Resources for Homegrown Threat

Obama’s Ramadan Pandering

by  Robert Spencer 

08/17/2010

Ramadan didn’t fall around Christmas time this year, but Barack Obama came bearing gifts anyway. At an Iftar dinner Friday night at the White House (the third night of Ramadan), Obama endorsed the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero. 

In doing so, he was in effect saying that Muslims could build a triumphal mosque marking Islam’s superiority and victory—which is how the Ground Zero mosque will be viewed in the Islamic world—and can lie about their funding (as Ground Zero mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has done), and lie about their commitment to interreligious dialogue and harmony (as Rauf has also done), and refuse to denounce jihad terrorists (as Rauf has refused to denounce Hamas), and all that is just fine with the President of the United States.

For Obama, it’s all about religious freedom. Apparently now the principle of religious freedom now gives religious groups an absolute right to build anything anywhere. Expect Shinto revivalists to build a shrine to the kamikazes at Pearl Harbor any day now, and self-proclaimed Christian Ku Klux Klansmen to build a chapel honoring the Confederate dead at the site of the murder of Martin Luther King. It’s religious freedom! It’s the American way!

Obama brought more goodies for Muslims in the U.S. and around the world in his Ramadan message this year. In it, he claimed that during Ramadan Muslims “provide support to others to advance opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.”

Oh, really?

When have past Ramadans ever resulted in any advancement of “opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere,” Mr. President? In reality, it’s against Islamic law to give zakat, the almsgiving that is one of the pillars of Islam and is required of every Muslim, to non-Muslims. 

That’s why Western governmental agencies and Christian charities build and staff schools and hospitals in impoverished parts of Africa and Asia, but oil-rich Muslim countries have never undertaken similar endeavors. With the sharp divide in Islam between believers and unbelievers, such that Muslims are commanded to be “merciful to one another, but ruthless to the unbelievers” (Koran 48:29), there is no basis in Islamic law for the idea that Islam fosters the advance of “opportunity and prosperity for people everywhere.” 

Obama also said that Ramadan’s rituals of fasting and prayer “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance, and the dignity of all human beings.”

It would be kind of him to explain how the Koran’s designation of non-Muslims as “the most vile of created beings” (98:6) advances human dignity, much less tolerance or justice. The Koran’s command that Muslims must fight against Jews and Christians until they pay a religion-based poll tax, jizya, “with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29) likewise militates against the idea of universal human dignity that Obama professes to have discovered in Islam.

“And here in the United States,” Obama continued, “Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.” 

Islam has always been a part of America? Really? Will Obama provide us with a list of the Muslim Founding Fathers, the Muslim heroes of the American Revolution, the names of the Muslims killed fighting in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II—surely the President will have no trouble coming up with all that, will he? And he could also throw in a list of those “extraordinary contributions” that Muslims have made to our country. Aside from being the impetus for some extraordinary innovations in airport security, I can’t think of any. But I sure Barack Obama must be way ahead of me.

And so for this Ramadan, Barack Obama gave U.S. Muslims a grand mosque at Ground Zero, and an American pedigree as sterling and impeachable as his own. Will this be enough to stop the jihad against the U.S.? Smarter bets would be on its instead growing bolder than ever.

This article was originally published here.

A Mosque Grows Near Brooklyn

The dubious financing of 'Cordoba House' deserves scrutiny.

by Stephen Schwartz

The Weekly Standard

July 26, 2010

Since a proposal to construct a 15-story mosque and community center two blocks from Ground Zero was announced last year, the project has been a focus of widening protests. To be named Cordoba House, the project would require demolition of two buildings at 45-47 Park Place and Broadway that were damaged on 9/11. They would be replaced by a glass and steel 100,000-square-foot structure with a new address, 45-51 Park Place.

According to its sponsors, the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society of Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the structure would cost $100 million and would include "a 500-seat auditorium, swimming pool, art exhibition spaces, bookstores, restaurants," and an area for Islamic prayer. The Cordoba Initiative and ASMA were created by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Kuwait-born cleric of Egyptian background.

Every inch the professional moderate, Rauf has the imprimatur of the State Department, which sent him on an international bridge-building tour earlier this year. And he has cloaked the Cordoba effort in the rhetoric of reconciliation, describing himself and his colleagues as "the anti-terrorists." But he deflects inquiries about its financing. On July 7, New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio called on state attorney general Andrew Cuomo, who is also Lazio's Democratic opponent in the coming election, to "conduct a thorough investigation" of three aspects of the project:

- Rauf's refusal to acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization;

- Rauf's leading role in the Perdana Global Peace Organization, "a principal partner," in its own words, of the Turkish-launched flotilla that tried to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza;

- and the project's questionable sources of funding.

Lazio has been supported in this demand by New York Republican congressman Peter King.

Many who object to construction of an Islamic facility so close to the site of the World Trade Center feel that a large, if not dominating Muslim presence there would be at best insensitive and at worst a symbol of the very Islamist supremacy that is the goal of al Qaeda and other jihadist killers. Such sentiments are hardly the last word in a question of public policy. But the background support and financing for this ambitious undertaking are matters that deserve to be addressed.

Non-Muslim defenders of Rauf—including Cuomo and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg—have rejected demands for investigation of the ideological and financial underpinnings of the Ground Zero mosque. They have argued that such an inquiry would violate the First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. But faith should not serve as a pretext for extremist or potentially criminal activities.

Rauf's ASMA website lists mainstream philanthropic donors, including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, three Rockefeller charities, the Danny Kaye & Sylvia Fine Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, three feminist-oriented groups, and six other funders. New York Muslims, however, are well aware that the Rauf scheme is also associated with financing and support from other doubtful individuals and entities in addition to Perdana, which is led by the notorious Jew-baiter Mahathir bin Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia.

The idea of building an Islamic peace memorial in lower Manhattan was circulating as early as 2003. Its early proponents were two Iranian brothers, M. Jafar "Amir" Mahallati, who served as ambassador of the Iranian Islamic Republic to the United Nations from 1987 to 1989, and M. Hossein Mahallati. Amir Mahallati had served with Rauf in the leadership of an obscure nonprofit, the Interfaith Center of New York, for which Rauf was a vice chair and Mahallati a board member. The two had also participated in a 2006 radio program, "From Turmoil to Tourism: Following the Path of Abraham."

Hossein Mahallati had experience of his own in the intersecting New York worlds of charitable giving and property management. He was director from 1983 to 1992 of the Alavi Foundation, set up in 1973 by the government of the shah of Iran as the Pahlavi Foundation, but taken over and renamed after the Khomeini revolution. The Alavi Foundation is currently the subject of a federal civil action seeking forfeiture of assets, including an office building at 650 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and four Shia mosques and schools in New York, California, Maryland, and Texas.

While U.S. sanctions on the Alavi Foundation, announced in 2009, received little notice, the government's charges are disturbing. They include control of Alavi by the Tehran dictatorship through its diplomats at the United Nations, and transfer of income from the office building at 650 Fifth Avenue to Bank Melli, the Iranian national financial institution. Bank Melli had been designated a "Weapons of Mass Destruction proliferator" by the U.S. Treasury Department. Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey noted, "The international community has recognized the proliferation risks posed by Iran's Bank Melli." In late 2009, the Alavi Foundation's last head, Farshid Jahedi, pled guilty to two felony counts of obstruction of justice for destroying documents about the Alavi-Melli relationship that had been subpoenaed in the investigation, which continues. Jahedi was sentenced on April 29 to three months' imprisonment, six months' supervised release, and a $3,000 fine.

Hossein Mahallati was the subject of an unsuccessful federal inquiry in 1992 regarding an alleged conspiracy to export biological warfare materials to Iran. His predecessor as Alavi director, Manoucher Shafie, who managed the foundation's transition from serving the shah's government to that of Ayatollah Khomeini, was charged with conspiring to export prohibited U.S. technology to Iran. Neither was prosecuted.

Hossein Mahallati remains an enthusiastic supporter of Rauf's Ground Zero enterprise, especially since an Egyptian property developer, Sharif El-Gamal, who appears to be the real leader of the effort, using Rauf as his public face, put up $4.85 million in cash to purchase the location. El-Gamal is chief executive officer of Soho Properties, Inc., a commercial real estate investment firm he founded in 2003. His partner is Nour Mousa, another guiding figure in the Ground Zero mosque effort and the nephew of Amr Moussa, head of the Arab League. Amr Moussa was the first major Arab leader to go to Gaza and affirm support for Hamas, in mid-June, after the recent blockade-running assault.

El-Gamal has kept a low profile in the dispute over the appearance of an Islamic institution near Ground Zero, although last week he appeared before a hearing of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to announce that Cordoba House will now be known as Park51. He and Rauf have both taken to downplaying the religious character of the proposal, preferring that the building be called a "community center."

So far, then, the Ground Zero Islamic facility rests on a support network linked to the anti-Jewish Mahathir and the Perdana-supported Gaza raiders, some notable servants of the Iranian clerical dictatorship, and an Egyptian property developer associated with the pro-Hamas chief of the Arab League.

But the questionable aspects of the Ground Zero Islamic project do not end there. Feisal Abdul Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, executive director of ASMA, has been one of the most assiduous promoters of the lower Manhattan mega-mosque. She spoke on July 6 to the Chautauqua Institution, celebrating the double heritage she claims: "The first, the American faith-based social activism, a legacy that included the abolitionists, women's suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement. Second, I have inherited the tradition of my faith, a faith that has inspired positive social change for over 1,400 years."

Rauf's wife failed to mention another feature of her background: She is the niece of Dr. Farooq Khan, formerly a leader of the Westbury Mosque on Long Island, which is a center for Islamic radicals and links on its website to the paramilitary Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the front on American soil for the Pakistani jihadist Jamaat e-Islami.

Lazio and King are right, and Cuomo and Bloomberg are wrong. Aside from the matter of sensitivity to the families of the 9/11 victims and other Manhattanites who live near Ground Zero, if the friends and fans of Feisal Abdul Rauf believe his mosque plan is entirely above board, they should be the first to encourage full public disclosure of its backing and finances.

This article was originally published here.

Detroit Muslims Mourn Terrorist Cleric

by  Robert Spencer 

07/13/2010

Shi’ite Muslims in Detroit were in mourning last week for the Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, a world-renowned Lebanese cleric who died on July 4. 

Three Shi’ite mosques conducted memorial services for six nights, with thousands of area Muslims attending. 

That ought to give law enforcement and government officials pause, since Fadlallah was a bloodthirsty jihadist cleric who hated America and Israel, and approved of the 1983 Hezbollah attacks on a U.S. Marine barracks and the American Embassy in Beirut that killed over 300.

If what the mainstream media constantly tells us about Islam and Muslims is true, wouldn’t thousands of Muslims in Detroit be denouncing Fadlallah, rather than mourning him? It is constantly demanded of us, on pain of charges of “Islamophobia” and bigotry, that we assume without examination that most Muslims in the U.S.—all but a few “wackos,” such as are found in “any religious group”—are loyal citizens who love constitutional liberties, abhor jihad terrorism, and have no intention of bringing Islamic law here, at any time or in any way, in whole or in part, now or in the future.

So why do so many Detroit-area Muslims love Fadlallah? Shouldn’t patriotic, pluralistic American Muslims oppose such a man, and not engage in such a public display of mourning, simply as a matter of principle? It certainly seems so from Fadlallah’s public record. 

Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights last week called Fadlallah a “man of peace, man of justice ... a man of antiterrorism and antiviolence.” There are some very compelling indications, however, that Elahi’s characterization of Fadlallah was about as accurate as calling Barack Obama an advocate of the free market. 

In the words of one the ayatollah’s most notorious admirers, former CNN Mideast editor Octavia Nasr (who lost her job after she lauded Fadlallah on Twitter after he died), Fadlallah “hated with a vengeance the United States government and Israel,” “regularly praised the terror attacks that killed Israeli citizens,” was a Holocaust denier, and was “designated a terrorist by the U.S. Treasury Department.”

None of that seemed to impress the mourners in Detroit. One Detroit Free Press story noted that area Muslim leaders disputed the accuracy of some of these claims about Fadlallah, but they didn’t explain how the false information gained so much currency as to hoodwink the Treasury Department and so many others.

In August 2006, Fadlallah encouraged Hezbollah jihadists who were fighting against Israel: “You are moving ... to reach a new victory for the nation and to defeat the American and Zionist political pride and all the enemies of freedom in the region and the world. You are the soldiers of the Arab and Islamic nation and your struggle will bring victory to Arabs, Muslims and the oppressed.” He characterized their fight as a “new battle of Khaibar.” 

As I explain in my book The Truth About Muhammad, Khaibar was less a battle than a massacre: Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, suddenly appeared at the Arabian oasis of Khaibar, which was inhabited by Jews, and he and his men began killing in earnest. Thus when modern-day jihadists invoke Khaibar, they are recalling an aggressive, surprise raid by Muhammad, which resulted in the final eradication of the once considerable Jewish presence in Arabia. To the jihadists, Khaybar means the destruction of the Jews and the seizure of their property by the Muslims.

Not surprisingly, Hezbollah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah eulogized Fadlallah as a “merciful father.” Also not surprisingly, Fadlallah was a dear friend of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, the architect of the Iranian revolution. Yet thousands of Muslims in the Detroit area turned out to pay final respects to this man. 

Could it be that we’ve been sold a bill of goods about what Muslims in the U.S. really think, and need to examine that subject much more closely? 

Could the knee-jerk assumption on the part of government, media and law enforcement that all Muslims in America are “moderates” who abhor jihad terrorism and work against it, be false. And could it be leading us to expose ourselves to unnecessary vulnerability? A great deal could be riding on the answer to that question.

This article was originally published here.

Mr. Spencer is director of Jihad Watch and author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)", "The Truth About Muhammad," "Stealth Jihad," and most recently "The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran" (all from Regnery -- a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).

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What do you think, should individuals have the right to mourn whomever they choose? Do terrorists deserve to have tears fall when they die?

How Islamists Came to Dominate European Islam

by Daniel Pipes National Review Online

May 25, 2010