Uprooting jihad

Letters to the Editor
Washington Times | 11 July 2007

In his letter “The roots of terror” (Monday), Chuck Woolery claims that we misrepresented the “root” causes for Muslim suffering. Yet, “[t]he repression, suffering and death of hundreds of millions of Muslims” does not result from Western or Israeli policies or actions, but from totalitarian, corrupt Arab and Muslim regimes and clerics who confine them to the Dark Ages.

The current Sunni and Shi’ite fight in Iraq exhumes earlier wars, predating the American presence. Palestinians have received more financial aid than any other refugee group in history. They suffer because their corrupt leaders squandered it all, and prolonged the Palestinians’ misery. Bolstered by the Saudi/Gulf and Iranian regimes, the Palestinians advanced a culture of death and destruction, strangling the development of a viable society.

Jihad is an eternal Muslim institution, antedating modern Israel’s creation by 13 centuries. Through this institutional religious mechanism of war and repression, pre-Islamic Jews and Christians of historical Palestine were conquered, massacred, pillaged, enslaved and deported. The survivors and their descendants suffered the brutal Shariah-inspired system of dhimmitude until the League of Nations Mandate in 1918. That the Jewish people are now flourishing in democratic Israel, rather than as dhimmis under oppressive Islam, is still a basic “grievance” to Arabs and Muslims.

Appeasement and “critical and constructive dialogue” with jihadists whose goal is to restore the caliphate by any means, only proves ignorance of the Muslim Brotherhood agenda.

To stop the jihadists and alleviate the suffering of oppressed Muslims worldwide, we should discourage discussions with Islamists. Let the Islamists denounce their incessant attempts to politically enforce a seventh-century religious ideology upon entire nations. Let them also prove their denunciations by dismantling their terror funding networks.

When all jihadists renounce terrorism, al Qaeda stops killing “infidels,” Palestinians no longer indoctrinate children to become suicide bombers, Iran no longer seeks to eliminate the United States and Israel and Muslim nations institute basic human freedoms, only then can Mr. Woolery’s and our hopes for a peaceful world be realized.

Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
American Center for Democracy

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Egyptian roots of hatred

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | Jul. 6, 2007

Had the citizens of Greeley, Colo., been friendlier to the introverted Egyptian student Sayyid Qutb during his studies there from 1948 to 1950, he might not have become the Muslim Brotherhood’s signature ideologue. But the lonesome Qutb resented everything America had to offer, especially individual freedom, capitalism, jazz and women’s “open” sexuality.

Shortly after returning to Egypt, Qutb joined the Muslim Brothers (or Muslim Brotherhood) and committed to paper the dogma of the organization’s founder, Hassan al-Banna, calling on all Muslims to resist modernization and live only according to the Islamic law, a theme Qutb expanded to include the “liberation” of Palestine, in subsequent writings of his own. The seeds of hatred for everything Western, which Qutb sowed half a century ago, have spread around the globe and are now growing like kudzu throughout America and the West.

Using the motto “God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur’an our constitution, jihad our way and dying for God our supreme objective,” and armed with al-Banna’s master plan to expand Islamic fundamentalism, the Muslim Brothers began their jihad against the West.

Petrodollars turned the once small Egyptian radical organization into a global jihadist movement, spawning every Islamic terrorist group operating today. These include al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and many other often nameless affiliated groups responsible for terrorist attacks like the latest at Glasgow’s airport and London’s foiled car bombings. Nevertheless the U.S. Department of State is well on its way to legitimizing the organization by accepting the Muslim Brotherhood’s self portrayal as “moderates” and “reformists.” Indeed, this is how some U.S. officials described the MB representatives with whom they engage in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Continue reading “Egyptian roots of hatred” →

Business…Russian Style

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Human Events | Posted: 06/27/2007

The Transparency International 2007 global report released on May 24 documents widespread Russian corruption and lack of independence in Russia’s legal system, and its courts in particular. This, according to the report, is due to the government’s growing political interference. Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s best-known opposition newspaper, claims that corruption in Russia is the rule, and “business is impossible without it.”

Moreover, Russian Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, speaking at an investor conference in Moscow last week, admitted that “everyone knows the Taxation Service is corrupt.” Leading investigative reporter Roman Shleinov claimed recently in London, that attempts to expose this corruption resulted in more than 2,000 dead journalists in the last decade.

Russia’s economic growth — more than $515 billion in foreign currency and gold reserves — make Putin very popular among his people, despite the corruption and his regime’s growing restrictions on civil and human rights, freedom of the press, and private, public and foreign entities. Most recently, his popularity reached over 70% approval ratings. Not surprisingly, Putin disregards whatever domestic and foreign criticism of his centralized and authoritarian government. He even declared: “I am an absolute, pure democrat— I am the only one, there just aren’t any others in the world.”

Russia’s long tradition of autocratic regimes seems to empower Putin’s undermining of Russia’s recent history of democratic capitalism. With ever-increasing frequency, Russia uses its corrupt courts to legitimize nationalizing and confiscating private and public corporations from entrepreneurs who built their wealth and the Russian economy on the ashes of the crumbling Soviet infrastructure. Those allowed are holding onto their corporations and vast personal wealth, carrying out Putin’s agenda of centralization and consolidation of domestic and even global strategic resources and industries such as aluminum and steel, and above all, energy. Continue reading “Business…Russian Style” →

Platforms of the Enemy

By John Perazzo
FrontPage Magazine | May 21, 2007

It is every American’s right to dissent from the domestic and foreign policies of their government. However, when their country is attacked by adversaries who have sworn its destruction, and American critics use the platforms of the enemy as launching pads for their own attacks, other Americans may legitimately wonder about the loyalties such choices reveal.

The Iraq war is a conflict over which well-meaning Americans may reasonably disagree. Some critics argue, for example, that the Bush administration did not show enough patience prior to invading Iraq; that not every peaceful alternative was explored; that the Iraq conflict is a misguided distraction from the effort to track down Osama bin Laden and stabilize Afghanistan; or that the war cannot be won. Supporters of the war will disagree, but they will also recognize that these positions can be held by patriotic Americans who wish their country well.

But this benign attitude towards opponents of the war is bound to change when “critics” characterize their commander-in-chief as Adolf Hitler, their government as the Third Reich, and their nation as “the world’s greatest terrorist state.” Or when they seize any pretext to portray their country as a ruthless aggressor in the war, while painting their country’s enemies sympathetically as its victims. When such hostile critics choose to make these charges from the media platforms of the enemy, their enterprise looks less like dissent within a shared community than a psychological warfare campaign to promote their countrymen’s defeat. Continue reading “Platforms of the Enemy” →

Stanford Prof. Joel Beinin Dredges Up False ‘Death Threat’ Claim Against L.A. Journalist

By Cinnamon Stillwell
Campus Watch | May 16, 2007

Stanford Middle East history professor and former president of the Middle East Studies Association Joel Beinin is known for letting his one-sided political perspectives invade the classroom. As former Stanford professor Steven Zipperstein told The Jewish Weekly of Northern California in 2002, “It’s said that Joel Beinin doesn’t believe in balance as an intrinsically crucial goal in academic life. “The charge is accurate, and he would acknowledge it, I think.”

Alyssa Lappen wrote about Beinin for Campus Watch in 2004 and she encapsulates his less-than-savory viewpoints in the following passage:

He denounces American “imperialism” on Al-Jazeera Television. A former Zionist, he refers to jihadist suicide bombers as “martyrs.” He praised Mideast scholars for ignoring the issue of terrorism, and he regularly repeats the most twisted and paranoid claims of Islamist regimes as though they were historical fact. If one individual can showcase all the flaws of Middle East Studies in academia, Joel Beinin is that man.

Although the exact details are somewhat murky due to Stanford’s policy of not allowing colleagues to discuss personnel moves, according to Beinin, he’s “officially on extended leave of absence [from Stanford] until the end of 2008.” In the interim, Beinin has taken up residence at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he is the director of Middle East studies. Continue reading “Stanford Prof. Joel Beinin Dredges Up False ‘Death Threat’ Claim Against L.A. Journalist” →

Moderate and Radical Muslims: The Confused PBS View

by Alyssa A. Lappen
American Thinker | May 7, 2007

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) doesn’t want Americans to learn of radical Islam’s war against moderate Muslims, such as Danish Member of Parliament Naser Khader, who are trying to reform and transport to the 21st century a faith born (and for a great many, stuck) in the 7th century.

“If [MP Khader] becomes the Minister of Foreigners or Integration, why don’t we send out two guys to blow up him and his ministry,” Danish Imam Ahmed Akkari said while being secretly taped by France 2 journalist Mohamed Sifaoui in March 2006. Once exposed, the 29-year-old Akkari denied his threat, but later claimed on tape, “It was a joke. I was joking.” But Khader speaks Arabic, and it was no joke.

Ahmad Abu Laban, one of Akkari’s radical compatriots, knowingly stated on tape that the West gives his radical co-religionists “a margin of freedom” in which to lobby politically to impose Islamic law on Western and Danish society, and “we use it.”

Both of these radicals were taken out of commission in 2007—Akkari in an auto accident and Abu Laban died of cancer.

But a veritable army of radicals follow in their steps, as becomes clear after viewing a new 52-minute documentary, Islam versus Islamism: Voices from the Muslim Center, screened privately in New York City on May 2 and for U.S. legislators in Washington D.C. on April 25 by producers Martin Burke, Alex Alexiev and Frank Gaffney.

The radicals and their Persian Gulf backers now dominate 80% of U.S. mosques and Muslim organizations, according to Sufi leader Hisham Kabbani, whom mainstream Muslim groups blackballed for testifying to the U.S. State Department in January 1999. Continue reading “Moderate and Radical Muslims: The Confused PBS View” →