Seeing real life sharia in action

Calling it something else

Review of: Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws are Choking Freedom Worldwide

By: Paul Marshall and Nina Shea
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 480 pp.
ISBN: 0199812284

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Family Security Matters | Nov. 4, 2011

“Apostasy is, in principle, subject to sharia hudud rules, which means that the punishment—death—is believed to be fixed by divine order and not subject to judicial discretion…,” write Paul Marshall and Nina Shea in chapter two of Silenced (p. 23), without further explanation.

Silenced falls far short of the landmark study it might have been, had the authors honestly addressed foundational Islamic principles, history and texts that support offending modern codes, and stated the stupefyingly consistent and pervasive use of sharia laws throughout Muslim history. Specifically, hudud refer to Islamic behavioral limits thought divine since Mohammed established the creed.

Sharia’s heavenly status and its stubborn exercise rest squarely on Koran (considered sacred and immutable) and sunnah, or “traditions.” The latter includes hadith and sira, Mohammed’s recorded speech and deeds; and his life (usually, the Ibn Ishaq biography).

Apostasy—rejecting Islam—is but one offense to divinity. Adultery similarly requires capital punishment, and theft demands amputation.

To assert that hudud are rarely enforced, or fearing them is “lunacy,” as do Sadiq Reza and other Islamic law professors, is sheer absurdity. But readers of Silenced will not learn here that the horrors the book describes represent unadulterated use of classical hudud and sharia laws, as always practiced.

Three Muslim essayists

In order “to show that such temporal punishments are not required by Islam,” the authors deliberately avoid discussing the history of apostasy and blasphemy laws and “systematic treatment in Islamic jurisprudence and theology” (p. 287). They leave that topic to “three noted Muslim scholars” whose essays they include.

The Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) party provided the forward by the late Indonesian president, reputed Muslim reformer Abdurahman Wahid, aka Gus Dur (1940-2009).
Wahid misleadingly casts the “original” meaning of apostasy (as named in the index), and its required punishment—death—as only

“the legacy of historical circumstances and political calculations stretching back to…early …Islam, when apostasy generally coincided with desertion from the caliph’s army and/or rejection of his authority and thus constituted treason…. [E]mbedding (i.e. codification) of [its] harsh punishments…into Islamic law [is] a…byproduct of these circumstances, framed [by] human calculations and expediency, [not] the eternal dictate of Islam sharia on the issue….

“The…development and use of the term sharia to refer to Islamic law often lead those unfamiliar with [it] to conflate man-made law with its revelatory inspiration, and…to elevate to Divine [status] products of human understanding, … necessarily conditioned by space and time.

Wahid further attempts to distinguish sharia and its purported embodiment of “perennial values” from Islamic law. He says the latter resulted from “itjihad (interpretation),” depends on circumstance (al hukm yadur ma’a al’illah wujudan wa ‘adaman) and must be “continuously reviewed” to adapt and prevent Islamic law from obsolescence, rigidity and failing to connect with contemporary Muslim lives and sharia’s own “perennial values.” He thus claims that Islam’s greatest fiqh (jurisprudence) scholars, were “deeply grounded in tassawuf,” Islamic mysticism, and balanced “the letter of the law with the spirit” of accommodation to differing culture and practice across the Maghreb, Sahara, sub-Saharan Sahel region, southern Africa, Persia, Asia, the East Indies and the former Roman empire.

Reformer or not, Wahid headed an Islamic party, co-founded in 1926 Java by his grandfathers, both members of its sharia council, which purveyed strict Islamic law, according to Dr. Andrew Bostom. It required that members follow one of four Sunni schools of (Islamic) law—of “Muhammad bin Idris As-Shafi, Imam Malik bin Anas, Imam Abu Hanifa or Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal—and to do everything beneficial to Islam.” Al-Shafi’i (d. 820) himself interpreted Koran 2:217 “to mean that the death penalty should be prescribed for apostates,” the scholar Ibn Warraq explains in Leaving Islam. [1]

Moreover, all Sunni sharia schools had closed the “gates of itjihad,” freedom to interpret, 500 years ago. Lately, a few conservative Sunnis favor its reinstatement. Yet the Shi’a kept “benefits of ijtihad” alive, and witnessed no modern reforms, notes analyst and retired U.S. Army officer W. Patrick Lang. Iran maintains draconian sharia-based laws. Its current-day effects are detailed in chapter three.

Unsuccessful reformists

Ultimately, Wahid failed to improve Indonesia’s political landscape. Educated at Islamic schools, he joined NU at his grandfathers’ behest and took over in 1984, planning a secular “religious movement” to give social progress to all. He opposed Islamic supremacism. Muslims reacted violently. In 1998, as Suharto stoked anti-Chinese riots, Wahid sought calm to no avail. Hardline Muslims burned Chinese homes and shops, raped hundreds and killed at least 1,000—just as they had 100,000 ethnic Chinese in the mid-1960s. Wahid opposed East Timor’s secession, although before its 2002 independence, he apologized for Indonesia’s 1978 occupation and atrocities. Yet jihadis continued to attack Javanese and Maluku Christians (often with military aid), raided dozens of villages, forced thousands to convert and killed at least 5,000. Genocide has raised Indonesia’s Muslim population to nearly 90% of its total.

The late Muslim reformer Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd (1943-2010) wrote “Renewing Quranic Studies in the Contemporary World.” Although director of the International Institute of Quranic Studies (IIQS), he was declared an apostate by Egypt’s Court of Cassation (its highest). He fled. His marriage was forcibly dissolved. He viewed Koran from an “objective historical perspective,” asked how it “was transmitted, propagated, codified, and ultimately canonized,” and sought “interpretive diversity.” He condemned blasphemy and apostasy laws projecting Koran as “eternal and uncreated,” and opposing modern concepts and life principles of freedom, justice, “human rights and dignity of man….”

Indeed, apostasy and blasphemy laws embedded in 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence prohibit such thoughts. In Sept. 1978, the fatwa council at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, the closest Muslim equivalent to the Vatican, issued an official ruling on the case of an Egyptian emigre and convert to Christianity:

“…This man has committed apostasy; he must be given a chance to repent and if he does not then he must be killed according to Shariah.

“As far as his children are concerned, as long as they are children they are considered Muslim, but after they reach the age of puberty, then if they remain with Islam they are Muslim, but if they leave Islam and they do not repent they must be killed and Allah knows best.”[2]

Finally, a chapter on reform of classical Muslim apostasy and blasphemy laws came from Maldives-native Abdullah Saeed, the Sultan of Oman Arab and Islamic studies professor at Australia’s University of Melbourne. He includes an internet fatwa by Muhammad Salah al-Munajjid on punishment of a murtadd, referencing the classical Bukhari hadith, “if someone changes his religion, kill him.” Like Wahid, Saeed insists on the socio-political genesis of apostasy’s prescribed punishment that specified those “in a state of war against Muslims.” It was more “akin to treason” than a simple matter of changing one’s belief. He also argues that “clear textual proofs that guarantee certainty of knowledge (‘ilm qat’i) were lacking in this debate.” If any, his second thought would most likely gain limited acceptance by Muslim jurists in 2011. Ordinary Muslims and non-Muslims in Islamic regions increasingly oppose classical apostasy laws and other religious restrictions, he writes, increasingly pressuring them to comply with human rights standards like the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Yet Saeed’s own homeland banned the 2004 book on apostasy, co-authored with his brother and former Maldives attorney general Hasaan Saeed, on which he based this chapter.

How ready are Muslim jurists to change? The evidence suggests, not very.

Harsh reality

The hopes of Muslim reformers put them sharply at odds both with present-day reality and age-old Islamic conventions. Usefully, the book does catalog myriad effects of current legal codes for eight Muslim nations and regions, mostly penalties for allegedly criticizing or rejecting Islam. In Part II, chapters note dozens of cases that ended in execution, murder, or exile. Readers little aware of legal doctrines ruling Muslim nations, regions and groups likely will find their dire results quite shocking.

Saudi Arabia, “perhaps the most repressively controlled Muslim country in the Sunni world,” often victimizes citizens and foreigners, alike. Not for over 300 years have North American courts routinely tried people for witchcraft. But sorcery charges often precede Saudi death sentences, as for Lebanese Shi’a TV psychic Ali Hussain Sibat after his May 2008 Medina pilgrimage. In prison for 30 months, he won (with foreign help), a new trial and alternative, deportation.

But few escape. In Sept. 2011, Sudanese Abdul Hamid al-Fakki was beheaded for alleged “witchcraft and sorcery.” A sharia court in 2008 condemned an illiterate and ill Fawza Falih for allegedly causing a man’s impotence. In 2011 officials admitted she had choked on food and died in prison last year.

Under the Saudi takfir principle (p. 30-31), Muslims may likewise accuse others of leaving Islam—and often do. Those letting men and women to mix at school or work are infidels. “Either he retracts or he must be killed,” said sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Barrak in Feb. 2010. “He who casts doubt about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his own infidelity,” wrote Grand Mufti Bin Baz in a 2005 Saudi government brochure at its U.S. embassy, of an unnamed European cleric who had said “declaring Jews and Christians infidels is not allowed,” instantly making the cleric a murder target. Similar Saudi tracts denounce “innovative imams” as “heretics [whose] prayers are invalid.”

Egypt also commonly alleges apostasy, despite contrary claims by sharia law professor Reza. “Islamic jurisprudence is the principle source of legislation,” Anwar el-Sadat added to constitution Article 2 in 1971 (p. 62). Thus Muslims often use the hisba doctrine to legally prosecute those considered “harmful to Islam,” chiefly against traditionally repressed religious minorities like Coptic Christians. In fact, penal code article 98 (f) criminalizes “ridiculing or insulting heavenly religions,” facilitating frequent charges of blasphemy and apostasy from Islam—the only faith to which Egypt applies the statute.

In Jun. 1992, days after al-Azhar University clerics listed free thinker Farag Foda first among “helpers of evil,” two al-Jama’at al-Islamiyya members shot him dead. Foda sought to separate mosque and state. He exposed Islamic atrocities from first caliph Abu Bakr to the end of Abbasid Arab caliphate. And at Cairo’s Jan. 1992 book fair, he debated orthodox clerics whose fatwas he had mocked (including that against Salman Rushdie). At their trial, Muslim Brotherhood cleric Mohammed al-Ghazali defended Foda’s killers, noting that any Muslim could kill an apostate (p. 74).

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, instituted in 1980 under Zia al Haq, have also abetted minority persecution. State sharia courts value male non-Muslim testimonies at half that of Muslims, and of non-Muslim women, one fourth (p. 86). Hundreds of Christians have been prosecuted, far more proportionately than their two percent of the population. Believing Christians natural blasphemers, Muslims easily act on cues to attack, murder, and burn homes and churches. They target Hindus, Sufis and even Muslims, stoning men for alleged blasphemy, or for simply stating what a Westerner considers common sense.

Conditions vary only slightly elsewhere in the Muslims world, and the authors supply a long list of atrocities committed against victims of blasphemy or apostasy accusations. Such charges and attacks occur almost as regularly as clockwork—precisely because they track classic sharia, a key point the authors omit.

Apostasy goes global

Part III reviews parallel efforts at the United Nations to globally bar “defamation of religion,” a thinly veiled attempt to shield Islam alone from criticism. The chief culprit is the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a Saudi-based and funded organization founded in 1969 (as the Organization of the Islamic Conference). Here again, the book focuses on modern, Western hate-speech statutes and the real-world effects of limits that resulted from worldwide OIC pressure—not the foundational sharia law upon which the OIC built its frighteningly successful campaign.

The names and events that fill this 113-page section have also filled the pages of savvy online news magazines and channels for well over a decade now, and will be familiar to most who have paid more than glancing attention to the innumerable attacks on genuinely open-minded, free-thinking individuals of all persuasions. If nothing else, it is useful to have brief but well-documented studies of dozens of cases all in one place. Readers are reintroduced to Satanic Verses author Salman Rushdie, whose Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was in 1993 shot three times but survived. Also reported: the unusual genesis of 12 cartoons of Mohammed published in late 2005 by Denmark’s Jyllands Posten and the global repercussions. After illustrators refused to sign their own work for Kare Bluitgen’s biography of Mohammed for children, editor Flemming Rose commissioned the cartoons in protest of self-censorship in a Western democracy. Within weeks, the newspaper required security protection.

As I reported in Feb. 2006, Muslim Brotherhood and Hizb Ut Tahrir cleric Issam Amayra had the previous spring had incited Muslims in Denmark—from Jerusalem’s al Aqsa Mosque—to launch jihad there. [3] A jihad plot began months before Flemming Rose dreamed of commissioning Mohammed cartoons. Jyllands Posten merely supplied the excuse to trigger global riots. In Jan. 2006, trigger it, the OIC did. Violent “reaction” to the cartoons went viral after the paper refused to back down and Denmark’s prime minister refused to meet with Muslim ambassadors. A call by Muslim Brotherhood “spiritual leader” Yusuf Qaradawi for a U.N. Resolution against “affronts to prophets” set off thousands of Mideast “demonstrations,” Pakistani attacks on Christians and on and on. As recently as Jan. 2010, a Somali man attacked the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, then 74.

Victims in the West

In addition to additional Muslim reformers, the book covers several other cases of apostates, Christian converts and former Muslim critics, including the especially heroic Ibn Warraq and former Syrian physician Wafa Sultan (280-286), most of them fairly. It cannot go without comment, however, that the authors seriously insult Dr. Sultan: “She maintains that many verses in the Koran say that you must kill those who do not believe in Allah,” they write (p. 283). Or, Koran may not say it, she just thinks so.

To set the record straight, Koran 2:217 states:

“They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: “Fighting therein is a grave (offense); but graver is it in the sight of God to prevent access to the path of God, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members.” Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. Nor will they cease fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can. And if any of you Turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein.”

If commentary by the founder of Sunni Islam’s Shafi school (cited above) insufficiently explains its classical meaning, consider the exegesis on 2:217 by 13th century Maliki jurist Qurtubi (d. 1273):

“Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say they are asked to repent and, if they do, they are not killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik [founder of the Maliki school of Islamic Law]..It is also said they are killed without being asked to repent.”[4]

Additionally, Islamic jurists routinely cite Koran 4:89, which states:

“They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of God (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks;”

Baydawi (d. 1316) writes on 4:89: “Whosoever turns his back from his belief [irtada], openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever ye find him, like any other infidel.” [5]

The OIC role

One hopes Silenced will spur readers to question the founding purpose of the OIC, which the authors do not detail. The Saudis established the it in 1969 to follow classical sharia and Muslim Brotherhood principles, and in 1973 created the Islamic Development Bank to advance the “Islamic way of life.” Its biggest project: the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, which 57 members signed.

Significantly, the preamble opens with the ummah‘s keen awareness of “the place of mankind in Islam as viceregent of Allah on Earth,” a clear reference to Koran 3:110 and expected Islamic supremacy:

“Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind, enjoining what is right, forbidding what is wrong, and believing in Allah. If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors.” [6]

Not coincidentally, the OIC convened for the so-called Cairo declaration shortly after the Feb. 1989 fatwa of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling upon Muslims worldwide to track down U.K. citizen Salman Rushdie and execute him. Members agreed, the declaration would serve as their guide on “human rights.” These rights, its preamble specified, reaffirm the “civilizing and historical role of the Islamic ummah [nation]” divinely made “as the best community” to give “humanity a universal and well-balanced civilization” and to establish “harmony between” temporal and the afterlife and fulfill Muslim “expectations…to guide all humanity,” confused by conflicting beliefs and ideologies.

The OIC Cairo declaration proposed to contribute to global assertion of “human rights, to protect man from exploitation and persecution, and to affirm his freedom and right to a dignified life,” but only in accordance with sharia. Briefly, it supports the opposite of “human rights” in the West: unequal rights.

The OIC, then, functions chiefly as a rising barricade—dangerously invisible to Western leaders, journalists and educators—to cow and herd free-thinking Western democracies on every continent into ever-tightening iron-clad boundaries to guard Islam against free speech, which the authors understand, despite their seemingly wishful thinking.

The book paints a global landscape, exposing a decades-long campaign to silence Islam’s internal and external critics via modern legal principles that clearly offend basic human rights. Example after example shows Muslims, through acts, expressing the belief that their creed, alone, is beyond criticism. Their actions suggest that many Muslims feel specially licensed to demand “cultural respect,” plus suppress infidels in their homelands, and everywhere else. Particularly those wanting equal human rights for all, even freedoms of faith and speech—free enough to criticize Muslim theology and Islam.

Further examples continue to accumulate daily. In Iran, Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhami, now 32, has lived precariously under a sword of Damocles since his 2009 arrest for apostasy—and converting from Islam at age 19. In 2010, he was convicted of apostasy and sentenced to death, though Iran now claims he was sentenced for rape. The mainstream press has remained largely silent over this outrage, albeit among many in Iran. Meanwhile in Paris, Islamic thugs bombed the office of satire magazine Charlie Hebdo(a Gallic version of Britain’s Private Eye) after its latest cover changed its name to Charia Hebdo and listed Mohammed as a “guest editor” to mock Tunisian and Libyan Islamic law. Yet Daily Beast (in the U.S.) headlined the satirical cover—not the bombing—as “shocking.” I’m choking.

Sadly, however, Silenced does not address the most important fact: Egregious violations of basic human rights, heretofore, have stemmed directly from Islamic texts—the Koran, hadith and sira—not only “human interpretation” thereof. In the Koran itself (3:110) originated the claim that Muslims are the best of peoples, notes Australian writer Geoff Dickson. [6] Muslim jurist Ibn Kathir (1301–1373) in his tafsir (exegesis) explains the verse to mean:

“You are the best of peoples ever raised up for mankind; you enjoin Al-Ma`ruf (all that Islam has ordained) and forbid Al-Munkar (all that Islam has forbidden), and you believe in Allah. And had the People of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) believed, it would have been better for them; among them are some who have faith, but most of them are Fasiqun (rebellious).”

Theoretically anything is possible. So, theoretically, is Islamic reform. But the rest of humanity meanwhile deserves and needs the truth about Islamic expansionism and irredentism, including where and how those beliefs and practices originated.

_____________________________________________
NOTES:

[1] “…But whoever of you recants and dies an unbeliever, his works shall come to nothing in this world and the next, and they are the companions of the fire forever.” As cited from Samuel Zwemmer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam, pp. 33-35, (see also http://radicaltruth.net/uploads/pubs/Zwemer—Law%20of%20Apostasy.pdf) in Ibn Warraq, ed., Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out, (Amherst: Prometheus, 2003), pp. 17, 35. Verse 2:217:

“They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: “Fighting therein is a grave (offense); but graver is it in the sight of God to prevent access to the path of God, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members.” Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. Nor will they cease fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can. And if any of you Turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein.”

[2] Pamela Geller, “Exhibit A, the document: fatwa (death penalty) for apostasy,” Atlas Shrugs, Sept. 21, 2009, http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/09/rifqa-bary-death-threat-exhibit-a-the-document-fatwa-death-penalty-for-apostasy.html(first viewed 9/21/2009).

[3] Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada, translated Issam Amayra’a April 2005 sermon from the Arabic.

[4] From Tafsir Al Qurtubi: Classical Commentary of the Holy Qur’an (Volume 1), translated by Aisha Bewley, p. 549, as cited by Dr. Andrew G. Bostom in his Sharia versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism, (Amherst: Prometheus, forthcoming).

[5] From Samuel Zwemer, The Law of Apostasy in Islam, London, 1924/1925, p. 33, as cited by Bostom, in the forthcoming Sharia versus Freedom, id.

[6] Koran 3:110, as translated by Yusuf Ali, Yet Another Quran Browser, http://qb.gomen.org/QuranBrowser/cgi/bin/retrieve.cgi?version=pickthall+yusufali+khan+shakir+sherali+khalifa+arberry+palmer+rodwell+sale+transliterated&layout=auto&searchstring=003:108-112 (last viewed 11/3/2011).


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Lars Hedegaard acquittal

Danish Ambassador to the U.S.


Sir —

This afternoon I happily and thankfully received news of the acquittal of Lars Hedegaard, for the wrongly alleged crime of hate speech. This is a definite step in the correct direction.

Nevertheless, there remains a serious question on the unjust prosecution and conviction of MP and pastor Jesper Langballe on the same absurd hate speech charge — for daring to speak in Lars Hedegaard’s defense.

Again, MP Langballe’s prosecution represents an assault against a basic human right embedded in Denmark’s long history, its constitution, and the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — to free speech. It also represents a stratospheric level of hypocrisy.

As a freedom lover, I also ask again: why has your public prosecutor, so far as I’m aware, never suggested charging the rabble rousers who incited riots in Denmark — and globally — after Jyllands Posten courageously published a series of satirical political cartoons. More importantly, how does Denmark continue to allow the same vile persons to blast Jew-hatred and hatred of all non-Muslims throughout your country by all available means.

Despite the excellent decision in the Hedegaard case, Denmark’s actions still leave an unfortunate ring of dead silence on that major score — which has already caused manifold injuries, property damage and deaths.

I cannot yet excuse Denmark from prosecuting truth-tellers, the real victims — while letting totalitarian Islamic hatemongers continue with impunity, loudly and publicly seek global imposition of sharia law. If Denmark has laws prohibiting sedition, I would encourage their strict enforcement. Such incitements are not a question of free speech — but one of public welfare and national security. I have not yet recaptured the love for your nation instilled in me by a generous family of Grena potters in summer 1969.

In any case, Denmark would be wise to resume fighting beasts at their core, as during World War II.

Firstly, that would require vacating the conviction of MP and pastor Langballe.

Secondly, it demands that Denmark rescind the ridiculous statute that allows your nation to cave in to sharia libel laws. (For the sake of sanity, we must assume that Danish legislators passed this dreadful statute into law not realizing the terrible consequences that would ensue.)

However, as I indicated last week, if ever sharia engulfs Europe, Denmark and Scandinavia would succumb — and your government fall to said radicals. Such a terrifying event would destroy forever the very notion of human rights and free speech in your nation and far beyond.

Fortunately, Denmark yet remains its own nation.

Therefore, please, sir, convey to Denmark’s leaders the necessity of reversing their cowardly current course. Rather than prosecute courageous souls who, in today’s poisonous and dangerous politically correct environment, dare to speak truth (at the grave risk of bodily harm or death), let Denmark seize control of its own affairs, prosecute hate mongers whose manifold incitements to riots and murder will otherwise bury you all alive — and establish firmly in the sand a line that you will not allow unelected rule-purveying EU officials to cross.

I beg that you help Denmark renew its courage and fortitude in the face of a sinister onslaught against the entire free world.

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


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Why does Denmark prosecute truth tellers?

Jan. 19, 2011

Danish Ambassador to the U.S.


Sir —

I am extremely alarmed with the public prosecution of Lars Hedegaard, a leading Danish columnist, and MP and pastor Jesper Langballe, for alleged crimes of “hate speech.”

Apart from the assault these prosecutions represent against a basic human right included in your constitution and the United Nations’ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — to free speech — it is boldly hypocritical.

The Danish public prosecutor, so far as I am aware, has never even suggested prosecuting all the rabble rousers who incited actual riots within the borders of Denmark — and indeed, around the world — after Jyllands Posten courageously published a series of satirical political cartoons. Moreover, the same vile persons today continue to blast Jew-hatred and hatred of all non-Muslims throughout your country by every available means. And you do nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Dead silence that has already caused manifold murders and deaths.

In effect, we must conclude that Denmark now prosecutes truth-tellers, themselves victims of genuine hatemongers — namely the totalitarian Islamic radicals who daily, and with complete impunity, call for global imposition of sharia law.

Naturally if ever such a thing engulfs Europe, it would include Denmark and Scandinavia — at which time your government would fall to said radicals, and the very notion of human rights and free speech would die with your nation.

This is a very sad turn for a nation whose citizens once defended human rights at the risk of their own private lives to save virtually Denmark’s entire Jewish population during World War II.

I spent the summer of 1969 in your country. It was one of the happiest times of my life. Now, that memory and all my good feelings for Denmark are going up in flames — by the hand of your public prosecutor.

Please, sir, reverse this course of action. Do not prosecute people who courageously dare, in today’s poisonous and dangerous politically correct environment, to tell the truth of things. Rather, take control and begin prosecuting the hate mongers whose manifold incitements to riots and murder will otherwise bury you all alive.

Americans are watching, and are very much dismayed by the rotten current state of Denmark. Why should Denmark not instead again set an example of courage and fortitude for the entire free world?

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


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Though Europe Rots, We Must Defend the West

With free speech under attack, our civilization’s survival is at stake.

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Pajamas Media | Jan. 18, 2011

Defending the rights to free speech of editor, columnist and Danish and International Free Press Society president Lars Hedegaard — especially the right to criticize orthodox Islam as freely as one may Christianity or Judaism — now equals defending the right of Western civilization to survive. 1 Barring an effective international outcry — or a rare fever of Sudden Enlightenment Syndrome one morning soon awakening Denmark’s Public Prosecutor with common sense — Hedegaard will face trial on Danish racism charges and conviction alike on Jan. 24, 2011: 2 a veritable auto da fe.

In Dec. 2009, Hedegaard remarked in a taped interview upon certain domestic violence peculiar to Muslim families (“they” rape their own children). He was then charged as a common criminal. 3

In 1969, Denmark’s proud history of supporting freedom, whatever the cost, enticed me to live for a summer with a family of potters in Grena, Jutland. In the 1940s, Denmark saved virtually its entire Jewish population from a regime whose totalitarianism many Islamic leaders now hope to best. Since then, Denmark may have gone rotten. The state apparently deems it far less criminal for groups driven by ideological or religious belief to behave criminally, than for anyone to publicly observe their heinous deeds. All the more, as (in this case) said criminal behavior would in other situations scandalize civilized people. Should a modern Danish coven of warlocks and witches regularly rape and roast their teenage daughters, doubtless the public prosecutor would charge no one for saying as much.

Alas, Hedegaard challenges modern Danish liberalism too, as he did in a Jan. 2009 interview with me. 4

Denmarks’ Public Prosecutor charged Hedegaard with racism for allegedly violating article 266 b of its penal code, (aka “racism clause”). This allows a prosecutor to infer criminal offense in any statement that he believes threatens, demeans or ridicules anyone based on race, skin color, national or ethnic origin, religious faith or sexual orientation. In other words, the law gives the prosecutor endless latitude to levy criminal charges over a wide range of easily misconstrued statements by or about — well, almost anyone.5 This absurdity of law in effect lets Denmark’s public prosecutor lavish his taxpayer-funded time on perusing news and other taped records of public figures for factual statements on Islam or predominantly Muslim behaviors; and that is how he seems to cast his own prejudiced net.

In North America, free speech is presumed a fundamental right cemented into the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — namely the first article in the Bill of Rights that Congress passed, the states ratified and U.S. law adopted on Dec. 15, 1791. It naturally includes the right to criticize almost anything, short of treason, charges for which the U.S. has not prosecuted in a very long while. Moreover, foreigners can no longer easily rebuke Americans via foreign lawsuits for taking full advantage of that enshrined U.S. freedom. 6

But in the early 1960s, orthodox Islamic believers calling themselves the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan, in Arabic) initiated global efforts to destroy the West and its values, free speech foremost among them. By their thinking, God alone can make laws, not man — the only just laws therefore being Islamic (sharia). All others, especially secular Western laws, must go, particularly those allowing what Islamic law considers blasphemy and a capitol offense — any criticism of Islam or Mohammed.

In 1982 and again in 1991, the Brothers set to paper their long-held plans to decimate Western societies and impose global Islamic law. They declared war on basic human rights — evolved from Judeao-Christian traditions codified in King Henry I’s 1100 C.E. Charter of Liberties, 7and expanded into various forms of due process 8 via Britain’s 1215 Magna Carta, 9 King Edward I’s 1305 writ of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, 10 New York’s 1683 Charter of Liberties and Privileges, 11 William Penn’s 1701 Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges, 12 the U.S. 1791 Bill of Rights, article § 77 of the Danish Constitution (letting anyone publish without censorship or government consent) — and a host of like statutes in most Western nations. These culminated with the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, affirming human rights to “enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want….” 13

Upon first hearing of MB plans, Westerners generally react with stupefied incredulity. Some furiously rage at the messenger. Yet global Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi concretely stipulated 14 these MB plans on Dec. 1, 1982 in “Towards a worldwide strategy for Islamic policy (Points of Departure, Elements, Procedures and Missions),” 15 which Swiss officials discovered in Nov. 2001 at the villa of MB chief financial officer Yusuf Nada. 16 North American MB chief Mohamed Akram on May 22, 1991 created a similar “regional” outline in an “Explanatory memorandum for the General Strategic goal for the Group in North America,” 17 presented as evidence by U.S. prosecutors to help convict five Holy Land Foundation officials of 108 terror-financing related charges. 18

The realities behind this decades-long Muslim Brotherhood campaign have now slammed Europe. On Dec. 3, 2010, Denmark’s public prosecutor figuratively collected his first scalp for racism, that of pastor and Member of Parliament Jesper Langballe, 19 not surprisingly for defending Hedegaard. “Of course Lars Hedegaard should not have said that there are Muslim fathers who rape their daughters,” Langballe stated, “when the truth appears to be that they make due with killing their daughters (the so-called honor killings) and leave it to their uncles to rape them.”

Randers municipal court found MP Langballe (Danish People’s Party) guilty of hate speech under Denmark’s penal code, Article 266b after duly honoring Danish legal precedent to deny Langballe the right to prove his truthful allegation that Muslim families often sexually abuse and murder their daughters for family honor. In such cases, Danish law figures the truth immaterial. As if under Islamic libel law itself, 20 Denmark may nowadays convict a defendant solely upon the personal offense taken or perceived in his or her statement. No actual crime need have occurred.

At his kangaroo court trial, MP Langballe therefore concluded, “With this article in the penal code, I must be assumed convicted in advance. I have no intention of participating in this circus. Therefore I confess.” Denmark denied MP Langballe both freedom of speech and due process and may now fine or incarcerate him up to two years. 21

These are but the latest journalists, elected European officials and humanitarians charged for perceived defamations of Islam in their statements of fact and exact reiterations of Quranic and other Islamic sacred texts. Finland first stepped to the plate, in 2009 convicting its best known political blogger, Jussi Kristian Halla-aho, then 38. 22

However in May 2008, Gregorius Nekschot, a pseudonymous Dutch cartoonist was similarly arrested and charged with discriminatory speech. In Sept. 2010, Dutch prosecutors finally dropped charges against Nekschot, on the eve of Holland’s next travesty of justice. Despite a court order that he dismantle his personal website, Nekschot was victorious. “I can carry on making caricatures, perhaps even more controversial ones, because I have been allowed to keep my anonymity,” he said.23

Then came five charges of hate speech against Dutch MP Geert Wilders. Prosecutors initially ruled that Wilders’ statements might hurt Muslim feelings but weren’t crimes. But in Jan. 2009, Amsterdam’s Appeals Court reversed the finding and ordered prosecutors to proceed. 24 At trial, an empaneled judge snidely remarked on Wilders’ intent to remain silent. An immediate appeal to replace the biased panel was denied. 25 Dutch prosecutors then reiterated the legality of criticizing religion (Muslim feelings determine no “facts of the case”, but trial judges ignored their request to acquit on all five charges.26

After incontestable judicial bias surfaced, however, a new appeals court on Oct. 22 terminated the Wilders trial. At a private May 2010 dinner party, Islamic expert and defense witness Hans Jansen revealed, magistrate Tom Schalken (among the Amsterdam judges to order Wilders’ prosecution) had approached to explain why Wilders must be prosecuted. Schalken’s unlawfully expressed, extra-judicial comment to a defense witness forced the appeals justices to order a new Wilders trial.27

Next up was Austria’s Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Pax Europa‘s Austrian representative and a former Organization for Security and Co-operation envoy in Europe. Pax Europa, focusing on sharia law incursions and simultaneous erosion of free speech in Europe, is Germany’s “foremost human rights organization,” she says. 28 In Sept. 2010, Sabaditsch-Wolff learned she was accused of “defamation of religion” during a 2009 three-part seminar on “Islamization of Europe” for the Freedom Education Institute (FEI). She is not a member of FEI or any part of the late, controversial Joerg Haider‘s “far-right” Austrian Freedom Party. But even if Sabaditsch-Wolff did belong, it would not be criminal: the state gives public monies to the Austrian Freedom Party’s Institute.

Moreover, Sabaditsch-Wolff based her academic observations on experience gained, by choice, from living most of her adult life “in Arab and Muslim-majority countries.” Exactly which statements prompted Vienna’s prosecutor to indict her for hate speech, he did not see fit to specify. 29 She was “tried” in Vienna, if you can call it that, in Nov. 2010. No decision has yet been announced.

That same month, the European Union required member states to implement the “Framework decision on combating racism and xenophobia,” a measure adopted Nov. 28, 2008 to combat “certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law.” This EU legal provision required all EU member states to comply fully by Nov. 28, 2010, Sabaditsch-Wolff asserts, and punish “intentional conduct” considered a pretext to target “a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” 30 Oblique or not, this means Muslims.

Who passed these measures, at whose proposal, without consulting Europe’s parliaments or populaces — and whether are they binding under national constitutions — should immediately arise as critical topics of debate in all EU member states. And Americans, lest we think ourselves immune, should steel the ramparts for the continuing onslaught upon our own treasured rights to free speech. Despite our new Free Speech protection measure, free speech remains under barrage assault.

NOTES:
1 In borrowing the title from the book of my friend and colleague, Ibn Warraq, I intend him the highest compliment for being, with Lars Hedegaard, among those at the vanguard of defending Western civilization.
2 “The scandal of Danish justice,” International Free Press Society, Dec. 12, 2010,http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2010/12/the-scandal-of-danish-justice/ (first viewed 12/12/2010).
3 “The scandal of Danish justice,” International Free Press Society, Dec. 12, 2010, ibid.
4 Alyssa A. Lappen, “The eternal Danish optimist,” Right Side News, Jan. 5, 2009, http://www.rightsidenews.com/200901043173/life-and-science/culture-wars/the-eternal-danish-optimist.html.
5 Ahmed Mohamud and Eva Agnete Selsing, “The lawsuit against Lars Hedegaard,” International Free Press Society, Sept. 27, 2010, http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2010/09/4087/ (viewed 1/9/2011).
6 NY Assembly Rep. Rory I. Lanceman, “Author of New York State’s first-in-the-nation law against “libel tourism” applauds congressional passage of the “Speech Act” to protect Americans’ 1st Amendment rights,” N.Y. Assembly District 25, Jul. 25, 2010, http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/?ad=025&sh=story&story=39928; Alyssa A. Lappen, “America’s First Amendment lifeline,” Human Events, 1/25/2008, http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24649; “Gov. Patterson signs legislation protecting New Yorkers against infringement of First Amendment rights by foreign libel judgment,” New York State press release, May 1, 2008, http://www.r8ny.com/node/16798; On May 1, 2008, New York State established the first libel terrorism protection act in the U.S.; I played a critical role obtaining necessary legislative support, without which I suspect it would have been impossible to achieve passage of a federal law along the same lines.
7 “Charter of Liberties,” Medieval Sourcebook, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/hcoronation.html (viewed 1/10/2011).
8 “Due process,” U.S Constitution, 5th Amendment, annotations, p. 11, reprinted at FindLaw, undated, http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/11.html; see also “Due process,” Cornell Univ. Law School, http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process (both viewed 1/10/2011)
9 “Magna Carta,” Britannia History, http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/magna2.html
10 “A brief history of habeas corpus,” BBC, Mar. 9, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4329839.stm (viewed 1/10/2011).
11 Charter of Liberties & Privileges, NY, 1683, http://www.montauk.com/history/seeds/charter.htm (viewed 1/10/2011).
12 William Penn, “Charter of Privileges,” Oct. 28, 1701, http://www.constitution.org/bcp/penncharpriv.htm (1/10/2011).
13 “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” United Nations General Assembly, Dec. 10, 1948, http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml; The document recognizes “the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people….” (emphasis added).
14 Lappen and Rachel Ehrenfeld, “Sharia financing and the coming ummah,” Chap. 28, Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency, ed. Jeffrey Norwitz, (U.S. Naval War College: 2008), pp. 389-404, https://www.alyssaalappen.org/wp-content/uploads/sharia-financing-and-the-coming-ummah-by-ehrenfeld-and-lappen.pdf.
15 Yusuf Qaradawi, “Towards a worldwide strategy for Islamic policy (Points of Departure, Elements, Procedures and Missions),” global Muslim Brotherhood, Dec. 1, 1982, as cited by Patrick Poole, “The Muslim Brotherhood Project,” Front Page Magazine, May 11, 2006, http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4475 and http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4476 (first viewed 5/11/2006).
16 Olivier Guitta, “The Cartoon Jihad,” Weekly Standard, Feb. 20, 2006, http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/704xewyj.asp (viewed 2/22/2006).
17 Mohamed Akram, “Explanatory memorandum for the General Strategic goal for the Group in North America,” Muslim Brotherhood, global Muslim Brotherhood, North America, May 22, 1991, p. 15, http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/HLF/Akram_GeneralStrategicGoal.pdf (first viewed 9/18/2007).
18 Jason Trahan and Tanya Eiserer, “Holy Land Foundation defendants guilty,” Dallas Morning News, Nov. 28, 2008, http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/112508dnmetholylandverdicts.1e5022504.html; see also “Ruling: humanitarian aid to Palestine a front for Hamas support,” Raw Story, Nov. 24, 2008, http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Largest_Muslim_charity_in_US_ruled_1124.html; “US-based Muslim charity guilty of funding terrorism,” Telegraph, Nov. 24, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3515658/US-based-Muslim-charity-guilty-of-funding-terrorism.html; “Federal judge hands down sentences in Holy Land Foundation case,” Dept. of Justice, May 27, 2009, http://dallas.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/pressrel09/dl052709.htm (all viewed 12/2/2010).
19 “The scandal of Danish justice,” International Free Press Society, Dec. 12, 2010, ibid.
20 Ahmad Ibn Lulu Ibn Al-Naqib (d. 1368), Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law Umdat, translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, 1991 and 1994, Amana Publications (revised ed., 1994), p. 730, as noted in Lappen, “Does sharia law now apply in the U.S.” Pajamas Media, Jan. 2, 2008, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/sharia_libel_law_now_applies_i/.
21 “The scandal of Danish justice,” International Free Press Society, Dec. 12, 2010, ibid.
22 James Cohen, “23 minute interview with Jussi Halla-aho,” International Free Press Society, Sept. 17, 2009, http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2009/09/23-minute-interview-with-jussi-halla-aho/ (viewed 1/10/2011); see also “Jussi Halla-aho,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussi_Halla-aho (viewed 1/10/2011).
23 Katrine Winkel Holm, “Prosecutor drops case against Dutch cartoonist,” International Free Speech Society, Sept. 25, 2010, http://www.internationalfreepresssociety.org/2010/09/prosecutor-drops-case-against-dutch-cartoonist/ (viewed 9/30/2010).
24 Mike Corder, “Dutch court: prosecute anti-Islamic law-maker,” Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2009, as reprinted in http://sweetness-light.com/archive/court-prosecute-geert-wilders-for-hate-speech (viewed 1/10/2011).
25 Bruce Mutsvairo, “Wilders hate speech trial to resume,” Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 5, 2010, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2010/1005/Geert-Wilders-hate-speech-trial-to-resume-in-Netherlands (10/6/2010).
26 “Dutch prosecutors sought anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders’ acquittal on five hate speech charges Friday, saying his criticism of the Muslim religion, though hurtful to some, was not criminal,” Radio Netherlands Worldwide, Oct. 15, 2010, http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/acquit-dutch-anti-islam-lawmaker-prosecutors (viewed 1/10/2011).
27 “Hans Jansen, scholar of Islam, and a witness for the defense in the Wilders trial, describes a curious dinner party,” and “Uproar: Dutch court orders retrial for Wilders,” New English Review, Oct. 22, 2010, http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_months.cfm/m/10/y/2010/sr/100 (both viewed 10/22/2010).
28 A. Millar, “Lawfare in Austria: Is truth illegal?” Hudson Organization, Oct. 11, 2010, http://www.hudson-ny.org/1596/sabaditsch-wolff-lawfare-austria (first viewed 10/12/2010).
29 A. Millar, “Lawfare in Austria: Is truth illegal?” Hudson Organization, Oct. 11, 2010, ibid.
30 “Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff: We are Being Systematically Silenced, This is our Time,” In Defense of Free Speech, Nov. 27, 2010, http://english.savefreespeech.org/?p=221 (viewed 1/10/2011).


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

Organization of Islamic Conference’s Chicago Summit Flops

The recent Chicago meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) had low turnout, U.S. envoy Rashad Hussain failed to turn up, and only a tenth of the audience seats were filled.

by Alyssa A. Lappen

Family Security Matters | Oct. 8, 2010

The International Islamic News Agency suggests that Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of Turkey presented a moderate and modern portrait at Chicago’s late September American Islamic College (AIC) conference. He tried. The “second largest intergovernmental organization outside the United Nations” stands as a “strategic and crucial partner” to the U.N., Ihsangolu said and is “not a religious organization.” Sounding liberal was paramount. After all, Ihsangolu appeared here, the first time any OIC forum welcomed the U.S. general public.

The OIC, he said, had evolved into a

“unique institution with a very modern and up-to-date charter and a 10-year program of action propelled by the vision of moderation and modernization…. [that] voices the consensual views and attitudes of the Muslim world, defends its causes and coordinates … joint actions … political, economic, cultural or otherwise. [emphasis added]

“[It] reflects the true and real image of Islam, based on tolerance, peace, … and acknowledgment of diversity [to] dialogue with other[s] … [for] historic reconciliation between the Muslim world and the West. Contrary to the popular understanding, … [the Abrahamic tradition of faith,] Islam and points of reference is (sic) compatible with the finest manners of human nature. It … embraces the supreme virtues of peace, equality, justice, compassion, human rights. It respects nature and the environment…, not the preserve of any people, or religion or civilization…, [but] diversive (sic) values… all [must] internalize and uphold.”

OIC ambassador to the U.N. Ufuk Goken noted its condemnations of attacks on an active duty Jewish soldier in Israel and Christians in Mosul. The OIC also combats “Christianophobia,” he said, and is not:

  • full of jihadis
  • anti-American
  • antisemitic
  • an organization with double standards.

Former White House special OIC envoy Sada Cumber even faulted Islamic theocracies and seemed to criticize the OIC for failing to unify Islamic sects. The world’s real WMD, Cumber said, are “Weapons of Muslim Destruction” — Muslim governments “pushing their version of Islam” on the world. Not a single Muslim government anywhere offers its citizens the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness Muslims enjoy in the U.S., he said. “The day [my native] Pakistan can offer that, I will move there.”

Alas, the event flopped. Expected White House envoys were no-shows. Two distinct audience counts during Ihsangolu’s Sept. 29 keynote — delayed a half hour as planners prayer for more warm bodies — found the refurbished 1,000-seat AIC auditorium holding under 30 and 50 people, respectively.

Generously estimated, maybe 150 guests all told attended four Sept. 29 panel discussions. But the hall never simultaneously seated even 100 guests. By Oct. 6 AIC had posted no conference news or photos. A revised agenda and speakers’ list were hidden and shorter than AIC originally promised. A site search turned up only the May 2010 White House announcement of Rashad Hussain‘s appointment as special OIC envoy. Hussain called in last-second regrets, audibly enraging CAIR Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab. He fumed at Hussain’s failure to reschedule his “conflict.” Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwanophobia site claimed a “kitchen sink” of “hate smears” had caused the cancellation — “supremacist gathering,” “Muslim Brotherhood,” “Hamas,” “Shariah,” “Khilafah,” “yada yada.”

Advance marketing, though, belied the actual OIC charter content (strangely, no longer posted at the OIC). It and OIC’s 10-year plan unify members behind Islamic values, wrote Geneva-based Association for World Education NGO emissary David G. Littman in 2008. Their collective goal is to promote traditional Islamic values and world “pioneering.” Others citing native Muslim scholars, jurists and sacred texts, also correctly name it as conquest. Writes scholar of Islam Bat Ye’or,

“in contrast to to the European states “[OIC nations unify] to [defend] their national sovereignty and territorial integrity… support … Palestine with al-Quds Al Sharif, the Arabized name for Jerusalem, as its capital, and exhort each other to promote human rights, basic freedoms, the state of law (shari’a), and democracy according to their constitutional and legal system — in other words, compliance with shari’a.”

Sure enough, Ihsangolu stressed Muslim efforts to open “channels of communications with their host countries,” suggesting Muslims aren’t citizens of “their host counties,” but the Muslim ummah (nation). The Brotherhood espouses this foundational Islamic dogma, notably in its May 1991 strategic goals for North America by Mohamed Akram.1 Ihsangolu often cited the dread “Islamophobia,” thus embracing immutable sharia requirements that Muslims may deride other faiths, but must never tolerate critics or criticism of Islam, in any form. Like most other speakers, he also encouraged Muslims, “Join other groups in fighting injustice,” which “goes hand in hand” with Islamic teachings. By what definitions.

The OIC, projecting a false veil of moderation, should perhaps rejoice that the conference fizzled. Otherwise, intemperate comments might have gone viral. World Congress of Muslim Philanthropies president and Chicago physician Tariq Cheema, moderated “American Foreign Policy & the Muslim world.” A regular at events stacked with MB participants and organizations, this 2nd panel sought a big U.S. policy shift. Cheema asked U.S. Muslims to strengthen inter-continental “south-south” hemispheric relations, introducing others hoping to blunt U.S. preeminence and empower global Islam.

“Islam in the American context,” the 3rd panel, featured Gallup Center for Muslim Studies’ Magali Rheault. She outlined findings of a 2010 “religious perceptions” poll purported to show anti-Muslim bias, Muslim depression, unhappiness and poor economic status relative to other U.S. religious groups. But Gallup failed to ask why any disliked specific doctrines. If it confirmed participants as U.S. citizens, the report doesn’t say. Glaringly absent were queries on U.S. allegiance, or if participants:

  • Accept the US Constitution as the land’s supreme law, superseding any civil or criminal laws espoused in your religious texts?
  • Accept the equality of all religions?
  • Favor separation of religion and state?
  • Would serve U.S. armed forces faithfully and fight if necessary against their co-religionists?

While subject to U.S. laws, Muslim disregard for them did not concern two other 3rd panel speakers. Chicago Malcom X College social scientist Misbahudeen Ahmed-Rufai, a Ghana native, discussed largely silent African Muslims in the U.S. He cited, but did not question, the huge percentages of African Muslims who arrived or remain in the U.S. illegally.

“If you burn a Koran it is a hate crime,” asserted Loyola Univ. Islamic studies director Marcia Hermansen. She thereby ignored the outrageous May 2009 U.S. military incineration of Bibles sent unsolicited to U.S. troops in Afghanistan — and more importantly, the First Amendment that consciously and actively lets citizens speak freely — and burn U.S. flags, Bibles or Korans if they like.

Perhaps most revealing were some comments during the day’s 4th and final “Imagining our future” panel. Gambling State Univ. mathematical professor Abdulalim Shabbaz claimed that Europeans invented racism — he specified it as “white supremacism” — to justify enslaving Africans. He ignored the ongoing Islamic slaving tradition. And Shabbaz first quoted Koran 49:13, acknowledging human diversity, while enjoining Muslims to assert their “most honored” status, another kind of supremacism:

“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of God is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And God has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).” [emphasis added]

Convert S. (“Sherman”) Abd al-Hakim Jackson, a speaker at the Muslim Brotherhood Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), and Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA) seemed to envision a Muslim revolution. He worried that U.S. Muslims try too hard to prove what they are not — “intolerant,” “terrorists,” or “trying to impose our way of life.” He feared a “domesticated” U.S. Islam not making “principled” social contributions. He wanted Muslims to be “America’s moral conscience,” challenging the U.S. “state” and “dominant culture” and teaching Americans they’re “not infallible.” That would require more power. He cited the grandson of MB founder Hasan al-Banna, Tariq Ramadan: those impious at night can’t “expect to change society by day.” U.S. Muslims should use their “perceived threat,” or risk losing relevance, he said. Minority medieval Muslims had conquered the mid east and made unIslamic institutions Islamic. Hint hint.

Convert Aminah McCloud, a self-described early acolyte of Muslim Brotherhood International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) founder Ismail Faruqi, offered the biggest shockers. Introduced by MB mainstay ISNA secretary general Safaa Zarzour as his mentor, teacher and friend, McCloud said Muslim leaders “represent us as a passive people, a patient and docent (sic) in the face of oppression.” That insures U.S. Muslims will “have no future,” she said. She questions Muslim involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

“We [Muslims] did not perform our own investigations. We took the side of those against us and declared that any [groups] involved were not of us, praying that we would not be called on to do anything more than acquiesce…”

Regarding Muslim responses to the genocidal 9/11 attacks, she said,

“the thing that alarmed me the most was when I watched Muslims who were supposed to represent me claim that Islam just meant peace. I would have never transitioned to a religious tradition that just meant peace, that stood for nothing.”

Meanwhile, McCloud viewed fellow Americans as oppressive, genocidal maniacs, “who pray for [Muslim] extinction.”

“…America is a nation of cowboys, with little respect for those who don’t fight for what they believe in. …America, for better or worse, again, is a nation of cowboys. From the stories of its first genocide against the people of this land, everyone knows what Americans are liable to do if you extend an unprotected hand.”

Cumber too, openly embraced sharia, whose purest form, he said would provide Muslims rule of law, access to justice, higher education, soft and hard infrastructure, gender equality, accountability and transparency. Hardly a vision of sharia shared by the Muslim Brotherhood, OIC’s parent and watchdog.

Ihsanogulu wanted to sway novices to Islam with a ceremonial facade identical to that of an Oct. 2009 Helsinki “Islam in Europe” conference. “We are not anti-Christian, we are not anti-Semitic, we are not anti-anybody,” he said then. The “moderate and modern” 2008 OIC renaissance (strangely labeled “jihad of peace“) claimed all the same purportedly liberal values Ihsangolu paraded in Chicago.

The Saudi-founded and petrodollar-flush OIC spent a fair sum to that end. It presumably underwrote air tickets and rooms for key OIC and Muslim leaders and funded dinner and soft drinks for maybe 75 guests on Sept. 28, to welcome Ihsanoglu and celebrate the opening of AIC, albeit as-yet unaccredited. On Sept. 29, the OIC plied another 75 or so Muslim leaders and guests from the general public with coffee, tea, and a four course sit down luncheon of hummus and pita; salad; halal chicken, vegetables, potatoes; and rice pudding. Hosts distributed party favors too — dated, embossed OIC brief cases holding patented, OIC coffee mugs, OIC stainless travel mugs and retractable ball-point pens.

But the AIC itself pled poverty, soliciting Sept. 29 attendees for $1,000, $4,000. $5,000, $30,000, $600,000 or $700,000 donations for brass name plates of choice on chairs, classrooms, dorm rooms, conference rooms, the auditorium or the dormitory building, respectively.

Nevertheless, Americans should remain vigilant. Constitutional protections of free speech and religious practice do not outlaw criticism of faith that would infringe on the rights of others. The OIC-hosted Muslim speakers often invoked U.S. Constitutional rights, but conveniently ignored them in cases that others had bruised their sentiments. They labeled all critics of Islam hate mongers and bigots.

Americans should recognize this strategy as a dangerous attempt to introduce a key sharia law component — prohibiting any criticism of Islam — to the detriment of everyone, especially Muslims. To achieve true renaissance presuppose questions.

Notes:
1 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 (viewed 9/18/2007); “Attachment A,” In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Dallas Division, USA vs. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, http://www.pipelinenews.org/images/2007-05-29-US v HLF-ListCoConspirators.pdf (first viewed 6/1/2007).


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.

The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology

Part Four: The conceptual drivers for Mumbai

rightsidenews_301

By Alyssa A. Lappen
Right Side News | Nov. 30, 2009

On Thanksgiving 2009, as police worldwide continued arresting Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) collaborators and Home Box Office plans to release a film quoting a Pakistani terrorist mastermind — victims, families and others mourned the massive Mumbai terrorist attacks precisely one year earlier on Nov. 26, 2008. Doubtless few Americans realized that in July 2008 a Chicago Pakistan-born jihadist had posed as Jewish to case LeT’s key target, Nariman Chabad House. That David Coleman Headley and his Chicago peers, arrested in a giant October FBI Muslim slaughterhouse raid, planned to bomb Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten news offices too. That they allegedly attempted to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, whose satirical 2005 Mohammed cartoons lent Islamic radicals an excuse to launch worldwide riots actually planned months earlier. Or that Hafiz Masood, while imam at Boston’s Islamic Center of New England, had raised funds for LeT.

The consuming desire of Mumbai’s Muslim attackers to specifically target Jewish people (and Chabad’s Nariman House), was exposed Jan. 5, 2009 by reporter Shomendra Sharma in India’s daily e-paper, DNA India. The terrorists intended to send “a message to Jews across the world by attacking the ultra orthodox synagogue.” Imprisoned LeT predator Fahim Ahmed Ansari corroborated the report — but only 10 months after his Feb. 2008 capture for bombing a Rampur Central Police Reserve training camp — so as not to jeopardize the terrorists’ most secret and important Nariman House attack.

Unlike any mainstream U.S. journalists, AtlasShrugs founder and publisher Pamela Geller ran the story that morning. JihadWatch followed her lead early Jan. 6. Few others reported it at all.

The blackout was particularly shocking, given the clarity of the news: LeT’s Pakistani handlers “were clear this operation [Nariman] should not fail under any circumstances,” DNA reported. The Taj Mahal, Oberoi and Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus targets, however, “were [merely] intended to amplify the effect.” After landing their dingy, terrorist leader Ismail Khan again “intensely” briefed the assigned Nariman perpetrators—-Imran Babar (a.k.a. Abu Akasha) and Nasir (a.k.a. Abu Umer)—-personally instructing them what to do. The results were intensely barbaric and bloody. Bodies were horrifically mutilated, and eyes gouged out.

But for AtlasShrugs, still fewer Americans would know these salient facts.

While appalling, such revelations would hardly surprise those familiar with Islamic theocratic texts. People unfamiliar would be well-advised to consult our generation’s preeminent scholar on Islamic antisemitism, Dr. Andrew Bostom. In mid-2008 the Brown University medical professor and renal specialist published probably the most complete collection of Islamic texts, demonstrating the weighty evidence of Islamic Jew-hatred contained throughout foundational Islamic holy books, jurisprudence, and historical accounts — as propagated by Mohammed himself. (Full disclosure: I happily assisted Dr. Bostom in some aspects of the book’s preparations).

Islam’s founder of Islam began his anti-Jewish campaigns with his respective 624 and 625 expulsions of the Quaynuqa and Nadir Jewish tribes from Medina. He continued in 627 with the slaughter of all Qurayza Jewish men and enslavement of their women and children. In 628, he besieged and banished the Jews of the Khaybar oasis. On his death bed, Mohammed instructed his heirs to totally ban Jews from Arabia — a goal consummated in 643 and 644 by Caliph Umar.

Nor does Bostom alone observe essential facts concerning this foundational hatred. Renowned antisemitism Professor Robert Wistrich, too, had previously noted that the Koran contains “…notably harsh passages in which Muhammad brands the Jews as enemies of Islam and depicts them as possessing a malevolent, rebellious spirit.” Wistrich cites verses that purport to justify the Jews’ “abasement and poverty;” and describe them as “…’laden with God’s anger’…” for disobeying Allah. Mohammed instructed Muslims to humiliate Jews, Wistrich observes, “…because they had disbelieved the signs of God and slain the prophets unrightfully…” (Sura 2:58/61). The Koran also claims that both David and Jesus cursed “…the unbelievers of the Children of Israel…’,” (Sura 5:78/82). The penalty for disbelieving God’s supposed signs and the miracles of Mohammed, Wistrich notes, was to be transformed into apes and swine (Sura 5:60/65). Moreover, Islamic oral tradition — the deeds and sayings of Mohammed (hadith) — claims that the Jews, in accordance with their purportedly perfidious nature, deliberately poisoned Muhammad, causing his painful, protracted death. Finally, Wistrich notes that the “malevolent, conspiratorial Jews are to blame for the sectarian strife in early Islam, for heresies and deviations that undermined or endangered the unity of the umma (the Muslim nations)…”

Indeed, even modern Muslim clerics often cite these historical Islamic data in statements, judicial texts and charters — despite frequent attempts to whitewash that history. In June, 2009 at Cairo’s Al Azhar university, for example, President Barack Obama described the thousand-year-old institution as “a beacon of Islamic learning” that had “carried the light of learning” throughout the centuries.

Yet, the Islamic paragon of tolerance and nearest Muslim “equivalent to a Pope,” Al Azhar grand imam Mohammed Sayyid Tantawi last year apologized for shaking hands with Israeli president Shimon Peres—-in far better keeping with his character than the handshake. As Bostom has often noted, Tantawi genuinely considers Jews “enemies of Allah, and descendants of apes and pigs;” actively supports Islamic “religious law” (his words) suicide bombings to kill Israeli civilians, women and children; and after his 1997 meeting with Israeli chief Rabbi Israel Lau, urged Muslims to meet Jewish “enemies” in order “… to counter their dubious claims and stick fingers into their eyes….” Moreover, Tantawi derived this hatred directly from the Koran, “more than one-third of which deals with the Jews”—-as he readily admits.

Indeed, Tantawi’s 1966 Ph.D. Thesis, Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [The Children of Israel in the Koran and the Sunna], which Bostom excerpted in English for the first time, states that the Jewish people “were cursed from aforetime and were exiled from his [Allah’s] mercy, and miserable wretchedness al-dhullah wal-maskana was decreed as their lot, for horrible punishment became their dominant trait.” (p. 391) As hateful a 700-page screed as one is ever likely to read, the dissertation undoubtedly also earned Tantawi his Pope-like Islamic position. It further states,

“[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness… only a minority of the Jews keep their word… [A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

As historian David Littman heroically began to note at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Jan. 1989, the Hamas Charter in the same spirit is a genocidal decree. Moreover, (as Bostom has also noted), even before its preamble, the Hamas document opens by quoting the most sacred of all Islamic texts, the Koran chapter 3, v. 110-112:

“You [Muslims] are the best nation that has been brought out for mankind. You command good and forbid evil and believe in Allah. If only the people of the Book [i.e., Jews and Christians] had believed, it would have been well for them. Some of them believe, but most of them are iniquitous. They will never be able to do you serious harm, they will only be an annoyance. If they fight you, they will turn their backs and flee, and will not be succored. Humiliation is their lot wherever they may be, except where they are saved from it by a bond with Allah or by a bond with men. They incurred upon themselves Allah’s wrath, and wretchedness is their lot, because they denied Allah’s signs and wrongfully killed the prophets, and because they disobeyed and transgressed.” (Koran, 3:110-112)

Only within the context of the above information can one fully appreciate Right Side News‘ exclusive fourth and final interview of Atlas, by investigative reporter Alyssa A. Lappen. Since beginning the series in February 2009 (parts I, II and III are here, here and here), Lappen has queried Atlas on her tireless efforts to expose the Muslim wars within the U.S. and Western world — on free speech, human rights of women, and non-Muslims generally. In this last segment, Lappen concentrates on the Nov. 28, 2008 Islamic terror attacks in Mumbai, which consolidated in all respects every front in the global Islamic jihad, through its special focus on the Jewish people.

Finally, the full meaning of these attacks has come home to roost in the U.S. — with the discovery that Pakistan-born, U.S.-based Islamic terrorists were involved in their planning. Indeed, on Tuesday, Nov. 24, even a mainstream newspaper — in Barack Obama’s former Chicago political environs no less — informed readers of the troubling roles of U.S. terrorists in Mumbai.

Surprisingly, three days earlier on Nov. 21, the ultra-liberal Christian Science Monitor similarly had headlined an article on the “Islamic terror motive” of the Nov. 5 Muslim massacre of 13 people at Ft. Hood. CSM actually emphasized underlying Islamic facts — albeit while claiming they present an essentially “partisan divide.” Still, this too represented vastly improved mainstream reporting, in record time after a jihad strike: For on Nov. 5 and 6, major news networks and newspapers (excepting Fox News and the New York Post) almost universally towed the politically correct line on the second such attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11. They termed U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan a “suspect,” “shooter” or “gunman“—-and studiously avoided references to Islam or terrorism.

Since February 2009, Atlas has increasingly received well-merited public recognition for her ardent contributions to protecting U.S. Constitutional rights, including the freedoms of speech, press and assembly — which inherently assume and include freedom from terror. In May 2009, Atlas began contributing frequently to American Thinker. Since August 2009, she’s also often contributed articles at Newsmax, which recently granted her a Newsmax blog.

With this interview, Right Side News and Lappen hope to demonstrate that ultimately, the fervor of Islamic attacks on the Jewish people reflect the fervor of Islamic hatred for all women and non-Muslims — and the universal freedoms of men and women that the Muslim leaders are determined to replace with Islamic law. But the exposure Atlas provided to the level of hatred expressed at Nariman House, has all the better focused the ordinary eye on the depth of depravity dictating Islamic attacks of all kinds. Thus can mankind help summon a will exceeding that of its foes, a steel will, strong enough to utterly demolish jihad.

Alyssa A. Lappen: When did you first understand that the Jewish people and Chabad’s Nariman House were the focal point of the Mumbai attacks.

Atlas: Most of the details were out there, but not publicized. It wasn’t public that Chabad was targeted first — that according to the LeT central command in this operation, that was the most important. The terrorists had also targeted the Taj Mahal, Oberois and Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus. But Chabad was central because of Islamic hatred of Jews. In late December, it came out that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka Holtzberg, were sexually mutilated. I was one of the few to report that.

Then on Jan. 5, Somendra Sharma at the DNA India e-paper reported that the Pakistani fanatics had wanted to send a message to the world. It was central to that operation. Everything besides Chabad was intended to amplify the effect, but they were not the central targets. A senior police official told the DNA on the condition of anonymity. Mohammed Ajmal, also known as Kasab, told them that Chabad House was their primary focus.

AAL: That is truly depraved. So these people murdered at least 166 people in at six locations, just to amplify the message that “any Jews killed were worth 50 times as much as anyone else.” It boggles the mind. Why?

Atlas: You need to understand. At this point, U.S. Muslims mention Jews 17 times a day in their daily prayers. Seventeen times a day, they invoke hatred against “those that incur the wrath of God,” that is, Jews. Even Jewish leaders in Israel have no idea of Dr. Bostom’s seminal work. People do not understand what these [jihadists] are doing. They do not understand.

AAL: You are saying that 17 times a day, Muslims pray to kill Jews?

Atlas: Yes. I’m telling you about the prayers. I found this in researching a separate issue, from conversations with [JihadWatch director] Robert Spencer and Dr. Andrew Bostom. Robert reported that U.S. mosques have tacked on the dua qunoot — a prayer to destroy Allah’s enemies — to regular daily prayers. That dua qunoot prayer ends with a plea for “torment … to overtake infidels.” And it’s been added to every raka’ah, as it is called, the sub unit of Islamic prayers, or salah. So Robert reports that pious U.S. Muslims pray 17 times a day to destroy Allah’s enemies, which means Israel. But in this context, it also means Jews.

AAL: So, you’re saying that in the context of Mumbai, the terrorists’ message was, what, “We are coming to get you?”

Atlas: Yes. That’s the message that Jews are supposed to glean from this. This is what they were saying, by targeting a couple who do good work, who provided a force for good in the world. They brutally murdered Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife Rivki and seven other Jews there. And a fact little discussed is that the Rabbi and his wife were sexually mutilated. It wasn’t in the mainstream media. The Mumbai Mirror reported this. Their genitalia were mutilated.

When they landed in Mumbai, Ismail Kahn told the two Nariman perpetrators not to allow a single minimal glitch in finding and capturing the Chabad House. They wouldn’t even plant a bomb in a taxi to go there — in case the bomb exploded before they reached the target. They wanted to make sure Nariman House was destroyed and the people there were destroyed. Period.

The photos of the enormous amount of blood is one indication of how brutal those murders were. Another is the horrific torture sustained by Israeli captives at Nariman House before their murders. I’m pointing out that no one talks about it. Only one line in the Mumbai Mirror discussed the disturbing photos at the Taj Mahal or mentioned that the terrorists sexually assaulted their Jewish victims and then mutilated their genitalia. Some of the other guests were forced to strip, but the Rabbi and his wife were sexually assaulted. And that was from an official who refused to be identified.

AAL: What overarching message do you take from this.

Atlas: These people do not believe in “Give me Liberty or give me death.” The terrorists themselves were in no doubt that Nariman House was the central target. It housed a Jewish center, and the fanatic Pakistani Muslims wanted to send a message to the world from there. And at all the locations, more Israelis were murdered than any other nationality.

When he was asked why, Mohammed Ajmal, the one surviving terrorist, told police they wanted to send a message to the Jews across the world by attacking an Orthodox synagogue. So look, no matter how the press might try to twist this, it’s not about Israel. This is a message to all Jewish people of the world.

AAL: In answer, Chabad has sent Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz there to rebuild. We’ve obtained photos of Nariman House’s new Torah Ark, of memorial services at Chabad House and of students wrapping Tefilin, Jewish prayer phylacteries enclosing parchments with portions of Exodus and Deuteronomy. But most important, Chabad will rebuild.

Atlas: That is the Jewish way. Until forced to leave, we Jewish people keep on keeping on. Maybe it is stupid in the context of the world we live in. We live in a culture of death. And by this I mean. Everything. Look at the sides our president takes — in reaching out to Hamas, and Hezbollah. He supports the ethnic cleansing of Jews with this disgusting phrase, “no natural growth.” So if Jewish people in Judea and Samaria give birth to a baby, Grandma has to move out.

Islam is a culture of death also. And at the U.N., here is the U.S. letting the world powers side with the evil forces.

However, not to rebuild is victory for Islam, and a victory for death.

Judaism is a culture of life.

Chabad has to rebuild with heavy weaponry in the house, though. I’d never tell them not to build. I’m not Obama. However, God expects us to have brains. I believe in God. I believe God loves me and my children. But I still have to worry about them. We have to be responsible. Rabbi Holtzberg was very worried about security. And Chabad cannot rely on the [Indian] government to protect them. They have to rebuild a secure building. They should rotate retired IDF officers there at all times.

AAL: Do you believe Israeli leaders understand the importance of these Mumbai attacks?

Atlas: I don’t know. In February 2008, the Mumbai antiterrorism squad arrested Fahim Ansari, for his role in a previous bombing at Lucknow. This came at a high price for the Mumbai anti terrorist squad, but Ansari also had some connection with the Mumbai terrorist attacks. He was arrested for his role in other bomb blasts, but had surveyed the Chabad house. And Ansari did not divulge that information because it would have compromised the most important operation of the Lakshar … He was warned by the LeT that Nariman house was their most secret operation and must not be compromised at any cost.

So if Israeli Jews are drinking [poisonous] cool aid and believe that Islam will live peacefully with them, in a two state genocide solution, then pass me the bomb water. Pass me the cool aid too. Engaging in those conversations is like trying to rationalize the irrational. It’s impossible. It’s an impossible goal.

For Israel, the so-called two-state solution is a suicide pact. There can be no two state solution. It’s in the Hamas charter. I don’t know what Islam would do without this hate. Muslims die for this hate. It’s their reason for living and their reason for dying.

AAL: Why don’t the general public, never mind only Jewish leadership, seem to understand the stakes?

Atlas: Here’s an example. Concerning Mumbai, last June, Britain’s Daily Mail got their hands on police intercepts from the LeT central command in Pakistan. Of course they invoked Allah every few sentences. But more importantly, the Daily Mail took down the posted transcripts almost immediately. The Daily Mail had it posted for a few hours, tops. I happened to have kept the whole article. It might jeopardize their outreach efforts.

AAL: (Laughs at irony).

Atlas: You’re laughing. But in the U.S., outreach [to Muslims] has now become more important than investigating crimes.

There are days I feel like I am just shoveling shit against the tide. But look what will happen if [the government] shuts me down. Here, when they were on the phone, they intercepted and recorded the conversations. Wasi [the Pakistani controller] says to the killers, “The manner of your death will instill fear in the unbelievers. This is a battle between Islam and the unbelievers.” Later on, Wasi tells them, “You are very close to heaven now. You will be remembered for what you have done here. Stretch it out as long as possible. …

There is no question this is Islamic jihad. This is Islam.

AAL: No of course, it’s not funny at all.

Atlas: No, you had the killers on the Rabbi’s phone, talking to Pakistan. Wasi in Pakistan told them, “Just shoot them now. Get rid of them now. You could come under fire at any time.” The killers replied, “Sure, we’ll shoot as soon as we come under fire.” Wasi tells them, “No, now, you never know when you might come under attack.”

What more can we say. Is there anything that could more stunningly indict Islam? When will people talk about this. That they always target synagogues? That a lone jihadi went into a Seattle Jewish center, shot up the place, and killed a pregnant Jewish woman. Then he said, “I killed my Jew.”

AAL: But you’re saying it’s actually much more than that.

Atlas: Right.

Mumbai was not the exception. Mumbai is the rule, and I don’t think America will escape that kind of attack. That it has not already happened [in the U.S.] does not mean it will not happen. I do not believe that for a second.

Maybe the mainstream media is finally starting to communicate the reality. Starting. A new Home Box Office film quotes a Mumbai attack mastermind, who controlled the Nov. 26, 2008 terrorists by cell phone. “This was just the trailer,” he said. “Just wait till you see the rest of the film.” The LeT projected their intention of “liberating” Muslims. They’ll conduct global jihad against “infidels,” beginning with Jews. “‘Just shoot them now,’ says the controller, adding, ‘Go on! I’m listening. Do it.'”

There are dozens of Islamic training camps in the U.S., with caches of arms. The Central Islamic command worldwide is the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). And these people insist that non-Muslims “respect” Islam and subdue themselves before Islamic supremacism. And when Obama, who was born and raised a Muslim, speaks to the Islamic world, he validates everything I’m saying: There is an ummah [Muslim nation]. They are just part of an ummah, not citizens of any country. And for non-Muslims to join, they have to follow Islamic law.

AAL: So, what’s the bottom line? What lesson should we take from Mumbai to help overcome this madness?

Atlas: That Mumbai happened—-and why it happened. That this war is a reality. It will not go away. And that Islamic Jew hatred is very real and part of their basic doctrine. It cannot be ignored.

The other lesson is, don’t lose heart. You go knowing that you fought. You must fight. There is no other way. If you are not fighting this insanity, then you are part of the problem. And individuals can change parts of human history. [Edmund] Burke said evil prospers when good men do nothing. All that’s necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

And Ayn Rand says that only its sanction is what makes evil possible.


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