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.

All Articles, Poems & Commentaries Copyright © 1971-2021 Alyssa A. Lappen
All Rights Reserved.
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What has happened to the Anti-defamation league?

Is opposition to sharia a social crime?

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Mar. 31, 2011

ADL now supports sharia. How can any supporter of civil rights defend the introduction of such barbaric “law” into the United States?

The following is an open letter addressed to the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

Dear Mr. Foxman —

I am absolutely appalled that ADL has smeared the name of a reputable attorney, David Yerushalmi alongside others who, unlike him, are indeed egregious in word and deed.

Attorney Yerushalmi was rankly faulted in a terribly unprofessional article some weeks ago. In my opinion, as a journalist of 35 years experience, this is a case in which he was genuinely libeled and I certainly hope he intends to sue. I believe he has a cause of action.

As you know, libel in America consists of stating something inaccurate (often intentionally) — and with purposeful malice. The article I note above contained no facts on which to base its opinions, and malice virtually dripped from the prose. In recent years, journalists have often made me ashamed of my lifelong profession, but this piece took the cake and the frosting as well. If it had any role, partial or otherwise, in your determination to add Mr. Yerushalmi to a list of hate-mongers, I would urge you to reconsider.

I have spoken with Mr. Yerushalmi as a source and find him one of the most precise attorneys I know. His information is absolutely credible. He thoroughly and exactly cites many Islamic law texts. He is never inaccurate. Never. He is certainly not the hateful man that you paint him.

Perhaps you are unaware that the national leadership of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), on the other hand, has repeatedly been identified by federal law-enforcement officials to have had links with terrorist organizations. This occurred in Nov. 2008 with the Holy Land Foundation Hamas and terror-financing case. The government obtained 108 unanimous verdicts on ALL 108 terror-financing, money laundering and tax fraud charges leveled against five HLF officers. Some of the funds they sent to Hamas had washed through CAIR accounts, proven by canceled check copies.

Federal evidence was again cited in the civil suit by the family of David Boim in the Chicago 7th Circuit Court of Appeals against the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) — CAIR’s predecessor and co-founder — in Dec. 2008. The federal judge in that case ruled that the CAIR predecessor — namely the IAP — was indeed inseparable from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim American Society and he held their agents responsible, fully and finally, for the $156 million judgment in the Boim’s case against them. Thus $156 million less is now available to fund Hamas terrorism.

Then in October 2010, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that hundreds of individuals and organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case — including CAIR — would NOT be delisted as unindicted co-conspirators, due to the preponderance of evidence against them. CAIR knew and knows that the evidence against its leadership and several CAIR chapters is indeed so strong that it could never have won an appeal, and did not even try. An appeal was filed by another North American Muslim Brotherhood organization with which you may not be familiar, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a subsidiary of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

It is a travesty that you brand as a hate monger a man legitimately attempting — via the U.S. courts — to legally defeat efforts of the above groups, among others, to increasingly impose Islamic law through secular U.S. civil courts and institutions. Unfortunately, the encroachment of these laws is not a “theory” but is a well-established fact.

In Florida, in the last few weeks, a judge ruled that a mosque must — under secular U.S. laws — follow sharia to resolve an internal dispute between members. Those suing came to America to ESCAPE sharia law. Yet now a U.S. court has ordered them to adhere to it. They will appeal this egregious decision, rightfully so.

A New Jersey judge ruled some months ago that a man who had badly beaten his wife had the right to do so, since sharia condones this practice. Fortunately, that decision was reversed on appeal.

In Massachusetts, about four years ago, the ACLU motioned for dismissal of criminal charges against three terrorists who fraudulently obtained charitable tax-exempt status to fund suicide murder. Sharia law requires Muslims to give 2.5% of their wealth annually to charity (zakat); funding jihad and jihad fighters are covered by several of eight religiously mandated means to allocate annual zakat payments. The ACLU cited these facts in its motion, arguing that raising monies to fund jihad, fraudulently or otherwise, is Constitutionally protected religious practice under the First Amendment. Fortunately, the federal district justices in Worcester, Ma. denied this motion point blank.

Do you suppose that any of the above instances are part, at best, of some wildly imaginative conspiracy theory? I assure you the ACLU motion to protect the religious freedom of fraudulently collected “tax-exempt” funds for jihad was quite real. I held and read the motion in my own hands, and reported on the case. The argument was all too real — albeit surreal.

Mr. Foxman, contrary to your claims in the ADL commentary on Mr. Yerushalmi, these cases are not the figment of some lunatic’s mind. Unfortunately, in fact, dozens of similar such cases nationwide demonstrate an orchestrated attempt to inject Islamic law into the U.S. secular legal codes, both on state and national levels. In those cases that the goals are achieved, these sharia laws provide exceptions for Muslims alone — to legal standards normally considered foundational to Western civilization — on a vast array of points and issues.

Another difficulty is that, unlike other kinds of religious law, sharia law is composed largely of edicts and regulations to be imposed upon non-Muslims. If it is allowed to continue to its logical terminus, therefore, the only possible conclusion of this trend would be complete decimation of all manner of constitutionally protected freedoms, including freedom of speech, “out of religious respect.” Consider the case of Uganda. Yes indeed, Idi Amin was educated in Saudi Arabia and ultimately he fled to and died there. While this aspect of Amin’s history was barely reported, he hoped to impose sharia law on Uganda. Let us recall the genocidal results.

Certainly we can demand respect for all faiths, without disallowing any criticism whatever. Look, for example, at your own criticism of Mel Gibson’s film on Christ. No one branded you a hatemonger. You merely expressed your opinion as a matter of constitutionally-protected free speech. And so it should be with all faiths — including Mohammed, Islam and sharia. How on earth can people learn any of its dark aspects if no one is allowed to speak on the subject without merciless and baseless accusations of hate mongering like those you leveled in this case.

You may recall Wafa Sultan, who lived under sharia, and spoke quite plainly against sharia and Islamic precepts on Al Jazera, shocking the Arab and Muslim worlds. She has now done so in America too.

I would think you’d support the Freedom Pledge that Dr. Sultan and her other fearless Former Muslims United co-founders — including Nonie Darwish, who lost her father to a suicide “martyr” mission — have sent to dozens of Muslim leaders across the U.S. They ask these leaders to pledge to protect religious freedom of apostates to Islam, namely to promise to openly oppose fatwas calling for apostates’ deaths, and do everything else possible to protect their freedoms from medieval — not to say unconstitutional and illegal — practices like the Islamic death penalty for public abandonment of faith. Only two Muslims have signed, God bless them both. That is no figment of imagination, either, nor are the fatwas calling for their deaths.

Florida U.S. Rep., Ret. Col. Allen West agrees with Mr Yerushalmi — that sharia proponents have put America’s secular laws under attack for years now and, via the judiciary, have already had considerable success eroding them. Having served two tours of duty in Iraq, Rep. West is familiar with the Islamic laws and has seen them in action on the ground.

That ADL is unaware of any of the above noted facts does not render “hate-mongers” of those Americans who pay keen attention to their surroundings and do not share your complacency.

Once upon a time, the ADL did excellent work to combat anti-Semitism, which of course was its founding mission. Here, the ADL has apparently taken the side of organizations that for decades have expressed zealous anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel — and indeed of the very concept (much less existence) of a Jewish state. They have done so both through their words at private organizational conferences, and writings in organizational publications and pseudo-academic journals — and with their money, for suicide bombers, in Jerusalem and Israel, among other things.

It is easy to find such statements and positions from their leadership over the last 30 years, and recently too. For years, dozens of hard-working non-profit organizations have researched these organizations to expose them. In several terrorism and related cases, the federal government has prevailed partly on the basis of their solid, professional research. That is but one way in which individuals dangerous to America (and Israel) were convicted of terror-related crimes, deported for fraudulent immigration applications or both.

Furthermore, in part, you label David Yerushalmi “extremist” for asking that the U.S. actually enforce existing immigration laws. You may not like it, but that is a legitimate political viewpoint, for legal reasons of course, but also for humanitarian considerations. It is certainly not grounds for the juvenile name-calling the ADL issued in this case. Actually, “undocumented workers” very often suffer horrendous landlord and employment abuses — and the highest rate of criminal assault, theft, fraud and so on targeting any population. For among those “undocumented workers” live tens of thousands of criminals. Indeed, several 9/11 hijackers were what some might, ten years later, call “undocumented workers.”

Taken together, these two positions in the ADL frontal attack on David Yerushalmi sadly suggest that the organization now opposes those who want only to uphold existing U.S. laws — legally, I might add — yet agrees with groups that regularly break U.S. laws, verbally and financially support anti-Semitism and terror, and have already in effect funded dozens of murders, perhaps even hundreds.

Agreed, there have been Jewish extremists. But they are very few and far between. More importantly, David Yerushalmi is not one of these. I think you do great disservice to the Anti-Defamation League and the time-honored fights against anti-Semitism and racism by siding with extreme, radical, hateful, proven terror-supporting organizations. They are intent upon demolishing his good name — and that of anyone else daring to criticize them or their agenda, much less their precepts of faith and religious law — and thereby to intimidate the American press and leadership into silence. Surely you should recognize this as the tactic of brown shirts.

Opposing the emergence of sharia law in American public life hardly exemplifies racism, or extremism. It is merely an effort to maintain and enforce the Constitutional separation of church and state, based on sad and very real experience over the last decade in particular.

Moreover, it is the earnest effort of many concerned minorities who ought to be ADL’s natural allies — former Sudanese slaves, former Muslims fearful for their lives (even in America), Maronite Christians, Hindus whose temples have been smashed by the thousands, Coptic Christians with families suffering mass slaughter (hundreds burned, alive, in churches), now, in Egypt and on and on.

Yet you attack Mr. Yerushalmi as an extremist.

Shame on you. Shame!

I read your mother’s oral history and am fortunate to have known and to know other survivors of the Vilna ghetto and Stutthoff, generally unknown death camps in its orbit and death marches. They bestowed a sacred blessing and this indelible lesson, to speak out, not to remain silent. Your mother, I think, did not save you from the Holocaust to do something so atrocious as this.

Best regards —

Alyssa A. Lappen

Investigative journalist and poet
https://www.alyssaalappen.org

CC: U.S. Rep. Allen West
CC: Diana West, Syndicated columnist
CC: Andrew McCarthy, Columnist and former U.S. Attorney
CC: Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, Cong. Mount Sinai and President, New York Board of Rabbis
CC: Jeffrey Weinsenfeld, Philanthropist and Trustee
CC: Debra Burlingame, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Tim Brown, Co-founder, 9/11 Families
CC: Editor in Chief, Jewish World Review
CC: Gary Rosenblatt, Jewish Week
CC: Matthew R.J. Brodsky, Editor, InFocus, Jewish Policy Center
CC: Rick Greenfield, Editor, Jewish Ledger
CC: Susan Rosenbluth, Editor, Jewish Voice and Opinion
CC: Steven Baum, Editor, Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism

_____________________________________________________________________
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor 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).

Sharia in action in Aceh. How can any supporter of civil rights defend the introduction of such barbaric “law” into the United States?

EDITOR’S NOTE: In addition to the items listed above, it should also be pointed out that the ADL has decided in its article to smear David Yerushalmi as a racist, as well as someone it sneers at as perceiving sharia implementation to be a “conspiracy.”

The smear that David Yerushalmi is a racist is a point which the ADL emphasized through an update to another smear-piece against Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, where Attorney Yerushalmi is said to indulge in “anti-black bigotry.” The ADL suggested in the article discussed by Ms. Lappen that, “He also contended that African-Americans are a ‘relatively murderous race killing itself.”

David Yerushalmi has presented on his SANE website a repudiation of earlier criticisms of this and other comments, where it is clear the original statements were taken out of context. He states that this repudiation has been available to ADL since September 2010. This repudiation covers other points, but for brevity I reproduce one paragraph that relates specifically to the “murderous” comment:

“The reference to blacks and murder in New York specifically linked to an article I had written (and published in the American Thinker here) which analyzed a New York Times story which addressed the Department of Justice statistics that show that blacks in New York are grossly overrepresented among the City’s murderers. Indeed, I point out that the victims in these cases are most likely to be fellow blacks. Would one be irrational to conclude that blacks are more likely to murder (more “murderous”) than non-blacks? To suggest otherwise is to argue that the statistics reported by the DOJ and relied upon by the New York Times are inaccurate. Moreover, nowhere in the article do I even begin to suggest that these statistics are explained by skin color or race more broadly, and indeed the article leaves open the why because statistics themselves could never tell us that.”

It is deeply worrying that a lawyer’s opposition to sharia law — which runs contrary to the principles enshrined in the American Constitution and the Bill of Rights — should be used as a cudgel to attack him. When such an attack comes from a group supposedly aiming to defend the rights of Jews yet is seen to be apparently condoning Sharia, this obviously raises alarms about motive and intent. More so when leading proponents of Sharia in America have been shown to support the terrorist organization Hamas, which invokes the killing of Jews as part of sacred Islamic scripture in its Hamas Charter. This and other clauses that call for the delegitimization of Israel have not subsequently been removed from the Hamas Charter.

Adrian Morgan, The Editor, Family Security Matters.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant

by Alyssa A. Lappen
Right Side News | March 10, 2009

Review: United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror (WND Books, 2009), 239 pages.

In 2000, I noted a near-total mainstream news blackout on hateful Islamic ideological drivers of violence and jihad. I then began migrating from financial journalism to covering Islam and the Middle East. At first I believed colleagues were ignorant of services translating statements and articles from Arab, Urdu, Pashtan and Turkish clerics and media. A bevy of rude, angry replies to my letters, however, disabused me of that naivetÃ©. Rather they suffered from an almost universal animus to facts—and to educating the public on underlying factors.

I simply could not understand.

Jamie Glazov’s United in Hate provides the first genuine insight I’ve yet found into this phenomenon. This brilliant historian and Ph.D. in U.S., Russian and Canadian foreign policy identifies a sort of psychotic dementia opposed to liberal humanism and the Socratic method. The diseased worship various Utopian ideologies, and are adamantly determined to reconstruct them on earth, regardless the costs in human life. Taking a page from everyman philosopher Eric Hoffer, Glazov labels them “believers.” These political theory ultra-advocates all possess one psychological characteristic—parallel to a genus, or DNA strand, and rooted in denial—a virulent, apparently communicable hatred for human imperfection, and therefore everything and everyone of the real world.

Neither believers nor their secular faiths are all identical. Yet deadly, duplicate attributes afflict all forms of Communism—engendered by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Pham Van Dong, Mao Zedong, and Daniel Ortega—and political Islam. Believers all suffer acute alienation from society, total blindness to it—and the inability “to rise to the challenges of secular modernity,” establish real, “lasting interpersonal relationships or [internalize] any values that help him find meaning in life.” (p. 6)

Even nearly two decades after the Soviet Union’s defeat, Glazov finds that believers continue to threaten Western civilization. Now, they have married their animus for humankind to Islam’s longstanding, toxic war against individual freedoms and its renewed, current-day jihad against the West.

After defining their ailment, Glazov reviews believers’ shocking prominence—and intense commitment to the communist death cult. Wooden-legged drug user, “satanic sexual orgies” aficionado and U.S. outcast, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, witnessed Ukrainian mass starvation in 1933, for example. Yet he reported the situation to be “not famine but abundance.” Peasants appeared “healthier and more cheerful” than anticipated. Their markets overflowed with “eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter.”

Journalist Anna Louise Strong covered Washington state’s 1916 Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) riots, became a World War I pacifist and in 1921 traveled to Poland and Russia, and metamorphosed into a Stalinist, immune to 1930s arrests and murders of her friends. In the 1950s, Strong migrated to China, where she died in 1970—still defending Mao’s bloody cultural revolution.

Playwright George Bernard Shaw, likewise “revered Stalin.” In 1931 his Soviet minders’ introduction of two train station waitresses “intimately acquainted” with his plays convinced him that Russians were more literate than Britons. Visiting Potemkin village prisons built to fool idiots like him similarly persuaded Shaw that ordinary English delinquents exited prison as “criminal types,” while Russia made such people ordinary men.

Few Kurt Weill fans may realize that Three Penny Opera collaborator Bertolt Brecht doubled as a dedicated Marxist, opposed to free expression. Art was meant “not to serve beauty or any other aesthetic value; [but] to destroy the old order and thereby enable the birth of the communist utopia.” Intellectuals were all scum, “parasites, professional criminals, informers….” The more innocent, the more they deserved to be shot. Brecht even said there “must have been enough evidence” to arrest his lover Carola Neher, who was never seen again.

These famous believers were followed by a long line of deniers—including Noam Chomsky, Norman Mailer, Simone de Beauvoir, Susan Sontag, Jean Paul Sartre, Abbie Hoffman, Shirley McLaine, Mary McCarthy, newsman Dan Rather, author Gunther Grass, producers Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg, actors Ed Asner and Michael Douglas and many famous others. None ever knew “real economic hardship” or lacked material comfort, educational opportunity or social advancement. Yet these “new left” devotees—like Students for a Democratic Society terrorist William Ayers, President Barack Obama’s political mentor since circa 1995—all longed to redistribute wealth from evil capitalists to sainted “have-nots,” with typical sangfroid for the deadly consequences.

Longing for submersion into a communal whole, indeed their own deaths, believers flocked throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s to adulate mass murderers in Havana, Hanoi, Beijing and finally Managua. They denied victims of Castro’s vicious racism and homophobia—80% of them black, and Cuba’s 18%, post-1959 population decline; horrors and mass murders at Hanoi’s Cu Loc (nicknamed the “Zoo” and “Cuban program”) and North Vietnamese villages; mass starvation and murder in China; and malnutrition, begging and mass abuse in 145 Nicaraguan settlements, outside of which, Ortega ordered soldiers to ask no questions and shoot everyone on sight.

With the fall of communism, the believers migrated to yet another death cult—-jihad as exemplified in virtually every Islamic terrorist organization under the sun. In Islam, Algerian radical Ali Benhadj notes, “If faith… is not watered and irrigated by blood, it does not grow. It does not live. Principles are reinforced by sacrifices, suicide operations and martyrdom for Allah.”

Islam commands Muslims to commit violent jihad. “Myriad Koranic verses emphasize the importance of fighting unbelievers,” Glazov notes. For example, the “famous Verse of the Sword,” (Chapter 9: Verse 5) nullifies all non-violent passages and instructs Muslims to seek and obtain global “hegemony.”

Unfortunately, Glazov reaches this discussion, in Part III of his book, only after seeming to suggest that the current jihad arose from Nazism and Communism. He also subsequently suggests that Islamic hatred of Jews is partly an outgrowth of European anti-Semitism. In both instances, Glazov mistakes. Mohammed himself initiated Islam’s virulent hatred of Jews and Judaism, as becomes eminently clear in Dr. Andrew Bostom’s brilliant Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. Moreover, Islamic affinity for Nazism was an outgrowth of Islamic ideas, not the other way around: Hitler himself identified with Muslim thinking and numerous Nazis later converted. But these objections are slight.

Glazov correctly notes that Islam, as always practiced and taught today, is rooted in jihad ideology. He also recognizes that Western Marxist believers identify strongly with Islamic adoration for “purification through mass death,” although they don’t actually understand Islam at all. Just as Marxists denied every horror perpetrated by the Marxist regimes and heroes they worshiped in previous eras (which Glazov describes in detail). No, their rigid secular view of everything today prevents them from comprehending that Islamic violence “has absolutely nothing to do with economic inequality, class oppression, or Western exploitation.” They demonstrate “an obvious and profound racism,” Glazov observes: They consider Muslims and Arabs inadequate “to understand their own circumstances.” Muslims frequently explain jihad as the natural result of Koranic directives to make Islam a global empire. Yet, believers always reject their explanations—as if one cannot seriously expect Muslims to understand their own theocratic, imperialist ideology.

Perhaps Islam can be reformed, as Glazov posits—and a dedicated few do hope to turn Muslim minds away from hatred and violence. “Human rights is not negotiable, even for God,” says one moderate Muslim I was recently privileged to meet. “Otherwise, Islam is a only a cult.” But that would be news to stubborn mainstream media, who (considering Glazov’s reflections) look married to the same Marxist belief and denials that drove Walter Duranty and Anna Louise Strong.

Those few cannot change what is hidden, unrecognized, unknown—and largely denied by their potential Western allies, however. The success of a handful of Muslims fighting impossible odds to promote secular Islam and reform their co-religionists’ thinking requires gargantuan efforts.
Glazov’s book is therefore critical to everyone who cares about the survival of Western civilization. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis noted, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Clearly, only public pressure can force the news media to pull up their window shades and shine the necessary light on Arab and Muslim ideological hatred of everyone not like them. And this book could help raise the pressure.
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Alyssa A. Lappen, a freelance investigative journalist, is a former senior fellow of the American Center for Democracy, former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance and former associate editor of Forbes. Her work has also appeared in FrontPage Magazine, the Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Pajamas Media, American Thinker, Human Events, Midstream and Revue Politique. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org/.

Schumer Steps Forward

Editorial of The New York Sun | July 28, 2008

Senator Schumer’s decision Friday to add his name to those of Senators Specter and Lieberman among the backers of the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008 increases the likelihood that the measure will make its way into law in the scramble after Congress returns from summer recess but before it breaks again for the elections. It will be an uphill battle, but count us among those hoping for a success. The law seeks to counter “libel tourism,” the practice of suing American writers in foreign jurisdictions, where the libel laws are friendlier to plaintiffs. The Free Speech Protection Act would prohibit American courts from enforcing such foreign judgments, and it would allow their victims to countersue in American courts.

To understand what’s at stake, look at the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, in whose honor it has been nicknamed “Rachel’s Law.” In 2003, Ms. Ehrenfeld, an expert on terrorism who has served as an adviser to the Department of Defense, published “Funding Evil,” a study of how terrorist networks are financed. A Saudi billionaire sued her for libel in Britain, where the burden of proof for such lawsuits is lower than in America. Though only 23 copies of her book had been sold in Britain, its court found against Ms. Ehrenfeld, ordering her to have her book pulped and to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

The judgment of the British court cannot be enforced in America. But the cost and burden to Ms. Ehrenfeld of defending the suit sent a message to any writer, or any publisher, contemplating a book on the subject of Islamist terror. “In effect,” wrote a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Stanley Kurtz, “the Internet-driven internationalization of publishing is nullifying America’s First Amendment protections.”

As the capital of America’s publishing industry, New York is especially vulnerable to this threat. That’s why the State Legislature unanimously passed, and on April 30 Governor Paterson signed, a state version of Rachel’s Law. “New Yorkers must be able to speak out on issues of public concern without living in fear that they will be sued outside the United States, under legal standards inconsistent with our First Amendment rights,” Mr. Paterson said at the time.

The federal law as drafted won’t end all threats of foreign hassling of American-based journalists. We think of Mark Steyn, whose column regularly appears in these pages. Mr. Steyn spent the last year defending himself against charges brought by the Canadian Islamic Congress that an excerpt from his bestselling book “America Alone” suddenly constituted, when it was published in Maclean’s magazine, an incitement to hatred of Muslims. He was not sued in a regular court, with its legal protections and rules of evidence. Instead, he was hauled up before the Canadian Human Rights Commission, an unaccountable tribunal with sweeping powers to stamp out any speech it considers offensive.

After coming in for unprecedented public criticism over the Steyn case, the commission eventually dismissed the charges against him, though a case before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is still pending. The Ehrenfeld and Steyn cases are but two examples in a trend that prompted the New Criterion magazine, along with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, to host in April a conference on “Free Speech in the Age of Jihad.” The proceedings have just been issued as a pamphlet, underscoring that across the Western world, legal and quasi-legal mechanisms are being used to try to block open criticism of Islam or of prominent Muslims.

The “findings” contained in Rachel’s Law make an articulate case for the need to pass it. “Free speech, the free exchange of information, and the free expression of ideas and opinions are essential to the functioning of representative democracy in the United States,” it says. “The free expression and publication by journalists, academics, commentators, experts, and others of the information they uncover and develop through research and study is essential to the formation of sound public policy and thus to the security of the people of the United States.” Senator Schumer, along with Senators Specter and Lieberman and their colleagues in the House backing similar legislation, including Reps. Peter King and Anthony Weiner, are taking an important step in leading the effort to pass this law.
____________________________________________

See also: The Guardian, “A National Disgrace.”

Contact the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Congress should outlaw shari’a finance

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Examiner | June 2, 2008

A spate of conferences in the U.S. recently on Islamic banking — i.e. shari’a finance — signals a worrisome American blindness to the budding industry’s inherent dangers.

Among the perils of shari’a finance, according to a January analysis by Moody’s Investors Service are: A central role in investment decisions for shari’a scholars who are actually Islamic clerics; investors being forced to accept weak positions; short track records of major investors; multiple complex asset types; risky interest rates and new ventures; plus a lack of transparency combined with corporate management and risk control in the hosting Third World countries.

Like other financial rating agencies, Moody’s currently profits from assessing Islamic financial instruments.

But it missed the biggest risk of all—the ideological risks of shari’a, or Islamic law. Even Islamic banking promotions admit that the industry’s documentation is not standardized, its inter-creditor agreements can be complex and it frequently employs off-balance sheet financing.

Moreover, shari’a regulations override commercial decisions. Citibank, for example, launched Saudi American Bank (SAB) in Jeddah and its Riyadh branch in 1955 and 1966 respectively, apparently without considering business risks under shari’a. The Saudis abruptly seized SAB in 1980, denied Citi all future profits, and ordered the bank to train Saudi staffers. Why? Because under shari’a, the bank was judged insufficiently Muslim.

Secular laws alone don’t govern shari’a finance. Although a 20th century Muslim Brotherhood (MB) invention, it cannot be severed from the body of Islamic statutes that Mohammed initiated and caliphs, scholars and jurists developed over 1,400 years.

Shari’a also underlies Muslim Brotherhood economic reforms. Police discovered the group’s central plan, “Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy,” or “The Project” in the Lugano villa of MB chief financial officer Yusef Nada in November 2001.

Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusef Qaradawi based the 12-point handbook on shari’a interpretations of MB founder Hassan al-Banna, who in 1928 envisioned a caliphate (Islamic state) to impose shari’a law worldwide.

The Project orders Muslims to do “parallel work to control local power centers”—and create “special Islamic economic, social and other institutions” and “necessary economic institutions” to fund spreading fundamentalist Islam. Shari’a finance builds such “parallel” Islamic economic institutions.

Consider the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB). Both write global shari’a finance regulations (fatwas).

AAOIFI members include the central banks of designated terrorist states Iran and Sudan—and the Saudi Dallah al Baraka Group, al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation, Kuwait Finance House, all implicated in funding al Qaeda, according to former U.S. counter-terror official Richard Clarke in testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the U.S.

IFSB members include the central banks of Iran, Sudan, Syria, and the terror-funding Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA).

Worse, Shari’a laws grant the Islamic ummah (Muslim nation) supremacy over all others—along with all land and property, to hold in trust for Allah. Under shari’a, land or property conquered or acquired by Muslims cannot generally revert to its original owners.

Possessions confiscated from non-believers are “a way of exacting revenge,” writes 11th century jurist Abul Hasan al Mawardi whose Laws of Islamic Governance many Muslims still consider valid. In other words, classical Islamic jurisprudence and Qur’anic passages alike, reflect the thinking evidenced in the MB’s 20th century Project.

According to Al-Mawardi, Allah authorized Second Caliph Umar Ibn Khattab to confiscate property in three ways—by fulfilling a trust to Islam, by force, or by ruling under Allah’s law. Thus, it is “just” to take anything from nonbelievers.

Far from benefiting mankind, as Islamic banking proponents claim, shari’a advocates a supremacist ideology commanding Muslims to wage jihad war until they subdue all “infidels” and “unbelievers.” Muslims must “convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or force” and “gain power over other nations,” writes 14th century Tunisian jurist Ibn Khaldun in “The Muqaddimah.”

And economic jihad fulfills the mandate of Qur’an 49:15: “Strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives,” reiterated in 61:10-11.

Congress should thoroughly investigate shari’a finance, declare it unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

Alyssa A. Lappen, a senior fellow at the American Center for Democracy, is a former senior editor of Institutional Investor, Working Woman and Corporate Finance. Her website is https://www.alyssaalappen.org.

Flash: Moon Is Not Green Cheese

So extensive is current misuse of English that even George Orwell, I think, would be flabbergasted by its prevalence—and its chief source: not the government, after all, but pseudo scholars and unprincipled journalists who might as well contend the moon is made of green cheese, and have all but convinced the world with their reams of false propaganda.

To sensible critics, these malfeasants can only respond with scurrilous, vindictive personal attacks—and never facts—since they apparently have none at their disposal.

Take the verbal assault on Dr. Andrew Bostom by Trans-Atlantic “Un-Intelligencer” journalist John Rosenthal in his “review” of a book on the Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazism.

Remarkably, Rosenthal actually libels Bostom—twice: First, he falsely and maliciously accuses certain “self-professed Islamophobes,” by which he clearly means Bostom, of writing that Islam “was…the source or inspiration of the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists!” Secondly, he falsely and maliciously states that Bostom suppressed a quotation from Adolph Hitler concerning Arabs—simply to lambaste Matthias Kuntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred thesis—when Bostom did no such thing.

Having read both of Bostom’s books in their entirety, and all of his essays, I can attest that he has never suggested Islam as “the source or inspiration of the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists!”

What’s more astounding: Rosenthal subsequently added a footnote to his second libelous passage—admitting that Bostom after all hadn’t omitted Hitler’s quotation on Arabs, concerning their “racial inferiority.” As Bostom has explained, it was irrelevant to his essay’s point on Hitler’s effusive, alternative praise for Islamic aggression, and his profound dual regrets: that Islam had neither prevailed at the 8th century Battle of Tours, nor had “Islamized Germans” stood “at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.” Moreover, Bostom included the full quotation in his forthcoming Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, as I do below, with notes. [1] Yet, Rosenthal neither corrects his two libels in his text—nor troubles to properly apologize in print.

One leading intellectual replies, Rosenthal attributes to Bostom a thesis he never put forth, and then ridicules him for publishing it. He tries to make people think that Bostom attacked Matthias Kuntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred thesis, and then made

the ‘extravagant proposition’ that the Nazis discovered anti-Semitism by perusing the Koran or by exchanging letters with the mufti.

I have read two of [Bostom’s] books, and most of [his] articles, and nowhere do I remember [him] trying to blame Nazi anti-Semitism on Islam, which would be clearly absurd. …

Rosenthal … implies that the attack on Kuntzel … could not have been motivated by the fact that it is glaringly wrong. You do not have to be a ‘self styled expert in Islam’ to see the fallacy in Kuntzel’s thesis any more than you have to be a self-styled expert in astronomy to know that the moon is not made of green cheese.

There is a concept in economics called anti-work. That happens when people who pretend to be doing productive labor are in fact doing destructive labor—an auto mechanic who, upon examining someone’s car, breaks a part in order that he can charge for fixing it. Kuntzel represents anti-scholarship. He spends a great deal of intellectual labor in order to argue a thesis that no one thought of before. Then he gets a great deal of attention to his thesis, and soon people are wasting their intellectual energies debating it over and over. …

I heartily recommend Bostom’s own rebuttal to Rosenthal’s convoluted and idiotic attack. Read, and learn.

NOTE:
[1] Albert Speer,

who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote a contrite 808 memoir of his World War II experiences while serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed by the Nuremberg tribunal. 808a Speer’s narrative includes this discussion which captures Hitler’s racist views of Arabs on the one hand, and his effusive praise for Islam on the other: 809

Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs. When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. 810 For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. [emphasis added] Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire. [emphasis added] Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

A similar ambivalence characterized Nazi Germany’s support for Arab Muslim causes in the World War II era. 811 Hitler for example, in December 1937, even proposed omitting his “racial ladder” theory—which denigrated the Arabs—from a forthcoming Arabic translation of Mein Kampf. 811a Moreover, it is a tragic irony that despite the “very low rung” occupied by Arabs in Hitler’s racial ladder design, 812 the convergence between Nazi racist antisemitism and theological Muslim Jew hatred 813 still resonates across the Arab Muslim, and larger non-Arab Muslim world, to this day.

NOTES:
808. A recently discovered letter, however (Kate Connolly. “Letter Proves Speer Knew of Holocaust Plan,” The Guardian, March 13, 2007), indicates that despite repeated claims he was unaware of Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews, Speer attended a conference in 1943 where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, made clear the Nazi regimes genocidal program during what has become known as the Posen speech. Writing in 1971 to Helen Jeanty, widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted, “There is no doubt—I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed….” Who would believe me that I suppressed this, that it would have been easier to have written all of this in my memoirs?
808a. Albert Speer. Inside the Third Reich. 1970, New York, p. 96
809. Ibid.
810. Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, however, recounts how the Arab jihad ravages of Western Europe continued apace after their defeat at Tours. The Arab invaders found the Mediterranean regions of France, Italy, and Sicily, “more attractive” prey, in particular the churches and monasteries. Dufourcq wrote, (from Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad, pp. 421-422: Around 734-735 they stormed and took Arles and Avignon. From the coast of Provence and in Italy, their sailors preceded the cavalry or substituted for them. In 846 they disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, seized Ostia, went up the river, refrained from attacking the wall of Rome, but pillaged the Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which at that time were both outside the walls. This alarm prompted, as a counter-measure, the construction of a new Roman enclosure encompassing Saint Peter’s and rejoining the old one at the Castello Santangelo, the old mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. In 849 the Moslems attempted a new landing at Ostia; then, every year from around 857 on, they threatened the Roman seaboard. In order to get rid of them, Pope John VIII decided in 878 to promise them an annual payment of several thousand gold pieces; but this tribute of the Holy See to Islam seems to have been paid for only two years; and from time to time until the beginning of the tenth century, the Moslems reappeared at the mouth of the Tiber or along the coast nearby. Marseilles, for its part, was also hit: in 838 the Arabs landed there and devastated it; St. Victor’s Abbey, outside the walls, was destroyed, and many inhabitants of the city were carried off in captivity; ten years later a new raid occurred, the Old Port was again sacked. And this perhaps was repeated once more around the year 920. The whole Italian peninsula was similarly exposed: around 840 Moslem ships followed the Adriatic coasts as far as the Dalmatian archipelago and the mouth of the Po River. Then, returning South, they dared to attack a city, Ancona, some two hundred kilometers northwest of Rome; a sort of commando dashed ashore: the city was devastated and set on fire. During their conquest of Sicily, when they took Syracuse in 878, after a deadly attack, they were exasperated by the resistance that they met with. When they rushed into the city, they found along their way the Church of the Holy Savior, filled with women and children, the elderly and the sick, clerics and slaves, and they massacred them all. Then, spreading out through the city, they continued the slaughter and the pillage, had the treasure of the cathedral handed over to them; they also took many prisoners and gathered separately those who were armed. One week later all of the captives who had dared to fight against them were butchered (four thousand in number, according to the chronicle al-Bayyan). In 934 or 935, they landed at the other end of Italy, at Genoa, killed “all the men” they found there, and then left again, loading onto their ships “the treasures of the city and of its churches”. A few years later they settled for a time, it seems, in Nice, FrÃ©jus, Toulon… One could list many other similar facts. Generally speaking, in these Arab raids carried out by a cavalcade or after a landing, the churches were especially targeted, because the assailants knew that they would find there articles used in worship that were made of gold or silver, sometimes studded with precious stones, as well as costly fabrics. And because the churches were considered to be an offense against God, the One God, given that they were consecrated to the “polytheistic” belief in the Trinity, they were then burned down. The bells were the object of particular animosity, because they dared to amplify the call to infidel prayer by resounding through the skies, towards heaven; therefore they were always broken.
811. Lukasz Hirsczowicz. The Third Reich and the Arab East, 1966, London, pp. 315-316.
811a. Ibid., p. 46
812. Ibid., p. 315.
813. The fourth conference of the Academy of Islamic Research; D.F. Green. Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel; Bat Ye’or. Chapter XXI “The New Egyptian Jew Hatred—Local Elements and External Influences” in Jews in Egypt (Hebrew), 1974, Jerusalem. Full English translation of the original French by Susan Emanuel is presented herein; Tantawi. Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Qur’an and the Traditions]