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Iranian Video Promotes Islamic Mahdi To Return Soon

newsmax.com

A feature-length documentary film, produced by a top adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claims that the cataclysmic events that will usher in an era of Muslim world domination are about to begin, triggered by actions launched by Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah.

Iran's Ahmadinejad repeatedly talks about the coming of the 12th imam, a Muslim messianic figure whose “reappearance” will make Islam victorious over the entire world.

He begins every public speech — including his yearly address to the United Nations — with a prayer that his actions will “hasten the return” of the 12th imam.

Now former Revolutionary Guards officer Reza Kahlili, who defected to the West after spying on behalf of the CIA inside Iran for more than a decade, has obtained a bootlegged copy of a new film made by Ahmadinejad’s office that lays out the Iranian president’s scenario for how the end times will begin.

It won’t be pretty for Israel, the United States, or U.S. allies in the Middle East.

The feature-length documentary film produced under the direct supervision of Ahmadinejad’s top adviser and chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, claims that the cataclysmic events that will trigger the return of the Mahdi are about to start.

It all begins with the death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, revolts in Egypt and Yemen, and ends with Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah leading Muslim armies to conquer Jerusalem.

The film, called “The Coming Is Upon Us,” is now being shown at Revolutionary Guards and paramilitary Bassij Corps bases around Iran, and will soon be released in an Arabic-language edition for mass distribution in the Arab world.

“Their intention is to incite further uprisings with the hopes of motivating Arabs to overthrow U.S.-backed governments, with the final goal of the annihilation of Israel and Allah’s governance of the world,” Kahlili tells Newsmax.

The film uses classic Muslim texts to convince the faithful that this scenario of Muslim world government, led by Iran, was foretold in the Koran and the Hadith, the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

It might appear innocuous — like those Christian and Jewish end-times scholars who reach deep into the world of Biblical prophecy for clues as to the exact date of the second coming of Jesus — except that the Iranians are not telling the faithful to prepare their souls for salvation: they are telling them to gird up for the coming battle with the infidel.

Early on, the film identifies the trigger that will set off the torch of this Muslim end times scenario. “Whoever guarantees the death of King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia], I will guarantee the imminent reappearance of the Mahdi,” the film states, purporting to quote Muslim scripture.

“The Coming Is Upon Us” is not about prayer or redemption. It is about war.

To a backdrop of militarist pictures of Iranian leaders with crowds of Hezbollah fighters and driving music, the film claims that a nation “from the East” will rise up to prepare the way for the reappearance of the Mahdi.

That nation, of course, is Iran.

“This is their plan, and it’s coming right from the horse’s mouth,” Kahlili tells Newsmax. “They are claiming to have discovered all of these clues in Islamic scriptures, so this is not just a political plan, but a claim to absolute truth.”

Signs of the end times abound, the film states.

These include: great earthquakes, sedition, and the rise of evil world leaders (depicted are George W. Bush, President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, German Chancellor Merkel, among others).

Even worse: “Women will rid themselves of the Hijab,” the Islamic head covering many young Iranian women threw off during anti-government protests in 2009. “Adultery will become common. Men will dress like women. Men will content themselves to men and woman to woman.”

But the film goes beyond the standard condemnation of cultural depravity the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leaders commonly toss off when discussing the West.

It presents Islamic scripture as a treasure map leading to the end times, and claims to have the key to unlock its secrets.

Kahlili has made a 28-minute version of the film available on his blog, along with English subtitles.

The film claims that the Hadith “map” leading up to the reappearance of the Mahdi includes the following way-points:

The United States and Western colonial powers will invade Iraq
A revolution will take place in Yemen, and the “first soldiers” of the Mahdi will reach Mecca from Yemen
The people of Egypt “will rise up against their ruler”
Jews will re-establish a government in Palestine, and the Muslims will be “separated from one another and be disunited”
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will die, ushering in a final period of unrest and conflict with Israel that will lead directly to the Mahdi’s return

The film is nothing short of a declaration of war, an Iranian version of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” which after all in German means “my struggle” or “my jihad.”

The key figure in this Iranian end-times scenario is a mythical descendent of the Prophet Muhammad named Seyed Khorasani, who will deliver the flag of Islam into the hands of the 12th imam in person.

He will be the leader of the “people of the East,” and will have “a strong army in order to be victorious in the intense wars to take place before the Coming.”

The film claims explicitly that this leader is none other than Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The film claims that Iran has become militarily so powerful that during a recent meeting with Israeli leaders, U.S. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that “the option of a military confrontation [with Iran] is no longer possible.”

“The pursuit of nuclear bombs by the radicals ruling Iran is directly connected to this belief, as war, chaos, and lawlessness must engulf the world to pave the way for Imam Mahdi’s reappearance,” Kahlili says.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpuuQTU4co&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpuuQTU4co&feature=player_embedded)

From Moscow to Mecca - fundamentalist Islam takes a stronger hold
economist.com

Only the call to prayer disturbs the morning air in the small Dagestani village of Novosasitli. Dogs do not bark here. All “unclean” animals have been exterminated. Apart from an occasional counter-terrorist raid, life is quiet. People leave their houses unlocked; there has not been a theft for years. A few weeks ago two women were killed—but they were fortune-tellers, or, according to local men, witches.

Most women wear the hijab. Alcohol is forbidden, polygamy common. Officials rarely come by, but life in the village is more orderly than in much of the rest of Dagestan. The locals have built a school extension for the growing number of children. Some of the money came as a zakat—a mandatory charitable contribution by the better-off to the poor, as required by the Koran. Disputes are settled by imams.

The village is home to Abdurakhim Magomedov, a charismatic spiritual leader of Islamic fundamentalists and the first translator of the Koran into the local language. “Fifteen years ago, only half the people in Novosasitli wanted to live by sharia law. Today everyone in the villages wants it,” he says. To achieve this, he adds, Dagestan needs to be free.

Last summer, after a few young women were kidnapped from the village, a community group set up a checkpoint and a night watch. But last month a military truck with ten gunmen came and smashed the checkpoint. If this was an attempt to draw Novosasitli into Russia’s orbit, it achieved the opposite, increasing the tension that is tearing apart not only Dagestan but the whole north Caucasus—and, with it, Russia.

Russian rule has always been tenuous there. The territory, which stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian, was colonised late and was never fully integrated into Russia’s empire. Its Muslim peoples enjoyed considerable autonomy, both religious and cultural, until the Bolsheviks took over—whereupon the Caucasus was so modernised and Sovietised that when the Soviet Union fell only Chechnya declared its independence.

Two wars later Chechnya is relatively stable under President Ramzan Kadyrov, a former rebel whose patron is Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister. Grozny, Chechnya’s once-ruined capital, is now a surreal place boasting several skyscrapers, the largest mosque in Europe, chandelier-lit streets and a Putin Prospect. The president enjoys something of a personality cult: official licence-plates carry his initials, and banners outside schools thank him for “taking care of our future”. Yet Chechnya is virtually a separate state, where women must wear headscarves in public and the sale of alcohol is restricted.

Violence has spread from Chechnya to other north Caucasus republics and beyond. Outsiders notice it only when suicide-bombers blow themselves up on the Moscow metro or at the capital’s international airport. Yet parts of the north Caucasus are in a state of simmering civil war. Statistics are unreliable, but by the estimates of Memorial, a human-rights organisation, at least 289 Russian soldiers and policemen were killed last year and 551 wounded. About the same number died in 2009—more than Britain has lost in Afghanistan over the past ten years.

On paper, all five predominantly Muslim republics (Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia) are part of a single administrative district. On the ground, however, they are separated by borders and checkpoints fortified by sandbags and machineguns. Crossing from one republic to another feels like crossing a national frontier. Taxi-drivers from Dagestan prefer not to venture into Chechnya.

Each of the republics has its own political set-up and is unhappy in its own way, but the root of the problem, say experts, is shared: the de-legitimisation and crumbling of the Russian state and its inability to rule by law. In much of the north Caucasus corruption has eroded the very basis of the state, which performs almost none of its functions and is seen as a source of disorder and violence rather than security.

This also holds true in the rest of Russia, but the north Caucasus has a strong alternative to Russia’s political system: Islam, which now unites all the Muslim republics. Whereas the first Chechen war in 1994 was fired by nationalism and separatism, the second war (which echoes still) had a strong religious dimension. The leader of the Islamist rebels, Doku Umarov, has proclaimed himself emir of north Caucasus.

Sufis v Salafis

The failures of the Russian state and the compensating role of Islam are particularly noticeable in Dagestan, the most religious, populous and complex of all the north Caucasian republics. It is double the size of Chechnya and consists of several dozen ethnic groups, most with their own language.

The conflict in Dagestan, however, is not between ethnic groups but between Sufism, a traditional form of Islam which includes local customs and recognises the state, and Salafism, which rejects secular rule and insists that Islam should govern all spheres of life. As Alexei Malashenko, an expert on Islam at the Carnegie Moscow Centre, puts it: “The goal of building a pure Islamist state might be a Utopia, but the struggle for it can be infinite.”

Salafism started to spread in Dagestan only after the Soviet collapse, partly as a reaction to the tame, officially recognised local version of Islam. (Raising a vodka shot to Allah used to be standard practice in the Caucasus, says Mr Malashenko.) Tension escalated in the late 1990s when Islamist radicals took over two villages in Dagestan, declaring sharia law and chasing away both local government and the police.

Sufi leaders, who had exercised a virtual monopoly over religious life in Dagestan and enjoyed official backing after the end of Soviet rule, saw the rise of Salafism as a threat. Local officials, many of whom were Sufis, started to put pressure on Salafis, forcing their spiritual leader out of Dagestan. In August and September 1999 Shamil Basayev, the leader of the Chechen fighters, and Amir Khattab, who was born in Saudi Arabia, led two armies into Dagestan, triggering the second Chechen war.

“I told Basayev that Dagestan was not ready for jihad, but he did not listen,” says Mr Magomedov, the Islamist leader. Indeed, most people in Dagestan resented the intruders. They treated the Russian army as a liberating force, and backed it with local volunteers. Sharia villages were cleared of radicals and the parliament of Dagestan passed a law forbidding extremism and Wahhabism, although it did not define either.

Sufi leaders used Basayev’s invasion to see off Salafis as a whole. In effect, the state took sides in a religious war. Wahhabism became synonymous with terrorism. Anyone who practised Salafism was outlawed by the authorities. Torture, disappearances and killings became commonplace. Bearded men from villages such as Novosasitli were driven to Chechnya by federal forces, only to be found dead a few days later. In Novosasitli soldiers publicly tore up copies of the Koran.

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“The terror was conducted by the state, and in response [the insurgents] turned to counter-terrorism,” says Mr Magomedov, who himself has been arrested and tortured several times. His views are moderate compared with those of radical Salafis, who blow up shops selling alcohol and plant bombs on beaches. He does not condone the bombing at Moscow airport because it does nothing to advance Islam. But he has nothing against attacks on the army or security services, if they are engaged in a war against Islamist fundamentalists.

Although the insurgents use Salafism as their ideology, not all Salafis are rebels. The number of insurgents is estimated by experts at 500 men, plus 600-800 part-timers, across the whole north Caucasus. They draw their main strength not from numbers or even ideology, but from the failures of the Russian state and its injustices. Attacks on policemen and the army in Dagestan have doubled in the past year. They are met with popular indifference, if not approval.

Leaving Friday prayers in GroznySalafis have adopted the rhetoric of human rights and built up a mood of political protest, whereas the Sufis have been tainted by their association with a brutal and corrupt state, explains Nadira Isaeva, the 32-year-old Salafi editor of Chernovik, an independent newspaper. “The Sufi leaders have no active civil position,” she says, “but they control vast financial assets, including tourist companies that sell haj tours to Mecca.”

The result of all this has been a surge in Salafism. Ten years ago only 10% of people in Novosasitli were Salafis. Today at least 50% are, and almost all the young embrace it. Many of them have studied in Egypt and Syria, and speak Arabic.

A country of strongmen

A new local government appointed by the Kremlin last year tried to ease pressure on the fundamentalists, allowing them to practise Salafism without being arrested for it. Rizvan Kurbanov, the deputy prime minister in charge of security, says his first step was to visit a Salafi mosque and talk to its spiritual leaders, including Mr Magomedov. But the government is worried about giving Salafis equal access to services or allowing them political representation, partly for fear of a backlash from mainstream imams.

Trying to claw back some credibility, the government has cracked down on casinos (which operated openly despite a previous ban) and set up a commission to help former rebels adapt to a peaceful life. It has even talked about an amnesty for those who are willing to lay down their arms. But as Mr Magomedov argues, the people who need an amnesty are those who are accused of extremism simply because of their faith, not their actions.

Examples abound. Last year a group of young bearded Salafi men drove to the mountains for a picnic, stopping on the way in a small town where they were attacked by local Sufists. The police, many of whom are Sufis, joined in, beating them up so brutally that one of them died. “While the authorities are trying to entice former rebels back to normal life, their own subordinates are pushing another 100 into the hands of the rebels,” says Ms Isaeva.

Police violence is not restricted to the fight with the Islamists, either. A 14-year-old boy was tortured and crippled by the police after being wrongly accused of stealing a drill. Sapiat Mag Omedova, a petite female lawyer who was thrown out of a police station and ended up with concussion, has been accused of attacking four burly policemen. None of these cases led to police bosses being punished. The police force, which is 20,000 strong, is barely controlled by the Dagestani government.

Mr Kurbanov says it is not in his power to fire a police chief, since both the police and security services answer to Moscow. That is not the only reason. Unlike Chechnya, Dagestan is a state of semi-autonomous districts controlled by local strongmen who are backed by a local police chief and often by an imam. Said Amirov, the wheelchair-bound mayor of Makhachkala, who has survived at least 15 assassination attempts, is considered to be as powerful as the president of the republic. An attempt by the president or his team to cleanse a particular police department is seen as a declaration of war against a powerful vassal.

The balance between regions and clans is fragile. Saigidpasha Umakhanov, the mayor of Khasaviurt, a town close to the Chechen border, is a charismatic strongman who led local armed resistance to Basayev in 1999. “There is no one in the republic who could dislodge me,” he boasts. “Only the president of Russia.” If he himself were to die, “at least I would die like a real man—not like some bastard with a bowed head.” The prospect of death is real enough: a vast computer screen on his desk displays input from multiple CCTV cameras.

As a powerful regional leader, Mr Umakhanov sneers at Magomedsalam Magomedov, who was appointed Dagestan’s president without consultation with local strongmen. “He is not an independent player. The oligarchs in Moscow interfere in his decisions.” The scrapping of regional elections by Mr Putin in 2004 has eliminated peaceful channels for political competition, only making places like Dagestan more explosive. Mr Umakhanov says the only way out of this paralysis is direct elections. He is not alone in feeling that way. Most Russians want to elect their regional governors. This is precisely what the Kremlin fears, as it would mean the loss of guaranteed political support from puppets in the regions.

Unable to offer any unifying idea or the rule of law, the Kremlin tries to compensate with injections of money. Corruption is so rampant that, at best, the funds get siphoned off; at worst, they are used for terrorism. The Dagestani economy is 80% subsidised by the Russian government, but there is little to show for it apart from a few seaside villas and lavish weddings for the rich—at which guests may sport gold-plated revolvers bulging in their jeans.

As for the rest of the Dagestanis, they are left with potholed roads, derelict farms and factories, a polluted sea and a grim landscape dotted with houses half-built or half-ruined. Free education and health care are myths. The rate of TB is one of the highest in Russia. Jobs, exam grades and university diplomas are all for sale.

In this region, Russian identity has been hollowed out. As one young man puts it, “The only thing that makes me Russian is a note in my passport. I can’t get a job in Moscow or even a mortgage, because I come from Dagestan.” Radicalisation of young people is increasing, both in the north Caucasus and in Moscow. The main slogan of the ultra-nationalists who rioted in Moscow recently was “gotcha1 the Caucasus”. Radicals in the Caucasus feel the same way about the Russian state.

Mr Putin came to power pledging to fight the centrifugal forces in Russia. After more than a decade of his rule, the risk of disintegration is greater than ever. The Kremlin has no strategy to prevent it. And the biggest threat to Russia’s territorial integrity comes not from Dagestan or any other part of the north Caucasus, but from the Russian state itself. As a young man in Novosasitli remarks: “There is no future for Dagestan inside Russia now because Russia itself is fraying at the seams.”

Sunni/Shiite Civil War Feared As Pakistan Prepares To Send Troops To Saudi Arabia
wnd.com

Pakistan is prepared to move two army divisions into Saudi Arabia to protect the kingdom in the event of any outbreak of trouble, such as what has happened in Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and other Middle East and North African nations, informed sources say in a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

It also is ready to help recruit ex-Pakistani military personnel for Bahrain's national guard, the sources report.

The sources said the decision was reached reluctantly, but it puts Sunni Islam-majority Pakistan alongside other Sunni Muslim partners, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, in a move that apparently is intended to assure that Sunni Islam remains dominant in the Arab world.

The perception is that the influence of Shiite Islam-dominated Iran is on the rise.

Ironically, Pakistan and Iran have had a history of close political, economic and military relations. Their relationship was so close that Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, known as the father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, provided nuclear assistance to Iran.

Given Iran's nuclear ambitions, sources say the alignment of nuclear-armed Pakistan with a broad Sunni Muslim bloc of countries by offering the two army divisions to Saudi Arabia is designed to blunt the "emerging Shiite crescent in the Middle East."

As a further show of support to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan has organized and recruited some 1,000 ex-army personnel for service in the national guard of Bahrain.

Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa recently requested troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to put down increasingly violent demonstrations by the Shiites, who make up some 70 percent of the population. Saudi Arabia and the UAE each recently sent some 1,000 troops and logistical support to Bahrain.

Khalifa and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz accuse Iran of fomenting the demonstrations with the idea of taking over the island country between Iran and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf.

"The recent political upheaval in the Arab world from North Africa and now engulfing the Gulf region monarchial kingdoms has shaken the very fundamentals of the underpinnings of United States security framework in the Gulf region," according to Subhash Kapila of the South Asia Analysis Group.

"The United States security architecture in the Gulf region rested on the continuance of existing autocratic U.S.-friendly monarchies presiding over the oil riches of this region," he said.

"Herein emerges Pakistan army's strategic indispensability and strategic utility to both the United States and Saudi Arabia in securing the status-quo in the Gulf region for all of them," he added.

Al Qaeda Capitalizing on 'Arab Spring' to Build Power and Shore Up Weaknesses
foxnews.com

Stunned by the secular Arab rebellions that have toppled some of the Middle East’s most enduring dictators, Al Qaeda and other violent Muslim extremists are struggling to capitalize on the upheavals that have reshaped the political map of the Middle East.

While counterterrorism officials, scholars and analysts disagree about the likely impact of the “Arab Spring” protests on efforts to combat terrorism, many agree that Islamic jihadis face both enhanced peril and opportunities in the coming months.

Many also agree that eliminating the political vacuums the upheavals have created is vital to preventing Al Qaeda, its affiliates, and those it inspires from becoming more powerful.

“The key ingredient is political stability in the region,” said Jean-Louis Brugruiere, a leading French investigating judge charged with counterterrorism efforts who now tracks jihadi financial operations for the European Union.

“The faster existing and new Middle Eastern governments fill political power vacuums and restore stability,” he said in an interview on Wednesday, “the less of a threat the violent Islamists will pose.”

Initially, the breath, depth, and effectiveness of the protest movements promoted largely by young, liberal, secular reformers seemed to shock Al Qaeda into silence.

Osama Bin Laden has issued no public statement or communiqués about the political protests since their inception two months ago, said Jarret Brachman, a leading counterterrorism analyst and the author of “Global Jihadism.”

“At first, we heard almost nothing from senior Al Qaeda core figures. They seemed to be reeling,” he said. Then last month, Ayman al-Zawahri, Bin Laden’s deputy, issued an audio statement that was defensive and pleading in tone, Brachman said.

“He was almost pleading with Egyptians to embrace Islam and reject the United States and democracy,” he added, and he also tried claiming credit for having ousted President Hosni Mubarak by arguing that Washington was willing to abandon Mubarak because of the Sept. 11 attacks. Brachman called the Zawahri message “unconvincing and predicable.”

A more upbeat spin on the upheavals came late last month from Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric and top propagandist for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, which American counterterrorism officials consider the most dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate.

In a four-page essay in their online magazine “Inspire” titled, “The Tsunami of Change,” Awlaki argued that the protests, by having broken the “barriers of fear” and by ousting seemingly immutable dictators who protected “American imperial interests” in the region, would work to Al Qaeda’s longer-term political advantage.

The dictators whom Al Qaeda most loathed and feared were now gone. The ensuing wars and political turmoil in such states as Libya and Yemen, where Awlaki is said to be hiding, would enable Al Qaeda militants to recruit, train and organize in such open spaces, he wrote.

That seems to be happening in some Arab states where political transitions are under way or being contested. But experts caution that since each state is so different, the militant Islamists’ prospects must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Yemen is the state of most immediate concern.

Fox News reported this week, citing a Yemeni official, that a group called the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army had taken control of the historical capital of Abyan, the main foothold for AQAP where American and Yemeni counterterrorism activities have been focused.

AQAP was said to have declared the province an “Islamic Emirate” that would henceforth be governed by Islamic law. Also, AQAP and other Islamic militants in the area were said to have surrounded a smaller military company that had to withdraw because the Yemeni Army was unable to send them reinforcements.

Christopher Boucek, an expert on Islamic movements at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, called President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s decision to reposition counterterrorism units fighting AQAP back to the capital in Sana to protect his regime a major setback for U.S./Yemeni counterterrorism efforts.

So, too, he said in an interview, was the prospect not only of Saleh’s ouster, which U.S. officials are said to now consider inevitable, but also that of his son, nephews, and many of the counterterrorism officials with whom Americans have been working to fight AQAP and other jihadis.

“They’ll have to build all new relationships,” said Boucek. “Under-governed space in Yemen is increasing by the day. Chatter among terrorists is reportedly growing, and it’s about time for them to try to mount another operation,” he said.

Last winter, AQAP sent two sophisticated mail bombs in American cargo planes that were intercepted and disarmed. Boucek is equally gloomy about counterterrorism efforts throughout the region.

“The Islamists are among the most patient and most disciplined of the political players,” he said. “A couple of years down the road, victory will go to the opposition that is the best organized.”

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In Egypt, he said, “we focused on Tahrir Square and not on the back-street mosques. But they are likely to be best at capitalizing on the political opening,” Boucek asserted.

Although the army, traditionally a bulwark of anti-Islamist fervor, is in charge of the political transition in Egypt, attacks have recently increased on Christians and other minorities, allegedly conducted by ultra-conservative “Salafis,” or Muslim militants focused on religion rather than politics.

Deposed President Hosni Mubarak permitted them to flourish as a counter-weight to the equally conservative Muslim Brotherhood, believed to be the largest and best organized Muslim opposition group in the country.

The Salafis have denied carrying out the attacks, but analysts say they have become increasingly assertive in demanding that Egypt remain an “Islamic” nation and in fighting efforts to reduce the role of Islam in the public arena.

Recently, Islamists cut off the ear of a Christian in the southern city of Qana because he was said to have had a relationship with a Muslim woman, which Muslim fundamentalists consider “haram,” or forbidden by the Koran. Last week, according to IPT News, run by Islamic expert Steven Emerson, one man was killed and eight others injured in the village of Kasr el-Bassil when Salafists attacked the owner of a liquor store, which the most observant Muslims also shun.

In the city of Monufiya, Emerson reported, dozens of Salafis stormed the house of a woman who was accused of being a prostitute. Her furniture was reportedly burned in the street. In Libya, where NATO-backed rebels have been battling the 40-year regime of leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, the situation is even more complex, with each side accusing the other of ties to Islamic terrorists and radicals.

According to Emerson and the Wall Street Journal, Libyan rebel leader Abdel-hakim al-Hasidi has said that around two dozen of his troops had fought American troops in Iraq. But he called them “patriots and good Muslims,” not “terrorists.” So, too, he insisted were members of Al Qaeda, since they had also “resisted foreign invasion.” Nor is Al-Hasidi, an influential Islamic preacher who spent five years at a training camp in eastern Afghanistan, the only militant within rebel ranks. His field commander is Salah al-Barrani, a former fighter from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was formed in the 1990s by jihadis returning from Afghanistan and who continued fighting the Qaddafi regime until a truce was arranged between them.

Spokesmen for the Libyan rebel national transition council deny that these militant Islamists play a leadership role in the rebellion. They are supported by French activist Bernard-Henri Levy, among others, who helped persuade French President Nicolas Sarkozy to recognize the rebels rather than Qaddafi’s government in Tripoli. There was “no evidence,” Henri Levy said this week, that Al Qaeda or militant Islamists had a “significant presence” in rebel ranks.

American military officials, too, have downplayed the Islamist threat from the rebels, saying in recent testimony on Capitol Hill that they detected only “flickers” of an Al Qaeda presence in eastern Libya where the rebellion is based.

In interviews, other intelligence officials maintained that Qaddafi’s regime has long-standing connections to secular and Islamic terrorist groups that continue to threaten western interests. One official who asked not to be quoted said there was evidence that Qaddafi was paying Tuaregs, nomadic Berbers who live in Libya and roam throughout North Africa, as mercenaries, and that they were selling anti-aircraft missiles, machine guns and other weapons to Al Qaeda.

Much of the think-tank community in Washington seems divided between optimists and pessimists over whether Al Qaeda and the most dogmatic Muslim militants will ultimately benefit from the Arab upheavals.

Pessimists believe that the protests and reform movements that have ousted longstanding dictators who were nonetheless staunch American allies and partners in counter-terrorism efforts are inevitably destined to be hijacked by the more disciplined, ruthless Islamists, especially given the lack of civil institutions, the rule of law, or culture of tolerance in so many Arabs states.

Others remain cautiously optimistic.

James Dobbins, a former ambassador who runs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at Rand, concedes that the upheavals will inevitably disrupt some intelligence cooperation and links among security services in the short run. But he argues that Al Qaeda and like-minded groups are likely to be undermined by the political opening of autocratic states in which political dissent was routinely crushed.

“As peaceful and legal outlets for dissent and the pursuit of Islamic programs open up,” he said, “it will diminish the perceived need to engage in violent activity.” Polls show that support among Arabs for Al Qaeda and such militants has been steadily declining for several years, he added. Their popularity was likely to fall further, he said, “if you have a shot at achieving your goals without violence.”

While Washington and its allies had to remain vigilant about terrorist threats, he said, there was reason to believe that the Arab Spring protests would eventually work to Al Qaeda’s disadvantage.

“Their narrative has been utterly disrupted,” he said. “The dictators they sought to replace have been ousted, and not by them or their violence.”

While representative governments would most probably reflect the will of a majority of their citizens for a more “Islamic” government, such policies would not necessarily jeopardize good relations with Washington, he asserted.

“The most Islamist state in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia,” said Dobbins, “and they’ve been a strong ally of America’s.”

But Saudi Arabia, the pessimists counter, is also the country of origin of most of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attack. While many Israelis have expressed concern about whether militant anti-Israeli Islamist forces would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the Arab spring rebellions, Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, who resigned late last year as head of Israelis military intelligence, was also more optimistic than many of his peers.

In a lecture last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he argued that “a democratic Middle East” was “good for Israel.”

“Democracies rarely go to war,” he said. Israel could not remain indifferent to the values that had brought the Egyptian people to Tahrir Square -- a desire for “freedom, justice, rule of law and democracy,” he added.

“Even if, in the short run, it may be more dangerous,” he said, “in the long run I believe it’s a very, very positive process that we should support.”

A senior New York Police Department intelligence analyst pointed to at least one short-term benefit of the upheavals: Home-grown Islamic radicals in America, too, had been stunned and shaken by the protests and the loss of what he called their “narrative of oppression.”

Like their counterparts in the Middle East, he said, they have been distracted and, for the moment, paralyzed by shock.

“Like all of us,” the official said, “they’ve been glued to their TV sets.”

Obama's faith adviser helped craft 'perfect Islamic state'
Shariah project scrubbed from Internet, sought to 'implement' Muslim caliphate
wnd.com

JERUSALEM – Dalia Mogahed, appointed to President Obama's faith advisory council, was a partner in an Islamic project whose stated goal was to "define, interpret and implement the concept of the Islamic State in modern times," WND has learned.

The project was founded and directed by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the controversial Muslim cleric behind the proposed 13-story, $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City.

Besides her role on the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Mogahed is also on the advisory council of the Department of Homeland Security. She testified before the Senate on engagement with the Muslim community.

Together with Rauf, Mogahed was a leading voice in the Leadership Group on U.S.-Muslim Engagement, which issued a 153-page recommendation paper, obtained and reviewed by WND, that calls for dialogue with Hamas.

The consensus focused on improving America's relationship with Muslims globally, with many of the recommendations later reportedly being adopted by the Obama administration. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross, Obama's Mideast envoy, also served on the Leadership Group that released the recommendation paper.

The paper specifically called on the U.S. to engage opposition parties in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood. It set the boundaries for dialogue with Hamas if the Islamist terror group renounced violence. Also, the paper called on the U.S. to immediately engage Hamas using intermediaries in hopes of moderating the group.

Mogahed, meanwhile, is a senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, where she led what has been described an unprecedented survey of Muslims worldwide, including in the U.S. and Europe.

The survey was the basis for a 2008 book she co-authored, "Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think."

Mogahed's Gallup survey concluded only 7 percent of the world's Muslims are political radicals and that the majority support democracy.

Other Gallup findings under Mogahed concluded that Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable. Large majorities of Muslims would guarantee free speech if it were up to them to write a new constitution, the survey claimed.

'Sister' Mogahed and Shariah Islamic state

WND has learned that Mogahed and the Gallup survey provided key data for Rauf's "Shariah Index Project ," which sought, according to its own mission, to "define, interpret and implement the concept of the Islamic State in modern times."

The project at one time was featured on the website of Rauf's Cordoba Initiative, which is the group behind the so-called Ground Zero mosque. However, after the mosque issue was highlighted in the news media, the Shariah Index Project, a sister project of Cordoba, was scrubbed from Rauf's website.

The website BigPeace.com previously uncovered the scrubbed section of the Cordoba website that detailed the Shari'ah Index Project.

"Imagine: a Perfectly Islamic State," said the deleted section of Cordoba's website.

The website described how Mogahed's Gallup division helped to refine the principals of the Shariah Index, which was to serve as the basis for the "perfect Islamic state." The website stated representatives from Gallup also joined in a phone conversation to help craft the principles.

Further, Jasser Auda, a Qatari professor who is one of the personalities behind the Shariah Index Project with Rauf, described Mogahed's involvement in providing key data that helped formulate the Shariah Index plan to map out an Islamic state, even referring to Obama's faith adviser as "sister Mogahed."

In an interview about the Shariah Index Project with OnIslam.com, an Islamic news portal associated with Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, Auda stated, "Our sister Dalia Mugahed – at that time she was the head of the Muslim societies branch, now she is in Abu Dhabi leading the same project on Muslim societies in a different project."

Continued Auda, "At that time in Washington she was leading the Muslim societies index, and she gave us according to an agreement between Gallup, Cordoba and the Prime Minister of Malaysia office, gave us (Shariah Index Project) the data for three years, through which we came up with some conclusions based on asking people."

In her role on Obama's faith council, Mogahed reportedly offers recommendations to the U.S. president on how faith-based organizations can best work with government to solve society's toughest challenges.

Militant Muslim Group Plans to Protest Royal Wedding
Newscore

LONDON -- A militant Muslim group has sought police permission to demonstrate on the day of the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton with the stated aim of disrupting the event, The (London) Times reported Tuesday.

Scotland Yard said that it had also received indications from the far-right English Defense League that, if Muslims Against Crusades held a protest, it would mount a counter-demonstration.

Police will not allow either group to protest inside the security zone, which covers Westminster Abbey and the processional route. But they have no powers to ban a stationary protest elsewhere in central London.

The Muslim group, an offshoot of the banned al Muhajiroun organization, says that it is planning a "forceful demonstration." Its website carries a picture of a burning Union Jack and pictures of William and other members of the royal family captioned "enemies to Allah."

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has ordered tough action to stamp out disorder on the day of the wedding.

Lynne Owens, an assistant commissioner, said, "If anybody comes to London on the day of the royal wedding intending to commit criminal acts, we will act quickly, robustly and decisively."

The Metropolitan Police will have 5,000 officers on wedding duty. In addition to the threat from extremist demonstrators, Scotland Yard is also making plans to cope with potential public order issues from anarchist groups, the protection of 80 visiting VIPs and any threat from individuals stalking the royal family.

William and Kate will tie the knot at Westminster Abbey on April 29 in a ceremony to be broadcast live around the world.

Muslims Demonstrate at Tennessee Capitol In Support of Sharia (Islamic Law) and Terror Funding
THE TENNESSEAN

They should be protesting against the sharia (Islamic law.) They came to America to get away from the oppressive and brutal system of governance, did they not? Or did they come to impose it?

Several hundred Muslims thronged the state Capitol on Tuesday in protest of legislation that they say takes aim at their religious beliefs, calling on the bill to be defeated.

Muslims from across the state — many wearing traditional skullcaps and headscarves — packed a committee room and corridors to hear testimony on a bill that supporters say would help Tennessee stop terrorist plots but opponents believe singles out Muslims who adhere to Islamic law.

They urged lawmakers to withdraw the bill, or at least to delay it until it can be rewritten so that groups labeled as terrorist organizations can protest the designation before they are forced to shut down.

“These are issues for any group,” said Nadeem Siddiqi, a native Knoxville resident who traveled to Nashville to speak against the bill. “The United States of America is known for its freedoms, known for due process, known for a fair system, and to be able to have a few individuals in a state of panic create this kind of risk to civil society is just inappropriate.”

Incredible that they can equate American freedom with the brutal oppression of sharia.

The gathering, which was put together by mosques and Muslim civic groups around the state, comes in response to legislation that originally criticized Shariah, the basic set of Muslim religious laws governing everything from warfare and criminal punishments to prayer preparations and family matters.

The first version of the bill, which was written by an Arizona organization critical of Islam, labeled Shariah “a legal-political-military doctrine and system” that requires its followers to support the overthrow of the United States government. Several Muslims who turned out Tuesday said that is a distortion.

“People have this idea that Shariah is just chopping people’s hands, but Shariah is a way of life for us,” said Arshia Shah, a lawyer originally from Britain who now lives in Sparta and came to the Capitol with her husband and two daughters. “It’s prayer. It’s how we deal with our spouses. And to tell people that they can’t practice this — that they’re doing something wrong — is a great concern.”

The bill has since been amended to remove all references to Shariah and Islam.

What is left is legislation, known formally as the Material Support to Designated Entities Act, that would let the governor and the state attorney general label groups as terrorist organizations.

Once designated, a group’s financial assets could be frozen and its contributors could face criminal penalties.

The bill’s sponsors, House Speaker Pro Tempore Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, and state Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, say the bill gives Tennessee law enforcement agencies the ability to disrupt terrorist plots. They also say it could be used to disrupt street gangs and neo-Nazi groups, as well as terrorist organizations.

“I think it’s a good bill,” Ketron said. “They say it’s duplicative because it mirrors the Patriot Act on the federal level, but local law enforcement see and hear what’s going on locally.”

Large turnout
Muslim organizations have been opposed to the legislation from the outset, but Tuesday was the first time they turned out in large numbers, drawing a crowd that rivaled those brought to the Capitol by labor and teachers organizations earlier this session.

Jihad Watch
April 23, 2011

Michigan: Qur'an-burning Pastor Jones jailed over planned mosque protest
Jailed for planning a protest? How was that even possible in America? For refusing to pay a "peace bond"? Wouldn't the responsibility for any disturbance be upon those who decided to react to whatever Jones was doing by causing the disturbance? Pamela Geller says it here: "The city of Dearborn's position is that Muslims are so violent and irrational that they won't be able to control themselves if Jones holds a protest? And he has to pay for damages? Why wouldn't the marauding Muslim hordes pay the damages if they are doing the damage? And if they get violent, why aren't they in jail?"

She also points out the inconsistency, here: "Terry Jones was sent to jail in Michigan over a planned protest outside the largest Islamic Center in the U.S. I have seen the most vile displays of subversion, anti-Americanism, Jew-hatred and violence at anti-war rallies during the Bush years. No one said boo. It's free speech. The KKK marches, no one says boo, it's free speech. Monsters protest military funerals, it's free speech. Nazis in Skokie? A-OK. But Islamic jihadis launch the most brutal and bloody attack on America on September 11, 2001, and we haven't stopped apologizing. And now we have turned over our soul, the heart of our freedom."

More on this story. "Pastor Is Jailed in Michigan Over Planned March at Mosque," from the Associated Press, April 22 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) — A Florida pastor at the center of a Koran-burning controversy was jailed briefly for refusing to pay what the authorities called a “peace bond” for a planned demonstration outside a mosque.
The pastor, Terry Jones, whose remarks against Muslims have inflamed anti-Western sentiment in Afghanistan, said he refused to pay the $1 bond because doing so would violate his freedom of speech. He was released from jail hours later after paying the $1....

The bond also prohibited Mr. Jones from going to the mosque or the adjacent property for three years.

Robert Sedler, a constitutional law professor at Wayne State University, said the United States Supreme Court has ruled that it is the police’s job to protect speakers at such events and said it is unconstitutional to require protesters to post a bond for police protection.

A Koran burning in March at Mr. Jones’s church in Gainesville, Fla., caused protests in Afghanistan that killed more than a dozen people. The Wayne County prosecutor, Kym Worthy, said fears that Mr. Jones could incite violent counterprotests led them to court.

Mr. Jones represented himself and told the jury that the mosque, one of the largest in the country, was chosen because his protest was against “a radical element of Islam.”

“All we want to do is walk, demonstrate, protest on an area that already belongs to you, to the city,” he said. “We are not accusing this mosque. We are not accusing the people of Dearborn. We are not accusing all Muslims.”

Islamists on Welfare: Paid to Plot the West's Demise
Islamist Watch - April 4,2011

In 2008, the Toronto Sun reported that "hundreds of [Greater Toronto Area] Muslim men in polygamous marriages — some with a harem of wives — are receiving welfare and social benefits for each of their spouses, thanks to the city and province, Muslim leaders say."

"Polygamy is a regular part of life for many Muslims," Canadian Society of Muslims president Mumtaz Ali declared bluntly. "Ontario recognizes religious marriages for Muslims and others."

Government officials quickly denied the Muslim leader's claims about immigration law and social benefits regulations. Only one public servant seemed sufficiently concerned. "This is wrong," said city councilor Rob Ford. "They should put a stop to this immediately."

Instead, welfare abuse by Muslims appears to have metastasized across the Western world. Almost three years later, news stories about radical Muslims — often immigrants — engaged in social benefits scams emerge regularly from Europe, Canada, and Australia. Even when they are not involved in fraud, Muslims frequently are overrepresented on welfare rolls, compared with other communities. The statistics from around the globe are jaw-dropping, especially in economically uncertain times.

According to one 2007 source, immigration, of which Muslims comprise a significant part, "costs Sweden at least 40 to 50 billion Swedish kroner [approximately $7 billion] every year … and has greatly contributed to bringing the Swedish welfare state to the brink of bankruptcy." Yet two years earlier, the country's finance minister declared counterintuitively that "more immigrants should be allowed into Sweden in order to safeguard the welfare system."

One Iranian immigrant to Sweden expressed astonishment at his new country's policies: "In Sweden my family encountered a political system that seemed very strange. The interpreter told us that Sweden is a country where the government will put a check into your mailbox each month if you don't work. She explained that there was no reason to get a job."

The statistics from Norway are even more shocking. According to a University of Oslo study, "non-Western immigrants" are ten times as likely to be on social assistance as native Norwegians.

In Germany, Muslims are four times as likely to be receiving welfare as non-Muslims. However, unlike his counterpart in Sweden, Berlin's former finance senator Thilo Sarrazin is speaking out against the benefits system and has penned a bestselling book condemning the nation's immigration policies. Sarrazin stated while in office that welfare recipients could feed themselves on four euros per day, adding that "losing weight is the least of their problems."

Research by Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard from 2002 reveals that mostly Muslim immigrants in Denmark "constitute five percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending." In that country, numerous "single" women who receive social assistance are really the wives of polygamous Muslim men.

Polygamy and benefits fraud go hand in hand across the continent. Last year in France, a polygamous Muslim and father of 17 children was charged with welfare fraud when authorities discovered that "two of his companions lived in Dubai for a year while continuing to receive welfare benefits worth 10,000 euros." The man did not exactly have a low profile, as he made news previously when one of his wives was fined for driving while wearing a niqab that restricted her vision.

In one instance, a former minister in the British government, which has been known to grant additional welfare benefits to cover a man's additional wives, openly promoted welfare use and abuse among her Muslim constituents. Last December, deputy Labour Party leader Harriet Harman labeled Muslim immigrants who send a portion of their welfare payments to families back home "heroic." She even "called for tax refunds to encourage more immigrants to follow suit."

However, ordinary Muslims are not the only ones exploiting generous Western welfare systems for personal gain. In 2005, the UK Telegraph reported that the governor of Pakistan's Sindh province had received British state benefits of around £1,000 a month for ten months, plus the rent for a northwest London house.

Even worse, many well-known Islamic radicals are on the dole. The irony of the situation is inescapable: their parasitical behavior obliges governments, through taxpayers, to subsidize their adopted country's own destruction.

For example, one of England's most notorious Muslim leaders, hate preacher and Islamic law proponent Anjem Choudary, has boasted about receiving £25,000 a year in benefits, explaining that the money "belongs to Allah." Membership in Choudary's Islam4UK group was criminalized after he threatened to lead 500 followers on a highly provocative "anti-war" march, "carrying empty coffins to mark Muslims 'mercilessly murdered' in Iraq and Afghanistan." Choudary even paid the £50 fine brought down against Emdadur Choudhury (no relation) for burning poppies while disrupting somber Remembrance Day services last year. It was revealed that Emdadur Choudhury, who has been dubbed "the designer label extremist" for his taste in Western clothes, lives in "a free council flat and [receives] almost £800 a month [in] state handouts."

Then there is Abdul Rahman Saleem, who once served prison time for inciting racial hatred during London riots against the Danish Muhammad cartoons. He now stands accused of "fiddling the benefits system by working while claiming jobseekers' allowance." A "friend"-turned-informant told the Daily Mail, "He likes to say 'Allah provides' — but in reality it is the state he seems to despise so much that makes the provisions for him. The Child Support Agency claims there is nothing they can do to make him pay for his children because he is in receipt of jobseekers' allowance."

Meanwhile, five Muslim men convicted of harassment for shouting insults during a 2009 homecoming parade for British soldiers nevertheless went unpunished, declaring that taxpayers would foot the bill for court costs because they were on welfare.

Moreover, it was revealed last year that the council house occupied by the wife and eight children of England's most infamous convicted hate preacher, the hook-handed Abu Hamza, received a £40,000 "makeover paid for by taxpayers." His children are British-born, the Daily Mail reported, "meaning they are entitled to support from the state, which would continue even if Hamza is extradited." This support has included close to £700 per week in rent, benefits, and allowances

Islamists on Welfare: Paid to Plot the West's Demise
Islamist Watch - April 4,2011

cont....

Not even revelations that some actual terrorists collect welfare payments before and after they commit their crimes have prompted sweeping reforms of the benefits system.

Two weeks after the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, four explosions disrupted the city's public transportation system once more. (Fortunately, only one injury was reported.) British authorities subsequently discovered that the Muslim radicals involved in the attack had collected more than £165,000 in benefits, aided by multiple addresses and national insurance numbers. Two of them originally won asylum in Britain by using forged passports and false names.

Abu Qatada, sometimes referred to as "Osama bin Laden's ambassador in Europe," was found guilty of plotting to plant bombs during millennium celebrations in Jordan. After his release from prison in 2008, he was granted £150 a week in "incapacity benefits" for a bad back — despite later being photographed wearing a knapsack and carrying groceries on the anniversary of the July 7 London bombings. Along with publishing that photo, the Telegraph revealed that "Qatada's family is understood to be claiming around £47,000 a year in benefits — £500 a week in child benefits for the four of his five children under 18, £210 for income support, £150 for incapacity benefit, £45 in council tax benefit — along with a council home worth around £800,000."

Similar situations have occurred in Australia. When Abdul Nacer Benbrika stood trial on terrorism charges, it emerged that the illegal Algerian immigrant and father of seven, who had been ordered deported three times, "never worked a day" in 19 years and "has cost us millions" in welfare payments, "baby bonus" checks, and other benefits, in the words of one broadcaster.

Furthermore, Australian David Hicks brazenly declared his plan to go on the dole as soon as he was released from prison. An unrepentant would-be "martyr," Hicks trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and claims to have met Osama bin Laden 20 times. His father told the Herald Sun in 2007, "He's an Australian citizen. He has a right to that sort of thing."

One of Norway's most notorious welfare recipients is also a convicted terrorist: Mullah Krekar, who has been linked to bombings in Madrid and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Canada's most famous welfare recipients — Muslim or otherwise — remain the Khadrs. Confessed war criminal Omar Khadr still resides in Guantanamo Bay, having pleaded guilty to killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan in 2002. However, his extended family members, all of whom share his radical views, continue to live on welfare in a Toronto suburb.

Despite the public outrage provoked by the Toronto Sun in 2008, little evidence suggests that the situation has improved in Canada. In early 2011, the Mounties charged Ahmad El-Akhal, a Quebec immigration consultant, with "providing Canadian citizenship documents to hundreds of people in the Middle East so they could collect benefits and tax refunds" to the tune of $500,000. Adding an original twist on the venerable scam, none of the individuals receiving benefits actually lived in Canada. According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the scheme had been going on since 1999.

This author contacted the officials originally quoted in that Toronto Sun report to ask what is being done about welfare abuse by Muslims. The office of Rob Ford, who is now Toronto mayor, never replied to inquiries. Just one individual, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Community and Social Services, responded — but only with a boilerplate email. Rebecca MacKenzie explained that the ministry is "not able to provide comment on specific cases due to privacy concerns," adding that they "take allegations of fraud very seriously."

Seriousness is long overdue. As an Islamist Watch blog post from 2009 put it, "Only one adjective properly describes a government that funds those who seek its destruction: suicidal."

Imam's Call to Add Crescent Moon Symbol to Russian Emblem Met With Alarm
foxnews.com

Was it a call to bring the revolts and violence of the “Arab Spring” now sweeping the Middle East to Russia?

That is the question that swirled throughout Moscow when a top imam called for the addition of the Islamic crescent moon symbol to the Russian emblem.

The surprise call by Talgat Tadzhuddin during an interview with a leading Russian newspaper was met with alarm because the imam heads the Central Spiritual Association of Muslims of Russia, a major regional Islamic association.

As quickly as the word of the proposal became public it ignited a wave of condemnation.

“According to this logic,” Georgiy Vilinbakhov, head of Russia’s Heraldry Service argued, “we must change the name of Russia, put a green stripe on or flag and move the capital city from Moscow to somewhere on the border between Europe and Asia.”

The fears of renewed tension between the state and the Islamist were exacerbated because Moscow had just seen serious clashes between Islamic and Russian youths.

Moreover, Russia has been involved in a number of disputes along its southern tier that pit predominately Muslim populations seeking autonomy and Islamic governance against Russian troops.

In Chechnya, for example, Russia has fought two brutal wars and been the subject of major terror attacks by Islamic separatists from the region. The two most significant were the 2004 attack on a school in Beslan that left more than 300 dead and the 2002 siege at a Nord Ost theater by 50 Chechen soldiers that left at least 170 dead.

Both attacks left relations with Russia’s Islamic community in a fragile state.

In his interview, Tadzhuddin said, “We are asking for one of the heads (of the Russian state emblem, a double-headed eagle) to be topped with a crescent moon and the other to be topped with a Russian Orthodox cross. All the crowns on the coat of arms -- two on the heads of eagles and one above the middle -- are topped by crosses. But Russia has 20 million Muslims. That is 18 percent of the population.”

Tadzhuddin also said that he had presented a sketch of the proposed change to both Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has not commented on the issue.

In the days since the proposal was made public there have been no public protests or support for the changes anywhere in Russia. And other major Muslim groups inside Russia quickly rejected the proposed changes to the emblem, which was adopted in 1472 under the reign of Ivan III after his marriage to a Byzantine princess. It was replaced when communists took over in 1917 and reestablished in 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Muhammedgali Khuzin, head of the executive committee of the Russian Association of Islamic Consensus, a much larger Muslim organization, said the proposal would hurt cultural harmony, unleash xenophobia and be generally counterproductive.

He also intimated that any changes to the Russian emblem were bound to create conflict.

The Russian Orthodox Church also rejected the idea, but suggested that flags of predominately Muslim areas might choose to add the crescent to their regional flags.

Experts in the U.S. and in Russia agree that there is little likelihood that the proposal was meant to spread conflict.

Eric McGlinchey, an expert on Central Asia and professor at George Mason University, said that the fact that Tadzhuddin was able to meet with Putin and Medvedev made it unlikely that there was more to the proposal than “an effort to recognize cultural diversity in Russia.”

“The Central Spiritual Association of Muslims of Russia has a long history of being close to the state. It was closely affiliated with he old Soviet regime and, while not exactly a state organ, it has close ties to the government,” he said. “It is not a call for revolt.”

“I don’t think that Putin and Medvedev would meet with someone who was likely to call for Islamic turmoil in their borders,” he added.

Peter Byrne, a journalist who has worked extensively throughout Russia, said simply, “It is not an issue here.”

Welcome to Eurabia - As Muslim population mushrooms, we may be seeing last days of Europe as we know it
ynetnews.com

We are living through the self-extinction of the European civilization that shaped the age we live in. In his new bestselling book “Civilization,” renowned Harvard historian Niall Ferguson writes: “If the Muslim population of the UK were to continue growing at an annual rate of 6.7% (as it did between 2004 and 2008,) its share of the total UK population would rise from just under 4% in 2008 to 8% in 2020, to 15% in 2030 and to 28% in 2040, finally passing 50%in 2050.”

Ferguson is not alone in using the term “Eurabia” to describe an Islamicized, senescent European continent. Historian Bat Ye'or spent her career studying the phenomenon and Professor Bernard Lewis told German daily Die Welt that “Europe will have Muslim majorities at the latest by the end of the 21st Century.”

The global number of Muslims is expected to jump by 35% in the next 20 years, growing twice as fast as the non-Muslim population, according not to these “Eurabia mongers,” but to the famous US Pew Forum, which published projections Muslim population growth between 2010 and 2030.

The most frightening figures are in Europe. Some of the biggest increases in Europe’s Muslim population in absolute numbers over the next 20 years are expected to occur in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany. The Muslim populations in Italy and Sweden are projected to “more than double in size.” Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, warned about Italy’s “slow demographic suicide” and Italian Father Piero Gheddo, a doyen of Vatican’s missionaries, warned that "Europe will be dominated by Islam in the space of a few generations."

A low European fertility rate, massive immigration from Muslim countries and a confident Islamist minority are turning the cradle of Western civilization into its grave. As historian Walter Laqueur has warned, these are “the last days of Europe.”

Losing precious gifts

All over Europe, the number of births has dropped in comparison to the number of deaths year after year. For a stable population a nation needs a fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s roughly the case in what America. Israel has a significant 2.6 rate. Meanwhile, Italy shows one of the world’s lowest levels of fertility: 1.3. Canadian journalist Mark Steyn, author of “America Alone,” has warned that at the end of the 21st Century there may “still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy,” but this will “merely be designation for real estate.”

While, Austria was 90% Catholic in the 20th Century, Islam could make up the majority religion among Austrians under 15 years of age by 2050, says American journalist Christopher Caldwel. In the four largest cities of the Netherlands – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht – Mohammed, with the variations of Mohamed and Muhammad, is the leading name among newborns. The same is true for the European Union’s capital, Brussels.

Elsewhere, only 3.2% of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. Now it’s more than 15%. According to the Pew Forum, France’s Muslim population will increase from the current 4.7 million to 6.9 million in 2030. Indeed, demography is changing all European cities: The populations of Amsterdam, Brussels and Marseille is between 20 and 25% of Muslim; Birmingham, Cologne, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Strasbourg and The Hague are between 10 and 20% Muslim; Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna are between 5 and 10%.

The problem is that the fastest-breeding demographic group in Europe is also the most religious and the one most resistant to the pieties of a liberal democracy. It’s not difficult to imagine how this confrontation between a European atheistic apathy and an Islamist theological turmoil will end.

The Muslim Brotherhood runs most European mosques. Its front groups are courted by Western governments and media. Europe is one of their priorities. They call it “dar al shaadi”, the land of mission. Yusuf al Qaradawi, the most famous guru of the Brotherhood, spoke clearly: “Islam will return to Europe, not by the sword, but with proselytism.”

Europe risks losing all its precious gifts: Human dignity, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, rule of law, separation of state and mosque. Across Europe there are dozens of journalists, cartoonists and writers who are living under terrorist threats.

The latest WikiLeaks files revealed that at least 35 Guantanamo terrorists were radicalized in London mosques before being sent to fight the West.In the UK there are 80 sharia courts operating like a legal apartheid within common law. These courts are based on the rejection of the principle of inviolability of human rights. The courts formalize the “talaq,” the repudiation of the wife by the husband, polygamy, the right to “rebuke” the wives and the prevention of intermarriages.

Jews a barometer of tolerance

Holland - with all of its rules against discrimination - is already a segregated society. The biggest mosques in Europe frame the vibrant green, luxuriant, wooded, watery Dutch countryside. At the Zuidplein Theatre, one of the most prestigious in Rotterdam, an entire balcony was reserved for Muslim women. This is not happening in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but in the city where the Founding Fathers set out for the United States.

The Economist, a publication far from anti-Islamic ideas, spoke of Rotterdam as a “Eurabian nightmare.” This nightmare is threatening the Jews too. Anti-Semitism in Western Europe last year was “the worst since World War II", according to the Jewish Agency. It will only worsen in the future. Books such as Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are prominently displayed bestsellers in Muslim stores on Edgware Road in the heart of London.

Let's not forget Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man from Paris, kidnapped and tortured without anyone intervening in the surrounding apartments of the housing projects from. Residents heard Halimi’s screams but didn’t say a word.

In Sweden, a country described by The Guardian as “the greatest success the world has known,” Jews are leaving large cities such as Malmo due to security reasons and anti-Semitic attacks. Dutch liberal guru Frits Bolkestein just sparked an uproar in the Netherlands by saying that Jews have “no future here and should immigrate to the US or Israel.”

The famous Holland of Baruch Spinoza, the shelter of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition, is making way for a realm of fear, intimidation and subjugation. Jews are also fleeing Antwerp, the city once proudly called “the Northern Jerusalem.”

Anti-Semitism is an eruption of barbarism into our civilization and the Jews have always been a barometer of tolerance. When the Jews will be gone from Amsterdam and Antwerp, nothing will be the same in Europe. We should not be surprised if one day, under the Eurabian banner, these new Europeans will try to expel the descendants of the Holocaust from the land of Israel. This second Shoah will be called "Peace and Justice for Palestine."

London serves as Islamic Hub for Radicalizing Muslims
telegraph.co.uk/news

Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, two preachers who lived off state benefits after claiming asylum, are identified by the American authorities as the key recruiters responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the world to Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.

The leaked WikiLeaks documents, written by senior US military commanders at Guantánamo Bay, illustrate how, for two decades, Britain effectively became a crucible of terrorism, with dozens of extremists, home-grown and from abroad, radicalised here.

Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is described as a “haven” for extremists. United States intelligence officials concluded the mosque served as “an attack planning and propaganda production base”.

The files will raise questions over why the Government and security services failed to take action sooner to tackle the capital’s reputation as a staging post for terrorism, which became so established that the city was termed “Londonistan”.

The documents show that at least 35 detainees at Guantánamo had passed through Britain before being sent to fight against Allied forces in Afghanistan. This is thought to be more than from any other Western nation.

Of those, 18 were originally from abroad. The other 17 were British nationals or citizens granted residency here after claiming asylum, who were indoctrinated before being sent to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

The Government has paid millions of pounds in compensation and benefits to people regarded as highly dangerous by the US authorities.

Qatada, who was paid compensation under human rights laws for being “unfairly detained”, is described as “the most successful recruiter in Europe” and a “focal point for extremist fundraising [and] recruitment”. Hamza is accused of encouraging “his followers to murder non-Muslims”.

Four mosques in London and an Islamic centre are highlighted as places where young Muslim men were radicalised and turned into potential terrorists. Finsbury Park mosque “served to facilitate and training of recruits,” note the files, adding that it was “a haven for Islamic extremists from Morocco and Algeria.”

The Daily Telegraph, along with other international newspapers, is publishing details of more than 700 files on the Guantánamo Bay detainees obtained by the WikiLeaks website.

Earlier, this newspaper disclosed that dozens of terrorists held at the prison had admitted plotting a wide array of attacks against targets in Britain and America. However, it also emerged that more than 150 innocent people had been sent to Guantánamo.

Now, the key role that Britain and British-based preachers played in the lives of many of the Guantánamo detainees can be disclosed.

British intelligence services also provided information, including lists of suspected extremists seized from raids on Islamic centres, to the US military as it interrogated detainees. The information was passed on despite the Government publicly condemning the use of torture at Guantánamo. The leaked documents also reveal that:

• Sixteen detainees sent back to Britain are regarded as “high risk” by the US authorities and are liable to plan attacks against the West. However, they have been paid a reported £1 million each in compensation by the Government. For the first time, details of their alleged extremist activities, including travelling to Afghanistan to fight against British troops, are disclosed;

• The US government suspected the BBC of being a “possible propaganda media network” for al-Qaeda after details of a phone number at the broadcaster was found in the possession of several suspected terrorists. The number, which now appears to be disconnected, was thought to be for an employee of the BBC World Service, which was then funded by the Foreign Office;

• Terrorist recruits from across Africa and the Middle East flocked to London to claim asylum, often after travelling through other European countries;

• British taxpayers’ money was used to bankroll an Afghan politician who was sent to Guantánamo Bay after being exposed as an al-Qaeda aide. Mullan Haji Rohullah received more than £300,000 to destroy his opium crop – but he sold the drugs and kept the money from the Department for International Development.

• Four of the Guantánamo detainees were “British intelligence sources” who betrayed their paymasters.

• The last remaining British national at the prison is an al-Qaeda commander who directed terrorist forces in Tora Bora during the Afghanistan conflict. His family, who were previously allegedly paid directly by Osama Bin Laden, is thought to have received compensation from the Government.

The files help to explain American anger towards the British authorities, who have been regularly accused of failing to tackle radicalisation in this country.

The top-secret documents show how Muslim men travelled to European countries such as France, from where they obtained fake EU passports. They then crossed the channel to take advantage of Britain’s generous asylum system.

Extremist preachers radicalised the men at London mosques, showing them videos of atrocities committed against Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.

According to one document, Finsbury Park mosque was “a key transit facility for the movement of North African and other extremists in London to and from al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan”.

They were flown to Pakistan and Afghanistan at the terrorist group’s expense, put up in special guesthouses and sent to the training camps. They were introduced to senior al-Qaeda figures including Bin Laden and taught to fight and make bombs. Wives were arranged for some terrorists and their families received generous payments.

The US government condemned the release of the Wikileaks documents. In a statement, the Pentagon said: “It is unfortunate that news organisations have made the decision to publish numerous documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks concerning the Guantánamo detention facility. These documents contain classified information about current and former detainees, and we strongly condemn the leaking of this sensitive information.

“The WikiLeaks releases include Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs) written by the Department of Defence between 2002 and early 2009. These DABs were written based on a range of information available then. Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee.

“The previous and current administrations have made every effort to act with the utmost care and diligence in transferring detainees from Guantánamo.”

Barack Obama, the US President, previously made a high-profile pledge to close the Guantánamo Bay facility and prosecute in the criminal courts those alleged to have broken the law.

However, the pledge has now been largely abandoned and the US authorities recently announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the most senior terrorist at the prison and the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, will be tried at a controversial military tribunal.

Mohammed, who was tortured more than 100 times, has admitted his involvement in dozens of plots, including plans to hijack aircraft and crash them into Heathrow airport, Big Ben and Canary Wharf, and assassination attempts against Pope John Paul II and former President Bill Clinton. He is among 15 so-called kingpins at the prison who are unlikely to ever be freed.

The British Government Returns to its Jew Hating Ways

Melanie Philips who is a British Journalist who has a full command of the history and politics of the Middle East. She exposes the current British Government. Here is an open letter from her to Prime Minister Cameron which is right on target.

If Britain continues its duplicity they will be on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of G-d.

Dear Prime Minister,

I was interested to read that, when you met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, you said:

‘Britain is a good friend of Israel and our support for Israel and Israel’s security is something I have described in the past, and will do so again, as unshakeable.’

I wonder, therefore, if you make a habit of threatening your friends? For you also said that unless Israel ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ with the Palestinian Authority, the more likely it is that Britain will endorse the ‘State of Palestine’ for which the PA is expected to seek recognition at the UN in September.

This is not the behaviour of a friend so much as the kind of intimidation that is more reminiscent of a Mafia protection racket.

First of all, you have incomprehensibly decided to pressure the victim in this conflict to make peace with her aggressor, even though the victim is the one party that constantly tries to make peace while the aggressor does not. It is the PA which has refused to negotiate with Israel, not the other way round, on the spurious grounds that Israeli expansion of Jewish homes beyond the ‘Green Line’ is a bar to negotiations.

I wonder whether you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you do not insist that Mr Abbas ‘engages seriously in a meaningful peace process’ by unambiguously renouncing – in both English and Arabic – his repeated assertions that his people will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, the casus belli of the entire conflict?

I wonder also if you might explain to both Britain and the Jewish people why you implicitly endorse the racist ethnic cleansing inherent in the putative ‘State of Palestine’ which the PA says it will declare – a state in which Mr Abbas has repeatedly declared that not one Jew will be allowed to live — but which you have now threatened to support? I’m sure the British people in particular would be interested to know when you decided that racism and ethnic cleansing were part of your modernizing program for the Conservative Party.

Next, I wonder if you might clarify for us exactly why the British government has welcomed the alliance entered into between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah, and why you believe that this will advance the cause of peace. As you know, your government still regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation. More than that, Hamas is explicitly committed to the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews, a platform from which is has explicitly stated this week that it will not resile. And as you know, following the killing of Osama bin Laden the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, condemned the ‘assassination of a Muslim holy warrior’ — while for their part the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the terrorist department of the Fatah organization that you do not appear to think is an obstacle to peace, called bin Laden’s death ‘a catastrophe’ and vowed to step up the jihad to establish the dominance of Islam in the world.

I’m sure we are all agog to learn why you, a Conservative Prime Minister and the supposed ally of America in the defense of the free world, have chosen not only to applaud and promote a coalition which includes genocidal fanatics who are in bed with both al Qaeda and Iran, but why you are also threatening their victim, Israel, that Britain will endorse a state run by this genocidal coalition unless Israel itself enters into negotiations with it. To carry on with the Mafia analogy, this is akin to threatening someone that if they do not put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger you will set the Mob on them to achieve the same result.

cont...

cont...

I’d be grateful if you could explain to us why you support the killing of the leader of al Qaeda, as well as sanctions against Iran on the grounds that both represent an unconscionable threat to the free world, and yet at the same time demand of Israel that it makes concessions to a coalition made up of the allies of Iran and al Qaeda. I’m sure we’d all like to know, if this is how you treat your ‘friends’, how you would treat your enemies.

I realize, Prime Minister, that before you achieved high office your knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs was hovering around the zero mark. As a result, it is likely that your only knowledge of the Middle East comes from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has a history of virulent antagonism towards the Jewish people. I would also expect, however, that you have an eye to your own place in history, and that you would probably like to be viewed by future generations as the British Prime Minister who stood shoulder to shoulder with the victims of genocidal aggression against their destroyers, rather than the other way round.

If you are to get this the right way round and thus avoid such posthumous infamy, it is vital that you come to realize the key point about the Middle East impasse. To arrive at a solution, it is imperative first of all correctly to identify the problem. The problem in the Middle East is not the absence of a state of Palestine. Were that the case, the problem would have been resolved when such a state was first mooted long before World War Two. The problem is instead that the Arabs wish to destroy the State of Israel. The solution, therefore, is to stop them from continuing to try to do so. And to achieve that, it is essential that the west stop rewarding them for their attempts.

For the single most important reason for the never-ending nature of the Middle East impasse is that, uniquely, for more than nine decades the west has rewarded the Arab aggressors and punished their Jewish victims. And from the start, the western leader of this infernal process, I’m afraid to say, was Britain.

It was the British who, out of sheer breathtaking malice against the Jewish people, first incited the (hitherto mainly benignly disposed) Arabs against the Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in Palestine in the early years of the 20th century. It was the British who set out to undermine and reverse their own government’s policy to re-establish the Jewish national home in the land of Israel. It was the British who reneged on their internationally binding treaty obligation to settle the Jews throughout Palestine – including the areas currently known as the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza – with the result that they kept out desperate Jews trying to flee Nazi Europe, causing thousands to be murdered in the Holocaust. At the same time, they encouraged Arab immigration from neighboring countries and turned a blind eye to the pogroms carried out by these Arab newcomers against the Jews whose land it was supposed to be –thus laying the groundwork for the false claim that th
e Arabs
were the rightful inheritors of the land. And all the time, the British cloaked this vicious treachery in the honeyed fiction that they were the true friends of the Jewish people and had their interests at heart.

The history of the British in this terrible conflict between Jew and Arab is not merely a chronicle of the utmost perfidy and malevolent Judeophobic bigotry. It is also directly responsible for the continuation of the conflict to this day. For Arab aggression against the Jews has been rewarded and encouraged from the start, by robbing the Jews of their rightful inheritance and giving great chunks of it to their aggressors. But if aggressors are rewarded, the inevitable result is more aggression until they achieve their final terrible aim.

And that very same process is in evidence today, with Britain’s grotesque endorsement this week of the coalition for genocide and your government’s unconscionable pressure upon Israel to negotiate its own destruction with its mortal enemies. Prime Minister, the virus of Judeophobia is now rampant once again throughout Europe – let alone in the Arab and Muslim world. And the fuel for this fire is the set of genocidal falsehoods about the Arab and Muslim war of extermination against Israel, a Big lie which has turned victim into aggressor and vice versa. Appallingly, the British government is helping stoke this vile inferno by endorsing many of these falsehoods — and now, worse still, by actually promoting the coalition of genocide and turning the screw on its victim. The similarities with the 1930s and 1940s are uncanny and horrifying – similarities not just with what was allowed to develop in Europe, but also what happened in Palestine itself, the source of today’
s
terrible impasse.

Prime Minister, if you are not very careful indeed history will judge that you re-established a direct line back to the malevolence of the British in Palestine; back to that terrible time when Britain so foully betrayed the Jewish people and became a party to genocide; back to the approach which gave genocidal fanatics hope that victory was within their grasp. To stand up against all this — the defining madness of our times — would demand of you, I know full well, the utmost statesmanship and moral courage. But the alternative is to earn the contempt of decent people everywhere and the scorn of posterity. The choice, Prime Minister, is yours.

Sincerely, Melanie Phillips

Palestinians Prefer Islamic Caliphate For Future State
worldviewweekend.com

I'm always a bit wary of using public opinion polls in the Middle East because much depends on the day the poll is done; the way questions are worded; and the fact that in authoritarian societies ruled by dictatorial regimes people don't necessarily speak their mind.

In this poll, by Near East Consulting, there are some peculiar results that make it appear skewed toward Fatah and against Hamas. This may have to do with the fears of those polled. It is revealing that-I don't think I've ever seen this before-the official Fatah-controlled Palestinian press agency, Wafa, distributed a story on the poll because it fits with their political line.

But that fact makes the following two points all the more remarkable, even shocking compared to past, comparable polls:

--Asked to give their primary personal identity, 57 percent said Muslim; 21 percent, Palestinian; 19 percent, human beings; and only 5 percent said Arab.

This says something important about the steep decline in Arab nationalism but brings into question Fatah-style Palestinian nationalism, too. One can see oneself primarily as a Muslim and still support Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but this upward trend also indicates of the growth of thinking likely to lead people toward backing Hamas in future.

--Asked what government system they preferred in future, about 40 percent said they want an Islamic caliphate. In addition, 24 percent seek a system like those in Arab countries, and only 12 percent prefer one like that in European countries.

While defining what an "Arab system" means is ambiguous, it is reasonable to presume that means an Arab nationalist dictatorship since at this moment virtually no Arab country is a democracy.

When asked whether they support Fatah or Hamas the results are so overwhelmingly pro-Fatah as to make one suspicious. It is safer for someone living in a dictatorship to discuss general principles rather than oppose that government in conversation with outsiders. Yet, again, one would expect a Fatah supporter to highlight a Palestinian or Arab identity rather than a Muslim one.

What this poll, and other indications, suggests to me is that the potential constituency for Islamism (Hamas) is at least 40 percent, for Palestinian nationalism (Fatah, Palestinian Authority) just over 20 percent, and for democracy about 12 percent. Most of those who expressed no opinion would probably support the PA to give it an election victory but that cannot be assumed.

Note that there is no real organized moderate democratic party in the entire Palestinian political spectrum. The findings remind us of just how small the base is for any modern democratic state in the sense that is understand not only in the West but also in much of Asia, Africa, and the Latin America.

Remember that in most of the rest of the Third World, even where dictatorship exists, a moderate democratic state is a popular aspiration. It may not be what people have but it is what the majority wants. This really doesn't seem to be true in the Middle East.

These figures also imply that Hamas is more likely to recruit current Fatah supporters than vice-versa.

There are hints here of what would happen in completely free elections in a future Palestinian state. They do not incline Israel-or anyone with good sense-to rush to support the creation of such a state, especially now that Fatah and Hamas are once again united .

Anti-Christian violence in Egypt sparks fears of rising Salafi influence
france24.com

The deadly attacks on two Cairo churches over the weekend have highlighted fears that sectarian violence could flare up rather than die down in post-revolution Egypt.

Tensions – sometimes deadly – between Egypt’s Muslim and Christian communities are not a new phenomenon in the world’s largest Arab nation. But Saturday’s clashes between the two communities following the burning of two churches in Cairo’s Imbaba neighbourhood, have raised fears of the growing role of fundamentalist Salafi Muslims in Egypt.

An ultraconservative strain of Islam, Salafism is a salafist theology whose followers believe in emulating the first three generations of Muslims, theoretically rejecting any innovations.

While Salafism does not explicitly advocate violence, experts believe their extreme interpretation of Islam creates an environment where adherents are susceptible to radical ideology, making it “a bridge to extremism”.

A fringe group in Egypt, the Salafis - unlike the Muslim Brotherhood – do not have an organized structure.

From Qena to Cairo, Salafis grab the spotlight

Following the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak - whose secular regime kept a repressive lid on Islamists of all stripes - Salafis have gained visibility in recent months.

On Saturday, they were at the helm of an angry crowd that surrounded Imbaba’s St. Mina church, claiming that a woman forcibly converted to Christianity was being held there.

The Imbaba clashes, which killed at least 11 people, came a day after a group of Salafis gathered in Cairo to protest the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

The Salafis – along with the Muslim Brotherhood – are also believed to be responsible for last month’s protests in the southern city of Qena that led to the suspension of a newly appointed Coptic Christian governor.

The protests in Qena were initially sparked by the new governor’s close association to Mubarak, but they gradually developed into strident demonstrations demanding the appointment of a Muslim governor.

According to Egyptian press reports, some of the slogans at the Qena protests chanted, “There is no God but God; the Nazarene [the Christian] is the enemy of God,” and “Salafis and Brotherhood are one hand against the Nazarene governor.”

Under the Mubarak regime, relations between the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood were tense, with Salafis routinely criticising the Brotherhood for taking part in the political game under the secular regime, which according to them contradicted Islamic principles.

A WikiLeaks cable published by the British Daily Telegraph newspaper cites a 2009 US Embassy in Cairo cable as saying, “MB [Muslim Brotherhood] leaders and prominent Salafis routinely denounce each other in the press for being agents of the security services.”

But the events in Qena showed that while the two groups do not share a common platform, they are capable of working together on specific common goals.

In the end Egypt’s caretaker government resolved the Qena dispute by announcing the governor’s suspension for three months.

An ‘iron fist’ against troublemakers

The interim administration’s response to Saturday’s deadly Christian-Muslim clashes following the Imbaba attacks was immediate. More than 200 people were arrested in the wake of the violence while Egyptian Justice Minister Abdel Aziz al-Gindi warned that anyone who threatened the country's security would face "an iron fist".

While the caretaker government’s response to the violence was reminiscent of the old regime’s way of treating communal problems as a security issue, Egypt’s new rulers have attempted to address their underlying causes.

On Wednesday, the government said it was formulating a new law that would ease restrictions on building churches while banning protests in front of places of worship.

Under a law dating back to Ottoman times, Egypt’s Christians are required to seek the ruler's permission before building churches. They also have to obtain permission to renovate or repair them.

Are the Saudi funding the Salafists?

Many Egyptians have voiced discontent over the way police handled the Imbaba clashes. The Egyptian police force, which was discredited during the popular uprisings earlier this year, remains demoralized and not yet fully operational.

Some Egyptians say the security services deliberately failed to immediately intervene in Saturday’s clashes because they are unwilling to confront the Salafis. Others believe there is a sinister plot by elements of the old regime intent on stirring up trouble to discredit the revolution.

Murkier still is the suspicion that Saudi Arabia is funding the Salafis in Egypt. Emad Gad, a researcher at the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, believes Saudi authorities are backing the Salafis in Egypt.

“The primary source of funding of the Salafis is Saudi Arabia, one can assume they are supported by the kingdom, which fears the establishment of a democratic regime in Cairo that would inspire other people, including their own citizens," Gad to FRANCE 24.

While the allegation is impossible to prove, many Egyptians believe it.

On Wednesday, demonstrators gathered outside the Saudi embassy in Cairo, protesting against Saudi funding of Salafi groups.

Mubarak’s regime did however undertake belated efforts to confront the rising Salafist ideology. As the country prepares for a parliamentary election in September – the first since Mubarak’s ouster - many Egyptians are concerned that the current political and security vacuum would see the Salafis widen their scope of activities.

Arab Christians moving away from Muslim communities in US
washingtontimes.com

Arab Christians here are trying to separate themselves from a boisterous Muslim community that has served as a punching bag for “terrorism” stereotypes since Sept. 11.

Many have moved to Detroit’s northern suburbs — Sterling Heights, Madison Heights, Farmington Hills and the Bloomfield areas — to get away from the high concentration of Muslims in Dearborn, said Pastor Haytham Abi Haydar of Arabic Fellowship Alliance Church. Other Christians, he said, have turned their backs on their Arab heritage and integrated with American culture.

But just like Middle Easterners often assume America is a Christian nation, many Americans assume all Arabs are Muslims. That’s made life in a post-9/11 world difficult for a group of people who is proving religion has no borders.

“On many, many, many occasions, if you’re an Arab, you might as well be a Muslim to many people here,” Mr. Abi Haydar said. “Unfortunately, the majority don’t see the dynamic that Christianity came from the Middle East, that Jesus was from the Middle East.”

Mr. Abi Haydar said some Americans know the difference and do not stereotype. “You can’t label all Americans as ignorant,” he said.

Still, there are many pastors and churchgoers who assume that all Arab Christians are converts from Islam, when, in fact, many have been Christians all their lives.

“I’ve seen a lot of Christians in churches here who don’t even know the difference between Arab Christians and Arab Muslims,” Mr. Abi Haydar said. “They think, ‘You’re an Arab. That means you’re a Muslim, or you converted from Islam.”

Many of these problems were brought on by al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, when he started drawing attention to the Arab community after he masterminded the 9/11 attacks. Arab Christians hope the tension dies now that he’s dead, so they can move on.

William Salaita, a Roman Orthodox Christian who immigrated here from Jordan in 1979, knows the depths of Arab stereotyping all too well. He still remembers the months following the terrorist attacks in 2001, when his daughter, who attended a Christian high school at the time, called him in tears one day because of discrimination from fellow classmates of the same faith.

“Almost everyone in school is accusing me of being Osama bin Laden’s terrorist,” she told him.

“They don’t distinguish,” he later said. “We look like people who are from al Qaeda or a terrorist organization.”

Noora Yousif, from Sterling Heights, has noticed a similar problem. She’s a Chaldean, a term that usually refers to Iraqi Catholics. But many Americans assume that’s another word for Muslims.

“I don’t think a lot of people know what Chaldeans are,” she said. “Automatically, they would assume you are a Muslim, until you start explaining to them.”

Oftentimes the stereotyping depends on where they live, said Shirin Fakhri, a member at Arabic Brethren Assembly Church in Sterling Heights, where she lives. She immigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1995, and has been fortunate enough to avoid stereotyping, because the community is more familiar with the Arab Christian population than in other areas.

Furthermore, Arab Christians who are integrated into American society — those who speak the language and dress to fit in — are less likely to face problems, she said.

That’s why many Arab Christians have disengaged from their Middle Eastern roots, Mr. Abi Haydar explained. While many Muslim communities keep their identities, many Christians “melt into American society.”

“The Christians don’t want to be around Muslims,” Mr. Abi Haydar said. “They just want to stay away from them.”

Miss Fakhri admits it would be difficult to settle down in Dearborn, because the Muslims customs are so different from her own and she would feel “weird living there.”

“I think it’s very hard for a Christian to live there in a Muslim community,” she said. “I would feel uncomfortable to live there. You feel like the whole community is total different.”

But Mr. Abi Haydar laments over the divide between Arab Christians and Muslims. While many of these Christians have moved to the northern suburbs, his church continues to be based in Dearborn, so they can reach out to their fellow Arabs.

“I find it very unfortunate, because Christians are failing to be a light to that community,” he said.

At Heritage Baptist Church in Sterling Heights, Mich., they are trying to defy these labels. The congregation shares its building with the Arabic Brethren Assembly Church, and they occasionally enjoy meals together.

“These are wonderful Christian brothers,” said Kevin McGuire, an assistant pastor at the Baptist church. “They worship the same Christ we do. We count them as part of the family of God.”

Whitewashing the Muslim Brotherhood - The Failure of American Middle East Studies Professors
frontpagemag.com

How well did Middle East studies professors at American universities interpret the Egyptian uprising, particularly the risk of the Muslim Brotherhood gaining power? Among fifteen prominent professors who commented publicly on the uprising before and immediately after Mubarak’s ouster, fully thirteen believed that overthrowing Mubarak would lead to democracy in Egypt and that the Muslim Brotherhood would play a constructive role. Instead of explaining the Brotherhood’s Islamist agenda to the American public, they naively discounted it.

UC Irvine professor Mark LeVine predicted “real democracy” and a new, more just world order. Fawaz Gerges (Sarah Lawrence College and London School of Economics) expected “a new game of politics that focuses on democracy, on pluralism.” Ian Lustick (Penn) likened the Muslim Brotherhood to European Christian Democratic parties. Mark Tessler (Michigan) compared the Brotherhood to American social conservatives. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham (Emory) said the Brotherhood “has earned a place at the table, and no transition to a democratic process can occur without it.” And Bruce Rutherford (Colgate) wrote, “In political documents and myriad interviews over the past fifteen years, the Brotherhood’s leadership has expressed a commitment to democracy and human rights.”

Oddly, Rutherford, author of the 2008 book Egypt after Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World, discussed restrictions placed on presidential candidates in the Brotherhood’s 2007 platform, but he seemed unaware that the same document also sought to enshrine Shariah (Islamic law) as the sole source of legislation and proposed establishing a clerical council above the legislative and executive branches of government. And shortly after Mubarak fell, the Brothers sought the authority to appoint clergy, which would give them direct control over such a council. Furthermore, it’s hard to discern a commitment to human rights in the words of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual guide Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who favors mutilating the genitals of young girls and exterminating world Jewry. Rutherford conceded that other Egyptians mistrust the Brotherhood, and even helpfully suggested ways it might reassure the wary Coptic Christians. Perhaps those Egyptians know something about the Muslim Brotherhood that Rutherford doesn’t.

While the Brothers’ ultimate goal is a universal Islamic caliphate governed by Shariah, they subscribe to a doctrine of stages, of which stage two, da’wa, or peaceful outreach, must precede conquest. Therefore, we cannot extrapolate their circumspection under Mubarak into a future when they might judge conditions ripe for seizing power. Gerges, LeVine, and Wickham all made this error.

Wickham, author of the excellent 2002 book Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism, and Political Change in Egypt, has a more nuanced view of the Muslim Brotherhood than her peers, but seems to wear rose-tinted glasses. Writing in early February for CNN.com and Foreign Affairs, she focused on reformers, most of whom—by her own account—have left the Brotherhood. At the same time, she overlooked the Brotherhood’s official policies, which show these reformers have not succeeded in changing the organization, and she dismissed as mere “rhetoric” the leaders’ statements. She also whitewashed the Brotherhood’s early history, which included terrorizing Egyptian Jews and Christians and collaborating with the Nazis.

Of the fifteen professors, only one, Jamsheed Choksy (Indiana University), strongly opposed empowering the Muslim Brotherhood. Not coincidentally, he was the only one who considered American strategic interests. By contrast, Rashid Khalidi (Columbia) explicitly opposed interfering with a Brotherhood ascendency, even if it hurt our geopolitical standing. Opining about foreign policy in a strategic vacuum is nonsensical, so Jamsheed Choksy stood out as an exemplary public intellectual.

Choksy viewed the Arab upheaval as the beginning of a new power struggle between secular democracy and Iranian theocracy. In his writings, he argues that both the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Iran advocate creating Islamic states, acquiring atomic bombs, ending the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, and curbing Western influence in the Middle East. Iran covertly funds the Brotherhood and formed ties with Tunisian Islamist Ghannouchi during his long exile. And shortly after long-time American ally Hosni Mubarak fell, Brotherhood leader Kamal al-Hilbawi flew to Iran for an Islamic unity conference, where he declared his wish to emulate Iran. Because of the dangers of a potential Iranian nuclear umbrella and Iran’s skill at co-opting unrest among its neighbors, Choksy urged Western countries to take a proactive role in supporting democratic elements versus Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood.

In stark contrast to Choksy, Juan Cole (Michigan), Gerges, and Lustick promoted the ruling Turkish Islamist AKP party as a model for the Muslim Brotherhood. But the AKP is a poor example on both strategic and democratic grounds. Since its 2002 election victory, the AKP has reoriented Turkey away from the United States and Israel and towards Iran. It refused to let the U.S. attack Iraq from Turkish soil in 2003, and the Turkish government participated in the sordid Mavi Marmara affair. Domestically, the AKP has systematically eroded democracy by disarming checks and balances and arresting journalists, military officers, and others they accuse of being involved in the apocryphal Ergenekon and Balyoz conspiracies. Turkey currently holds more journalists in prison than any other country, and between 700 and 1,000 Turkish journalists face legal proceedings. AKP Prime Minister Erdogan famously commented, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off,” and he seems to be living up to his ideals.

Regrettably, most Middle East studies professors failed to elucidate the ideology and goals of the Muslim Brotherhood and explain why they are incompatible with both liberal democracy and a stable world order. The Arab upheaval presents both opportunities and dangers, and it is crucial that we understand what’s at stake. Each country is different. While we hope in time the burgeoning new spirit of democracy will bear fruit, in Egypt, early elections will favor the Brotherhood over the poorly-organized and leaderless demonstrators. The military, which remains in power, seems closer ideologically to the Brothers than the democrats. And because of their oligopolistic business interests, the military officers are particularly unsuited to solve Egypt’s severe economic problems, so another round of revolution may be in order, with unknown results. What is long overdue is a revolution at American universities — in the struggle against the entrenched apologists for radical Islam, the first cries for freedom have barely been heard.

Christians worry Egypt being hijacked by Islamists

ca.news.yahoo.com

Last January, Nazih Moussa Gerges locked up his downtown Cairo law office and joined hundreds of thousands of fellow Egyptians to demand that President Hosni Mubarak step down.

The 33-year-old Christian lawyer was back on the streets this month to press military rulers who took over after Mubarak stepped down to end a spate of sectarian attacks that have killed at least 28 people and left many afraid.

Those who camped out in Tahrir Square side by side with Muslims to call for national renewal now fear their struggle is being hijacked by ultra-conservative Salafist Islamists with no one to stop them.

"We did not risk our lives to bring Mubarak down in order to have him replaced by Salafists," Gerges said. "We want an Egypt that will be an example of democracy and freedom for the whole world."

Sectarian tensions are not new to Egypt, where Christians make up around 10 percent of the population of 80 million. But the frequency and intensity of clashes have increased since Mubarak's overthrow.

Many blame a broader weakening of law and order that began as the protests against Mubarak gathered pace and police deserted the streets. Authorities are trying to rebuild security forces to deal with increased lawlessness following mass jail breakouts.

Egypt's military rulers have vowed to punish those behind sectarian clashes, banned demonstrations outside places of worship and promised to give Christians equal rights.

But Christians say no one has been tried yet for the burning of a church in Helwan, south of Cairo, in March or for violence in the Cairo suburb of Imbaba on May 7 that left 15 people dead. At least 13 died in clashes after the Helwan incident.

The army has said 190 people will face trial over the Imbaba clashes, which began when a group of Salafists demanded to look inside a church where they suspected a female convert to Islam was being held against her will.

IRON FIST?

When Christians gathered to worship in the eastern Cairo district of Ain Shams last week, they said Salafists and other local Muslims blocked access to the church and pelted them with cinder blocks.

The Christians said they had to abandon their attempt after security forces arrested eight of them.

"The General has said he will strike with an iron fist. Where is the iron fist?" said Marcelino Youssef, a spokesman for a Christian youth group that has been leading protests against sectarian attacks. He was referring to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, who heads Egypt's ruling military council.

For some Egyptians, including Christians, alarm over the recent inter-faith violence may be overdone. They say revolutions are often accompanied by a spike in violence that can carry sectarian undertones.

"If there are events which could lead to clashes every now and then, this may happen," said Milad Hanna, a prominent Christian thinker. "They (Muslims) are normal people, not angels."

Some blame leaders of Egypt's Coptic church for cultivating fear of Muslims, in turn stoking sectarian tension by making the Christian community more defensive.

"The Church has promoted a fear of Muslims, arguing that the Egyptian people lack awareness and that democracy will not work in our context," Muslim political scientist Amr Shobaki wrote in a column in newspaper al-Masry al-Youm on May 14.

DISCRIMINATION

The sectarian clashes have prompted many Christians to vent pent-up grievances at perceived discrimination since the 1970s.

Gerges recalls bitterly the time when he applied to join the prosecutor's office in southern Cairo soon after graduating from Ain Shams University with distinction.

He said he was told by the recruiting official that his qualifications made him the ideal candidate.

"Then he looked at my family name and shook his head."

For Gerges, the message was clear: a Muslim gets priority over a Christian when it comes to government jobs.

Egyptian Christians say discrimination against them starts in school.

"Coptic history has been removed" from textbooks, said Imbaba priest Sarabamon Abdo Rizeq. "How is a Muslim going to love me if he doesn't know anything about my Christianity?"

At a sit-in outside state TV headquarters by the Nile in central Cairo, protesters posted a list of what they called "The Copts' Demands."

They included giving Christians equal access to government jobs, recognizing Egypt's Coptic history by making it part of the school curriculum, and easing restrictions on the construction of churches.

Christians complain that under laws inherited from Ottoman rule, Copts are required to obtain special permits from the head of state to build or repair a church.

"Our demands are actually basic rights," said Malak Maher, 33, one of the protesters. "We want equality."

Ahmadinejad’s Team Expects Arrival of 12th Imam … on June 5
May 23,2011 Pajama's Media

Increasing tensions between Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intensified when hardline clerics exerted pressure on Ahmadinejad to obey the supreme leader as the ultimate authority. Those tensions were exacerbated with the arrest of over 25 of Ahmadinejad’s associates and loyalists, along with a high-level member of his inner circle. Supporters of the supreme leader are referring to Ahmadinejad’s group as “The Deviant Movement.”

This “group” has announced that within the upcoming weeks a monumental event will turn the tide to their advantage.

Based on a report from Iran’s Ayandeh, one of the officials within “The Deviant Movement” has informed his confidants that certain sources close to the “Mahdi’s Emergence Movement” have stated that an important event will soon change the course of operations to Ahmadinejad’s favor. According to interpretations offered by Ahmadinejad’s team, a high-ranking member of the Islamic Republic will meet with a climactic incident. This in turn will build up to the announcement of the “covert emergence” of the Twelfth Imam (or Mahdi) in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

Hardliners critical of Ahmadinejad maintain that his team believes a covert emergence will commence on the 14th of Khordaad (June 5) in Medina, setting the stage for the announcement of the actual emergence in the next few years.

Certain accounts have chronicled that prior to the official emergence of the Mahdi, he will appear covertly in Medina, and during a period of one to three years he will lay the foundations for the actual announcement of his appearance.

The Deviant Movement states that: “At the time of the covert emergence, his regent (i.e., the supreme leader) will be deposed from his position.”

Previously, Ali Mottahari — a pro-supreme leader member of the Islamic Parliament — criticized Ahmadinejad:

Ahmadinejad believes that the covert emergence has, in fact, occurred. Therefore, he acts like he no longer needs the supreme leader and that he can disobey him, as he is taking his orders directly from the Mahdi himself.

Mehdi Khazali, son of Ayatollah Khazali — an ally of Khamenei who has access to high-level authorities within the supreme leadership — has noted on his website that the month of Khordaad (May 21 to June 21) will generate much chaos within the Iranian political strata. He has also expressed grave concern regarding the state of affairs and developments facing the Iranian people in the second half of the month.

He has added that there will be a bloody reckoning between Ahmadinejad’s allies and the supreme leader — that the “Godzilla” of power wants to destroy everything in sight. He emphasizes that there is no way to remedy the situation and that Godzilla will devour everything, big and small, in its path:

It is too late and there is no way out. All I can say is that I am sorry for you! And a great nation must not only be witness to the destruction of the haves and have-nots, but specifically, its entire existence.

Since Ahmadinejad’s ascent to power, talk of the emergence of the Mahdi has increased. A number of hardliners, who are installed within the halls of the presidency, are attempting to utilize the Iranian and global situation to demonstrate the signs of the emergence of the Mahdi and to prove that the Rapture is imminent.

As I revealed recently, a secret Iranian documentary, The Coming is Upon Us, details the last condition for the reappearance as the destruction of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem by Ahmadinejad. He has been portrayed as the mythical figure in centuries-old Hadiths, Shoeib-ebne Saleh, the Islamic commander who attacks Israel in the End of Times and creates the needed circumstances for the reappearance of the Shiite messiah, the 12th Imam Mahdi.

The question is: Will the rifts in the Iranian leadership push Ahmadinejad and his team to draw Israel into an unwanted war to prove that he is that mythical figure and to facilitate the Rapture?

Jihad Watch 5/29/2011

Iran: Basij commander says "the United States, through expanding communications, is developing the infrastructures for the universal reign of Islam"

Confident in the future

The Basij is the gang of thugs that the mullahcracy uses to crush the demonstrations in Iran. In any case, he is referring here to communications technology. But given the warmly positive stance of official Washington, during both the Bush and Obama administrations, toward the Westward spread of Sharia and Islamic supremacism, Naqdi may be closer to right than most people realize. "U.S. itself is laying the ground for reign of Islam in world: Basij commander," from the Tehran Times, May 29:

TEHRAN - Basij Commander Mohammad-Reza Naqdi has said that the United States is setting the stage for the future dominance of Islam over the world by its own hands.
“The United States, through expanding communications, is developing the infrastructures for the universal reign of Islam. Expansion of communications in the world has provided a historic opportunity for the faster and wider propagation of the Islamic Revolution and the thoughts of the Late Imam (Khomeini, the Founder of the Islamic Republic) throughout the world and (the opportunity) must be used appropriately,” Naqdi stated in Tehran on Sunday.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Basij commander made a mockery of U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent call for Israel to halt its settlement activity in the West Bank and said, “Our recommendation to the Zionists is that they push ahead with their settlement activity in the occupied territories, regardless of the U.S. president’s remarks so that the Palestinians, who will return to their homeland soon, would not face housing problems.”

Naqdi also said, “Today the world’s nations have chosen the Islamic Republic as their leader, and as the first step, Muslims in the region will soon bring the borders of the Middle East back to the lines set before 1919.”

He was referring to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, organized by the victors of World War I to negotiate the peace treaties between the Allied and Associated Powers and the defeated Central Powers, which led to the conclusion of a number of peace treaties that reshaped the map of Europe and the world.

Iran's Parliament Votes to Send Ahmadinejad to Court
AP June 1,2011

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's parliament voted on Wednesday in favor of taking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to court over what lawmakers say is a violation of the country's constitution stemming from the president's move last month to declare himself caretaker oil minister.

The vote in the conservative-dominated assembly is its latest action against Ahmadinejad since the president in April publicly challenged Iran's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

That challenge was triggered by Ahmadinejad's attempt to sack the powerful intelligence minister, Heidar Moslehi, a move Khamenei blocked. Although Ahmadinejad publicly backed down in the confrontation with Khamenei weeks later, it emboldened his hard-line rivals in parliament.

And last month, Ahmadinejad incurred the wrath of the Guardian Council -- Iran's constitutional watchdog body -- when he sacked Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi under a Cabinet reshuffle plan and declared himself caretaker oil minister.

The confrontations appear to be part of a power struggle ahead of parliamentary elections next year and the vote for Ahmadinejad's successor in mid-2013.

It's unclear whether Wednesday's vote in the 290-member parliament will actually be followed by charges or a a lawsuit against Ahmadinejad, but it clearly pits the majority of the lawmakers against the president.

The legislators voted 165-1 to refer Ahmadinejad to the country's judiciary after a parliament committee report concluded his action in taking over the oil ministry was an "obvious violation of the constitution." Remaining lawmakers were either absent or abstained from the vote.

Lawmakers were upset after Ahmadinejad last month restructured the Cabinet by combining eight ministries into four without seeking the lawmakers' approval. The president has the power to dismiss ministers and put caretakers in place for up to three months without parliament's approval.

But when Ahmadinejad declared himself caretaker oil minister, the lawmakers said it was an illegal move, some even alleging the president sought personal control of Iran's most moneymaking body. Iran also holds the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' rotating presidency this year.

"This illegal and hasty action will damage the Islamic Republic of Iran's interests on the global level," the parliament committee report said. "As (caretaker) oil minister, Ahmadinejad has issued and will continue to issue orders that are obviously illegal interference."

In another sign of the lawmakers' confrontation with the president, about 50 legislators have signed a petition to summon Ahmadinejad to appear in parliament to answer questions. At least a fourth of the lawmakers have to sign before a president can be questioned. If successful, it would be the first time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that a president is forced to answer questions before the Iranian assembly.

Those behind the petition want Ahmadinejad to respond to a long list of accusations, including refusing to carry out laws passed by parliament, withdrawing money from state funds without authorization and his alleged lack of transparency on budget spending.

‘Jesus: Prophet of Islam’ — New Muslim Bus Ads to Debut in Australia
The Blaze
June 3, 2011

If you ask the organization Mypeace in Australia, Jesus wasn’t God, but he was a good prophet of Islam. That’s just one of the messages the group is set to debut on Australian buses in September. And it’s just one of the messages already plastered on billboards around Sydney.

As CNS News reports, “roadside billboards in the metropolitan Sydney area carry one of four simple slogans: ‘Jesus: A Prophet of Islam,‘ ’Holy Qur’an: The Final Testament,‘ ’Muhammad: Mercy to Mankind‘ and ’Islam: Got Questions? Get Answers.’

“Mypeace.com.au a Muslim Organisation based in Sydney is launching a bold venture and the first of its kind in its public awareness campaign by placing ads about Islam on Sydney buses,” the group’s site explains. “Starting on September 27th of May 2011, for four weeks, several buses in Sydney will start carrying messages on the religion of Islam. Each ad will invite interested individuals to call MyPeace’s toll free number … and converse live with a Muslims to ask questions about Islam; request a free copy of the Quran and Islamic literature.”

The group adds that the bus ads will appear on the backs and sides of 40 buses traveling throughout Sydney.

But the ads are causing quite a stir. One billboard claiming Jesus is a prophet of Islam has already been vandalized, and now an Australian bishop is speaking out.

“In Australia with its Christian heritage a billboard carrying the statement ‘Jesus A prophet of Islam’ is provocative and offensive to Christians,” Julian Porteous, auxiliary bishop at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, responded in an article.

“Central to Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is more than a prophet,” he said. “He is the Son of God. He is acclaimed Lord and Savior of humanity. This statement is a direct assault on Christian beliefs.”

Porteous said religions should not “set out to antagonize those with differing beliefs.”

“Dialogue between the religions can only take place when it is founded in mutual respect. It is not fostered by provocative statements.”

Porteous urged Mypeace to withdraw the ads.

Considering the tenants of the Christian faith, and what Islam believes about Jesus, the group‘s claims are not in line with Christianity’s understanding of Jesus. For example, as CNS points out, Islam denies Christ’s “divinity, crucifixion, and resurrection.”

Still, in a video posted on Mypeace’s website, it claims that Islam is the “religion of Jesus and Moses:”

The Real Egyptian Revolution - The Muslim Brotherhood's Takeover Of Egypt
www.jewishworldreview.com

The coverage of recent events in Egypt is further proof that Western elites cannot see the forest for the trees. Over the past week, leading newspapers have devoted relatively in-depth coverage to the Egyptian military authorities' repressive actions in subduing protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo, particularly during their large protest last Friday.

That is, they have provided in-depth coverage of one spent force repressing another spent force. Neither the military nor the protesters are calling the shots anymore in Egypt, if they ever were. That is the job of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The proximate cause of last Friday's mass demonstration was what the so-called Twitter and Facebook revolutionaries consider the military's slowness to respond to their demand for ousted President Hosni Mubarak's head on a platter. The military responded by announcing that Mubarak and his sons will go on trial for capital crimes on August 3.

Beyond bloodlust, the supposedly liberal, young sweethearts of the Western media are demanding a cancellation of the results of the referendum held in March on the sequencing of elections and constitutional reform. Voting in that referendum was widely assessed as the freest vote in Egyptian history. Seventy-seven percent of the public voted to hold parliamentary and presidential elections in September and to appoint members of a constitutional assembly from among the elected members of the next parliament to prepare Egypt's new constitution.

The protesters rightly assert that the early elections will pave the way for the Muslim Brotherhood's takeover of Egypt since the Brotherhood is the only well-organized political force in Egypt. But then, the liberals said they wanted popular rule.

The Facebook protesters demanded Mubarak's immediate removal from power in January. They would not negotiate Mubarak's offer to use the remainder of his final term to shepherd Egypt towards a quasi-democratic process that might have prevented the Brotherhood from taking over.

In their fantasy world — which they inhabit with Western intellectuals — the fates of nations are determined by the number of "likes" on your facebook page. And so, when they had the power to avert the democratic Islamist takeover of their country in January, they squandered it.

Now, when it is too late, they are trying to win through rioting what they failed to win at the ballot box, thus discrediting their protestations of liberal values. Their new idea was spelled out last week at an EU-sponsored conference in Cairo. According to the Egyptian media, they hope to convince the military they protest against to stack the deck for the constitutional assembly in a way that prevents the Brotherhood from controlling the proceedings. As Hishan El-Bastawisy, a former appellate judge and presidential hopeful explained, "What we can push for now is that the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has to put some guarantees of choosing the constituent assembly in the sense that it does not reflect the parliamentary majority."

So much for Egypt's liberal democrats.

As for the military, its actions to date make clear that its commanders do not see themselves as guardians of secular rule in Egypt. Instead, they see themselves as engines for a transition from Mubarak's authoritarian secularism to the Brotherhood's populist Islamism.

Since forcing Mubarak to resign, the military junta has embraced Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. They engineered the Palestinian unity government which will pave the way for Hamas's victory in the Palestinian Authority's legislative and presidential elections scheduled for the fall.

Then there is the Sinai. Since the revolution, the military has allowed the Sinai to become a major base not only for Hamas but for the global jihad. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned on Monday, Egyptian authorities are not asserting their sovereignty in the Sinai and jihadists from Hamas, al Qaida and other groups are inundating the peninsula.

Last week's move to open Egypt's border with Gaza at the Rafah passage is further proof that the military has made its peace with the Islamic takeover of Egypt. While the likes of the New York Times make light of the significance of the move by pointing to the restrictions that Egypt has placed on Palestinian travel, the fact is that the Egyptians just accepted Hamas's sovereignty over an international border.

Many in the West argue that given Egypt's increasingly dire economic situation, there is no way the military will turn its back on the US and Europe. By all accounts, Egypt is facing economic collapse. By summer's end it will be unable to feed its population due to grain shortages. By November, its foreign reserves will have dried up.

But rather than do everything they can to convince foreign investors and governments that Egypt's market is safe, the military junta is taking steps that destroy the credibility of the Egyptian market. To please both the Mubarak-obsessed protesters at Tahrir Square and the Muslim Brotherhood, the military refuses to reinstate natural gas shipments to Israel.

Not only is Egypt denying itself hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues by cutting off gas shipments to Israel, (and Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). It is destroying its reputation as a credible place to do business. And according to the New York Times, it is also making it impossible for the Obama administration to assist the Egyptian economy.

The Times' reported this week that the US tied President Barack Obama's pledge of $1 billion in debt forgiveness and $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Egyptian authorities asserting sovereignty in northern Sinai. Presumably this means they must renew gas shipments to Israel and fight terror.

cont.

The Real Egyptian Revolution - The Muslim Brotherhood's Takeover Of Egypt cont...

The fact that the military would rather facilitate Egypt's economic collapse than take the unpopular step of renewing gas shipments to Israel ought to end any thought that that economic interests trump political sentiments. This situation will only get worse when the Muslim Brotherhood takes over Egypt in September.

And make no mistake. They intend to take over. As they did in the lead up to March's constitutional referendum, the Brotherhood is using its mosques as campaign offices. The message is clear: If you are a good Muslim you will vote for the Muslim Brotherhood.

When Mubarak was first overthrown in January, the Brotherhood announced it would only contest thirty percent of the parliamentary seats. Last month the percent rose to fifty. In all likelihood, in September the Brotherhood will contest and win the majority of the seats in the Egyptian parliament.

When Mubarak was overthrown, the Brotherhood announced it would not run a candidate for president. And when Brotherhood Shura governing council member and Physician's Union leader Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh announced last month that he is running for president, the Brotherhood quickly denied that he is the movement's candidate. But there is no reason to believe them.

According to a report Thursday in Egypt's Al Masry al Youm's English edition, the Brotherhood is playing to win. They are invoking the strategies of the movement's founder Hassan al Banna for establishing an Islamic state. His strategy had three stages: indoctrination, empowerment, and implementation. Al Youm cites Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's "organizational architect" as having recently asserted that the Brotherhood is currently in the second stage and moving steadily towards the third stage.

Now that we understand that they are about to implement their goal of Islamic statehood, we need to ask what it means for Egypt and the region.

Sunday Brotherhood Chairman Mohammed Badie gave an interview to Egyptian television that was posted on the Muslim Brotherhood's English website iquwanweb.com. Badie's statements indicated that the Brotherhood will end any thought of democracy in Egypt by taking control over the media. Badie said that the Brotherhood is about to launch a public news channel, "with commitment to the ethics of the society and the rules of the Islamic faith."

He also demanded that state radio and television begin broadcasting recordings of Banna's speeches and sermons. Finally, he complained about the anti-Brotherhood hostility of most private media organs in Egypt.

As for Israel, Badie was asked how a Brotherhood-led Egypt would react if Israel takes military action against Hamas. His response was honest enough. As he put it, "The situation will change in such a case, and the Egyptian people will have their voice heard. Any government in power will have to respect the choice of the people, whatever that is, like in any democracy."

In other words, the peace between Israel and Egypt will die of populist causes.

So far, Israel's responses to these strategically disastrous developments have been muted and insufficient. Wednesday the Defense Ministry announced that Israel is speeding up construction of the border fence between Egypt and Israel. The 210 km long fence is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2012.

While this is an important move given Gaza's effective fusion into the Sinai with the border opening, it does not address the looming threat from Egypt itself. It does not address the fact that with Mubarak's ouster, a previously all-but unthinkable outbreak of hostilities with Egypt has now become eminently thinkable.

Facing the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt in September, Israel's government must begin preparing both diplomatically and militarily for a new confrontation with Egypt.

The West's intoxication with the myth of the Arab spring means that currently, the political winds are siding with Egypt. If Egypt were to start a war with Israel, or simply support Hamas in a war against Israel, at a minimum, Cairo would enjoy the same treatment from Europe and the US that the Hizbullah-dominated Lebanese government and army enjoyed in 2006. To block this possibility, the government must begin educating opinion shapers and political leaders in the West about the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood It must also call for a cut-off of US military aid to Egypt.

Militarily, the government must increase the size of the IDF's Southern Command. The Egyptian armed forces have more than a million men under arms. Egypt's arsenal includes everything from F-16s to Abrams tanks to first class naval ships to ballistic missiles to sophisticated pontoon bridges for crossing the Suez Canal.

The IDF must expand its draft rolls and increase its force size by at least one division. It must also begin training in desert warfare and develop and purchase appropriate conventional platforms.

With the Iranians now apparently moving from developing nuclear capabilities to developing nuclear warheads, and with the Palestinians escalating their political war and planning their next terror war against Israel, it serves to reason that no in the government or the IDF one wants to consider the strategic implications of Egypt's reversion from peace partner to enemy.

But Israel doesn't get to decide what our neighbors do. We can only take the necessary steps to minimize their ability to harm us.

It's time to get cracking.

A BIG Muslim problem--Inbreeding
By Bryan Fischer

(Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy at the American Family Association, where he provides expertise on a range of public policy topics. He hosts the "Focal Point" radio program on AFR Talk,which airs live on weekdays from 1-3 p.m.. Central on American Family Radio's nationwide talk network of 145 stations)

Nicolai Sennels is a Danish psychologist who has done extensive research into a little-known problem in the Muslim world: The disastrous results of Muslim inbreeding brought about by the marriage of first-cousins .

This practice, which has been prohibited in the Judeo-Christian tradition since the days of Moses, was sanctioned by Muhammad and has been going on now for 50 generations (1,400 years) in the Muslim world.

This practice of inbreeding will never go away in the Muslim world, since Muhammad is the ultimate example and authority on all matters, including marriage.

The massive inbreeding in Muslim culture may well have done virtually irreversible damage to the Muslim gene pool, including extensive damage to its intelligence, sanity, and health.

According to Sennels, close to half of all Muslims in the world are inbred. In Pakistan, the numbers approach 70%. Even in England,more than half of Pakistani immigrants are married to their first cousins, and in Denmark the number of inbred Pakistani immigrants is around 40%..

The numbers are equally devastating in other important Muslim countries: 67% in Saudi Arabia, 64% in Jordan, and Kuwait, 63% in Sudan, 60% in Iraq, and 54% in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

According to the BBC, this Pakistani, Muslim-inspired inbreeding is thought to explain the probability that a British Pakistani family is more than 13 times as likely to have children with recessive genetic disorders. While Pakistanis are responsible for three percent of the births in the UK, they account for 33% of children with genetic birth defects.

The risk of what are called autosomal recessive disorders such as cystic fibrosis and spinal muscular atrophy is 18 times higher and the risk of death due to malformations is 10 times higher .

Other negative consequences of inbreeding include a 100 percent increase in the risk of stillbirths and a 50% increase in the possibility that a child will die during labor.

Lowered intellectual capacity is another devastating consequence of Muslim marriage patterns. According to Sennels, research shows that children of consanguineous marriages lose 10-16 points off their IQ and that social abilities develop much slower in inbred babies. The risk of having an IQ lower than 70, the official demarcation for being classified as "retarded," increases by an astonishing 400 percent among children of cousin marriages.

(Similar effects were seen in the Pharaonic dynasties in ancient Egypt and in the British royal family, where inbreeding was the norm for a significant period of time.)

In Denmark, non-Western immigrants are more than 300 percent more likely to fail the intelligence test required for entrance into the Danish army.

Sennels says that "the ability to enjoy and produce knowledge and abstract thinking is simply lower in the Islamic world." He points out that the Arab world translates just 330 books every year, about 20% of what Greece alone does.

In the last 1,200 years of Islam, just 100,000 books have been translated into Arabic, about what Spain does in a single year. Seven out of 10 Turks have never even read a book.

Sennels points out the difficulties this creates for Muslims seeking to succeed in the West. "A lower IQ, together with a religion that denounces critical thinking, surely makes it harder for many Muslims to have success in our high-tech knowledge societies."

Only nine Muslims have ever won the Nobel Prize, and five of those were for the "Peace Prize." According to Nature magazine, Muslim countries produce just 10 percent of the world average when it comes to scientific research (measured by articles per million inhabitants).

In Denmark, Sennels' native country, Muslim children are grossly overrepresented among children with special needs. One-third of the budget for Danish schools is consumed by special education, and anywhere from 51% to 70% of retarded children with physical handicaps in Copenhagen have an immigrant background. Learning ability is severely affected as well. Studies indicated that 64% of school children with Arabic parents are still illiterate after 10 years in the Danish school system. The immigrant drop-out rate in Danish high schools is twice that of the native-born.

Mental illness is also a product. The closer the blood relative, the higher the risk of schizophrenic illness. The increased risk of insanity may explain why more than 40% of the patients in Denmark's biggest ward for clinically insane criminals have an immigrant background.

The U.S. is not immune. According to Sennels, "One study based on 300,000 Americans shows that the majority of Muslims in the USA have a lower income, are less educated, and have worse jobs than the population as a whole."

Sennels concludes:

There is no doubt that the wide spread tradition of first cousin marriages among Muslims has harmed the gene pool among Muslims. Because Muslims' religious beliefs prohibit marrying non-Muslims and thus prevents them from adding fresh genetic material to their population, the genetic damage done to their gene pool since their prophet allowed first cousin marriages 1,400 years ago are most likely massive. (This has produced) overwhelming direct and indirect human and societal consequences.

Bottom line: Islam is not simply a benign and morally equivalent alternative to the Judeo-Christian tradition. As Sennels points out, the first and biggest victims of Islam are Muslims. Simple Christian compassion for Muslims and a common-sense desire to protect Western civilization from the ravages of Islam dictate a vigorous opposition to the spread of this dark and dangerous religion. These stark realities must be taken into account when we establish public polices dealing with immigration from Muslim countries and the building of mosques in the U.S.

Let's hope America wakes up before a blind naiveté about the reality of Islam destroys what remains of our Judeo-Christian culture and our domestic tranquility.

Canadian School Hosting Muslim Prayer Time
onenewsnow.com

According to one activist, a Canadian middle school's decision to allow Muslim prayers during school hours is an Islamic "encroachment" on Western civilization.

Every Friday, the cafeteria at Valley Park Middle School in Toronto is transformed into a prayer room for Muslim students. According to Jihad Watch, local imams come to lead Muslim boys in Islamic prayers, and staff members assist in setting up the event.

Brigitte Gabriel is the founder of ACT! for America and author of They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It. She says the prayers are unnecessary because Islamic prayers can actually accumulate.

"When they cannot pray, they can gather all the prayer times and do them all at once," she explains. "If they can do that in Islamic countries, how come they cannot do it in Western countries?"

The school claims the Muslim students used to sign out of school early to attend Friday prayers at a local mosque. So to accommodate them, the prayers were brought to the school. Gabriel reports that ACT! for America has exposed a similar incident that took place at Tiza Academy in Minnesota, which is a taxpayer-funded charter school that also held Islamic prayers in the cafeteria and allowed students to participate in the ritual washing of hands and feet before prayer. When her organization sounded the alarm, al-Qaeda issued an urgent press release that called for ACT! for America to be stopped.

"Why would an organization like al-Qaeda be so concerned about what's happening at a little, small academy called Tiza Academy in Minnesota?" she wonders. "But what we are seeing right now is basically an encroachment of Islamic practices and sharia Islam encroaching in North America and in all Western nations. And it is all by design; this is not independent incidences."

The prayers begin after lunch on Fridays, when all non-Muslim students have returned to class.

ChristiansUnite Forums

Theology => Prophecy - Current Events => Topic started by: HisDaughter on April 02, 2011, 11:42:23 AM