03/10/15

Egyptian President Crushes Jihadists While Obama Coddles Them

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

Few Americans would want to live under the rule of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s authoritarian president. But on the other hand, neither would any jihadist.

An Egyptian administrative court recently upheld the nation’s Ministry of Religious Endowment’s decision to shutter 27,000 mosques deemed most supportive of jihadism.

Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, President of Egypt, speaks during the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. (Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, President of Egypt, speaks during the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2014. (Credit: AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

This marks the latest in a series of steps taken by the Sisi regime to cripple terrorists.

Such actions evince an attitude and approach toward countering the threat of Islamic supremacism entirely counter to that espoused by the Obama administration.

Consider four critical areas in which Presidents Sisi and Obama have taken opposing sides:

Defining the Threat

President Sisi has very publicly criticized Islam — linking it to jihadist destruction and backwardness in the Arab world. President Barack Obama has made every effort to de-link Islam from Islamic terror, arguing that Islam itself, not its reformation, is essential to combating jihadism.

During a December 2014 speech at the seat of Sunni Islamic learning, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, President Sisi stated:

It is inconceivable that the ideology we sanctify should make our entire nation a source of concern, danger, killing, and destruction all over the world. It is inconceivable that this ideology… I am referring not to “religion,” but to “ideology” – the body of ideas and texts that we have sanctified in the course of centuries, to the point that challenging them has become very difficult.

It has reached the point that [this ideology] is hostile to the entire world. Is it conceivable that 1.6 billion [Muslims] would kill the world’s population of seven billion, so that they could live [on their own]? This is inconceivable…You cannot see things clearly when you are locked [in this ideology]. You must emerge from it and look from outside, in order to get closer to a truly enlightened ideology. You must oppose it with resolve. Let me say it again: We need to revolutionize our religion.

In a less-noticed interview with Der Spiegel in February of this year, President Sisi stated:

For 1,400 years, the Koran has represented the absolute truth. But interpretations differ. I propose removing wrong and distorted ideas from the religious discourse.

Contrast this with a seminal speech delivered by President Obama at Al-Azhar University in June 2009, in which he stated that “Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism – it is an important part of promoting peace.”

During the recent Countering Violent Extremism Summit, President Obama said:

Al Qaeda and [Islamic State] do draw, selectively, from the Islamic texts. They do depend upon the misperception around the world that they speak in some fashion for people of the Muslim faith, that Islam is somehow inherently violent, that there is some sort of clash of civilizations.

President Obama sees misperception of the Muslim faith in Islamic terror; President Sisi has shown no such illusions.

Moreover, in addition to promoting “jobs for jihadis,” the Obama administration’s agenda for countering jihadism — euphemistically called “violent extremism” — consists largely of a laissez-faire law enforcement and oversight approach to the communities that pose the greatest danger, coupled with millions in funding for likely superficial programs, such as $15 million for the Department of Justice to support “community-led efforts to build resilience and counter violent extremism.”

Acknowledging the Incubator

Among other measures, President Sisi has sought to counter jihadists by attacking them at their source – mosques that espouse Islamic supremacy.

While President Sisi’s Ministry of Religious Endowments has granted 400 preaching permits to Salafist leaders, his move to close down 27,000 mosques — in the world’s most populous Arab country — is as dramatic as it is telling.

Consideration of such a policy would be unthinkable in America, as it would be seen as a violation of religious freedom, even if the facilities in question were to house those espousing anti-social and anti-American acts bordering on treason.

In fact, under President Obama America has taken a diametrically opposed approach: Actively seeking to partner with mosques, and creating significantly tougher standards for surveilling them.

A pillar of the Obama administration’s “countering violent extremism” policy is to engage more closely with Islamic communities and their leaders, i.e. imams.

The administration holds up as one of its outreach models a pilot program in Boston. The group said to be serving as primary liaison with the federal government is the Islamic Society of Boston. Problematic is the fact that the group has been linked to jihadists and jihadist-sympathizers, and was reportedly funded by Saudi and other Gulf sources to the tune of over $8.6 million. 

As mentioned in an earlier piece, the Mapping Sharia project indicates that imams in over 80 percent of 100 randomly surveyed American mosques recommend the study of violence-positive texts. Given the large percentage of mosques that fit this profile, it stands to reason that the federal government is likely partnering with some of these very institutions.

Recognizing the Aims of the Muslim Brotherhood

During the Arab Spring, President Obama tacitly supported Hosni Mubarak’s ouster — effectively backing the favored candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood — Mohamed Morsi.

Among General Sisi’s first acts upon deposing Mr. Morsi was to ban the Muslim Brotherhood. When asked whether Islamic State or the Muslim Brotherhood posed a greater threat, Sisi responded:

They both share the same ideology. But the Muslim Brotherhood is the origin of all of it. All these other extremists emanated from them.

Such a statement – or even the sentiment — has never flowed from President Obama’s lips.

President Obama has instead actively embraced members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Obama administration recently invited Muslim Brotherhood-linked leaders to the White House, and the State Department hosted a Muslim Brotherhood delegation, much to the chagrin of the Egyptians. 

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group, but the White House declined a petition that would have similarly given it such a designation in the United States.

Views of Israel and Iran

Egypt has become a key partner with Israel in fighting jihadists by dint of recognizing a common enemy in the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in Gaza.

Under President Sisi, Egypt reportedly sealed off 95 percent of the Hamas terror tunnels under Egypt’s border with Gaza, and demolished thousands of homes to create a massive buffer zone in the Sinai, to the benefit of both Egypt and Israel.

Furthermore, Egypt believes – as does Israel – that Iran is a true threat to regional stability – especially if Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear weaponry.

Conversely, President Obama has desperately sought to cast Iran – which has been at war with the United States since 1979 — as a worthy ally. Perhaps because of this, the president has worked with abandon to publically denigrate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leading up to and following the congressional address in which Netanyahu explained the threat posed by a nuclear Iran. The politicization and histrionics displayed by Democrats regarding Netanyahu’s speech speaks volumes in showing how far U.S.-Israel relations have fallen under the Obama administration.

Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post summarizes the relationships between Egypt, Israel and the United States accordingly:

Israel’s ability to take effective action against Hamas in concert with Egypt is hampered by the Obama administration that is insisting that Israel facilitate the Hamas’s rearmament – a development that threatens Israel and Egypt alike.

And Israel isn’t alone in its plight. Egypt is also being pressured by President Barack Obama and his administration.

In its war against Sunni and Shiite jihadist forces that threaten to destroy Egypt, and among other things, cause mass harm to the global economy by imperiling maritime traffic, Egypt finds itself betrayed by the Obama administration.

…Today Israel’s closest ally is Egypt. Under Obama, the U.S. is a force to be worked around, not worked with.

***

None of these points are presented in order to romanticize President Sisi’s rule.

He is an authoritarian overseeing a military regime that crushes its opponents as a means of survival.

Further, as Dr. Andrew Bostom has noted, President Sisi’s strident rhetoric on Islam has not matched his past words and deeds. For example, Bostom writes:

While Sisi was “ambiguous”/“apologetic” in his romanticized 2006 view of the (Shariah totalitarian, jihad promoting) Caliphate system as an idealized form of Islamic governance, he was unequivocal in his denunciation of precisely the kind of secular consensus, tolerant form of rule Egypt requires if it is ever going to make its Coptic Christian minority, and truly secular leaning Muslims, equal members of the society. Sisi rejected that pursuit in 2006, and his government’s actions under his aegis—a continuing campaign against freedom of conscience, coupled to ongoing “blasphemy” prosecutions—pace soothing “rhetoric”—indicate he meant what he articulated then.

Certainly, President Sisi’s regime is illiberal, violent and generally antithetical to Western values.

Nevertheless, when it comes to fighting jihadism, President Sisi looks like a paragon of moral clarity compared with the putative leader of the free world, Barack Obama.

There are few sadder commentaries on the current state of American leadership than this.

03/8/15

The Truth About NSA

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

This program is a unique look into the activities of one of America’s most important intelligence agencies from someone who was inside for 35 years.

02/16/15

“Defeat Jihad Summit” – Diana West Summary – Videos

Diana West
Hat Tip: Dick Manasseri

Editor’s Note – From the Center for Security Policy, headed by Frank Gaffney, the following summary identified what the Defeat Jihad Summit was designed to accomplish, this followed by notes taken by one attendee, Diana West:

Today, an extraordinary gathering of freedom-fighters in what might best be described as the War for the Free World convened in Washington, D.C.3348068130

Their purpose was to anticipate and rebut the thesis of President Obama’s “Countering Violent Extremism Summit” next week – namely, that the United States faces hostile forces whose identity, motivations and capabilities are defined by an opaque euphemism: violent extremism.

The “Defeat Jihad Summit” was sponsored by the Center for Security Policy and brought together present and former, domestic and foreign political leaders, senior military officers, national security professionals and other experts on Islamic supremacism and its guiding doctrine, shariah.

Please read the notes here and then go their site and view the videos of the speakers and more. Videos for Senator Ted Cruz. Governor Bobby Jindal, Speaker Newt Gingrich, General Jerry Boykin and a list of many others are on that link.

Notes from a Defeat Jihad Summit

By Diana West – “Death of the Grown-Up

Diana West

Earlier this week, I participated in the Center for Security Policy’s Defeat Jihad Summit.

I find that the several hours of speeches and discussion have distilled into some salient recollections and comments.

1) There remains a chasm between American “messaging” and that of some of our European friends who were invited to speak, including the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders, who contributed a taped message, and Lars Hedegaard, who addressed the conference via Skype from Denmark.

American participants in the main demand, even a little truculently, that we now, finally, break the bonds of “political correctness” and speak frankly about “radical Islam,” “Islamism,” “ideas of ISIS,” etc.

Wilders, whose Party for Freedom is No. 1 in the Dutch polls, and Dispatch International editor Hedegaard both speak, and have always spoken about “Islam” — pure and very simple.

Indeed, Wilders has encapsulated everything you need to know about Islam and the West thus: “The more Islam there is in a society, the less freedom there is.”

Not “Islamism.”

This difference is more than semantic. wilders

The primary mechanism of control that Islam exerts over people is Islamic slander law, Islamic blasphemy law. This is the institutional means by which Islam protects itself against criticism, even objective facts about Islam that might be construed critically.

The penalty is death. Not for nothing did Yusef Qaradawi state that Islam wouldn’t even exist without the death penalty for “apostasy.”

We have seen innumerable instances, particularly since the 1989 publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, where Muslims have executed, or tried to execute this death sentence even against non-Muslims, from Europe to Japan, in efforts to extend the rule of Islam.

When American lawmakers, generals and security experts omit “Islam” from their debates and war councils, focusing instead on what they have dubbed “radical Islam,” “Islamism” and the like, they are succombing to this same control mechanism.

They are protecting Islam. They are themselves sheltering Islam against the cold light of analysis. By extension, they are also preventing their own Western societies from devising means of defense against Islamization. They are accepting and carrying out what is probably the most important Islamic law.

There is concrete danger in this. Unless we can come to an understanding that it is the teachings of Islam — not the teachings of some peculiar strain called “Islamism,” or of an organization such as the Muslim Brotherhood or ISIS — that directly undermine our constitutional liberties, we cannnot protect our way of life from these teachings, whose popularity grows with the increasing Islamic demographic.

This is what the advanced Islamization of Europe shows us. A nominally sensible US immigration policy would immediately halt Islamic immigration to prevent a sharia-demographic from gaining more critical mass in the USA, democratically.

Then again, we don’t have a national border, much less a sensible immigration policy. That means many of these questions are moot.

2) Still, it bears noting: The Left has responded to the current cycle of Islamic jihad — a recurring blight on civilization, as Andrew Bostom’s Legacy of Jihad amply documents — by inventing a foe called “violent extremism.”

The Right, scoffing at this euphemism, “pinpoints” the threat of “radical Islamism.”Bostom

What is the difference? Ultimately, I see none. Both terms protect Islam.

Warning against the dangers of “radical Islam” implies that there exists some “normal Islam” that is completely compatible, perhaps even interchangeable, with Christianity and Judaism.

Indeed, this ongoing effort to normalize Islam is equally as dangerous as the institutional efforts that long ago “normalized” Communism.

This officially began when FDR “normalized” relations with the wholly abnormal Soviet regime in 1933, a morally odious event whose horrific repercussions are treated at length in American Betrayal.

Just as it required endless apologetics (lies) to maintain the fiction of “normal” Communism, so, too, does it require endless apologetics (lies) to maintain the fiction of “normal” or “moderate” Islam.

According to all of Islam’s authoritative texts, according to the example of Islam’s prophet, this “moderate” creed does not Islamically exist.

To turn the notion around, as Lars recently reminded me, when the brave and splendid ex-Muslim Wafa Sultan was asked several years ago to distinguish between “Islam” vs. “Islamism” at a Copenhagen conference, she brought the airy theory back to earth by asking: Based on your definition of Islamism, was Mohammed a Muslim or an “Islamist”?

3) This brings me to The Best Line of the summit, which was spoken by Nonie Darwish: “Islamism is Islam and Islam is Islamism.”

4) The Spirit of ’76 Award goes to retired Admiral James “Ace” Lyons who inquired of guest speaker and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich whether there was any movement in the Congress to censure Obama or initiate impeachment hearings. The consensus on this burning, patriotic question is, no, expediently speaking, there is not nor will there be such a movement.

As per the entire US elite’s corruption and complicity in Soviet crime outlined in American Betrayal, it seems we have arrived at the point where Obama’s political judge and jury — our elected representatives in the Congress — is surely complicit in his crimes against the Constitution, as well as with his identity fraud on the American people.

5) The Most Profound New Thought of the summit came from brave and splendid ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish (who, bonus, I met for the first time here).

Nonie conveyed her understanding, having grown up in Egypt the privileged daughter of an Egyptian shahid (martyr), that terrorism, the threat of terrorism is a feature of Islamic life at all levels: inside the family, in the public square, and everywhere in between.

I’m paraphrasing, but what came through her talk was the idea that Muslim “moderates” in Islamic society (which I am taking to mean human beings who do not have the seeds of violence within them) have come to take Islamic terrorism/violence/coercion as a given.

This means that they have come to accept such terrorism/violence/coercion as normal. Her great fear is that Americans, too, are coming to accept such Islamic violence as normal — that we, in a sense, are taking on the role of such Muslim moderates. This is, if it can be imagined, an even darker iteration of dhimmitude.

6) Speaking of ex-Muslims, I made a comment about the role of the apostate in the great ideological battles of our time. Today, it is the ex-Muslims who offer special insight into totalitarianism of the Islamic kind.

Many of my American colleagues, however, still prefer to lean on guidance from Muslim “moderates” — despite the fact, referenced above, that Islam’s own sacred texts, including the example of Islam’s prophet, support no such “moderation.”51yHDd+p4NL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

As they wish, they may await, or even themselves lead an Islamic reformation, but this in no way protects free speech or preserves public safety in our country now — especially when there are indicators that an alarming level of support for curbing and even criminalizing free speech about Islam exists among American Muslims — punitive measures, again, that find support in Islam’s texts.

In the 20th-century-battle against totalitarian Communism, anti-Communists did not embrace “moderate Communists.” Rather, they embraced ex-Communists who understood the totalitarian teachings and practices of Communism in Moscow’s gangster-quest for global dominance — a “caliphate” a la Lenin & Marx.

It was mainly the Left and Center  — the anti-anti-Communist Left and Center — that made common cause with “moderate Communists,” i.e., Social Democrats, Communist apologists, also Soviet agents among others, engendering meaningless treaties, defeats and loss.

Even more pernicious, though, was the resulting “postmodern” rot across the political spectrum, which tells me, as I argue in American Betrayal, that the West lost the “struggle of ideas” in the “Cold War.”

This spectral shift is interesting in and of itself. I see its patterns repeat in the past decade of military disaster in which it was US military strategy to ignore the teachings of Islam and instead lean on perceived Muslim moderates, or just bank on a hoped-for emergence of Muslim moderation, in the Islamic nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrible defeats ensued.

As former FBI special agent John Guandolo pointed out at the summit, we’ve tried this type of thing for 15 years and it doesn’t work.

Nor does it make sense — logically, doctrinally, strategically. But then neither does seizing on  “radical Islamism” and other terms of art that exclude and thus protect Islam.

The Moral of this summit: You can’t protect Islam and defeat jihad at the same time.

02/9/15

LISTEN: An Islam scholar politely unloads on President Obama’s ‘terrible deeds in the name of Christ’ remarks

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

In light of America’s ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran, and the continued conflagration of jihadism throughout the world, we sat down with prolific Islam scholar Andrew Bostom, author of several books including “Iran’s Final Solution for Israel: The Legacy of Jihad and Shi’ite Islamic Jew-Hatred in Iran,” and “Sharia Versus Freedom: The Legacy of Islamic Totalitarianism,” to discuss everything from the doctrinal basis of Iranian policy to his take on General Sisi in Egypt (full interview at bottom).

But it was during a question on President Obama’s recent National Prayer Breakfast remarks in particular that Bostom provided one of his most contrarian and compelling responses, stating:

Let me start with the Civil War — I mean this is a president who — we can excuse him for his ignorance of Islamic theology and Islamic history, you know despite his nominal background in Islam as a child. But excuse me, but the abolitionists were Christians, and the United States literally went to war with itself, unlike any other society before, to extirpate the longstanding, thousand year longstanding evil of slavery in virtually every human civilization. It’s just appalling that he doesn’t even grasp that fundamental decency about this country.

…[I]f you look at what he’s [President Obama’s] referring to in terms of the Crusades…if I could just share with you something that I wrote ten years ago [from Bostom’s “Jihad Begot the Crusades,” parts 1 and 2]…

51-I933tM5L

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Title: The Legacy of Jihad

Author: Dr. Andrew Bostom

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The jihad is intrinsic to the sacred Muslim texts, including the divine Qur’anic revelation itself, whereas the Crusades were circumscribed historical events subjected to (ongoing and meaningful) criticism by Christians themselves. Unlike the espousal of jihad in the Qur’an, the constituent texts of Christianity, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, do not contain a form fruste [incomplete] institutionalization of the Crusades. The Bible sanctions the Israelites conquest of Canaan, a limited domain, it does not sanction a permanent war to submit all the nations of humanity to a uniform code of religious law. Similarly, the tactics of warfare are described in the Bible, unlike the Qur’an, in very circumscribed and specific contexts. Moreover, while the Bible clearly condemns certain inhumane practices of paganism, it never invoked an eternal war against all of the world’s pagan peoples [for example like Koran 9:5 does…].

The Crusades as an historical phenomenon were a reaction to events resulting from over 450 years of previous jihad campaigns.

So I just did what I could back then to put some of this…blather in context. And then of course he [President Obama] goes on and talks about the Inquisition.

Well…Islam too has had its inquisitions. It’s had its inquisitions against other Muslims dating back to the 9th century…and it also had a horrific inquisition…in the 12th century, imposed upon the Jews in particular, who were massacred, pillaged and enslaved by the tens of thousands, and then forcibly converted to Islam. And some practiced crypto-Judaism, and they were subjected to the same practices curiously that were adopted by the inquisitioners in the same region, so you could argue this might have even been a historical prototype, just within a couple centuries later.

Bostom added:

And the big difference Ben, I think, is that we in the West, as religious and non-religious people, criticize all of these ideologies — whether they’re religions like Christianity and Judaism, or whether they’re very, very horrible secular totalitarian ideologies like Nazism and Communism.

All of the baggage that we have accumulated — and we have accumulated a lot of baggage, unlike in Islamdom, is open to criticism. And that is a profound difference Ben.

You can listen to the full interview below, during which we also discussed topics including:


  • Bostom’s view on the notion that Islam is a religion of peace
  • How Islamic doctrine guides Iran’s policies
    • Jihadism
    • Najis — impurity of the non-Muslim
    • Jew-hated specifically
  • Why the so-called “Green Movement” in Iran is not any better than the politicians in power today — only differing in terms of tactics
  • The ramifications of a nuclear Iran, and why negotiations with Iran are so disastrous
  • Why Bostom is more circumspect of Egypt’s General Sisi than other conservatives

 

Note: The link to the book in this post will give you an option to elect to donate a percentage of the proceeds from the sale to a charity of your choice. Mercury One, the charity founded by TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck, is one of the options. Donations to Mercury One go towards efforts such as disaster relief, support for education, support for Israel and support for veterans and our military. You can read more about Amazon Smile and Mercury One here.