Victims without Names

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 7, 2005

On June 5, 2002 a suicide bomber rammed his car into the rear end of Egged bus No. 830 to Tiberias at the Meggido Junction near Tel Aviv. The attack killed 17 people, one of whom remained unidentified for months. Despite the thousands of suicide and other terror attacks in Israel over the last 57 years, this was the first time a victim remained unidentified. Eden Productions film director David Ofek, photographer Ron Rotem and producer Elinor Kowarsky decided to pursue the story.

The result, No 17 is Anonymous, is a sympathetic, warm 2003 film showing the difficulties of Israeli life under the shadow of death. Its success hinges on the detective investigation undertaken by the filmmakers, who in the process of uncovering the identity of the 17^th man, tell the everyday, tragic-comic stories of several Israelis affected directly or indirectly by the Meggido bombing.

Where the victims sat on the bus–and when they disembarked–determined the difference between life and death. The story gives names, faces, flesh and bones to the living and dead alike. The victims were all people. Their lives were torn apart by the blast. But the death of the 17^th man was especially tragic: his face was completely burned away by the explosion; His charred remains had no recognizable features left whatever. Continue reading “Victims without Names” →

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U.S. Companies and Islamic Law

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | October 6, 2005

It’s time for the United States to limit financial transactions that involve American companies to governance by secular laws. The swelling oil revenues of the Gulf states have created demand from those markets for U.S. investments in banks, real estate and industrial stocks. Most has been invested according to the usual financial guidelines, but the recent surge in revenues has also stimulated the demand to impose Islamic law (sharia) on financial investments.

In their urgent desire to find new markets, Americans have opened the door to Islamist expansionism. The Dow Jones Islamic Markets index and Islamic U.S. banks and financial products, which are catering exclusively to Muslims, only advance the Islamic impetus to impose sharia-governed banking on the West. For example, Michael J.T. McMillen, a partner at Dechert, and “a pioneer in the burgeoning Islamic banking and finance market,” aggressively solicits and accommodates sharia compliant transactions. If Islamic investors want to abide by sharia, nothing prevents them from doing so. But there is no reason for American banks, businesses and investment firms to introduce Islam or any other religion into the U.S. capital markets.

American legislators, regulators and businessmen should follow the lead of Ontario’s Premier Dalton McGuinty who on September 11, responding to the Islamic Institute of Civil Justice, which applied to arbitrate civil cases in the Muslim community according to sharia, declared: “There will be no Shari’a law in Ontario. There will be no religious arbitration in Ontario. There will be one law for all Ontarians.” Mr. McGuinty said religious arbitrations “threaten our common ground,” and promised his Liberal government would introduce legislation “as soon as possible” to outlaw them in Ontario. “Ontarians will always have the right to seek advice from anyone in matters of family law, including religious advice,” he said. “But no longer will religious arbitration be deciding matters of family law.” Continue reading “U.S. Companies and Islamic Law” →

Caving in to Palestinian Pressure

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 23, 2005

Nothing seems to disrupt the momentum towards the creation of a Palestinian state that supports martyrdom, not even repeated, clear statements by Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. “[Martyrs] receive their reward in the Garden of Eden,” he told a group of students returning to school in

Gaza on September 4. Those who died “according to a national order,” he said, — including suicide terrorists — brought about the withdrawal from Gaza.” These are fighting words, not those of a leader committed to living side by side in peace with Israel. That Abbas sounds just like the leaders of HAMAS and Islamic Jihad, has not stopped the Quartet — the United States, United Nations, Russia and the European Union — from giving $750 million to the PA by the end of 2005. Nor did it stop the Japanese from giving $49.7 million in aid to the Palestinians through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), nor the Canadians from giving $36.7 million in aid to the PA this year.

In addition, the European Union gave $342.8 million in 2005, on top of $272.35 million from independent European states. Continue reading “Caving in to Palestinian Pressure” →

Financial Jihad

by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
HumanEvents.com | Posted Sep 22, 2005

“A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West],” former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir told a banking conference in Kuala Lumpur in November 2002. The conference was convened following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. “to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance.” Representatives of nine Islamic nations gathered to set up an Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) to “act as a global authority for Islamic banking and finance” and to compete with secular U.S. and international banking regulatory agencies.

Since 2002, internationally and domestically the Islamic impetus to impose Sharia-governed banking on the West has only increased.

Today, the Lariba American Finance House, based in Pasadena, California, operates its Islamic banking services in 28 states, modeled on the Sharia’aa Foundation guidelines of “His Eminence” Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. The good sheikh endorses suicide bombing, wife-beatingâ€”and attacks against America. Lariba also sells Islamic mortgages to Fannie Mae. Continue reading “Financial Jihad” →

Morbid Philanthropy

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 22, 2005

In its 2004 annual report, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation notes that it has “invested more than $400 million in pursuing a more secure world.” After the Cold War, the foundation sought to prevent “nuclear weapons … from falling into the wrong hands.” The “Age of Terror,” however, has urgently refocused MacArthur on its “duty” to understand “transnational terrorists,” who they are, how they are organized, how they gain â€œmoral, political and economic support”–and what “resentments and frustrations” drive them “to perpetrate terrorist acts.” [1]
From this departure poin–the wrongheaded belief that frustrations drive terror–it is a short leap to seeking a scapegoat. It explains the foundation’s tendency, where the Middle East is concerned, to shower gifts upon researchers, universities and quasi academic institutions with an anti-American or anti-Israel bent. In doing so its grants cross the line into overt political advocacy.

Favorite Middle East grantees include “human rights” and “law” efforts with anti-American attitudes. [2] A $250,000 grant in March 2003 to Human Rights Watch “to monitor the human rights impacts of the war in Iraq” focuses primarily on U.S. rather than terrorists’ “human rights violations.” [3]

But studies of “Palestine” seem to be a foundation specialty. In October 2000, $51,000 was directed to the Institute for Palestine Studies—hardly a disinterested party—for a nine month study of “Palestinian Refugee Property Losses and Resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The grant evidently backed anti-Israel Randolph-Macon College history professor Michael Fischbach, who published a paper on Palestinian refugee compensation in its Journal of Palestine Studies. [4] Continue reading “Morbid Philanthropy” →

Ontario: A Shari’a-Free Zone

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | September 20, 2005

When Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty announced on Sunday September 11 that Ontario would outlaw all forms of religious arbitration, including Islamic law or Shari’a, Western civilization won a great victory. For that success, Canada and the U.S. owe their thanks to Iranian exile Homa Arjomand, director of the International Campaign Against Sharia Court (ICASC).

Arjomand sprang into action in December 2003, when McGuinty appointed former Ontario Attorney General Marion Boyd to review the province’s Arbitration Act. Since 1991, this law allowed Ontario courts to pass family and business legal disputes on to religious bodies. McGuinty was responding to the Islamic Institute for Civil Justice (IICJ), which applied to arbitrate civil cases in the Muslim community according to Shari’a.

From then until December 2004, when Boyd proposed instituting Shari’a law in Muslim family arbitrations, Arjomand devoted every leisure moment to defeating this measure. â€œWe can stop it,” she said last year, despite her fear that Pakistani, Iranian, and Saudi Arabian governments backed the IICJ push for Shari’a rule in Ontario’s family courts. Continue reading “Ontario: A Shari’a-Free Zone” →