Richard Driehaus screen: A momentum strategy focused on earnings growth

Stockopedia | Aug. 22, 2012

In brief

Richard Driehaus is the founder and chairman of Chicago-based fund management firm Driehaus Capital Management. He rose to prominence in the investment community during the 1980s and 1990s by delivering impressive returns using momentum strategies that focused on small and mid-cap stocks. He was particularly attracted to firms that displayed strong earnings growth and he used earnings ‘surprises’ as buy and sell signals.

Background

Driehaus began investing in the stock market at the tender age of 13 (with the proceeds of a paper round) and he went on to spend considerable time researching and reading investment newsletters. In an interview for Jack Schwager’s book The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders, Driehaus said he had been particularly inspired by John Herold’s America’s Fastest Growing Companies. It was here that he began to focus on what he perceived as the importance of long term earnings growth as the ultimate driver of share price movement.

Driehaus set up his own broking and fund management business in the early 1980s after successful spells as a money manager for firms including A.G. Becker, Mullaney, Wells & Co. and Jesup & Lamont. By 2000 his success had earned him a place in Barron’s All-Century Team – a group of influential fund managers that counts investment gurus Peter Lynch and Bill Miller among its members.

Investment strategy

While Driehaus has never directly documented his investment techniques in a book, several analysts have scrutinised his strategies. According to the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), the heart of the Driehaus method is to identify those companies with improving earnings growth rates and then identify which of them are most likely to continue the trend. Driehaus then screens for firms that are beating analyst expectations and producing positive earnings surprises.

In Schwager’s The New Market Wizards, Driehaus explained that while he was prepared to hold equities for very long periods of time, his strategy meant being willing to turn over the portfolio more frequently than the conventional norm to get superior returns.

He claimed to take exception to the market paradigm of ‘buy low and sell high’, believing instead that more money is made buying high and selling at even higher prices. He explained:

“That means buying stocks that have already had good moves and have high relative strength – that is, stocks in demand by other investors. I would much rather invest in a stock that’s increasing in price and take the risk that it may begin to decline than invest in a stock that’s already in a decline and try to guess when it will turn around.”

In an extensive article on Driehaus for Institutional Investor magazine in November 1993, Alyssa Lappen said Driehaus was relaxed about high P/E ratios and balance sheet debt so long as sales and earnings growth looked sure to accelerate. “Not every stock that Driehaus buys has a stratospheric P/E. He’s an opportunist who sometimes picks up growth stocks at value prices,” she said. Lappen also noted that he showed no sentimentality to his stocks:

“He unceremoniously dumps his mistakes the moment the fundamentals deteriorate, the price pattern breaks down – or he finds a stock he likes better.”

What to watch

Although momentum strategies have proved to be an effective tool for investors there can be significant drawbacks – and none more so than the critical issue of timing. Momentum investors routinely risk getting their timing wrong on trades and in extreme market conditions, as seen in 2009, these strategies can crash. In addition, as Driehaus conceded, the higher level of portfolio turnover means that a momentum strategy needs a lot of work. Overall, this type of investing can be time-intensive and rack up comparatively high trading costs.

Does it work?

Driehaus has insisted that the investor who simply applies momentum as a technician will never survive and that investors must keep the faith even if the portfolio value falls significantly. In terms of performance, Driehaus Capital Management was reported to have delivered compound annual returns of 30% during the 12 years after it was started in 1980. An interpretation of Driehaus’s methods, produced by AAII, has returned 13.5% and 18.1% over five and 10 years respectively. By comparison, the S&P 500 returned just -1.1% and 4.2% over the same periods. Stockopedia’s interpretation of Driehaus’s strategy currently boasts annualised returns of 35.1% and in the last six months delivered 6.96% versus -1.48% for the FTSE 100.

Screening Criteria

Stockopedia’s Driehaus screen is based on the book Investment Gurus: A Road Map to Wealth from the World’s Best Money Managers by Peter Tanous (available on Amazon). Here are the criteria:
EPS Growth Streak > 2 EPS Growth % (TTM) > 0 EPS Growth % (TTM) > Industry Group Median % 50 Day Moving Average > 0 EPS Surprise %, Last Year > 5 # Brokers < 6 Rank ( Market Cap £m ) < 85% Relative Strength over 1 Month > 0 How can I apply this screen?

Further reading

Check out more momentum investing articles on Stockopedia, including:
Relative Strength: How Does Momentum Investing Work? The Top 5 Momentum Indicators Every Trader Needs to Know Searching for Momentum – six stocks that are riding a wave

For more information about Richard Driehaus:
Wikipedia on Richard Driehaus The New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders, Jack Schwager Investment Gurus: A Road Map to Wealth from the World’s Best Money Managers, Peter Tanous AAII or Dreihaus Married to the Market, Alyssa Lappen

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No Islamic Mea Culpas

At first-ever conference on the topic, experts explore the history and potential threat of Muslim anti-Semitism.

by Steve Lipman
Jewish Week | Oct. 5, 2010

Rabbi Richard Rubenstein

In the shadow of the controversial planned Islamic center near Ground Zero and a State Department alert about suspected Al- Qaeda attacks in Europe, several dozen experts on the threat to national security posed by contemporary Muslims met here Sunday — and a 48-year-old turning point in Roman Catholic history became an unofficial theme.

Several speakers at the first Conference on Muslim Antisemitism, held at the Metropolitan Doubletree Hotel on the East Side and sponsored by the two-year-old Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, invoked the memory of the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, which was held in Rome from 1962 to 1965. Vatican II, which introduced innovations in the Church’s liturgy, improved relations with the Jewish community by admitting Christianity’s fault for implicating Jews in the death of Jesus.

A similar interfaith effort is needed — but unlikely to happen — in Islam, which has become the chief instigator of anti-Semitism in recent decades, participants in the conference said Sunday.

A Vatican II form of “self-reflection” by prominent Islamic leaders is required in order to reduce tensions between Jews and Muslims, said Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, keynote speaker and author of the newly published “Jihad and Genocide” (Rowman & Littlefield). “I do not see this in Islam.”

Instead, said Rabbi Rubenstein and other speakers, Islam — little distinction was made at the conference between Islam itself and so-called Islamists who represent the extremist, terrorist wing — has become more assertive in preaching anti-Semitic aspects of the Koran and other Islamic texts, and Muslim leaders who engage in dialogue activities with non-Muslims often make less conciliatory statements to Arabic-speaking audiences.

In his keynote address, Rabbi Rubenstein said he finds dialogue with Muslims to be unproductive.

“I don’t engage in dialogue” with Muslim representatives,” he said. “I think it’s a waste of time. It gives them a legitimacy in the United States that they do not deserve.”

On the other hand, said Rabbi Rubenstein, president emeritus of the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn., dialogue with Christians is “a realistic possibility. I’ve spent 50 years in a fruitful dialogue with Christians.”

The rabbi’s remarks about dialoging with Muslims drew a mixed reaction from the conference participants, some five dozen of the leading experts — most of them Jewish — on Islamic politics and theology. Some of the other speakers said they enthusiastically take part in Jewish-Muslim dialogue. Many said they shared Rabbi Rubenstein’s feelings.

Many Jewish participants in Jewish-Muslim dialogue have been “burned many times” by Muslim participants who later made radical statements, said Sam Edelman, executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He said he, and other potential Jewish dialogue partners, have grown suspicious of participating in such dialogues. “Without trust, dialogue is difficult.”

Though some dissenting views about the militancy of most Muslims were expressed at the conference, the participants, mostly scholars and activists who spend their time monitoring Islamic activities, were largely in agreement that Islam is a threat to Jews and that few Muslims would qualify as worthy dialogue partners. This would appear not to represent the diversity of thought in the Jewish community on this issue and put the sentiments of conference participants at odds with many mainstream Jewish organizations in the U.S. who continue to support an outreach to “moderate” Muslims while criticizing Muslim excesses.

Sunday’s conference was convened, said Neal Rosenberg, co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, because “there’s an ideological war going on.” The subject, he said, “is topical right now. Anti-Semitism on a worldwide basis is growing.”

A score of books on anti-Semitism are being published this year in the U.S., he said.

Rosenberg said he was disappointed that few members of the general public attended the conference. “It’s a problem of America,” he said. Most Jews in this country, he said, consider widespread attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions to be something that happens overseas, in Europe. American Jews “don’t feel threatened.”

Conference participants browsed at tables that exhibited such books, in English and German, as “Muslim Anti-Semitism in Christian Europe,” “Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom” and “ Hatred of the Jew in the 21st Century,” and they viewed posters of anti-Semitic rallies in England.

Speakers at the conference described Muslims’ attempts to deJudaize Jewish scriptures and biblical sites in Israel, to deny the Jewish roots of Islam, to blame Jews for “slaying Allah’s prophets” and to equate Israeli actions with Nazi crimes.

Muslim anti-Semitism, they said, predates the modern Zionist movement, Nazi-style anti-Semitism and the establishment of the State of Israel, but can be traced to Koranic statements that call Jews “apes and pigs” and relegate Jews to an inferior status. They cited centuries of forced conversions, pogroms and expulsions at the hands of Muslims.

“There’s nothing new about this,” said freelance journalist Alyssa Lappen, who writes frequently for the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Other conference participants shared their personal stories of experiencing Muslim-generated anti-Semitism, and they offered suggestions for countering Muslim anti-Semitism. Among the suggestions: make coalitions with non-Jews, especially with members of the Islamic community who are open to admitting the problems in their faith; work to have anti-Semitic references removed from texts used by Palestinian children and expose “left-wing” activists who abet Muslim anti-Semitism.

Islam has replaced Christianity as the main source of international anti-Semitism, several speakers said.

“Today we take for granted that it is a global phenomenon. We’re in a new era of anti-Semitism … you can find it at any moment and anywhere,” said Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the best-selling 1996 book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” who is at work on a book about anti-Semitism. “The Internet makes it available. It’s a click away.”

A Muslim version of Vatican II, a first step to reducing Islamic anti-Semitism, is unlikely, several speakers agreed.

“Vatican II was based on some form of mea culpa,” a Catholic admission of guilt in fomenting anti-Semitism, said Andrew Bostom, editor of “Legacy of Jihad and Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism” (Prometheus, 2008). “Mea culpa is not on the [Islamic] radar screen.”

“There is,” added Steven Baum, co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, “no mea culpa in Islam.”

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Another local take on the ‘Ground Zero Mega Mosque’

By Bill Grimmell
Special to the Oak Ridger
Posted Sep 17, 2010 @ 08:31 AM

PARIS, Tenn. — Carolyn Dipboye (The Oak Ridger “Guest Column,” Sept. 6), suggested that those who object to the construction of a 13- to 15-story “Ground Zero Mega Mosque” are either stampeding public opinion for selfish purposes or thoughtlessly being so stampeded.

She stated, rightly in my opinion, that we should not view all Muslims as terrorists, though I haven’t heard anyone suggesting that all Muslims are terrorists, only that most terrorists are Muslims. However, she implies that all of us who object to the mosque are one with that miniscule minority of Americans who would burn Qurans or vandalize mosques (the Dove World Outreach Center’s Rev. Terry Jones, who has threatened to burn Qurans, leads a group of about 50 people).

Most of us who object to the mosque see it as a structure that could easily be interpreted as a monument to a radical Islam victory in killing nearly 3,000 U.S. residents and bringing down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers. As such, it may well be a powerful tool for recruiting Muslims to the cause of radical Islam since it was in the name of Islam that the 9/11 acts of terror were carried out. The proposed location of the mega mosque is 600 feet from the World Trade Center’s ground zero at a site where a building was severely damaged by an engine from one plane flown into the Center’s Twin Towers. I, along with others, believe the mega mosque’s location belies its sponsors’ claim that it will be built to foster tolerance and interfaith understanding.

As Mark Helprin (in an Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal op-ed) wrote: “Building close to ground zero disregards the passion, grief and preferences not only of most of the families of Sept. 11th but, because we are all families of Sept. 11th, those of the American people as well, if even not the whole of the American people. If the project is to promote moderate Islam, why have its sponsors so relentlessly, without the slightest compromise insisted upon such a sensitive and inflammatory setting? That is not moderate. It is aggressively militant.

“Disregarding pleas to build it at a sufficient remove so as not to be linked to an abomination committed, widely praised, and throughout the world seldom condemned in the name of Islam, the militant proponents of the World Trade Center mosque are guilty of a poorly concealed provocation. They dare Americans to appear anti-Islamic and intolerant or just to roll over.”

Supporting Helprin’s description of the uncompromising approach of the mega mosque sponsors is the sponsors’ refusal to meet with New York Gov. David Patterson to discuss the possibility of another location. Even now, in an otherwise moderate sounding op-ed, Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf, the apparent leader of the mosque development, affirms his determination to build the Mega Mosque at the designated site (New York Times, Sept. 7).

As noted in a petition currently on the Human Events website (and pointed out in part by Helprin and others):

“Throughout Islamic history, the placement of mosques has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to assert Islam’s superiority over Judaism. Similarly, the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque to assert the superiority of Islam over Christianity. An estimated 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason. Even the proposed name of the ground zero mosque, ‘Cordoba House’, is a clear historical reference to the Spanish city where a church was converted into a mosque after the city was conquered by a Muslim army.”

Knowing the Human Events-cited history lends weight to a belief that the mosque will be viewed by many, particularly radical Muslims, as a monument to a radical Islam triumph and a symbol of Islamic superiority. Further, Cordoba also was the headquarters city of the Caliphate that resulted from the Muslim conquest of most of Spain. Possibly the publicizing of the significance of Cordoba has led to the name change of the proposed mosque from Cordoba House to Park 51. (Imam Rauf claims the name Cordoba “was inspired by the city in Spain where Muslims, Christians and Jews co-existed in the Middle Ages during a period of great cultural enrichment created by Muslims.” Others have pointed out that that coexistence was actually a Muslim dominance that at times had a brutal character. According to Alyssa Lappen, as documented in her May 14, Pajama[s] Media website article, “Muslim rule in Spain never remotely approached the mythic level of beneficence that Rauf pretends.”)

The Rev. Dipboye would have us believe that the U.S. government’s embrace of Imam Rauf and his wife, Daisey Khan, should lead us all to believe that they are the benevolent, admirable folks that they portray themselves to be. Yet the federal government’s judgment of Muslim organizations and individuals has been far from consistently on the mark. The Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations embraced the Council on American Islamic Relations as the civil rights organization that it claims to be. Nihad Awad, representing CAIR, served on the civil rights advisory board of Vice President Gore’s commission on airline safety. (Awad, a founder of CAIR, was the only member of that advisory board representing a religious-based organization.) President Bush’s administration and the FBI during his administration consulted with CAIR, despite private individuals pointing to evidence that CAIR might be funneling funds to a Mideast terrorist organization (an illegal act in the U.S.). The FBI essentially severed its relationship with CAIR in 2008 after finding sufficient evidence in 2007 to name it an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation and five officials of that foundation. The foundation and the officials were indicted and subsequently convicted for providing financial support to a terrorist organization, i.e., Hamas.

Also, there is U.S. Army Major Nadil Malik Hasan, who despite evidence of his unfitness to remain in the Army, was not removed from service. He went on to slaughter 13 of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood. While the actions of CAIR and Major Hassan should in no way be seen as an indictment of other American Muslims, they do belie the idea that the U.S. government’s embrace of someone assures his or her benevolence.

Rev. Dipboye, in my opinion, views the moderate writings of Imam Rauf and his supporters with insufficient skepticism. Rauf’s associations, e.g., with the anti-Semitic and virulently anti-Isr[ae]l former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato Mahathir bin Muhamad, his use of a gathering of a radical Muslim organization to promote a book (Hizb ut Tahrir in Kuala Lumpur, Maylasia, in 2007) and the manner in which he promotes that book outside the U.S. provide part of the grounds for some skepticism. Could it be that Alyssa Lappen‘s suspicion is correct, that Imam Rauf is engaging in the practice of deception that is accepted in some Muslim circles? (Rev. Dipboye approvingly mentioned Rauf’s book that in the U.S. is titled, “What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with the United States.” She didn’t mention that it was originally published in Malaysia, titled, “A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawah in the Heart of America Post-9/11” and that Dawah is “inviting non-Muslims to accept the truth of Islam,” i.e., it is proselytizing.)

Rev. Dipboye also brushes aside some of what Christopher Hitchen refers to as “shady and creepy things” said by Imam Rauf (Slate, Aug. 9, 2010), and Hitchens is not an avowed opponent of the mega mosque. Yes, in one of those “shady and creepy” statements the Iman did say that the U.S. through its policies was an accessory to the 9/11 acts of terror (”60 Minutes” interview, Sept. 30, 2001). He did refuse to acknowledge that Hamas was a terrorist organization (June 18, 2010, WABC radio interview with Aaron Klein), he did support the Iranian revolution after Ayatollah Khomeini had declared Iran to be governed by the harsh Islamic Sharia law (Rauf’s New York Times letter to the editor, Feb. 27, 1979) and among other things, he said Islamic terrorism would not stop until the U.S. president issued a “America Culpa” statement (i.e., a statement that America is to blame) for ills that have befallen the Muslim world (Sydney Sun Herald, March 24, 2004). It may be true that the context in which the Imam made some of his statements might soften them, but they still by design or inadvertence have an inflammatory character for many if not most Americans.

At the beginning of this year, Christian churches in Malaysia were firebombed apparently by Muslims (two Muslim brothers have been convicted in the worst of these attacks). This was a reaction to a Malaysian legal decision that allowed a Catholic paper to use the name Allah to refer to the Christian God. The Imam Rauf, who maintains a “Cordoba Initiative” presence in Malaysia, advised Christian Malaysians as follows (Malaysia Star, Jan. 13, editorial):

“My message to the Christian community in Malaysia is that using the word Allah to mean the Christian God may be theologically and legally correct, but in the context of Malaysia, it is socially provocative. If you want to have influence with people in Malaysia, you must find a way to convey your message without provoking this kind of response.”

If Imam Rauf applies his advice analogously to his proposed mosque, then he should recognize that in the context of a United States that has been attacked in the name of Islam, it is provocative to go forward with the mosque construction at the designated site. Polls indicate that 70 percent of the American people are against construction of a ground zero mega mosque. I suspect that the best thing that the Imam could do to build bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims in this country is to build his mega mosque outside of the World Trade Center neighborhood.

William McGurn (Wall Street Journal, Aug. 3) noted that Pope John Paul II in another dispute recognized “that having the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.” Certainly, the Rev. Terry Jones has the right to burn Qurans (if he isn’t violating any burning ordinances, covenants or regulatory restrictions in so doing). However, I don’t think such burning is the right thing to do. Similarly, the ground zero mega mosque sponsors have the right to build and operate their mosque (if they aren’t violating any laws, covenants or regulations while so doing). However, I and apparently the great majority of the American people, including numbers of American Muslims, don’t think it is the right thing to do.

Bill Grimmell is an Oak Ridge resident.

Ground Zero Mosque: Keep Quiet or Provoke Osama Bin Laden – Really?

By Edward Cline

Family Security Matters | August 25, 2010

One of the most appalling and bizarre opinion pieces about the Ground Zero mosque appeared on August 21st in The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof’s “Taking Bin Laden’s Side.” The op-ed closely follows and dovetails with a Times report on how opposition to the mosque has only “provoked” Islamic “extremists” and “played into their hands.”

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda’s claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

This amazing statement is based on the premise that not being “hostile” to Islam would somehow mitigate Islam’s hostility for the West and particularly its hostility for the United States. Ergo, we should just keep quiet about the Ground Zero mosque and not provoke “extremists” with “extremism” of our own.

Incensed about American opposition to the mosque (once Cordoba House, now called Park 51, to move the focus away from any suggestion of Islamic conquest), Kristof maligns the mosque’s opponents by arbitrarily allying them with Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, because they, too, appear to Kristof to be against “interfaith harmony.”. Ergo, they are intolerant bigots, and probably racists, recalcitrant enemies of “religious freedom.” The piece is largely an excuse to attack Republicans, but one may take it as an attack on anyone who opposes the mosque.

Osama abhors the vision of interfaith harmony that the proposed Islamic center represents. He fears Muslim clerics who can cite the Koran to denounce terrorism. It’s striking that many American Republicans share with Al Qaeda the view that the West and the Islamic world are caught inevitably in a “clash of civilizations.”

Osama does not fear Muslim clerics who can cite the Koran, because the Koran can both sanction and “denounce” terrorism — as long as the denunciation is addressed to future dhimmis in English. Krifstof also errs in thinking that most Republicans subscribe to the “clash of civilizations” argument. They do not. Most of them are as ignorant of the subject as most Democrats, and like them unwilling or unable to see the broader picture, that Islam is a totalitarian ideology tricked out in elaborate but disingenuous religious garb. They, too, accept the illogic that to be “anti-Islam” is to be bigoted, racist, or intolerant. Their thinking does not penetrate beneath the garb.

Firmly pinching his leftist nose to obstruct the offensive odors of freedom, Kristof sneers:

The first is that a huge mosque would rise on hallowed land at ground zero. In fact, the building would be something like a YMCA, and two blocks away and apparently out of view from ground zero. This is a dense neighborhood packed with shops, bars, liquor stores â€” not to mention the New York Dolls Gentlemenâ€™s Club and the Pussycat Lounge (which says that it arranges lap dances in a private room, presumably to celebrate the sanctity of the neighborhood). Why do so many Republicans find strip clubs appropriate for the ground zero neighborhood but object to a house of worship? Are lap dances more sanctified than an earnest effort to promote peace?

I do not know of any YMCA’s that consciously harbor the promulgation of a hostile ideology, as most mosques in America do (about 80% of them financed by Saudi Arabian Wahhabists). Nor am I aware of any Republicans publicly endorsing strip clubs and lap dancing. Frankly, “shops, bars, liquor stores” and even strip clubs are consistent with what America is all about — the freedom to trade, drink, and associate with whomever one pleases — a freedom which Islam opposes and promises to extinguish.

Kristof performs a Joe Biden-caliber gaffe by referring the Imam Feisal Rauf’s mosque as a “house of worship,” when its promoters have strenuously denied it would be one, claiming that this structure would only incidentally have a “prayer room.” One may as well deem St. Patrick’s Cathedral uptown as a “community center” which only incidentally has an altar, pulpit, and nave.

We have Kristof’s assurances that Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, are on the up-and-up about the mosque being a mere “community center” because,

“I know Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife — the figures behind the Islamic community center — and they are the real thing.”

The “real thing” President George W. Bush held Saudi King Abdullah’s hand, and President Barack Obama bowed to him, neither of them knowing “the real thing,” either. But then friendship with a con man like Imam Rauf is a necessary condition for the success of the con. However, this should not much bother Kristof, because he himself is devoted to the three card monte scam of moral relativism. He is just not as good at it as Rauf. He has fallen, willingly or not, for the chimera of the imam’s kindly, grandfatherly persona, just as many Americans have fallen for the chimera of ObamaCare and other socialist legislation, proposed or enacted.

Kristof also dwells on irrelevancies. Brushing aside the fact that Islam’s historical record is one of brutal conquest, he cites instead Christianity’s not-very-sterling record.

The second misconception underlying this debate is that Islam is an inherently war-like religion that drives believers to terrorism. Sure, the Islamic world is disproportionately turbulent, and mullahs sometimes cite the Koran to incite murder. But don’t forget that the worst brutality in the Middle East has often been committed by more secular rulers, like Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad. And the mastermind of the 1970 Palestinian airline hijackings, George Habash, was a Christian.

Remember also that historically, some of the most shocking brutality in the region was justified by the Bible, not the Koran. Crusaders massacred so many men, women and children in parts of Jerusalem that a Christian chronicler, Fulcher of Chartres, described an area ankle-deep in blood. While burning Jews alive, the crusaders sang, “Christ, We Adore Thee.”

There, Kristof boasts, is my top-drawer relativist argument, which I offer for your diversion and that you cannot rebut except in a two-volume book, which I won’t read anyway because it would be filled with religious bigotry and character assassination. Our “clashing civilizations” are both guilty of atrocities and massacres. So, don’t pick on Islam, stop throwing stones, because I threw the first ones at my own house, and I wish you would be humble enough to keep your mouths shut.

It is Kristof who labors under a misconception, for Islam is a warlike ideology, posing as a “religion of peace.” Yes, George Habash, a Christian, was a prominent leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as well as founder of the rival and Communist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. This is as irrelevant as the fact that Josef Stalin, Communist dictator, studied at a theological seminary before embarking on his murderous career. Kristof implies that, yes, Islam has its bad men, but so has Christianity, so there is no reason to brand Islam as the devil incarnate.

As for Imam Rauf himself, he has a less-than-chaste background that straddles both stealth or “cultural” jihad in this country and the realm of terrorism itself. Alyssa A. Lappen, a leading authority on Islam, meticulously details both aspects of Rauf’s career. His association with the Muslim Brotherhood should dispel any doubts about his true motives and intentions. Discussing Article 17 of a long 1991 Brotherhood-inspired memorandum on how to rot and conquer the West from within, and in particular the United States, Lappen cites this specific section:

“The center we seek is the one which constitutes the “axis” of our Movement, the “perimeter” of the circle of our work, our “balance center”, the “base” for our rise and our “Dar al-Argam” to educate us, prepare us and supply our battalions in addition to being the “niche” of our prayers. (emphasis added)

Lappen concludes with,

The Muslim Brotherhood clearly spelled it out in Article 17. Building Islamic centers equals building military “battalions,” points from which to later stage the planned destruction of the West.

Not so ironically, but wholly consistent with such conscious destruction, Investors Business Daily ran a piece on how American Muslims are now largely planning and directing Islamic terrorism. The article lists five individuals with American backgrounds who are staging these attacks from overseas. These individuals have the advantage of knowing their enemy, while our policymakers refuse to know their enemy.

By remaking itself into an American enterprise, al-Qaida is now more lethal than ever. Its new generation of leaders understands the way America works, having lived here for decades. They have a better sense of our security blind spots. They also know which kinds of attacks will produce both mass panic and maximum economic damage.

Another development is the start-up of an Islamic “college” last Monday (August 23rd) in a most appropriate venue, Berkley, California, home of the radical “free speech” movement (many of whose exponents went on to government careers to better impose socialism on America) and now home of what can only be called a home-grown madrassa for adults, Zaytuna College.

Their training in political science and economic will be confined to courses in shariah lawâ€¦At the end of their four years of education, the graduates of Zaytuna will be expected to take part of the Islamic conquest of the American continent – – a conquest that began with the Immigration and Naturalization Law of 1965. They will be qualified to serve as imams at the hundreds of new mosques that are cropping up throughout the country every year and as Islamic chaplains in the militaryâ€¦Only two majors are offered at the new college: Arabic Language and Islamic Law and Theology.

Americans are behind this aspect of stealth jihad, as well.

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, the key founder of Zaytuna College, was born in Washington state and raised by his Roman Catholic father and Greek Orthodox mother in northern California as Mark Hanson. He converted to Islam in 1977. In 1991, he delivered a classic oration entitled “Jihad Is the Only Way” to the California chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America.

It is interesting that Hanson styles himself a “sheik.” What does he think about the country he wishes to see ruled by Sharia law? Among other things,

“I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights or any other element of this society that is held sacrosanct by the ill-informed peoples that make up this charade of a society.”

Finally, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry of “Swift Boat” notoriety, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and proud possessor of bogus combat medals from Vietnam, is doing his bit to Islamize America. He introduced a bill, the International Professional Exchange Act of 2010 (S. 3688), would specifically send Americans to “Muslim majority” countries to do Peace Corps type work, and invite Muslims to this country to perform the same kinds of selfless tasks.

“Today we stand at the crest of a demographic wave that will transform the early 21st century,” said Chairman Kerry. “Many societies are grappling with enormous economic strains as they struggle to keep up with the demands of a growing population. We need to meet these challenges head-on. This legislation is designed to help build professional capacity, strengthen civil society, and improve ties between the United States and Muslim-majority countries through a two-way exchange of professional fellows.”

“By targeting professionals like teachers, city planners, and public health workers, this program can be a valuable step in bolstering workforces around the globe. And by encouraging public-private partnerships, this program can help unite our institutions, governments, businesses, and charities around a common cause,” continued Chairman Kerry.

Which proves that one need not be a Muslim “brother” or activist ikhwan to advance the cause and campaign of Islam. There is an ideological linkage between Islam and what Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Kerry, and others propose that Americans “submit” to vis-a-vis their socialist agenda, which will be explored in a future article.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Edward Cline is the author of a number of novels, and his essays, books, reviews, and other nonfiction have appeared in a number of high-profile periodicals.

An archive of Family Security Matters’ recent Ground Zero Mosque articles can be found here.

The document that should stop the Islamic “Victory Mosque”

By Doug Hagmann
Canada Free Press | Aug. 23, 2010

Racists, Xenophobes and bigots. Those are just a few terms used to describe the opponents of the Islamic center planned near Ground Zero. These characterizations could possibly be avoided, however, by more fact-based protest.

To date, defenders of the center seemed undeterred, despite all that is know about the project front man. Look just a bit deeper.

Among the golden nuggets of evidence produced during the trial of the United States vs. The Holy Land Foundation et al is a document that should end any ambiguity concerning the true intent of Feisal ABDUL-RAUF in his quest to construct an Islamic center at Park Place. In fact, it should be cause to reexamine all Islamic centers and mosques that fall within a certain criteria. Cataloged as “Exhibit 003-0085” by the U.S. federal government, a document translated from Arabic to English titled An Explanatory Memorandum, On the General Strategic Goal for the Group In North America details the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

Feisal ABDUL RAUF is indeed an adherent and promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood’s goals and objectives. Any doubt to his Muslim Brotherhood connections are addressed by the excellent and timely report by Alyssa A. Lappen, which is required reading for factual insight into ABDUL RAUF’s link to the Muslim brotherhood.

Clearly, according to this document, the objective of the Muslim Brotherhood is to convert the U.S. into an Islamic nation through sabotage and subterfuge. It is a handbook to achieve that end. The author painstakingly describes the process of “settlement,” among others, and further described its meaning and the methods to be employed:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan* must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. [Emphasis added].

The succinct analysis by Ms. Lappen of point 17 of the document clearly illustrates that “building Islamic centers equals building military “battalions,” points from which to later stage the planned destruction of the West.”

And what better place inside our front lines is there but within the perimeter of destruction at Ground Zero?

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* Ikhwan (Arabic for brothers) was the Islamic religious militia which formed the main military force of the Arabian ruler Ibn Saud.

A shrine to Shariah

A new mosque at Ground Zero would symbolize Islam’s triumph

Frank J. Gaffney Jr.,
Washington Times | Jun. 29, 2010

The supremacist program authoritative Islam calls Shariah is big on symbols. Arguably, none is more effective than its practice of building mosques on its conquests’ most sacred sites.

In Jerusalem, triumphant Muslims built the Al Aqsa mosque on top of the Jews’ revered Temple Mount. They transformed what had been for 1,000 years the largest cathedral in Christendom, Constantinople’s magnificent St. Sophia basilica, into a sprawling mosque complex. The Moorish Umayyad dynasty in Spain made the city of Cordoba its capital and installed an immense mosque on the site of an ancient Christian church there.

Now, an imam in New York who suddenly has come into $100 million from undisclosed sources wants to build a 13-story Islamic Cultural Center adjacent to the site of Shariah’s greatest triumph to date in America: Ground Zero, the place where the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers proudly stood until they were destroyed by Shariah-adherent jihadists on Sept. 11, 2001. It is not a coincidence that the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, has called his project the Cordoba House.

Such a mosque on Sept. 11’s hallowed ground would not only constitute a durable, symbolic taunt by our enemies about their bloody victory. In accordance with Shariah, once ground has been taken for Islam, it can never revert to the non-Muslim Dar al-Harb, literally the house of war.

In other words, the ground zero mosque is designed to be a permanent, in-our-face beachhead for Shariah, a platform for inspiring the triumphalist ambitions of the faithful and eroding resistance to their demands for separate and (for the moment, at least) equal treatment in America.

So why, one might ask, have Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, various other elected officials and clergy and community leaders expressed support for the Cordoba House?

In part, it is a function of local considerations: Who wouldn’t welcome the prospect of an infusion of $100 million into the still-suffering economy of Lower Manhattan? What is more, if the mosque serves as a magnet for new Muslim residents, depressed housing prices could rebound.

The larger problem is that too few of our leaders understand the nature of Shariah and its implications. Even when a leader like Imam Rauf explicitly says he favors bringing Shariah to America, officials at every level of government seem untroubled by the fact that such an agenda necessarily is anti-constitutional and incompatible with our freedoms.

To be sure, Imam Rauf is a skilled practitioner of the Shariah tradition of taqqiya, deception for the faith. It turns out that he was to the manner born: As ace researcher Alyssa A. Lappen has documented, Imam Rauf has family and other long-standing ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

So, in a page taken straight out of the Brotherhood taqqiya playbook, the imam and his wife and collaborator on the Cordoba House project, Daisy Khan, have been much in evidence of late, professing their commitment to interfaith dialogue and the dedication of their new facility to serving the non-Muslim as well as Muslim communities.

As it happens, similar assurances about mosque complexes built elsewhere by other Shariah adherents have amounted to the old bait-and-switch scam. A group called Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) has monitored, for example, the Islamic Society of Boston’s Saudi-funded, city-enabled mega-mosque in Roxbury, Mass. Despite professions of tolerance, the mosque has ties to Hamas and other terrorists. According to APT, the mosque’s imam, Abdullah Farooq, has told his followers to ‘pick up the gun and the sword’ and supported local terror suspects Aafia Siddiqui and Tarek Mehanna.

In the United Kingdom, the North London Central Mosque (aka the Finsbury Park Mosque) has been embraced by the British government and is considered an archetype for its effort to counter radicalization by working with the Muslim Brotherhood’s nonviolent Islamists. Yet this mosque hosted one of America’s most wanted terrorists: Anwar al-Awlaki. According to National Public Radio, among those who attended his sermons was the Nigerian would-be panty bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

We have reason to fear that the U.S. government is poised to follow Britain’s disastrous course – further compounding the muddle-headed thinking among leaders across the country about Shariah and the threat it poses. John Brennan, President Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, has repeatedly signaled that he wants to reach out to moderate jihadists of the Taliban and Hezbollah. President Obama has said he intends to provide more than $400 million for Hamas-run Gaza.

Then, Mr. Brennan gave an interview in The Washington Times last week in which he displayed anew his profound misunderstanding of the enemy and its threat doctrine. As the Times’ Eli Lake reported: Mr. Brennan said that he opposed granting any legitimacy to what he called al Qaeda’s ‘twisted’ interpretation of Islam. ‘Clearly, bin Laden and al Qaeda believe they are on this very holy agenda and this jihad. However, in my view, what we cannot do is to allow them to think, and the rest of the world to think, for the future terrorists of the world to believe al Qaeda is a legitimate representation of jihad and Islam.'”

Such denials of the centrality of violent jihad to authoritative Islam – and the obligation to engage in more stealthy forms of jihad to the same end, the global triumph of Islam, where violence is not practicable – is a formula for disaster. Unchallenged, it will produce a toxic shrine at Ground Zero to the doctrine that animates al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood alike, Shariah.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is president of the Center for Security Policy, a columnist for The Washington Times and host of the syndicated program Secure Freedom Radio, heard in Washington weeknights at 9 p.m. on WTNT 570 AM.