Paul R. Pillar’s Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform

The latest book from a former CIA agent promises to be a good read, but does it deliver on this promise?

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Oct. 21, 2011

Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform
by Paul R. Pillar
Released September 6, 2011
Publisher: Columbia University Press (432 pp)
ISBN-10: 0231157924
ISBN-13: 978-0231157926

The preface to Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform promises a good read as former CIA officer Paul R. Pillar details perches from which he “observed the end of one misguided war and the beginning of another” — a pair of bookends to his public service career and “two tragically ill-conceived military expeditions.” In 1973, as the Vietnam war wound down, Pillar served as a junior army field officer at Camp Alpha outside Saigon. From 2000 to 2005, he headed CIA national intelligence for the Near East and South Asia in Washington D.C. — albeit with hardly “any more influence on events in one job than in the other.”

Unfortunately, the book quickly disappoints.

On joining any U.S. military or intelligence service, officers must swear a solemn oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;… bear true faith and allegiance to the same;…[and] obey the orders of the President of the United States….”

But like a stutterer intent on avoiding words he can’t pronounce, Pillar has mentally blocked names for the enemies against whom the U.S. must now defend. He omits mention of jihad or Islam, whose chief Al Azhar University and Muslim Brotherhood intellectuals have for decades declared war on the U.S. — and lists neither term in his too-brief, five-page index. Yet he’s proud to have headed the team that held secret talks with the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi to “become an ally,” an ally that subsequently the U.S. helped replace with al Qaeda peons.

All this unwittingly represents what U.S. Air Force major John M. Klein, Jr. might call “intellectual emasculation” and signals Pillar’s active role in catastrophic failures that have plagued U.S. intelligence since the Iranian hostage crisis, to borrow a phrase from former Joint Chiefs of Staff officer Stephen C. Coughlin.

Early on, Pillar reveals his personal biases against “neoconservative” Jewish advisers and policies of the “Israeli political Right,” which he insists manufactured the raisons d’être for the 2003 Iraq invasion. (pp. 15-30) He also claims U.S. intelligence unearthed no al Qaeda connections in Iraq, or evidence that Saddam Hussein ran chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in various stages of advance. He seems to have persuaded himself, but both assertions are demonstrably false. Indeed, redacted captured Iraqi documents, published by the U.S. military in Arabic and English translation, have been publicly available since 2007, as Jim Lacey brilliantly reported last month in the National Review. Clearly, Iraq did indeed have both biological and chemical weapons.

Assuredly, moreover, Pillar knows that Saddam Hussein at one time had a nuclear weapons program and periodically bought West African yellowcake to supply it — even if the purchases were not coincident with former CIA agent Joe Wilson’s 2002 investigation in Niger. In July 2008, the U.S. shipped to Canada 550 metric tons of evidence — concentrated natural uranium, later widely identified as “the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.”

By 2010, even DigitalGlobe images on Google Earth confirmed existence of at least five Syrian facilities, three of them respectively reported in 2004 and earlier, by a defecting Syrian journalist and Iraqi general, to store transported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But Pillar neglects Syria and the Al-Kibar graphite nuclear reactor under construction in September 2007 — just over Iraq’s border, and across a bridge on the Euphrates. Israeli bombers dipped under Syria’s radar and took out the plant, meant to process plutonium for an Iranian heavy-water reactor then rising, in nearby Arak. Soil samples gathered by the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) included key chemically processed “anthropogenic natural uranium particles,” undeclared in Syria’s nuclear inventory.

As for Syria, al Qaeda and their close ties to Iran — Pillar barely scrapes the surface. From October 2000 to February 2001, a senior Hezbollah commander ferried eight to 10 of the 14 Saudi “muscle” operatives on trips to and from Iran, the 9/11 Commission reported. Imad Mughniyah also reportedly co-founded Muqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi Mehdi Army, co-sponsored Basra’s Thaarullah (God’s Revenge), drafted Kuwaitis and Saudis and trained recruits in Lebanon’s Bekka Valley. Imad Mughniyah was assassinated in Damascus’ diplomatic district in February 2008 — near Iran’s embassy and Syria’s national Atomic Energy Commission (AECS) — after meeting Hamas chief Khalid Mashaal and a general of Bashar al-Assad assassinated in Tartous five months later. With help from Germany, and later Russia, Iran’s first nuclear plant at Bushehr went live in September 2011.

By 2002, Iraq had bought nearly 1 million tons of mostly Russian munitions. Before the war, Russia moved them, noted former Romanian intelligence chief Ion Mihai Pacepa in August 2003. After visiting Iraq no fewer than 20 times over the prior six years, Russian Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, returned to Iraq in late 2002 — with a Russian former deputy defense minister, an ex-air defense chief and others, according to Pacepa, the Soviet bloc’s highest official to defect. Anticipating Iraq’s defeat, Russia oversaw an emergency “Sarindar” exit plan to liquidate its arms, but keep material and skills to remake them. Pacepa learned of Sarindar from Romanian secretary general Nicolae Ceausescu, KGB chair Yury Andropov, and Gen. Primakov, who cheered Arab radicals, manged Iraqi weapons supplies, and hates Israel. Arabic documents captured by Operation Iraqi Freedom troops discussed the plans, too. One featured an unknown man telling Hussein, the “factories will be in our brains and souls, and [we] can make missiles…and can certainly achieve a great deal in one, two, or five years.” As the February 2006 Intelligence Summit disclosed, an Army unit published many tapes online and requested help translating from the public. Tape ISGC-2003-M0003997 mentioned removal of warheads from Iraq. The Army quickly deleted published tapes, which the government never again referenced, although captured, translated and redacted English and Arabic documents, published by the U.S. military in 2007, have remained available since then, as noted above; invalidating all claims that Saddam Hussein did not have biological or chemical weapons. He certainly did.

Meanwhile, former U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense John A. Shaw fully briefed CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officials with independent data. He documented identities, strengths and dates of Russian Spetsnaz transports, through files gathered by his U.K. contacts in London and at Syria’s border, Ukraine intelligence chief Igor Smesko and a friend of the late David Nicholas, then Europe’s Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) Ambassador to Kiev. DIA rejected it as “Israeli disinformation;” the CIA likewise tried to discredit Shaw’s sources.

Oddly, none of this appears in Pillar’s book.

U.S. intelligence systems are overly politicized, an “affliction” Pillar compares to “alcoholism,” whose victims, ironically, often exhibit denial. But he ignores its chief result — that volumes of known intelligence, for many political reasons, go unreported, or are altogether hidden. Masses of classified documents located by 9/11 Commission members on the eve of their report’s publication attest to Iran’s long history of operating with al Qaeda — data that Pillar and U.S. intelligence agencies never officially mentioned or, apparently, investigated. Nor, to date, have intelligence agencies acknowledged or addressed their penetration by National Iranian American Council (NIAC) operatives and others — the “Iran Lobby” of which 2008 reports in Tehran-controlled Aftab News and Baztab News openly bragged.

To yank political thorns from the sides of U.S. intelligence forces, Pillar proposes an outrageous solution — “substantial paring down of the unusually large political layer of the executive branch.” (p. 12) The U.S. should institutionalize intelligence agencies’ independence, he says, and create a “collective body, somewhat akin to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,” and give it the “last say” on intelligence community “output.” (pp. 314-315) A new bureaucracy, requiring Senate hearings — “with probably not all nominations in the hands of the president.”

The U.S. desperately needs some practical means to eliminate political cat fighting inside and between intelligence agencies — and with the executive branch. Yet another costly layer of officialdom would only complicate things, which are bad largely for reasons unrelated to Pillar’s complaints. Besides, trying to institute an enormous new supervisory board over matters of national security might not work too well, considering an all-time record of Americans — 80% — currently disapprove of Congress.

On Sept. 22, 1776, the British hanged Nathan Hale for spying. After Gen. Washington’s forces expelled them, Americans saw no further need for intelligence, quips Pillar at one point. Until July 1941, “America’s splendid geographic isolation” and infrequent interaction with outside powers made U.S. intelligence service superfluous and essentially intolerable except during time of war.

Since Pearl Harbor, though, blaming U.S. intelligence professionals and agencies for trauma suffered at foreign hands has grown into a sort of iconic national sport. Too bad this book squandered a chance to meaningfully advance our understanding of the game.

______________________________________________________
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist, with a focus on the Middle East and Islam. A former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008), she previously covered the economy, business and finance, as a Senior Editor at Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991); and an Associate Editor at Forbes (1978-1990).

She contributes regularly to the Terror Finance Blog and International Analyst Network and her work appears frequently in Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Right Side News, the Washington Times and many other Internet and print journals.

Ms. Lappen is also an accomplished poet, whose work has won several awards and honorable mentions, and appeared in dozens of books and (print and online) literary journals, including the 2007, second edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and issues of Wales’ notable Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine.

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
Printing is allowed for personal use only | Commercial usage (For Profit) is a copyright violation and written permission must be granted first.

Sharia Lobby Shifts into 5th Gear

Slow down, moving too fast, got to make the U.S. last…

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Sept. 7, 2011

Sharia advocates desperately want to convince legislators and the public that Islamic law is plain vanilla — and totally nonthreatening to existing U.S. legal codes. Notwithstanding a nationwide Muslim Brotherhood-backed pro-sharia push, nothing could be further from the truth.

“There are many unpleasant doctrines within Islam,” including its “repugnant” criminal code, honor killings, female genital cutting, and a Quranic verse Muslim clerics often cite, proclaiming “wives as a tilth unto you” (2:223), to deny the existence of marital rape.[1]

So allowed sharia professor Sadiq Reza at an Aug. 25-26 New York Law School (NYLS) conference. Any attempt to enforce its criminal code, he added, “would violate Constitutional law.” He insisted, though, that western Muslims don’t “favor” these aspects of Islam and none seek to impose them. Evidence that they do abounds (here, here, here, here, here) but Reza said his broad web search found none.

Northwestern University Islamic law professor Kristen Stilt, too, disdained sharia criticism as “lunacy.” And University of Toronto Islamic law professor Mohammed Fadel referred the audience to a glossy, Soros-funded condemnation of skeptics, breathlessly entitled “Fear, Inc.” to persuade the gullible.

Soon afterward, journalist Joseph Klein recalled some points of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood “scholar” Yusuf Qaradawi, revered by the Islamic world — and “Fear, Inc.” co-author Wajahat Ali. Qaradawi identifies fully with sharia as described by former CIA director R. James Woolsey and fellow so-called hate mongers headed by Center for Security Policy CEO Frank Gaffney, not Ali and his co-detractors. Qaradawi considers charity “jihad with money, because God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money,” as I noted in fall 2007. Like the MB-backed Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Qaradawi also seeks to internationally criminalize insults to Islam or Mohammed.

CSP’s sharia description is quite correct — not the “hate” or “lunacy” that Reza, Ali, Stilt and Fadel call it. Sharia is indeed a

“complete way of life” (social, cultural, military, religious, and political), governed from cradle to grave by Islamic law… Shariah is, moreover, a doctrine that mandates the rule of Allah over all aspects of society.”

Despite all sharia’s sobering negatives, orchestrated campaigns to hype it and smear its critics — with Reza in a vocal role — have worked their expected magic. Days after NYLS’s pro-sharia confab, in a Sept. 2 New York Times op-ed, Yale assistant professor Eliyahu Stern dutifully parroted the line of former Harvard Custodian of Two Holy Mosques prof. Frank Vogel, who thinks sharia “quite brilliant.” (On Sept. 3, its shine likewise compelled an unasked Dutch cleric, to “invite” Queen Beatrix to Islam.)

One might think a Yale assistant professor or the Times would check their facts prior to publication. One would be wrong. True enough, over 12 U.S. states are currently considering legislation that would outlaw using laws alien to U.S. foundational precepts in American courts. But Stern misspoke. A “bill recently passed by the Tennessee General Assembly equates Shariah with a set of rules that promote ‘the destruction of the national existence of the United States’,” he incorrectly groused.

Stern cited the summary of a proposed Tennessee bill version not actually passed into law. The real banana, Material Support to Designated Entities Act of 2011 (House Bill No. 1353), signed into Tennessee law Jun. 16, 2011 to amend its criminal code on terrorism, never once mentions the words “sharia,” “Muslim,” “Islam,” or “Islamic law.” Nor does American and Tennessee Laws for Tennessee Courts, House Bill No. 3768, signed into Tennessee Public Chapter 983 in May 2010, to address foreign laws containing discriminatory or unequal precepts or clauses otherwise alien to U.S. and state civil, criminal and Constitutional laws and public policies.Yet — evidently, without any independent study of sharia — Stern admonished its U.S. critics to forgo their Constitutional rights to free speech, and worse, allow and accept U.S. court recognition of Islamic law.

But also on Sept. 2, the American Islamic Leadership Coalition (ALIC) endorsed Michigan’s proposed HB4769 version of American Laws for American Courts.

Though apparently oblivious, in assuming a pro-sharia position, Stern effectively accepted a 7th century sharia dictate intended to suppress second class, non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis): Islamic rule prohibits non-Muslims especially, at dire risk, from criticizing Mohammed, Islam or sharia, what most Muslims project as divine, perfect, immutable — and indivisible — laws. (Several conference speakers unwittingly echoed Qaradawi and, while lauding sharia, also noted Islam’s total ban on its criticism.)

Put another way, the professors want American non-Muslim critics to comply with sharia and shut up.

Many women suffer real “oppression” in Muslim majority lands, for example, especially rape victims living under zina (extra-marital sex) or other sharia statutes, U. of Wisconsin law professor Asifa Quraishi admitted. Yet at every opportunity, including the NYLS conference, Quraishi has pushed hard to integrate sharia for Muslims into U.S. courts. Meanwhile, she’s advised international women’s rights advocates in Muslim majority countries that they would serve best “not to mention Islamic law at all.”

Quraishi blamed overseas human rights opposition to “sharia legislation (and sharia in general)” for exacerbating the plight of Muslim women. They “created an unwinnable and unnecessary war, of ‘sharia vs. women’s rights’.” That again said Muslims will not adapt, and infidels must follow sharia.

Here is the 7th century dictate to second class, non-Muslim subjects (dhimmis), writ large: non-Muslims’ criticism of Mohammed, Islam or sharia equals blasphemy. Such efforts to silence legitimate discussion render exceedingly troubling any consideration of separate and unequal sharia practices for use in U.S. courts. Already, too many U.S. Muslims ask and expect fellow citizens to censor themselves on sharia-related questions — or suffer bullying, and name calling best limited to pre-schoolers.

In 19th century Europe, Stern wrote, both political elites and philosophers embraced “fear that Jewish law bred disloyalty.” Immanuel Kant “argued that the particularistic nature of ‘Jewish legislation’ made Jews ‘hostile to all other peoples’,” Friedrich Hegel opposed Jewish dietary and other Mosaic laws as limits on an ability to identify with “fellow Prussians” or provide dutiful civil service and Bruno Bauer demanded that Jews renounce private religious rules in exchange for “full legal rights” and citizenship.

However, European Jewish history offers no logical reason for U.S. sharia critics to forgo their “full legal” and Constitutional rights to free speech or to allow Islamic law in secular courts. All citizens, including Muslims, already hold full rights, which no one seeks to revoke. Freedom requires no fixing.

To Muslims, sharia means justice, we’re told. Ironically, accepting such law in U.S. courts would create injustice, by making American Muslims more equal than others. They’d get exclusive rights, namely civil court access to religious cannon, not allowed to anyone else. This would substantially differ from the right to privately adhere (within the law) to religious cannon, which America has always allowed. Reinforcing this truth, the courageous U.S. men and women of AILC have clearly enumerated,

“the law should treat people of all faiths equally, while protecting Muslims and non-Muslims alike from extremist attempts to use the legal instrument of shari‘ah (also known as Islamic jurisprudence, or fiqh) to incubate, within the West, a highly politicized and dangerous understanding of Islam that is generally known as “Islamism,” or “radical Islam.”

“We see no evidence that statutes like HB 4769 will adversely impact the free exercise of our personal pietistic observance of Islam, which is not in conflict with the U.S. or Michigan constitutions. We recognize that not only Muslims, but also Jews, Christians and all people of faith need the government to protect their right to peaceful assembly, mediation and arbitration free of coercion, … within the bounds of American constitutional principles. Therefore, we stand together as a diverse coalition in support of any legislation that serves to protect and integrate our communities into the fabric of this great nation, by strengthening our accountability to the laws of the land, and the constitutions of the various states in which we live.”

If sharia were advanced, progressive, wonderful and “brilliant,” its truth and beauty could withstand all criticism and questions. But sharia raises a major reg flag, in banning free speech and inquiry. How it would play out in the U.S. is perhaps best examined by looks at Britain and Germany, where all sharia‘s ills stand fully exposed. One needs no PhD or LD to realize that officially accepting any part of a legal system so often demonstrably at odds with our own would, yes, prescribe genuine national disaster.

If anything, intense pressure from closet Muslim radicals for U.S. sanction of sharia should push every state that can to pass its own bill as quickly as possible.

________________________________
NOTES

[1] Andrew G. Bostom, “Sharia-sanctioned marital rape in Britain—and North America,” American Thinker,Oct. 15, 2010,, citing “Is there such a thing as marital rape?,” AMJAonline Jurisprudence Section, Association of Muslim Jurists in America, May 30, 2007, (first viewed 10/15/2010). Based on sharia, the influential Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America insists that marital rape is not a crime. The imams actually approve of felony attacks on wives. In 2007, a husband asked AMJA,“Is there such a thing as marital rape in the shariah?…is a man permitted to FORCE his wife to have sexual intercourse with him? … she is naashiz and unwilling to have coitus.” Fatwa # 2982 replied,

“For a wife to abandon the bed of her husband without excuse is haram [forbidden]. It is one of the major sins and the angels curse her until the morning as we have been informed by the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace). She is considered nashiz [rebellious] under these circumstances. As for the issue of forcing a wife to have sex, if she refuses, this would not be called rape, even though it goes against natural instincts and destroys love and mercy, and there is a great sin upon the wife who refuses; and Allah Almighty is more exalted and more knowledgeable.”

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She was previously an Associate Editor at Forbes, where she worked upwards of 12 years (1978-1990), and an editor and staff writer at several other publications. She is also a poet. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org.

The Anti-Defamation League’s Flat-Footed, Off-Key Shouter

An open letter to the head of the ADL, denouncing his condemnations of those who see Sharia as a threat to American values and liberty.

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Aug. 18, 2011

Dear Mr. Foxman,

For centuries Vilna occupied a special place in the hearts and minds of Europe’s Jewish communities. People celebrated the city as a study center, replete with libraries, schools, poets, playwrights, rich Jewish culture — and especially, learned rabbis and Jewish legal intellects.

From Rabbi Samuel of Babylonia to Rabbi Gershom of Germany, scholars throughout Jewish history taught the people to adapt to their host nations — and never demand the reverse. Rabbis also prized those students blessed with generosity and sufficient wisdom and humility to admit their errors and apologize to injured parties. No one is perfect, of course, but they correctly tutored Jewish men and women that those trying to achieve these charitable goals (among others) would at least reach goodness.

Alas, as a native of Vilna and child survivor of the Holocaust, none could have shouted more obstreperously than did your Aug. 10 JTA op-ed, headlined “Shout down the Sharia myth makers.” Leaders do not shout. They speak, listen and continue to learn. Through off-key cheer-leading, you merely highlighted your own ignorance.

“The separation of church and state embodied in U.S. and state constitutions,” you wrote, renders completely unnecessary, proposed “anti-Sharia bills” in several states. Our constitution already “prohibits our courts from applying or considering religious law in any way that would constitute government advancement of or entanglement with religious law.”

Obviously, it would contradict every bedrock American principle to force any U.S. resident — whether citizen, legal resident, or illegal alien — to unwillingly comply with religious law. On this we agree. There, our agreement ends.

For you also allege that the bills — addressing recently exposed U.S. state court outrages imposing foreign laws that infringed upon constitutional law and universal human rights alike — were based not on reality or actual decisions. The bills rest on “prejudice and ignorance,” you claim, advanced through “myth making … about the threat of Sharia” in the U.S. These ills, you further assert, have effected “camouflaged bigotry” against Islam and Muslims.

Theoretically, American courts should strictly adhere to U.S. constitutional law concerning any and all religious practices, edicts or canons. But the record could not be more clear: they too often err on the side of foreign law — and make no apology.

Criminal defendants asked U.S. courts, as I noted to you in March 2011, to substitute Islamic laws in lieu of domestic statutes. In Massachusetts, a federal court denied the motion of jihad-financiers to excuse their terror-funding tax fraud via First Amendment religious freedom guarantees, which they asserted to protect their rights to provide Islamically-mandated “charity.” Based on sharia, however, a New Jersey court did absolve wife beating and rape before that state’s appeals court reversed its ruling. And a Florida court similarly ordered parties in a civil dispute to follow Islamic, not U.S. law.

Face it, Mr. Foxman: for decades, U.S. courts have also miserably failed Muslim women and children on foundational precepts. On Mar. 24, 1986, for example, Laila Malak lost her 14-year old son and 9-year-old daughter when California’s appeals bench enforced a Beirut sharia custody ruling — given without her knowledge or participation, and allowing only 15 days from her post-facto notification to mount what would almost assuredly have been a futile “appeal.”

Sharia courts always give custody of minor children to fathers, a fact mentioned in footnote 2 to the California’s appeals bench decision. Married to Abdul in 1970 in Beirut, Laila in 1976 fled its bloody religious war with him and their son Fadi, and bore Ruha Jan. 25, 1977, in Abu Dhabi. In July 1982, without Abdul’s permission (and therefore against Islamic law), Laila moved with her children to her brother’s San Jose home, where she filed for a divorce and custody. Santa Clara county superior court denied three attempts by Abdul to enforce a Nov. 1982 Abu Dhabi sharia order that gave him custody, without due process, Laila’s knowledge or court consideration of the children’s “best interests.”

Simultaneously, however, Abdul had secured a Beirut sharia custody order — also without due process or the consideration of children’s “interests” requisite in U.S. courts. Ostensibly, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA) allows “comity” only for foreign rulings that hail from “legal institutions similar in nature” to U.S. courts — with “reasonable notice and opportunity to be heard” for everyone. What should apply, however, does not always.

Sharia courts are not “similar in nature” to U.S. courts, Mr. Foxman. As strictly Islamic judiciaries — neither secular nor civil — these dictatorial forums often force religious law on unwilling victims without recourse. Likely, Laila Malak has never seen her kids again. By contrast, Jewish law would not allow this; nor would a Jewish Beit Din ask that its decision replace U.S. criminal, civil or secular law.

Laila Malak’s tragic case could and would have been avoided had California previously adopted something like the American Laws for American Courts (ALAC) bills recently passed in Tennessee (May 2010), Louisiana (Aug. 2010) or Arizona (Apr. 2011). While the bills vary somewhat, none mentions sharia, contrary to your assertions regarding the Tennessee and Louisiana laws.

Since the 1970s, in dozens of similar cases, American courts nationwide applied sharia in lieu of constitutional laws. Albeit incomplete, a review of state courts and appellate benches produced manifold instances of “unconstitutional application of foreign and religious law in our judicial system.” Whatever their total, one cannot accurately describe cases unearthed thus far, as “a proverbial solution in search of a problem,” as you want us to believe. For the women and children affected they were life-destroying cataclysms.

No American, nor any Jewish leader, should accept that. You head an institution founded to defend and protect the Jewish people from anti-Semitism. Mr. Foxman, in Islamic nations, sharia laws implement institutional discrimination against Jewish people and other non-Muslims. Sharia demands and requires non-Muslim subservience. Who are you to defend it? How dare you?

With or without your unwarranted shouting, many courageous citizens, state and national legislators fortunately have acted, and will so continue, to prevent future travesties of justice.

Based perhaps on the experiences of your early life, Mr. Foxman, many long trusted and believed you to represent the American Jewish mainstream. Nevertheless, you lack an ounce of the humility evident in most great men. Via your intolerance of scholarship — and declarations on subjects of which you know less than nothing — you have unfortunately relinquished the right to trust, on any account.

Sincerely yours,

Alyssa A. Lappen
Investigative journalist and poet
https://www.alyssaalappen.org

CC: U.S. Rep. Allen West
CC: Ami Eden, Editor in Chief, JTA
CC: Andrew McCarthy, Columnist and former U.S. Attorney
CC: Diana West, Syndicated columnist
CC: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Cong. Mount Sinai; Exec. V.P., New York Board of Rabbis
CC: Jeffrey Weisenfeld, Philanthropist and Trustee
CC: Morton Klein, CEO, Zionist Organization of America
CC: Debra Burlingame, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Tim Brown, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Binyamin L. Jolkovsky, Editor in Chief, Jewish World Review
CC: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Editor, InFocus, Jewish Policy Center
CC: Gary Rosenblatt, Jewish Week
CC: Susan Rosenbluth, Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion
CC: Rick Greenfield, Editor, Jewish Ledger
CC: Steven Baum, Editor, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism

_____________________________________________________________________________________

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She was previously an Associate Editor at Forbes, where she worked upwards of 12 years (1978-1990), and an editor and staff writer at several other publications. She is also a poet. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org.

Is a ‘Little Bit of Sharia’ Okay?

By Alyssa A. Lappen and Andrew G. Bostom
American Thinker | Jul. 25, 2011

Some Americans argue that U.S. civil and criminal legal codes and courts should recognize Islamic law (sharia), as applied to Muslim families, at least. But sharia critics need point no further than Australia to show the utter incoherence of that contention.

Polygamy is illegal in Australia, as is marriage of underage women and children.

Nevertheless, Australia accepts

“valid Muslim polygamist marriages, lawfully entered into overseas,… with second and third wives and their children able to claim welfare and other benefits,”

according to The Australian legal affairs editor Chris Merritt. Australia accepts them, even though in many such marriages a woman is “under [Australia’s] lawful marriage age.”

In effect, Australia has allowed a parallel legal system — operating against its own statutes as a sort of illegal “shadow system” — to take hold.

Courts and attorneys down under may be largely “oblivious,” but sharia has taken root there, according to legal research by academics Ann Black and Kerrie Sadie to be published Jul 25 in The New South Wales Law Journal. In a 2008 survey, they found that 90% of Australian Muslims adhere to its civil laws and reject sharia.

Yet the researchers also found that, under the radar, many Australian Muslims have also long observed Islamic traditions and sharia, particularly in family matters. Not all Australian Muslims register new marriages taking place there, for example. Since Islamic law endorses polygamous and underage marriages, some families seal marital vows solely with religious ceremonies, breaching Australia’s Marriage Act. A man may take multiple wives (marry polygamously) — or take a wife or wives below the age at which Australia confers majority, allowing men and women to marry with “informed consent,” of their own volition.

The Australian Muslim push for broad acceptance of sharia has not occurred in a vacuum, however. In North America, U.S. and Canadian Muslim organizations and leaders likewise advocate for adaptation of sharia laws in as many venues as possible.

Jamal A. Badawi, a onetime board member of the U.S. arm of the global Muslim Brotherhood, naturalized Canadian, self-styled Christian-Islamic relations expert — and director of the MB’s Consultative Council of North America (CCNA) and the U.S. Hamas arm, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted Holy Land Foundation co-conspirator — seeks Western legalization of polygamy for Muslims.

Islam does not require second wives, so Muslims in the West must “follow the laws,” Badawi wrote in a May 2005 Islam Online fatwa. Yet he claims that Western prohibition of second wives for Muslims denies “a particular right according to [our] own sharia.” Western democracies should “reciprocate” what Badawi considers Islamic tolerance of religious minority worship, teachings, family law, and estate division with equal “autonomy in [Islamic] issues … , including marriage.” They should except their own laws to legalize Muslim sharia, making Islamic polygamy “quiet [sic] legitimate,” and superior to Western secular laws allowing homosexual marriage.

Often, he claims, no “solution would be better than polygamy” — for men with barren wives “instinctively aspir[ing] to have children or heirs,” for example, or whose “chronically ill” wives they must divorce or forever “suppress … instinctive sexual needs” and secretly take “one or more illicit sex partners.” Forget women’s wants or needs. Polygamy is an “optional solution,” Badawi claims.

Clerics at the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) — an offshoot of the North American Imams Federation (NAIF), describing itself as “a fiqh council, basically” — likewise extol sharia-endorsed polygamy. AMJA currently encourages Muslim Americans to engage in polygamous marriages in the U.S., where polygamous marriages, in every state of the union, remain completely and totally illegal.

In early Aug. 2007, a Muslim questioner of AMJA clerics stated that “as long as you don’t register your marriage to the registrar, it is okay to have more than one wife here in the states[.]” A friend argued that “the law prohibits marrying more than one is against shaariah so, it is okay for us to break it[.]” In essence, he asked whether Islam makes it legal or forbidden (“haram”) to abide by U.S. law.

Al-Haj replied in favor of Islam (emphasis added):

Polygamy is halal [permissible] in Islam and may be highly recommended when the number of females is bigger than that of males to afford all females a decent life that suffices their physiologic, emotional and other needs. The US law about polygamy is against the Islamic law, for no one can make prohibited that which Allah specifically made allowable.

A Muslim should respect U.S. laws on polygamy, al-Haj also suggested, only so as not to harm the reputations of either polygamy or Muslims, or harm his community or family, including “the second partner and her children from him.” Since “many celebrities hav[e] extramarital affairs,” who are not prosecuted, al-Haj concluded, the Muslim man should perhaps consult “a legal expert” on the lawfulness of entering an “undocumented marriage” (as in “undocumented worker,” i.e., illegal alien).

In Oct. 2007 AMJA cleric Main Khalid Al-Qudah also approved a Muslim’s request for Islamic validation of polygamy in another religious ruling (fatwa 2134). Polygamy, he wrote:

is permissible for different reasons, like:

1- The sexual energy of men is more than that of women in general. So, in some cases, one wife is not enough to fulfill the conjugal desire of her husband

2- Pregnancy and delivery negatively affect the shape and physical attraction that women have.

3- World wide, the percentage of females is always more than that of males, eventually, there must be a solution, either to permit adultery and prostitution, or to allow polygamy

4- One husband could take care of more than one wife at the same time; socially, financially, and even sexually as I mentioned above. However, the opposite is not right because of the physical and psychological capability that Allah the all mighty gave men.

Anyone who thinks a little bit of sharia is a-okay should reconsider. A little bit of sharia is akin to being “a little bit” pregnant.

A nation must consider whether all its citizens should be governed by secular law — or not.

Once sharia is “a little bit accepted,” there is no going back. That explains, moreover, why Muslim clerics would like nothing better than to introduce a little bit of sharia at a time.

A Foreign Policy Institute Obamamania Love Fest

Seeing the President as a “Born Again Neocon”

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | May 24, 2011

Muhammed Ali (1769-1849)

To hear former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht tell it, Ottoman governor Muhammed Ali and his Menemencioglu tribe supporter, Ahmed Bey, spawned Egypt’s current parliamentary and democratic longings in the 1830s. Gerecht presumably somehow credits the Macedonian renegade’s 1832-1840 [1] effort to usurp control of the Nile region from his Ottoman Turk masters and effect his own Egyptian empire. In any case, Ali’s military prowess brought the Sublime Porte to the verge of ruin, forcing the Ottomans, in desperation, to seek unheard of aid from infidels — that era’s great Western powers. [2]

Gerecht posited his theory of Egypt’s glorious 19th century democratic nascence at a May 19, 2011 University Club gathering in Manhattan hosted by Washington D.C.’s Foreign Policy Institute. The “organic discussions” initiated in 1830s Egypt were “œessentially shut off by dictatorship in the 1950s,” a situation duplicated across “the entire Middle East,” Gerecht said. Strangely, he did not hint at what he believes to have thwarted Egyptian democracy from 1840 to the 1950s. Colonialism, no doubt, although it actually conveyed any and all enlightenment to have stuck.

Gerecht’s historical conception underpins his enthusiasm for the new push for Egyptian democracy. He lauded President Barack Obama’s hopes for “Democracy in the Muslim World and democracy in the Arab world.” From initially appearing “a little bit George H.W. Bush and a little bit more Frantz Fanon,” Obama has morphed, growing “as the great Arab revolt has unfolded, a little bit more George W. Bush,” Gerecht said. Fellow FPI panelist, historian Max Boot, concurred. While still “very critical” of Bush even during his first years in office, Obama has “done a 180 in many ways” and now feels “compelled in the same way that Bush became a born again neocon,” Boot approvingly observed.

Reuel Marc Gerecht.

Granted, Gerecht is not completely dewey-eyed. “It’s going to be a rough ride,” he admits. He correctly expects Egypt’s imminent elections, whether in September 2011 or later, to win the Muslim Brotherhood at least 25% of the vote and seats in parliament, perhaps more. Gerecht also recognizes that upon winning such a margin, the MB will propose a legislative “vote to cancel the peace treaty with Israel” and attempt to formally institute as many aspects of sharia (Islamic law) as possible, succeeding in many (though he naÃ¯vely thinks, not all) aspects.

Unlike pragmatic realists, Gerecht said he does not “have a problem” with the likely results. “I want to see the Brotherhood do well enough so they can be a force,” he asserts. “I want to see great debates happen. The only way that you’re going to get evolution in this affair is for people to let rip.” He foresees a replay of “organic discussions” he imagines Egypt entertained nearly two centuries ago.

Nevermind that the Muslim Brotherhood now hopes to win 50% of the vote. [3] Nevermind that a recent poll found that at least 60% of Egyptians maintain fundamentalist Islamic views, 85% regard Islam’s political role as a “positive” (only 2% say it’s negative), and only 20% portray themselves as secular. [4] Nevermind that 91% of Egyptian girls routinely suffer female genital mutilation, [5] while Egyptian clerics routinely insist that Islamic law requires the practice. [6]

Boot differed slightly on U.S. “devotion to democracy” which he said insufficiently recognizes that the “actual messy, … semi-democracy” with which Egypt will emerge may “be more hostile to us and to Israel.” The U.S. should abandon its “overly idealistic” late 20th century view that everything will be fine given an uncompromised vote. “We should get our hands dirty here,” he said, and fund “more moderate, more secular, more pro-Western parties,” as done in the Cold War for pro-U.S. Forces.

Gerecht is not the only one with a distorted view of Egyptian democratic traditions.

Yes, in 1866 Khedive Ismail decreed that an advisory body be formed. [7] Ismail likewise encouraged cultural development. He initiated construction of what’s now called the Suez Canal, and increased the size of both the Alexandria port and trade with the West. [8] Ismail also expanded Egypt culturally. In 1770, for example, the Khedive commissioned Giuseppe Verdi to compose the opera Aida, which premiered in January 1771 at the recently constructed Cairo opera house. [9]

Arab League secretary general Amre Moussa points to such change as more democratic than any European structure then extant. [10] Former Egyptian dissident Saad E. Ibrahim has long expressed similar views. Not surprisingly, the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy boost them, from a strategic Washington D.C. office headed by Muslim Brother Ali Abuzakook. [11] Ibrahim reiterated his idyllic image of Egyptian democratic revolution at an Apr. 5 Middle East Forum lunch. [12]

Attributing anything at all revolutionary to Egypt’s 1866 parliament, however, is utterly preposterous. The U.K. Parliament predated Egypt’s dictatorially mandated advisory council by centuries. [13] Russia established its nobles’ Boyar Duma in 1547; a century and two-thirds later, in 1711, Peter the Great transferred the Duma’s genuine powers to a new Governing Senate. [14] Norway first convened its Parliament in 1814; [15] French revolutions spawned public representation starting in 1830. Austria-Hungary and Romania both established parliaments in 1866. [16] Other European democratic efforts undoubtedly abound. To say nothing of North America, where 13 colonies established their first representative government in 1774, where New England towns for more than a century before that held annual representative meetings — and each colony self-governed on most internal affairs.

Under close scrutiny, Egypt’s little democratic developments actually look far less significant than Gerecht suggests. He appears completely oblivious to the fact that, even at its apogee in the 1920s, Egypt’s secular parliamentary heyday barely existed. Moreover, by the 1930s the Muslim Brotherhood had advanced considerably in its original Islamiyya center, and in Cairo and other populous areas too.

Indeed, Muhammad Heykal published his hagiography of Muslim prophet Muhammad in 1935, according to Dr. Andrew G. Bostom. Other prominent “liberal nationalists” later successfully published similar pious hortatory Islamic volumes, ushering in what Nadav Safran termed the “Reactionary Phase” of Egyptian political thought and discourse. Brotherhood adherents believed secular Western ideologies and constitutions had failed. Islam thus re-emerged as an infinitely more popular alternative. As Safran noted in 1961,

Haykal’s argument (i.e., already in the mid-1930s) that the Egyptian cultural soil was inhospitable any but Muslim inspired ideals and values seemed to receive resounding confirmation from the events and met enthusiastic approval from the public.

Since the 1930s, and certainly after the collapse of the Wafd (Delegation) Party in the wake of World War II, Egypt’s populace demolished imported Western ideologies. Islamic leaders successfully replaced them by traditional loyalties to the Arab and larger Islamic communities, Bostom reported, providing a succinct description of the phenomenon, penned by Gabriel Warbeurg in 1983:

[I]nstead of the principles of the French Revolution and British parliamentarism, Islam re-emerged as the main source for government.”

In the 83 years since Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood, his heirs and its leaders had time and resources aplenty to develop a network in Egypt and worldwide, cultivate considerable financial aid from foreign governments (including Saudi Arabia) [17] and build a web of “charitable” funds—headed by “spritual” leader Yusuf al Qaradawi. The latter, an ardent supporter of jihad, suicide bombing, and wife beating, runs dozens of illegal and legal businesses to finance planned government takeovers. U.S. and European authorities have long known of MB plans written in 1982 [18] and 1991 respectively, [19] to impose sharia law globally and in North America. Organized and disciplined, the MB accumulated enough political expertise in the last near-century to dwarf any skills opponents might have retained from Egypt’s brief “democratic” experiment in the fairly distant past.

That MB experience hardly represents peacefulness, regardless of the latest MB spin. The organization parented every known Sunni terrorist organization today, and works closely with Hezbollah and Iran.

MB Shura Council member Abdul Moneim abu el-Fotouh, now making an Egyptian presidential bid, [20] in 1970 founded Jamaa Islamiya (JI). [21] That group assassinated President Anwar el Sadat [22] and in 1997 murdered 71 tourists in Luxor. [23] JI leader Karam Zohdi in 1981 received a life sentence for Sadat’s murder. But in 1997, Zohdi reputedly played a “major role” in a JI renunciation of violence and Egypt freed him in 2003.[24] The JI renunciation was either only local, or only temporarily expedient — or both — for in 2006, JI reportedly joined forces in several al Qaeda liquid bomb plots. [25]

Whenever convenient, el-Fotouh likewise routinely presents himself as a moderate. [26] That anyone ever believes him constitutes a sick joke.

In Jan. 2011, el-Fotouh said that the murder of 21 Coptic Christians praying in their church on New Years’ Eve was “a criminal act with Zionist…finger prints” to “sow hatred among Muslims and Coptic Christians.” Egyptian Muslims could not have murdered committed this atrocity. [27] Similarly, in Aug. 2006, el-Fotouh told the New York Times it was ‘better to support a Hezbollah-Iranian agenda than an ‘American-Zionist’ one.” He also accused the U.S. of invading Iraq only “to divide Muslims.”

In March 2003, el-Fotouh supported Islamic scholars who performed their ‘basic religious duty‘ in inciting Muslims to join jihad against the U.S. Al Azhar had rightly urged them to “defend themselves and their faith” against an “enemy” — stepping “on Muslims’ land” — which the clerics called “a new Crusader battle targeting our land, honor, faith and nation.” The al Azhar decree amounted to its clerics’ “attempt … to fulfill their duty before God,” since the U.S. planned “to enslave the Arab nation.” In Oct. 2006, the U.S. banned el-Fotouh from entering due to his many such past statements. [28]

Since New Year’s Eve, Muslims have only increased wholesale attacks against Egypt’s Coptic Christians—an estimated 12 million, up to 15% of Egypt’s people. [29] Perhaps since “divine” sharia law sanctions criminal abuses for innumerable inhuman reasons, Egypt’s military stands idly by, watching. Now, the MB has now joined a coalition with Egypt’s JI, increasing risks for its Christian minority. [30]

In April 2011, Saad Ibrahim dubbed Egypt’s turmoil a “lotus revolution” after a native Cairo flower. But the Muslim Brotherhood will assuredly gain control of Egypt by “democratic” vote. At that juncture, logical observers can expect to see Cairo water its “lotus” flowers with rivers of blood that could make Khomeini’s slaughter of Iranian civilians look like a Sunday picnic.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist focusing on the Middle East and Islam. She is a former Senior Fellow for the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She was previously an Associate Editor at Forbes, where she worked upwards of 12 years (1978-1990), and an editor and staff writer at several other publications. She is also a poet. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org.

NOTES:

[1] C. Kafadar H. Karateke C. Fleischer, “Historians of the Ottoman Empire: Ahmed Bey,” http://www.ottomanhistorians.com/database/pdf/menemenciogluahmed_en.pdf (viewed 5/20/2011).
[2] Efraim Karsh and Inari Karsh, Empires of the Sand: The Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East, 1789-1923 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 5, 27-42, 48, 69, 74-75, 289.
[3] “Muslim Brotherhood announce party chief, seek 50% of parliament,” al-Ahram, Apr. 30, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/11085/Egypt/Politics-/Muslim-Brotherhood-announce-party-chief,-seek–of-.aspx (viewed 5/20/2011).
[4] Doug Schoen, “Why the Muslim Brotherhood will win,” Fox News, Feb. 10, 2011, http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/02/10/muslim-brotherhood-win/ (viewed 5/17/2011).
[5] Armen Hareyan, “UNICEF calls on Egypt to end female genital cutting,” ExmaxHealth, Sept. 12, 2007, http://www.emaxhealth.com/48/15932.html Michael Slackman, “In Egypt, a rising push against genital cutting,” New York Times, Sept. 19, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/africa/20iht-20girls.7576384.html?pagewanted=print; “Female circumcision: 90% of childbearing women in Egypt” Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM) News Blog, Feb. 15, 2011, http://fgcdailynews.blogspot.com/2011/02/female-circumcision-90-percent-of.html (all viewed 5/22/2011).
[6] “Egyptian Shaykh: Muslim Scholars Say That FGM Is Either Obligatory or Commendable,” Translating Jihad, May 17, 2011, http://translating-jihad.blogspot.com/2011/05/egyptian-shaykh-muslim-scholars-say.html (viewed 5/17/2011).
[7] “Democracy is born,” al-Ahram, May 25-31, 2000, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/483/chrncls.htm (viewed 5/22/2011).
[8] “Alexandria,” ArchNet Digital Library, undated, http://archnet.org/library/places/one-place.jsp?place_id=1455&order_by=author&showdescription=1 (viewed 5/22/2011).
[9] Richard Willmer, “Music,” The Italian Language, undated, http://www.italian-language-study.com/italian-culture-abroad/music.htm (viewed 5/22/2011).
[10] Amre Moussa, Doha Debate Special Event, Qatar Foundation, Oct. 29, 2006, http://www.thedohadebates.com/debates/debate.asp?d=15&s=3&mode=transcript (viewed 5/22/2011).
[11] “Saad Eddin Ibrahim on democracy in the Arab world,” CSID Email Bulletin, Nov. 11, 2006, https://www.csidonline.org/publications/csid-bulletins/58/356#succor (viewed 5/22/2011); Washington, D.C. CSID director Aly Abuzaakook https://www.csidonline.org/about-csid (5/22/2011) is also former American Muslim Council (AMC) executive director, former International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) publishing chief, and former head of the Hamas-funding, designated terrorist organization United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). Steven Emerson, “Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade,” Jul. 31, 2008, http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/357.pdf, pp. 16-17, citing “Aly. R. Abuzaakouk, Guest CV,” Live Dialogue, Islam Online, undated, http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/Guestcv.asp?hGuestID=OVzzHu (blocked link), now at http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20080416030303/http://www.islamonline.net/livedialogue/english/Guestcv.asp?hGuestID=OVzzHu; Nadifa Abdi, “MYNA moves,” Islamic Horizons, Feb. 1988, pp. 16-17, and U.S. State Dept. FOIA documents, case 20070224, Dec. 10, 2007 (all viewed 3/4/2011).
[12] Saad Ibrahim remarks, Middle East Forum, Apr. 5, 2011. This reporter was present.
[13] Lionel Cecil Jane, “Coming of Parliament: England from 1350 to 1660,” Story of the Greatest Nations: From the Dawn of History to the Twentieth Century, ed. Edward S. Sliis, A.M. And Charles F. Horne, MS, (New York: Francis R. Niglutsch, 1905), http://www.archive.org/stream/catalogueofcentr00brisiala/catalogueofcentr00brisiala_djvu.txt; See also L.C. Jane, http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Parliament-England-1350-1660/dp/1459000455/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306086992&sr=1-1-fkmr1 (both viewed 5/11/2011).
[14] “Boyar Duma,” The Free Encyclopedia, http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Boyar+Duma (viewed 5/22/2011).
[15] “Parliament of Norway,” Wikipedia, as modified Apr. 13, 2011, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Norway (viewed 5/22/2011).
[16] Josephus Nelson Larned, The New Larned History for Ready Reference, Reading and Research, Vol. 1, (complete revised edition, 1922, p. 705, digitized by Google Books. Claudia Ursutiu, “Jewish Question in the Romanian Parliament (1866-1919),” Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of antiSemitism, http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/reslist.html (viewed 5/22/2011).
[17] Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, “Shari’a financing and the coming ummah,” Chapter 28, Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency, ed. Jeffrey Norwitz, (U.S. Naval War College: Jun. 2008), pp. 389-404, https://www.alyssaalappen.org/wp-content/uploads/sharia-financing-and-the-coming-ummah-by-ehrenfeld-and-lappen.pdf (first viewed 6/2/2008); Ehrenfeld and Lappen, “The truth about the Muslim Brotherhood,” Front Page Magazine, Jun. 16, 2006, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=3996 (first viewed 6/16/2006).
[18] Patrick Poole, “The Muslim Brotherhood ‘Project’,” Front Page Magazine, May 11, 2006, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4475 (first viewed 5/11/2006).
[19] Mohamed Akram, “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America, 5/22/1991,” www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/HLF/Akram_GeneralStrategicGoal.pdf (first viewed 9/18/2007), as cited in Lappen, “Yousef Qaradawi’s U.S. Minions,” Act for America Special Report, Feb. 25, 2011, https://www.alyssaalappen.org/2011/02/25/yusuf-qaradawis-u-s-minions/ (viewed 2/25/2011).
[20] “Muslim Brotherhood leader to run for Egyptian presidency,” Sydney Herald Sun, May 11, 2011, http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/muslim-brotherhood-leader-to-run-for-egyptian-presidency/story-e6frf7jx-1226054262936; “Egypt’s Muslims design presidential candidate for U.S. nod,” Debkafile, May 13, 2011, http://www.debka.com/article/20930/ (both viewed 5/19/2011).
[21] “Abdel Moneim Abu el-Fotouh,” Egypt Today, Mar. 5, 2006, http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=4686 (viewed 5/19/2011).
[22] “AJ Islamiya and Zawahiri’s EIJ assassinate Sadat,” America and the Mid-East, Xtimeline, Oct. 6, 1981, http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=12888 (viewed 5/22/2011).
[23] Simon Reeve, “The Liquid bombs plot: al Qaeda corrupts a generation,” The Mirror, Aug. 12, 2006, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/THE+LIQUID+BOMBS+PLOT:+Al-Qaeda+corrupts+a+generation-a0149377156 (viewed 5/22/2011).
[24] Lamia Radi, “Egypt frees leader of Jamaa Islamiya,” Middle East Online, 9/29/2003, http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=7187=7187&format=0 (viewed 5/22/2011).
[25] Reeve, “Liquid bombs plot: al Qaeda corrupts a generation,” The Mirror, Aug. 12, 2006, http://www.thefreelibrary.com/THE+LIQUID+BOMBS+PLOT:+Al-Qaeda+corrupts+a+generation-a0149377156 (viewed 5/22/2011).
[26] “Muslim Brotherhood leader to run for Egyptian presidency,” Sydney Herald Sun, May 11, 2011,http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/muslim-brotherhood-leader-to-run-for-egyptian-presidency/story-e6frf7jx-1226054262936; “Egypt’s Muslims design presidential candidate for U.S. nod,” Debkafile, May 13, 2011, http://www.debka.com/article/20930/ (both viewed 5/19/2011).
[27] “Islamists blame Jews for Coptic Church bombing,” IPT News, Jan. 3, 2011, http://www.investigativeproject.org/2468/islamists-blame-jews-for-coptic-church-bombing (first viewed 1/3/2011).
[28] Lappen, “Islam’s Useful Idiots,” American Thinker, Oct. 23, 2006, http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/10/islams_useful_idiots.html (viewed 10/23/2006).
[29] Egypt’s Coptic Christians, http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/copticchristians.htm; see also Michelle Boortstein, “Egypt’s uprising stirs fears of persecution of minority Coptic Christians,” Washington Post, Feb. 4, 2011 (both viewed 5/22/2011).
[30] Michael Weiss, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Salafi pact puts Egyptian Christians in great danger,” Telegraph, May 13, 2011, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/michaelweiss/100087770/the-muslim-brotherhoods-salafi-pact-puts-egyptian-christians-in-great-danger/; “Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader visits Jamaa Islamiya in Tripoli,” Lebanon News, May 13, 2011, http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=270587 (both viewed 5/13/2011).

Allen West Responds to Obama’s Demands on Israel

By Andrew Bostom and Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | May 20, 2011

According to The Blaze, Congressman Allen West decried President Obama’s insistence that Israel return to the 1949 Armistice borders established when the nascent Jewish State thwarted the Arab Muslim jihad invasion. West characterized this demand as the “most egregious foreign policy decision” of the Obama administration, while voicing his concern that implementing such a policy “could be the beginning of the end as we know it for the Jewish state.” Elaborating, West further observed:

The pre-1967 borders endorsed by President Obama would deny millions of the world’s Jews access to their holiest site and force Israel to return the strategically important Golan Heights to Syria, a known state-sponsor of terrorism. Resorting to the pre-1967 borders would mean a full withdrawal by the Israelis from the West Bank and the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Make no mistake, there has always been a Nation of Israel and Jerusalem has been and must always be recognized as its rightful capital.

He concluded with these apt critiques of Obama’s pronouncement — a morally cretinous geostrategic disaster:

President Obama has not stood for Israel or the Jewish people and has made it clear where the United States will stand when Palestine attempts to gain recognition of statehood by the United Nations. The President should focus on the real obstacle to security- the Palestinian leadership and its ultimate goal to eliminate Israel and the Jewish people.

The Obama Man-child’s animus toward Israel as unmasked by Allen West reflects Obama’s deeply ingrained Third Worldism.

Sylvia Haim, our greatest scholar of Arab nationalism, knew that this ideology was simply a forme fruste (an apt medical term for the incomplete, yet still diagnostic manifestations of a disease entity) of jihad. And Haim observed in 1955 that even the Arab Nationalist Ba’ath Party founder, Michel Aflaq — a Christian, or more appositely, an “Islamo-Christian” — insisted that in the end, Islam comprised the essence of this pseudo-secular political dogma:

Another feature of the modern doctrine which fits in with the Muslim past is the emphasis which both of them lay on communal solidarity, discipline and cooperation. The umma in Islam is a solidary entity, and its foremost duty is to answer the call of the jihad. This brings us to the third feature which both modern and ancient systems have in common, to wit the glorification of one’s own group. The traditional attitude of the Muslims to the outside world is one of superiority, and the distinction between the Dar al-harb, Dar al-Islam, and Dar as-sulh, is an ever present one in the mind of the Muslim jurist. It may therefore be said in conclusion of this modern doctrine of nationalism, that although it introduces into Islam features which may not accord with strict orthodoxy, it is the least incompatible perhaps of modern European doctrines with the political thought and political experience of Sunni Islam.

Haim (in 1962) quoted Aflaq:

Muhammad was the epitome of all the Arabs, so let all the Arabs today be Muhammad … Islam was an Arab movement and its meaning was the renewal of Arabism and its maturity … [even] Arab Christians will recognize that Islam constitutes for them a national culture in which they must immerse themselves so that they may understand and love it, and so that they may preserve Islam as they would preserve the most precious element in their Arabism.

Haim concluded in 1962 that “For Aflaq, Islam is [emphasis in original] Arab nationalism[.]”

It is now painfully apparent — witness these remarkable and distressingly stupid comments from 2009 (“if you actually took the number of Muslim-Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world”) and further consider the continued obsequious behavior toward the Muslim world, added to relentless pressure upon Israel for land and security concessions — that Barack Obama’s dull-witted adherence to Franz Fanon-style, “Wretched of the Earth”-inspired Third Worldism could be described as follows:

For Obama, Islam is Third Worldism.

Perhaps that is why this Man-child hates the Promised Land of Israel — certainly its Jewish inhabitants and their government. After all, Israel being the only modern, fully functioning pluralistic democracy amidst a barren landscape of Arab Muslim societies and their fanatical, theocratic, thugocratic, kleptocratic, and just plain lunacratic “governments.” But it is to these Muslim populations that the Man-child pays homage, while eagerly offering up as “tribute” — jizya — willing participation in the dismantling of Israel.

The contrast with Allen West’s staunch support for Israel — sound both geopolitically and morally — could not be starker.