RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND A MOSQUE

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON arguments of the supporters of the Ground Zero mosque includes religious freedom as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Religion is seen as the framework to support building a mosque and community center near the site of the former World Trade Towers. Is this really about religion? Step back and look at the controversy. Do you feel like you are taking part in a religious exercise or a political fracas?

There is a vast confusion about what a religion is and is not. Currently the operative rule is that anything associated with Islam is a religious affair where all of the freedom of religion is applied to the action or event. Islam's actions are religious and if you oppose it, you are an un-American bigot.

It is time to stop and take a look at what we mean by a religion. There are about as many Buddhists in America today as there are Muslims. When was the last time you remember a Buddhist demand of any kind? Do Buddhists set up councils to shape the textbooks and demand Buddhist finance? Does the government make a big announcement when Buddhists are appointed to high posts? Are there even any Buddhists in any White House appointments? Do Buddhists complain? Never, for these are political actions, and Buddhism has almost no political outreach. Buddhism in America is purely religious, not political at all.

Yet the media and the Internet are consumed by talk and argument about Islam. The discussion is never about how many rounds of prayer to do or whether a certain food is halal (religiously proper). No, the focus is always on something that non-Muslims are to do to accommodate an Islamic religious practice.

There is a practical working definition of religion as compared to politics. Religious practices are done by those who follow that religion and are motivated for achieving paradise and avoiding hell. Outsiders are not involved in those religious acts. If it is about going to heaven and avoiding hell, then it is religious. However, if the religion makes a demand on those outside of its own group, then that demand is political.

Most people think that the Koran is a religious text. Instead, 64% of the text (by word count) is about non-Muslims, who are called Kafirs. The Koran is fixated on Kafirs and makes many demands on them. Not the least is that Kafirs submit to the rule of Islamic Sharia law. Ultimately Sharia law is the pure expression of Islamic politics and it completely contradicts our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Under Sharia there is no freedom of speech, wives may be beaten and apostates murdered.

Mohammed had little success with Islam until he transformed it into a political system. He preached the religion of Islam in Mecca for 13 years and made about 150 converts. He left Mecca and moved to Medina. In Medina he turned to politics and jihad. In the last 9 years of his life, Mohammed was involved in an event of violence on the average of every 6 weeks. The political method persuaded every Arab to convert to Islam. The religion did not succeed; it was politics that made Islam powerful.

Bill Warner
Director, Center for the Study of Political Islam

CAIR STRIKES IN PREDICTABLE FASHION

IN THE PAST SEVEN DAYS, evidence surfaced that the FBI was cutting off its primary contacts with CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations), after CAIR refused to address FBI questions about CAIR's relationship to Hamas (a designated terrorist organization). Then, five members of Congress sent a letter to other members of Congress entitled "Beware of CAIR," citing the evidence that the FBI had severed ties with CAIR.

Click here to read the letter.

CAIR has responded in its predictable timeworn fashion—attack the messengers. The commentary below, fetched from the website of SANE (Society of Americans for National Existence), includes the response letter that CAIR sent to Congresswoman Sue Myrick, a Republican from Charlotte, North Carolina, and co-chair of the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus.

One line in CAIR's letter is particularly telling: "If enduring these baseless attacks from you is part of God's price for freedom, we embrace them."

Playing the victim, or in this case, the martyr, is a common tactic among Islamists. In CAIR's world, any critique or criticism of it, no matter how reasoned or documented, is anti-Muslim bigotry. For CAIR to claim that allegations against it are "baseless" is, well, baseless.

Why would the FBI finally make the decision it did to sever ties with CAIR if there was no basis for doing so? Why would the Justice Department list CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial if there was no basis for doing so? Why would an FBI agent, testifying under oath during that trial, label CAIR as a front organization for Islamist extremism if there was no basis for saying so?

The answer is they wouldn't.

The CAIR "scare letter" to Congresswoman Sue Myrick can be downloaded HERE.

When Representative Sue Myrick learned that the FBI had severed its connections with and ties to CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., she understood the significance of this event. On the one hand, the US Attorneys prosecuting the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (the largest Muslim charity in the US post-9/11), CAIR Texas officials and others for materially supporting terrorism in the Middle East had taken the unprecedented step to publicly identify CAIR, ISNA, and other such groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the HLF criminal trial. On the other hand, members of the FBI would use CAIR as a sounding board for the "Muslim community" notwithstanding the lack of any evidence that CAIR represents anyone much less a "Muslim community" known largely for its lack of community organization.

As a result, Rep. Myrick, who is deeply involved in counterterrorism issues in Congress, wrote a letter outlining this new awareness by the FBI to her congressional colleagues. In return, and almost precisely on cue, CAIR went on the offensive in an abject display of desperation.

In the midst of their explanation that they are just a "civil rights organization" defending the downtrodden and oppressed among Muslims in America, they launch into a personal attack on Rep. Myrick, and this organization, SANE. (That letter is available above in PDF format for download at the unique URL for this entry.)

What CAIR has done here they have done before and will continue to do in the future. SANE, David Yerushalmi, Rep. Myrick, Robert Spencer, Stephen Coughlin, Dr. Andy Bostom, Frank Gaffney, Brigitte Gabriel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Tawfiq Hamid, and many others, have taken on the difficult but critically important task to identify precisely the Enemy Common Threat Doctrine which animates the worldwide jihad against unbelievers and the West generally. This doctrine is of course Shariah or Islamic law. This doctrine commands the faithful to engage in the conversion, subjugation or murder of those who resist Shariah's call for submission to a worldwide hegemony called a caliphate.

CAIR's approach to public discourse on this subject, however, is to take writings out of context and to conceal the careful and thoughtful analysis of Shariah and to distort that body of work into a caricature of simple anti-Muslim bigotry.

We have responded to this ad hominem approach in broad strokes but for those interested, the more telling response to CAIR is to simply quote two of the most authoritative and "mainstream" Shariah authorities in the world. The first is the Dow Jones Shariah advisor Mufti Taqi Usmani, who has written a book on how a "good" Muslim ought to behave while living among the infidels in the West. In that book, published in 1999 in English and available on Amazon.com, Usmani wrote:

I am in receipt of your esteemed letter. Whatever you have written about Jehad can be summarized as this "If a non-Muslim state allows for preaching Islam in its country, Jehad against it does not remain lawful." If this is what you mean, my humble self does not agree with it. Obstruction in the way of preaching Islam does not mean only a legal obstacle, but greater power or domination of a non-Muslim state against Muslims is by itself a great obstacle in the propagation of Islam. There are no legal restrictions in most of the countries today on preaching Islam, but since their grandeur and authority is established in the world, it has led to developing a universal feeling which forms a greater obstacle than the greatest legal binding in the way of free propagation of Islam.

For this reason the most important purpose of Jehad is to break this grandeur so that the resulting psychological subordination should come to an end and the way of accepting the Truth become smooth. As long as this grandeur and domination persists the hearts of people will remain subdued and will not be fully inclined to accept the religion of Truth. Hence Jehad will continue. The Qur'an said in Sura Tauba:

Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

Here, killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah [subjugation tax on non-Muslims] after they are humbled or overpowered. If the purpose of killing was only to acquire permission and freedom of preaching Islam, it would have been said "until they allow for preaching Islam." But the obligation of Jizyah and along with it the mention of their subordination is a clear proof that the purpose is to smash their grandeur, so that the veils of their domination should be raised and people get a free chance to think over the blessings of Islam. Imam Razi has written the following commentary on this verse:

The purpose of "Jizyah" is not to let the unbelievers stay in their contumacy against Islam but sparing their lives to give them a chance for a time during which they may hopefully get convinced of the truth of Islam and embrace it. So when an unbeliever is given time wherein he would be observing the respect and honour of Islam, and hearing the arguments of its validity, and also observing the baselesness of disbelief, these things would convince him to turn towards Islam. This, in fact, is the real purpose of legalizing Jizyah.

According to CAIR and its national leadership, the most important and authoritative Shariah authority for them and their Muslim Brotherhood associates is Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Mr. Qaradawi is well known for his fatwa ordering the mujahideen of Afghanistan and Iraq to murder American combat soldiers and civilian contractors. He has also issued a fatwa authorizing the suicide-murder of any Jew in Israel—man, woman, or child. He is quoted from Al-Jazeera television. as follows:

Oh Allah, take your enemies, the enemies of Islam. Oh Allah, take the Jews, the treacherous aggressors. Oh Allah, take this profligate, cunning, arrogant band of people. Oh Allah, they have spread much tyranny and corruption in the land. Pour Your wrath upon them, oh our God. Lie in wait for them. Oh Allah, You annihilated the people Thamoud at the hand of a tyrant, You annihilated the people of 'Aad with a fierce, icy gale, and You destroyed the Pharaoh and his soldiers—oh Allah, take this oppressive, tyrannical band of people. Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one.

If CAIR were interested in a real discussion of these matters, as they suggest in their letter to Rep. Myrick, they have lacked neither opportunities nor platforms. Instead, they engage in the rankest form of ad hominem attacks and issue statements denouncing "terrorism" and the murder of "innocents" and the need for "justice" in the world. But anyone who has spent any time studying this Shariah propaganda understands it for what it is. All of the Shariah authorities, including OBL (who is not himself a Shariah authority), issue the same pronouncements because, per Shariah, jihad is not "terror"; the "killing of infidels" is not the "murder of innocents"; and "justice" is only achieved, as Mufti Usmani and Sheikh Qaradawi tell us ever so clearly, when Shariah-Islam rules the world and CAIR and its minions can shed their western disguises and apply Shariah's rule of law without apology or ruse and dominate all others who continue to resist Shariah-Islam.

Full disclosure: CAIR focuses attention on David Yerushalmi because he is representing several African American Muslims who are suing CAIR in federal court for racketeering, fraud and other crimes. For more information, CLICK HERE for the FrontPage interview with Yerushalmi.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that Morris Days, the “Resident Attorney” and “Manager for Civil Rights” at the now defunct CAIR MD/VA chapter in Herndon, Virginia, was in fact not an attorney and that he failed to provide legal services for clients who came to CAIR for assistance and who had paid for CAIR legal services.

Need to learn more about the ravages of Islam? D.S. Margoliouth and Joseph Schacht have recently been reprinted. Antoine Fattal's book on the legal status of non-Muslims under Islam never went out of print. K. S. Lal is easily obtained. Tritton, Arthur Jeffery, Armand Abel, Georges Henri Bousquet, Snouck Hurgronje—they are all about to be reprinted, at least in relevant part. Of course, I don't think for a minute that Esposito, or any of his crew, are familiar with any of these great scholars, and dozens more. I doubt they've even read them. They seem actually to believe that the only person to have written about dhimmitude is Bat Ye'or, whom they like to airily dismiss as "polemical" so that they will not have to confront her meticulous, scrupulous, and irrefutable scholarship.

Let's be clear. The basis of the Islamic attitude towards unbelievers is the law of war; unbelievers must either be converted, or subjugated, or killed. And CAIR is just one front on that war, the two-faced public front. We are encouraged the veil has been ripped back on this treasonous group.

FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

THESE ARE DANGEROUS TIMES. The volume and ferocity of anti-American chatter across the Internet have reached a level we have not seen since the days leading up to 9/11. The radical Islamists, who would use violence against those who do not accept their view of life, have become arrogant enough to bring their savage methods to new depths of depravity.

To understand this bolder enemy, we must [fully] recognize what they are capable of.

Mumbai.

Last November, a handful of terrorists came into Mumbai by stealth, and within hours brought a city of 18 million to its knees. They attacked ten symbolic sites favored by tourists, murdered some 200 people, and left a wake of indescribable destruction, shattering thousands of lives in their wake.

They singled out American, British, and Jewish targets, and ordered the terrorists to "kill to their last breath". Many of their victims were savagely tortured before being murdered. So brutal was the torture that experienced doctors who later examined the bodies were in shock and could not find the words to even speak about it.

Gaza.

In Gaza, Hamas brought a different kind of terror into the news. Hamas fights her enemies with cowardice and unspeakable cruelty. While terrorists have been given free reign to shell civilians living in southern Israeli towns, they hide behind the women and children of Gaza, drawing Israeli fire to its rocket launchers which are placed deep in densely populated areas, putting their own people at mortal risk.

During the last two years, nearly 6,000 rockets were fired from Gaza, aimed at schools and homes, mostly in the little town of Sderot, which has taken the brunt of the ceaseless barrage. Israel finally responded with a mighty attack to silence the rockets that had plagued its citizens for the last eight years, and while the number of rockets has been reduced, they did not stop, continuing to terrorize the people of southern Israel.

The True Face of Hamas.

There is now a mountain of documentation demonstrating that over recent months, Hamas has acquired massive caches of weapons and explosives which they stored in mosques, schools, and throughout residential neighborhoods.

They have humiliated, brutalized, and murdered their Christian and Fatah 'enemies' in cold blood. And after Israel dropped leaflets in Gazan neighborhoods, urging civilians find shelter away from the aerial attack, Hamas forced them back into their homes, preventing them from finding safety from the bombs. No wonder the number of civilian casualties is so high.

On December 24, in a final blow to any semblance of civilized governance, Hamas passed a new penal code firmly rooted in Shari'a law. Among the punishments that this new code enables are forty lashes for drinking wine, cutting off hands for theft, and crucifixion for 'treason'.

Their reversion to a seventh century penal code underscores their intention to achieve ultimate power that will drive the lives of their people back into the dark ages. The current plight of the people of Gaza can be laid squarely at the feet of Hamas.

What This Means for the West.

Hamas supporters have used the current conflict as another excuse to stir the boiling cauldron of Islamist hatred against the West. Their mantra of "Death to Israel, Death to America" feeds their frenzy and has spawned demonstrations throughout the United States, demonstrations that are growing increasingly hysterical and out of control.

Last week in New York City, seven police officers were hurt—two with head wounds—when a pro-Hamas demonstration became violent.

In San Francisco, pro-Hamas demonstrators shouted, "I want you to watch as I kill your children, cover your children in their own blood! I want you to watch me blow your children's brains out".

In Florida, a demonstrator screamed, "Go back to the oven," referring to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust, "You need a big oven, that's what you need." Click here to see the video.

Here in America, we watch these events unfold as if we were viewing a new kind of reality show. But this is not theater and we, who watch passively, as we sit comfortably in front of the television, need to be alarmed. It is difficult for Westerners to comprehend the depth of hatred that radical Islamists feel against those who are unwilling to adopt their faith. For them, multi-culturalism is not an acceptable way of life, it is evil.

Their view of life demands that we either convert to their version of Islam, or die. They have made it plain that their goal is to globalize jihad, and turn the world into a global Islamist state ruled under shari'ah law. For them, negotiation is not an option, there is only one way, and there is nothing to negotiate.

A few years ago, Abdurahman Alamoudi presented himself as a so-called 'moderate' Muslim, and suggested that he had a large following. He was an open supporter of Hamas and Hezballah, yet so highly esteemed that he had access to the White House (before he went to federal prison for his role in an assassination plot against the Saudi Crown Prince).

Not surprisingly, few took note when he told a Muslim conference in Chicago, "Muslims sooner or later will be the moral leadership of America—either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country." It was one of many warnings that we ignored.

Yousef al-Khattab, a NYC taxi driver, enjoys the benefits of life in America, even as he runs a website called RevolutionMuslim.com. On his website, he wrote, "We pray that we may witness the dismantlement of western, secular dominance across the world as we hold it to be pagan and idolatrous in the majority of its presumptions.

We seek a resurrection of the just example set forth by centuries of Islamic rule throughout the ages and we hold it to be self evident for the objective soul and mind that Allah is One and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is His Prophet and that the religion offers the solution to all of the world's ills and afflictions." Is anybody listening?

Radical Islam has taken a firm hold in our society. Hamas is only one of an undetermined number of radical Islamic groups that aim to do us harm. They have used the freedoms that they profess to hate to achieve access to our universities, our industries, our government, and our collective conscience.

They use our sense of fair play against us to impose their moral superiority, and demand our sensitivity to their rights, while simultaneously demanding that we forfeit our own.

So now, while Christian children can no longer pray in school, the same schools have adopted programs that teach our children what it is like to be Muslim, how they eat, and how they pray.

There are now terrorist cells in virtually every state in the union. Their aim is to globalize jihad, and replace our Constitution with the Koran, our penal code with shari'a law.

They range from the well known names such as al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood (which masquerades under many other names), and includes lesser known groups like Jamaat al-Fuqra, Darul Uloom, and Islamic Jihad. Associated with these groups are not-for-profit front organizations through which these groups launder money to support terroist activities.

For example, Jamaat al-Fuqra compounds have sprung up all over the country to provide Muslim warriors with rural campuses for combat training. Security is high and outsiders are not welcome. Darul Uloom, the school of Islam embraced by the Taliban, have active centers in Florida, Maryland, Texas, Connecticut and New York.

And CAIR, which claims to be nothing more than "a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group", was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the recent Holyland Foundation terrorist funding trial, Never-the-less, it provides sensitivity training to the FBI.

Today, in unassuming Muslim centers in Brooklyn, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Boston, MA; Fairfax, Virginia; and Dearborn, Michigan, jihad is being plotted, while we bend over backwards to ensure that they are not disturbed.

Today, we in America stand on the threshold of madness as we allow our nation to be undermined by those who would destroy all that generations of Americans have fought and died for.

The time is 1939 and we are Europe denying the growing threat of the Third Reich. Here in America, it is five minutes to midnight and it is time to wake up.

Ilana Freedman is the Editor of IntelAnalysis and is CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.