and the shopkeeper was closing up for the night when a van screeched to a halt outside. The back doors flew open. “Someone inside threw a woman onto the street,” he said. “She was lying on the road but she was still alive. A man lent out and shot a machine-gun into her body.”
As the van raced away, the shopkeeper ran over to her. She was aged 25 to 30 with long dark hair and was lying face up. “There was so much blood,” he said. “The police just took a photograph and put her in the back of a van.”
There have been 48 women killed in six months for “un-Islamic behaviour”. The murders in the teeming southern port of Basra have highlighted the weakness of the security forces and the strength of Islamic militias as Britain prepares to hand over control to Iraqi officials today.
In another case, two teenagers saw a woman beaten to death by
five or six men
from the Mahdi Army, Basra’s most powerful militia. One picked up a
rock and
crushed her skull. The teenagers were told that their home and family
would
be destroyed if they betrayed the killers.
Gordon Brown told the Commons last week that Iraq was now a democracy, that violence in Basra had fallen by 90% and that the Iraqis were “taking control over their own security”.
However, Major-General Jalil Khalaf, the police chief, said the city’s 28 militias were better armed than his men. “They control the ports which earns them huge sums of money” he said.
As well as skimming profits from oil exports, they were importing weapons from Iran.
“You could smuggle a tank across that border if you wanted to,” he added.
During four days of reporting independently in Basra – the first western journalist to do so for a British newspaper in almost two years – I met a Baghdad official who had come to investigate the port. He was abducted, tortured and freed only after a “gift” was promised to the kidnappers.
The objective of the UK forces in southern Iraq was to establish the security needed for political development and economic reconstruction. Major-General Graham Binns, the commander of British forces in Basra province, acknowledged that “we were unable to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people”.
December, 2007
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A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.
Aqsa Parvez, a student at Applewood Heights Secondary School, had been on life support in hospital since yesterday morning.
Police went to the family's two-storey home on Longhorn Trail about 8 a.m. yesterday after receiving a 911 call in which a man allegedly claimed to have killed his daughter.
Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.
Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
Homicide investigators had been standing by, as it soon became clear the young girl wouldn't survive the attack.
Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been remanded in custody and was to make his first court appearance today in a Brampton court.
The victim's brother, 26-year-old Waqas Parvez, was also arrested on a charge of obstructing police.
Neighbours described the family as very private and said several members from three generations have lived in the two-storey home, near Hurontario St. and Eglinton Ave., for just over two years.
School chums say Aqsa had been arguing with her family for months over whether she should wear the hijab.
Pal Ebonie Mitchell, 16, and other friends said Aqsa still wore the hijab to school last year, but rebelled against dressing in it this fall.
They said she would leave home wearing the traditional garment and loose clothing, but would often change into tighter garments at school.
She would change back for the bus trip home.
"Sometimes she even changed her whole outfit in the washroom at school," Mitchell said.
The teen was known to her classmates and Facebook friends as Axa. She posted several pictures of herself on the website in colourful clothes and accessories.
At Aqsa's high school, friends gathered in groups yesterday, struggling to come to grips with what happened and lamenting how she had quarrelled with her father to the point that she recently moved out to live with a friend.
"She said she was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother ... and she's not scared of nobody," said classmate Ashley Garbutt, 16.
"She didn't want to go home ... to the point where she actually wanted to go to shelters."
Friends said the root of her problems was a desire to blend in with friends at school, to wear the fashionable clothes she liked to buy on trips to Toronto's garment district, where she went with friends just last month.
"She liked fashion," said Mitchell. "We went to different stores; she was shopping; she bought lots of clothes."
"She loved clothes, she loved shopping and she loved taking pictures of herself," classmate Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, 16, said outside the school as friends sobbed at the news.
"She just wanted to show her beauty. She just wanted freedom, freedom from her parents."
"She just wanted to dress like us, just like a normal person," said Holmes-Thompson.
"She was a very kind person, she was really nice; everybody loved her."
Friend Shianne Phillips, 16, said she last spoke with Aqsa on Friday.
"She was crying and she was like ‘I'm really scared to go
home. I don't know what I'm going to do.' And that was it," Phillips
said.
December, 2007
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TORONTO - A Toronto mosque is telling Muslims not to say "Happy Thanksgiving" or invite friends into their homes for turkey dinner on the holiday weekend.
The Khalid Bin Al-Walid Mosque says to "avoid participating" in dinners, parties or greetings on Thanksgiving because it is a kuffaar, or non-Muslim, celebration.
A two-part article on the mosque Web site says Muslims should also "stay completely away" from "Halloween trick-and treat nonsense," Christmas, New Year's, anniversaries, birthdays and Earth Day.
"How can we bring ourselves to congratulate or wish people well for their disobedience to Allah? Thus expressions such as:Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Birthday, Happy New Year, etc, are completely out," it says.
In 2003, the Khalid mosque, which mainly serves the Toronto Somali-Canadian community, apologized for a newsletter that compared wishing someone a Merry Christmas to congratulating a murderer.
At the time, a junior employee was blamed for the slight, but the mosque's Web site has since posted similar edicts covering not only Christmas but also virtually every other Western celebration.
Muslims who participate in the holidays are termed ignorant and hypocritical.
While not all are religious holidays, the Internet site says Muslims are required to be different from non-Muslims "in matters which are representative of them or are characteristic of their identity."
Also banned, it says, are: watching sports or soap operas, walking dogs, family photos, wedding bands, Western hats, mingling and shaking hands with the opposite sex.
"Allah and his messenger have warned us against following or imitating non-Muslims in things which are characteristic of their religion or beliefs. This is more emphasized in the case of their eids [festivals] or occasions, which always hold some religious or ideological non-Islamic meanings, and on which the kuffaar indulge in many evil practices."
The Web site also has a question-and-answer section, which advises that Muslims can join political parties only if they are "able to exert some influence on the direction of the party so that it will take an Islamic direction."
Elsewhere in the Q&A section, it says that, "with strong determination and patience, the world will God-willing be under the Muslims' control."
The mosque is run by a federally registered charity. Rival factions within the Somali Muslim community are fighting in court for control of the charity. The mosque president could not be reached yesterday.
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From www.danielpipes.org
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Teach Arabic or Recruit Extremists?
New York City's Arabic-language public school, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, opens its doors this week, with special security, for 11- and 12-year-old students. One hopes that the prolonged public debate over the school's Islamist proclivities will prompt it not to promote any political or religious agendas.
Count me as skeptical, however, and for two main reasons. First is the school's genesis and personnel, about which others and I have written extensively. Second, and my topic here, is the worrisome record of taxpayer-funded Arabic-language programs from sea to shining sea.
The trend is clear: pre-collegiate Arabic-language instruction, even when taxpayer funded, tends to bring along indoctrination in pan-Arab nationalism, radical Islam, or both. Note some examples:
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Amana Academy, Alpharetta, Georgia, near Atlanta: A charter school that requires Arabic-language learning, Amana boasts of its "institutional partnership" with the Arabic Language Institute Foundation (ALIF). But ALIF forwards the learning of Arabic as a means "to convey the message of Qur'an in North America and Europe" and thus to "help the Western countries recover from the present moral decay."
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Carver Elementary School, San Diego: A teacher, Mary-Frances Stephens, informed the school board that she taught a "segregated class" of Muslim girls and that each day she was required to release them from class for an hour of prayer, led by a Muslim teacher's aide. Ms. Stephens deemed this arrangement "clearly a violation of administrative, legislative and judicial guidelines." The school's principal, Kimberlee Kidd, replied that the teacher's aide merely prayed alongside the students and the session lasted only 15 minutes. The San Diego Unified School District investigated Ms. Stephens's allegations and rejected them, but it nonetheless changed practices at Carver, implicitly substantiating her critique. Superintendent Carl Cohn eliminated single-gender classes and reconfigured the schedule so that students can pray during lunch.
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Charlestown High School, Massachusetts: The school's summer Arabic-language program took students on a trip to the Islamic Society of Boston, where, the Boston Globe reports, students "sat in a circle on the carpet and learned about Islam from two mosque members." One student, Peberlyn Moreta, 16, fearing that the gold cross around her neck would offend the hosts, tucked it under her T-shirt. Anti-Zionism also appeared, with the showing of the 2002 film Divine Intervention, which a critic, Jordan Hiller, has termed an "irresponsible film," "frighteningly dangerous," and containing "pure hatred" toward Israel.
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Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, Inver Grove Heights, Minn.: Islamic Relief Worldwide, an organization that allegedly has links to jihadism and terrorism, sponsored this charter school, which requires Arabic as a second language. The academy's name openly celebrates Islamic imperialism, as Tarek ibn Ziyad led Muslim troops in their conquest of Spain in 711 A.D. Local journalists report that "a visitor might well mistake Tarek ibn Ziyad [Academy] for an Islamic school" because of the women wearing hijabs, the carpeted prayer area, the school closing down for Islamic holidays, everyone keeping the Ramadan fast, the cafeteria serving halal food, classes breaking for prayer, almost all the children praying, and the constant use of "Brother" and "Sister" when adults at the school address each other.
Only in the case of the Iris Becker Elementary School in Dearborn, Michigan, is the Arabic-language program not obviously pursuing a political and religious agenda. Its program may actually be clean; or perhaps the minimal information about it explains the lack of known problems.
The above examples (and see my Web log entry "Other Taxpayer-Funded American Madrassas" for yet more) are all American, but similar problems predictably exist in other Western countries.
This troubling pattern points to the need for special scrutiny of publicly funded Arabic-language programs. That scrutiny should take the form of robust supervisory boards whose members are immersed in the threat of radical Islam and who have the power to shut down anything they might find objectionable.
Arabic-language instruction at the pre-collegiate level is
needed,
and the U.S. government rightly promotes it (for example, via the "National
Security Language Initiative" on the national level or the "Foreign Language in Elementary Schools"
program on a local one). As it does so, getting the instruction right
becomes ever more important. Citizens, parents, and taxpayers have the
right to ensure that children attending these publicly funded
institutions are taught a language skill—and are not being recruited to
anti-Zionism or Islamism.
September, 2007
From www.danielpipes.org |