The Rise of Islam

[nChrist]

[HisDaughter]

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."

[HisDaughter]

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.

[HisDaughter]

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...

[HisDaughter]

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

[HisDaughter]

I read the previous article in full and am impressed with the journalism and writing of this person.  It is an excellent read!

[nChrist]

I read the previous article in full and am impressed with the journalism and writing of this person.  It is an excellent read!

I second your comments. Sadly, a similar article could be written about the U.S.

[HisDaughter]

I second your comments. Sadly, a similar article could be written about the U.S.

I had that very same thought.

[HisDaughter]

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 .

[HisDaughter]

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.

[HisDaughter]

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.”

[HisDaughter]

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. 

[nChrist]

Most of those professors sound BRILLIANT. (NOT!)

[HisDaughter]

It's amazing how folks can be so educated and still be so ignorant.

[Shammu]

It's amazing how folks can be so educated and still be so ignorant.

We see it every day, all the time sister.