The Meat Head Mufti

by Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine | Mar. 14, 2007

Far from bowing to rising clamor for his deportation, the controversial Mufti Sheikh Taj Aldin al-Hilali is taking on the political establishment. Al-Hilali outraged Australians last fall by describing women as “uncovered meat,” and in January compounded their furor when he claimed that Muslims had more right to the country than the “Anglo-Saxon” heirs to Australia’s convict ancestors. On March 12, al-Hilali spokesman Keysar Trad brazenly baited politicians to stop using Muslims as a “political football.”

In October 2006, after al-Hilali’s misogynist sermon at west Sydney’s Lakemba mosque, Prime Minister John Howard criticized him and other politicians demanded his dismissal and deportation. Egyptian-born al-Halali has been in that position before, however: after spewing anti-Jewish hatred at the University of Sydney in 1988, deportation proceedings began. But under Muslim pressure, in 1990, Australia granted him citizenship.

Al-Hilali certainly follows recent radical custom. In Iraq, Islamic radicals have slain at least 20 women for living (and dressing) as liberated women. In 2005, a Spanish judge sentenced Mohamed Kamal Mustafa to 15 months in prison for writing, “blows [to a disobedient wife] should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body.” And in March 2003, Saudi Arabian religious police trapped 890 girls and women in a burning school rather than let them out in “improper dress.” At least 15 girls died. Continue reading “The Meat Head Mufti” →

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Disappointed

Feb. 22, 2007 | The Pedestal Magazine

Dec. 22, 2006

Dear John–

I’m disappointed with TPM‘s interview of Naomi Shihab Nye, who on the one hand claims to have a secular Muslim father, a former Lutheran mother (both “ecumenical, open-minded people”) and to be herself “[r]especting all paths, rejecting fundamentalism of all stripes,” while on the other hand, in her previous thought, demonstrating Orthodox Palestinianism, a late 20th and 21st Century fundamentalism, which blames the Jewish people for daring to have their own state, and denies them the same right of self-determination and nationhood allowed and encouraged for every other people under the sun.

Palestinianism is neither secular, nor humanist. Ms. Nye calls for “mutual respect, autonomy and self-determination, for the Israeli and the Palestinian people…” Yet she also claims (falsely) that these have never been granted to Palestinians—and that the only way Palestinians can achieve such autonomy is by denying the same to the Jewish people.

The Palestinian Authority has for the better part of 13 years autonomously controlled the disputed territories—aka the West Bank and Gaza. The PA constitution [here, in Arabic] seeks to impose radical Islam and Shari’a law. Since 1993, moreover, PA leaders have wrought destruction—democratic, economic, educational and social—of Palestinian Arab potential to live peacefully and prosper. The PA has allowed Muslim terror to destroy the local Christian community: the PA Christian population, (20 percent after World War II), has plunged since 1993 to less than 1.7 percent.

Since 1967, Israel had built schools, universities, hospitals, water and electrical systems in those territories, in addition to covering health care for Palestinian Arabs. But since the Oslo Accords, Palestinian leadership invested foreign aid of at least $100 billion in arms, terror, graft and corruption, while filling the Swiss, private bank coffers of Yasser Arafat (and undoubtedly, many other Fatah leaders). Despite long pretense of enmity, the Fatah “political party” shares basic goals, and has cooperated completely, with Hamas since at least 1995. In addition to Fatah’s own terror campaign, Arafat’s “moderates” condone and support Hamas terror attacks on Jews and Israel, despite Oslo’s prohibitions against them.

Finally, 96% of the security “Wall” for which Ms. Nye blames Israel is a fence. Sadly, this has caused economic harm to Arabs on its eastern side. Happily, the fence has reduced by more than 75% the number of suicide bombings, shooting attacks, and other attempted terror targeting Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem and within Israel’s Green Line. That was the fence’s sole purpose. Palestinian Arabs can only blame themselves for the fence. But for their determination to destroy Jews and replace Israel with an Islamic Shari’a state “from the river to the sea,” the fence would have been unnecessary.

Even the politically correct mainstream media admit that Hamas seeks to destroy Israel. Mistakenly, they also regard Yasser Arafat’s Fatah “political party,” now headed by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), as “moderate.” However, several articles of Fatah’s 1964 PLO Charter, rewritten in 1968, still incite Israel’s annihilation. Article 15, for example, invokes “liberation of Palestine” as a “national duty to repulse the Zionist…invasion from the great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence….” That is, ethnic cleansing—or genocide.

The PLO never revised its Charter to recognize Israel, as Oslo required, according to former PA foreign minister Farouk Kadoumi (and many others). Moreover, Fatah developed its “staged plan” to conquer Israel in the mid 1970s. As Faysal al-Husseini admitted in 2001, PA “acceptance” of Oslo was all part of this long-planned Palestinian subterfuge. Again, contrary to Ms. Nye’s argument, Palestinians did have autonomy—which they used not as the intended precursor to their own state, but to sow terror and destruction.

Ms. Nye’s name recognition does not confer “secular humanist” sainthood upon her. On the contrary, she is a fundamentalist, who (inadvertently, or not) supports Shari’a (Islamic law) in the disputed territories—and by endorsing the “one state” theology (without objection to the above-cited PA government plans), apparently in Israel as well. For a true secular humanist, please interview the courageous Wafa Sultan.

Best regards–
Alyssa A. Lappen

The Militarization of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood

by Patrick Poole
American Thinker | Feb. 13, 2007

In late October, a series of exchanges here at American Thinker debated the extremism or moderation of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and oldest Islamist organization in the world and the de facto political opposition party in Egypt. Events a few weeks later in Cairo rendered much of that discussion moot.

The exchange was initiated by Alyssa Lappen’s article “Islam’s Useful Idiots”, which challenged the foreign policy realist view that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt are political moderates and are committed to political reform in Egypt through peaceful means, notwithstanding their sometime-violent rhetoric and long history of using and supporting terrorism. In particular, Ms. Lappen took issue with statements delivered at a recent forum hosted by the NYU School of Law, where panelists represented the Muslim Brotherhood as “reformist” and “progressive”, and therefore, no threat to democracy in Egypt and a potential partner for peace for the US.

Later that week, Ms. Lappen’s article prompted strong responses from Nick Fielding and Alexis Debat – both of whom were panelists at the NYU forum noted by Lappen. Both accused her of misrepresenting their comments at that forum and reiterated that the Muslim Brotherhood was nothing to fear. In the spirit of fair debate, The American Thinker included detailed responses by Ms. Lappen to Fielding and Debat’s accusations.

In December, however, a militarized parade of Muslim Brotherhood youth cadres demonstrated with sticks, chains and martial arts displays at Cairo’s Al-Ahzar University, the most historic Islamic academic institution and one of the largest universities in the world, effectively putting the lie to contentions that the Muslim Brotherhood intends to pursue its goal of imposing shari’a law and instituting an Islamic government in Egypt through non-violent means (an almost ridiculous proposition on its face). Continue reading “The Militarization of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood” →

The ISG’s Dereliction of Duty

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
December 11, 2006 | American Thinker

On Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2005, President George W. Bush, described the determination of Islamic terrorists, who

“want to end American and Western influence in the broader Middle East, because we stand for democracy and peace, and stand in the way of their ambitions….The tactics of al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists have been consistent for a quarter of a century: They hit us, and expect us to run.”

The President then vowed as he has many times since September 2001:

“We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity; we will not tire or rest until the war on terror is won.”

Yet, as we now see, the U.S. is running, not only from the Middle East. Continue reading “The ISG’s Dereliction of Duty” →

Waste not

By Alyssa A. Lappen and Jack Lauber
Times Union | Sunday, December 3, 2006

Eliot Spitzer, listen up.

California, which has the nation’s toughest environmental laws, has just unveiled its “Roadmap for the the Development of Biomass.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger seeks to boost California’s wind, solar and biomass projects, and to eventually extract 22 percent of California’s energy feedstocks from urban wastes.

Last March, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously adopted a 20-year-plan to re-engineer its garbage disposal system and switch to waste-to-energy, eliminating transport costs and pollution.

The New York City Council, by contrast, adopted a garbage-export plan last July. Rather than harness trash to generate energy, New York City taxpayers will continue to export garbage, and pollution risks, at a cost of more than $600 million a year for residential trash alone. Continue reading “Waste not” →

The Progress of Hassan al-Banna’s Vision

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
AmericanThinker.com | November 24, 2006

The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, whose disciples are now celebrating his birth 100 years ago, would have been ecstatic to witness their progress in implementing his plans to compel the world to submit to Islam. Radical Islam have made inroads in most countries with a Muslim majority, reached supremacy in several countries and its influence is steadily growing in western nations as well.

Petrodollars fuel this progress.

Evidence of Islam’s growing influence threatens every aspect of social, political and economic principles in the West. To shield his identity, a key prosecution witness in a Hamas financing trial, was forced to testify in disguise, under a “one name alias,” and under heavy protection. The defendants are Bridgeview, Il. grocer Muhammad Salah, 53, and former professor Abdelhaleem Ashqar, 48 from Alexandria, Va., alleged Hamas members charged with racketeering and bankrolling Palestinian terrorists. Salah, a Hamas member, was arrested in January 1993, for funding Hamas, and attempting to “take over the military wing of Hamas.” He served 4.5 year in Israeli prison.
Continue reading “The Progress of Hassan al-Banna’s Vision” →