Shari’a finance

by Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPage Magazine | Nov. 14, 2007

In October, Abu Dhabi Prince Nahayan Mabarak al-Nahayan advertised his ultra-conservative sheikdom’s openness “in this age of globalization,” and having had world trade “from ancient times” by welcoming 100 world-class Jewish intellectuals to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) second biennial “Festival of Thinkers.” The UAE higher education minister controls 90%-plus of UAE crude and natural gas reserves–and wants good press for planned UAE cultural, science, technology and education institutions.

Also in October, shari’a finance gurus lobbied U.S. bankers at two Islamic finance conferences “to access more Islamic investment opportunities” and create more shari’a compliant products and new Islamic banks. Shari’a is “the path of Allah” explained “scholar” Nizam Yaquby obliquely at first, the Oct. 24 and 25 “Islamic Finance in North America” meeting, thus convincing many U.S. bankers that Islamic economics dates to Muhammad.

However, accepting “shari’a finance” is like swallowing double-edged swords. U.S. politicians, businessmen and regulators should scrutinize–and disclose–the diplomatic and economic weapons that costly oil bestows on erstwhile allies. Muslim clerics consider shari’a–the 7th century Qur’an-based legal code developed by Muslim jurists after Muhammad–one indivisible package, including wife-beating, stoning women, hanging homosexuals, dismembering thieves, supremacist ideology–and funding terror. And shari’a clashes with secular, Constitution-based U.S. laws.

Moreover, Islamic finance is an “invented tradition” empowering Islamic radicals, writes University of Southern California King Faisal Professor of Islamic Thought, Timur Kuran, in Islam and Mammon: “Neither classical nor medieval Islamic civilization featured banks in the modern sense, let alone ‘Islamic banks’.” Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna concocted the idea in the 1920s to unite Muslims in one global Islamic nation (umma).

Finally, Federal Reserve Board officials admit to not understanding shari’a finance. For example, “[W]e are certainly in no position to take a stance on issues of shari’a interpretation,” said New York Federal Reserve executive vice president William Rutledge on April 19, 2005 to the Arab Bankers Association of North America (ABANA).

The Muslim Brotherhood designed dogma and Islamic finance to spread shari’a–seeking ultimate global supremacy over daily life, individual, political and religious freedom. Shari’a mandates that Muslims fund jihad (financial jihad–al Jihad bi-al-Mal). Qur’an 61:10-11, “strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives….” And Qur’an 49:15, “(true) believers are only those who…strive with their wealth and their lives for the cause of Allah.”

“Financial Jihad [is]…more important…than self-sacrificing,” says Saudi Islamic cleric and Muslim Brother Hamud bin Uqla al-Shuaibi. Muslim Brotherhood spiritual chief Yusuf Qaradawi decrees, “Declaring holy war…is an Islamic duty… [F]ighting…is the Way of Allah for which zakat [charity] must be spent.”

In 2006, UAE donated $100 million to house Palestinian Authority prisoners and families of suicide bombers–and honor UAE president Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahayan, whose late father, over 30 years contributed millions for PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror. On July 27, 2005, Hamas thanked Al-Nahayan’s “sisterly UAE… for its ‘limitless [financial] support’,” and “aid for our Mujahid,” in other words, Hamas jihadist “charitable societies.”

UAE’s Bourse Dubai stock exchange recently requested approval to buy control of NASDAQ, 52% of London’s Stock Exchange (LSE) and 47.6% of OMX (Nordic exchange)–ten months after Bahrain’s Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAIOFI) certified its “Islamic ‘purity’,” designating it the world’s first “shari’a compliant” market.

AAOIFI’s members and shari’a board include Saudi Arabia’s Dallah Al-Baraka Group, al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation and Kuwait Finance House–all implicated in al Qaeda and other terror funding, according to former national counter-terror coordinator Richard Clarke. Other board members are the Islamic Development Bank, also known as the Bank of the Intifada for funding families of suicide bombers, whose principal owners are Saudi Arabia, Iran, Lybia and Egypt, and not one, but two U.S.-sanctioned terror states, Sudan and Iran. Islamic finance experts consider AAOIFI fatwas standards to which all shari’a banks and products, even in the U.S., must adhere. But UAE’s showcase Bourse on Oct. 22, 2007 denied its Islamic “purity” to the Partnership for New York City.

Dubai banned Israel’s delegation from the October Federation of International Freight Forwarders and Customs Clearing Agents world congress. Dubai Ports World and its government holding company prohibit trade with Israel. UAE banks wired most funding for the 9/11 attacks. Saudi Arabia boycotts Israel, despite promising in 2005 to stop, before joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Shari’a designates lying “one of the ugliest and most disgusting of sins.” Alas, lying is “permissible”–even encouraged–in innumerable circumstances. Sufi Imam Abu Hamid Mohammed ibn Mohammed al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) instructed followers, if one could achieve a praiseworthy “aim by lying but not by telling the truth, … [it is] obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory,” according to Nuh Ha Mim Keller’s Reliance of the Traveller.

Imposing shari’a–by proselytizing (da’wa) or jihad war–is obligatory.

U.S. banking and investment laws guarantee individual property rights, require full disclosure, and prohibit criminal or terrorist activities. Western bankers and businessmen, however, oblivious to shari’a and financial jihad history, clamor for Muslim petrodollars (supposed surpluses from overextended Middle Eastern exchanges) pouring into U.S. markets.

Former Goldman Sachs trader and Birthright Israel supporter Daniel Och, for example, plans to sell 9.9% of Och-Ziff Capital Management to Dubai International Capital, which on Nov. 6 also acquired Europe’s biggest diagnostic imaging company from Britain’s Bridgepoint private equity fund.

But DIC chief executive Sameer alAnsari sits on the board of Palestine Children Relief Fund, a U.S.-based Palestinian “charity” reportedly tired to the shuttered Holy Land Foundation, Global Relief Foundation, and the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO)–which have all been federally investigated for funding Muslim Brotherhood terror groups al Qaeda, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Buyers and sellers, beware.

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


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The Libel Tourist

The Libel Tourist” is a short-form documentary produced by the Moving Picture Institute, whose short films program allows young filmmakers to display their skills while also positively impacting human freedom.

This 8-minute film short addresses one of the gravest subjects of contemporary political life. Here, viewers witness the story of a chilling threat: how Saudi petrodollars have cowed, silenced, and nearly broken free speech in the West.

The film documents the true story of U.S. citizen Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, whom the U.K. High Court ordered to destroy all copies of her book—although it was never published in England—after a notoriously litigious Saudi billionaire sued her there. She refused.

Ehrenfeld’s Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It accuses the Saudi billionaire of funding of terrorism.

As I wrote in “Libel Wars” several months before Ehrenfeld invited me to join her American Center for Democracy as a Senior Fellow, she is counter-suing him in New York, to defend the First Amendment for herself—and for America. In “The Libel Tourist” (available here in English and Arabic), she speaks of this issue, the first time on film.

“This film is an eye-opening exposees,” says film director Jared Lapidus. “It deals directly with the issues of terrorism, Islamo-fascism, and how it is infringing on our rights in the West, and the U.S. in particular.”

Film Credits

Directed, Produced, & Edited: Jared Lapidus
Executive Producers: Thor Halvorssen, Rob Pfaltzgraff
Written by: Jared Lapidus, Sheldon Lapidus
Written by (Concept): Thor Halvorssen
Music by: Allan Fox
Narrated by: Dave Benson
Production Coordinator: Marina Lyaunzon
Copy Writer: Celia Farber
Graphic Design: Chandler Tuttle
Production Assistant: Shawn Kittelsen


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Tithing for Terrorists

Financing Jihad
by Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
National Review Online | Oct. 12, 2007

“Governments have political considerations,” said senior N.Y. Senator Charles Schumer, upon learning in September that Bourse Dubai intends to buy 20 percent of NASDAQ. Republican Senator Bob Bennett of Utah countered, saying, “Dubai is making a purchase on the open market of an asset that’s for sale. What’s wrong with that?”

Senator Bennett is correct — buying portions or all of NASDAQ is perfectly legal. Moreover, no changes could be made to NASDAQ regulations without Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approval. But of concern is Bourse Dubai’s Islamic influence in the heart of the U.S. markets and economy. And the deliberate United Arab Emirates (UAE) devaluation of the dollar since December 2006 is vastly increasing their purchasing power.

Bourse Dubai began operating as the world’s first fully shar’ia-compliant stock exchange, in December 2006. Sharia compliance requires companies traded to also be sharia-compliant, and establishes a special tax on all the others to “purify” them.

The Islamic “purity” (Tazkiya) of Bourse Dubai was approved by the sharia board of the 1991-Bahrain-registered and based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAIOFI). The AAIOFI laid the groundwork for the global Islamic financial network and regulates all Islamic financial organizations and products, including Bourse Dubai.

Like every Muslim country, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) collects mandatory Islamic charity (Zakat– the Third Pillar of Islam — an annual wealth tax), of about 2.5-percent from Muslim institutions and companies. Being non-Muslims, foreign banks and oil companies theoretically don’t pay Zakat. But foreign banks and oil companies in fact do pay 20 percent of their profits, but rather than Zakat, these mandatory payments are called “tax.”

Zakat we are told, is to help the needy. However, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader, Yusuf Qaradawi decrees, “Declaring holy war…is an Islamic duty, and fighting ….is the Way of Allah for which Zakat must be spent.” In his 1999 publication, “Fiqh az-Zakat,” Qaradawi adds,

The most important form of jihad today is serious, purposefully organized work to rebuild Islamic society and state and to implement the Islamic way of life in the political, cultural and economic domains. This is certainly most deserving of Zakat.

And as previously demonstrated time and again, Muslim jihadist-terror organizations are indeed prominent Zakat recipients.

In 2003, the UAE established an independent federal agency collecting Zakat on government tax revenues from “companies listed on the Dubai Financial Market and Abu Dhabi Securities Market…, oil-producing companies and branches of foreign banks.” In 2007 these revenues were estimated at $13.5 billion.

Saudi Arabia, for example collects $18 billion a year in Zakat — which includes the 20-percent flat corporation tax from foreign companies. The Saudis claim that the money collected develops their infrastructure. However, two thirds of Saudi men are unemployed and the infrastructure is crumbling. Yet, since the 1970s, the Saudi government has spent more than $100 billion to build thousands of mosques, Islamic centers and Islamic studies programs in universities worldwide.

On April 30, 2007 the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) — which also initiated Muslim riots after the Danish Mohammed cartoon publications — established the clerical International Commission for Zakat. The ICZ replaces more than 20,000 organizations that previously collected the money. The Islamic clerics’ centralized “expert committee” in Malaysia now supervises and distributes Zakat funds globally. The new committee will shortly distribute roughly $2 billion collected over Ramadan this year to Muslim charities.

Historical Development
The origins of all Islamic economic and financial regulatory organizations, including the AAIOFI’s date back to the 1920s invention of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) founder Hassan Al-Banna, who designed political, economic, and financial infrastructures to enable Muslims to fulfill a key form of jihad mandated by the Koran (Al Jihad bi-al-Mal — financial jihad)—“you… should strive for the cause of Allah with your wealth and your lives….” 61:10-11.

He viewed finance as a critical weapon to undermine the infidels “and…work towards establishing an Islamic rule on earth.” To do that, he understood that Muslims must create an independent Islamic financial system to parallel and later supersede the Western economy.

Al-Banna’s contemporaries and successors (such as the late Sayed Qutb and current Yusuf Qaradawi) set his theories and practices into motion, developing sharia-based terminology and mechanisms to advance the financial jihad — “Islamic economics,” finance and banking.

Early 1930s MB attempts to establish Islamic banking in India failed. Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser shut down the second attempt, in 1964, after only one year, later arresting and expelling the Muslim Brothers for attempts to kill him. Saudi Arabia welcomed this new wave Egyptian dissidents, as did King Saud bin Abdul Aziz earlier waves in 1954 and 1961. Their ideas so appealed to him and his clerics that in 1961, Saud funded the MB’s establishment of the Islamic University in Medina to proselytize their fundamentalist Islamic ideology, especially to foreign students.

In 1962, the MB convinced the king to launch a global financial joint venture, which became the cornerstone and engine to spread Islam worldwide. This venture created charitable foundations, which the MB oversees.

The first were the Muslim World League (MWL) and Rabitta al-Alam al-Islami, uniting Islamic radicals from 22 nations and spinning a web of many other charities with hundreds of offices worldwide. In 1978, the kingdom backed another MB initiative, the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), which with all these “charities” are implicated for funding al Qaeda, the 9/11 attacks, Hamas and others.

These “charities” are used to advance the political agenda set forth by the MB. “I don’t like this word “donations,” Qaradawi told BBC Panorama on July 30, 2006.

“I like to call it jihad with money, because God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and our money.”

In 1969, the Saudis convened Arab and Muslim states to unify the “struggle for Islam,” and have, ever since, been the OIC’s major sponsor. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. Based in Jeddah “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC charter mandates and coordinates “support [of] the struggle of the Palestinian people…recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories.”

The OIC charter includes all the MB principles. Its first international undertaking in 1973 was to establish the Islamic Development Bank “in accordance with the principles of the Shariah,” as prescribed by the MB, and launching the fast growing petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. The IDB, more a development than commercial bank, was established largely “to promote Islamic banking worldwide.”

“[A]n Islamic organization must serve God…and ultimately sustain ….the growth and advancement of the Islamic way of life,” writes Nasser M. Suleiman in Corporate Governance in “Islamic Banking.”

And so it has done — as noted in a 1991 U.S. Library of Congress report on Sudan’s Faisal Islamic Bank, established in 1977 under Sudan’s Faisal Islamic Bank Act, by Saudi prince Mohammed ibn Faisal Al Saud, and initiated and managed by local Muslim Brotherhood members and their party the National Islamic Front. Soon other political groups and parties formed their own Islamic banks. Together, Sudanese Islamic banks then acquired 20-percent of the country’s deposits — providing the financial basis to turn Sudan into an Islamic state in 1983, and promoting the Islamic governmental policies to date.

From 1975 to 2005, the IDB approved over $46 billion in funding to Muslim countries, ostensibly to develop their economic and educational infrastructures, but effected little regional economic impact. Their educational efforts, however, paid huge yields — via the rapid and significant spread of radical Islam worldwide.

Moreover, in 2001 alone, the IDB transferred $538 million raised publicly by Saudi and Gulf royal telethons to support the Palestinian Intifada and families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IDB has also channeled U.N. funds to Hamas, as documented by bank records discovered in the West Bank and Gaza. And yet the IDB received U.N. observer status in 2007.

The IDB and other Islamic financial successes encouraged MB leaders to formalize al-Banna’s vision. In 1977 and 1982, they convened in Lugano, Switzerland to chart a master plan to co-opt Western economic foundations — capitalism and democracy — in a treatise entitled “Towards a Worldwide Strategy for Islamic Policy,” also known as the Project. MB spiritual leader Qaradawi wrote the explicit document, dated Dec. 1, 1982.

The 12-point strategy includes diktats to “establish the Islamic state and gradual, parallel work to control local power centers…using institutional work as means to this end.” This requires “special Islamic economic, social and other institutions,” and “the necessary economic institutions to provide financial support” to spread fundamentalist Islam.

Consequently, the IDB founded the AAOIFI in 1990. AAOIFI members include the Saudi Dallah Al-Baraka Group, al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation, and Kuwait Finance House; each of its members were implicated in funding al Qaeda and other MB offspring according to Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief . The 18 AAOIFI members also include Iran and Sudan, both on the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list; Iran is an U.S. State Department-designated terror sponsoring state, too. UAE banks wired half of the funding for the 9/11 attacks

In addition, the “de facto Islamic Central Bank,” the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), was established in 2002 in Kuala Lumpur “to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance.” Chairing the organizers’ meeting, then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir stated, “A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West].”

IFSB members include the central banks of Iran, Sudan, and Syria (all designated state sponsors of terrorism) and the Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA), which is widely documented since its inception as a terror funder.

According to DAG and Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Saleh Kamel, more than 400 Islamic financial institutions currently operate in 75 countries. They now hold more than $800 billion in assets — growing 15 percent annually. HSBC, UBS, J.P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds TSB and BNP Paribas, are but a few that offer Islamic banking and sharia-based products to their Western clients — and promote them as “ethical investments.”

Rapidly rising oil prices fill the coffers of Islamic banks, the expansion of sharia economics and financial jihad — threatening the U.S. and entire non-Muslim world, in real-time.

Indeed, shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden called on Muslims “…to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means,” going on to say …. Look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy. Strike the key pillars of the enemy again and again and they will….”

The pending NASDAQ acquisition, purchases of over 52 percent of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and 47.6-percent of OMX (Nordic exchange), and the vigorous expansion of sharia finance, all steadily implement al Banna’s plan to spread and ultimately impose sharia worldwide.

Yet, still unaware of the implications of importing sharia finance, hoards of American bankers will later this month convene at New York’s Islamic Finance Summit at the Helmsley (Oct. 29-30, 2007) — which will focus on “Innovations in Sharia compliant Finance.”

In view of the facts, Senator Schumer has a valid point.

— Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil, is director of the American Center of Democracy, and a member of the board of the Committee for the Present Danger. Alyssa A. Lappen is a senior fellow at ACD.


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The camel in the tent

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | October 8, 2007

Objections to Borse Dubai’s proposed acquisition of 20 percent of Nasdaq last week prompted Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank to quip, “In the ports deal, the concern was smuggling something or someone dangerous… What are we talking about here — smuggling someone onto a stock exchange?”

It is not “who” Dubai will smuggle into the stock exchange we should worry about. It’s the arrival of the world’s first Islamic stock exchange exerting unprecedented Islamic influence in the heart of the U.S. and Western economies that should raise our alarm. Dubai’s handsomely paid Washington lobbyists see nothing wrong with that. Rather, they claim the deal benefits U.S. financial markets, giving “Nasdaq access to rich Mideast pockets.” Unfortunately, the deal also increases the appeal and influence of Islamic financing in the West.

What is “Islamic” finance? Islamic, or Shariah-based finance, is the 1920s invention of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. He ordered the Muslim Brothers to create an independent Islamic financial system to supercede the Western economy, facilitating the spread of Islam worldwide. He set the theories and practices and his contemporaries and successors developed Shariah-based terminology for “Islamic economics,” finance and banking. Attempts by Muslim Brotherhood members in the early 1930s to establish Islamic banking in India failed. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser shut down the second attempt in 1964, after only one year, later arresting and expelling the Muslim Brothers for attempts to kill him. Saudi Arabia welcomed them and adopted their ideas. Continue reading “The camel in the tent”


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The Muslim Brothers in Egypt: the driving force behind and Islamic dictatorship

By Julien Duval-Leroy
Research Institute for Europe and American Studies | Oct. 2007

Notes:
60. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, “The Muslim Brotherhood’s Propaganda Offensive,” American Thinker, April 2007, http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/04/the_muslim_brotherhoods_propag.html
61. Ibid.


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The Hamas PR Machine in America

by Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
inFocus | Fall 2007

On August 8, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the al-Salah Society as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), calling it “one of the largest and best funded Hamas charities.” Treasury revealed that Hamas had used al-Salah, “to finance its terrorist agenda.” The designation was one of many actions taken against Hamas front groups dating back to 1995, when Washington first designated Hamas a terrorist organization. Unfortunately, these actions do little to hinder Hamas activities in America.

The problem is not that Treasury’s actions are insufficient. Rather, U.S. companies continue to knowingly or unwittingly facilitate Hamas Internet and television services. Moreover, professors, media outlets, and even a former U.S. president, help Hamas broadcast its messages throughout America, even as Washington attempts to weaken the terror group following the violent takeover of Gaza.

Whitewashing Hamas in the Classroom

While Hamas represses its own Palestinian people in Gaza and continues to launch rockets into Israel indiscriminately, a legion of U.S. apologists, including Muslim lobby groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), propose that the U.S. recognize the terrorist government, so it may be influenced to modify its agenda. Leading the charge, alongside the Muslim lobby groups, are American academicians.

Boston University professor Augustus Richard Norton and Harvard University Middle Eastern Studies scholar Sara Roy recently co-authored an article for the Christian Science Monitor entitled, “Yes, You Can Work With Hamas,” encouraging Washington to recognize the legitimacy of the terrorist organization. Writer Cinnamon Stillwell notes that Roy, in particular, has “long been invested in forging the idea of a ‘New Hamas’ by attempting to downplay the group’s openly genocidal ambitions and picturing them instead as an enlightened group of do-gooders interested only in social services and education.”

Roy and Norton are not alone. Scores of other professors, including the University of Maryland’s Shibley Telhami; associate professor of political science and international relations at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Virginia Tilley; and Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, have increasingly sided with Hamas, blaming all Palestinian woes on Israel, despite the fact that an internationally recognized terrorist organization now governs Gaza.

Read All Over

The positions advanced by these academicians are also buttressed by the mainstream press, which has helped Hamas spread its propaganda. On November 1, 2006, for instance, The New York Times ran an opinion piece penned by Ahmed Yousef, an advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Yousef claimed that Israel refused a Hamas-proposed ceasefire with Israel. What the Times failed to note was that Yousef’s call for a hudna was essentially a call to let the guns fall silent in the near term, but did nothing to assure that Hamas’ long-term goal of destroying Israel would be addressed.

On June 20, immediately following the violent takeover of Gaza, both The New York Times and The Washington Post, America’s newspapers of record, ran two different op-eds by Yousef. The Times piece, entitled “What Hamas Wants,” falsely claimed that after the Hamas coup, “the streets of Gaza are now calm,” promising reform and disarmament under Hamas rule. In truth, Hamas has imposed a Taliban-like regime in Gaza that includes the killing of innocents, arbitrary confiscation of property, muzzling the media, and increased links to Iran and al-Qaeda. The Times, however, insisted that running the Hamas opinion piece contributed to a greater understanding of Gaza’s new rulers.

The Washington Post, on the same day, ran a separate op-ed penned by Yousef entitled, “Engage With Hamas.” The piece argued that if Gaza became “a breeding ground for terrorism,” Washington would be to blame, particularly if it did not engage with the new Hamas regime. These publications handed Hamas a propaganda coup.

Predictably, pro-Israel groups were enraged over the two opinion pieces. But the mainstream media was unmoved. On July 10, 2007, The Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed entitled, “Hamas’ Stand,” by Mousa Abu Marzook, a Damascus-based Hamas official heavily involved in Hamas fundraising. Marzook insisted that the terrorist group’s, “militant stance cannot by itself be the disqualifying factor.”

Over the Airwaves

The Hamas PR machine penetrates U.S. airwaves, too. The easiest venue to disseminate its message has been the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television channel. While the channel is not accessible on cable or local satellites, Americans can easily access it on the Internet. The channel has helped Hamas transmit the idea that suicide operations, or “martyrdom,” is approved by the prominent cleric and spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, Yousuf al-Qardawi. On July 16, 2007, for example, al-Jazeera featured a program in which Hamas chief Khaled Meshal, sitting alongside Qardawi, thanked the cleric for his “support of martyrdom operations.” Meshal praised Qardawi because he issued, “rulings in support of these operations, and there were times when we were in dire need of these rulings.”

American networks, for their part, have provided a platform for one of Hamas’ most ardent advocates, former President Jimmy Carter. In one interview, Carter told ABC that, “Hamas leaders sent me word that what they want to do is to form, to quote them, a peaceful, united, unity government.” The former president cast no doubt on this proclamation from a known terrorist organization. Indeed, he pleaded with American viewers on CNN to, “Give Hamas a chance.”

Hatred.com

Hamas also relies heavily upon the Internet to disseminate its virulent anti-Israel and anti-American message, which arguably makes their computer keyboards as dangerous as the rockets they fire into Israel. The Internet allows Hamas to raise funds, plan terrorist attacks, maintain international communication, and expand influence and recruitment through advertising and chat rooms.

Hamas operates a number of sites including: paltime.net; alresalah.info; palestiniangallery.com; fm-m.com; felesteen.ps; al-fateh.net; mujamaa.org; islamic-block.net; alkotla.com; palestinianforum.com; aqsatv.ps; and tanfithya.com. Perhaps the most well known Hamas propaganda website is the Lebanon-based “Palestine-info” network of 20 or more websites. Domains include: Palestine-info-urdu.com, palestine-persian.info and palestine-info.net. The operation is run from Beirut by senior Hamas activist Nizar Hussein, with instructions from Damascus-based Hamas chief Khaled Meshal.

A page entitled “Heroic Stories” on Palestine-info is a good example of the virulent content on this website network. Here, Hamas glorifies female suicide bombers, and includes a religious ruling (fatwa) from Qardawi. Other Palestine-info pages include idealized photos and propaganda of weapons-toting suicide bombers.

The Palestine-info websites include official Hamas news, propaganda, and chat forum outlets in eight languages targeting the Middle East, Western Muslim communities, as well as non-Muslims around the world. In addition to English and Arabic, Palestine-info publishes pages in Farsi, Urdu, Malaysian, and Turkish, as well as Russian (targeting Chechens) and French (for North Africans).

Internet Service Providers

Opinions vary on the exact number of American Internet service providers (ISPs) that facilitate Hamas activities on the web. According to Internet-Haganah.com, an activist website, Hamas purchased 18 websites (roughly 60 percent of its sites) from North American providers. However, an August 2007 report by Dr. Reuven Erlich asserts that Hamas obtained only about seven (roughly 35 percent) of its estimated 20 websites from North American ISPs.

Either way, corporations that sell server space and Internet services to Hamas are aiding and abetting the terrorist network. U.S. companies that support Hamas via the web include Domainbank.com, register.com, Network Solutions LLC, OnlineNIC Inc., GoDaddy.com, eNom Inc., Defender Technologies Group, and Oversee.net. Canadian firms that service Hamas include: Groupe iWeb Technologies Inc., Tucows Inc., and NIC.ps.

Conclusion

The Hamas PR machine exploits the American democratic system to spread hatred and incitement through America’s communications infrastructure, thereby assisting Hamas fundraising and recruitment activities. U.S. journalists, academics, and television networks that implore Washington to engage in dialogue with Hamas are providing this terrorist group with national and international platforms. Although these actions aid and abet our enemies, our Constitution protects them.

However, we can shutter Hamas websites, especially when providers are American, by invoking the Patriot Act, which defines facilitation of terrorist communications services as a terrorist act. Congress can also help by instituting new “Know Your Customer” requirements for all Internet service providers, and specifically network access and domain name register companies.

Some analysts argue that Hamas websites and TV broadcasts must remain operational so that the intelligence community can monitor them. This is a poor strategy. For every day these platforms remain online, hate propaganda continues to poison millions of minds, drawing recruits, and raising funds. And the terrorists go on killing.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center of Democracy, is a member of the board of the Committee for the Present Danger. Alyssa A. Lappen is a senior fellow at ACD. Both authors are contributing editors to the American Congress For Truth.


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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.