01/21/15

Fox News “Apologizes” to Radical Islam

The disease known as political correctness has infected Fox News. First, anchor Bret Baier withdrew from a Catholic conference under pressure from his management and the homosexual lobby. Now, Fox News has bowed to pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, issuing an embarrassing “correction” that was not warranted for having reported factually on the existence of Muslim-dominated “no-go zones” in Europe.

These zones, which are better understood as Muslim-dominated enclaves or ghettos, were the scene of much-publicized violent riots in France in 2005.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) decided to target Fox News after several programs featured commentators who noted the existence of no-go Muslim-dominated areas where Islamic terror cells take root and find recruits.

In response to CAIR’s criticism, Fox News has apologized, even saying the coverage of the no-go zones was offensive. It is as if the forces of the global Jihad have acquired a veto over what appears on the air on the channel.

While CAIR’s pressure was certainly a factor in the capitulation to the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, another factor could well have been the influence of the Saudi billionaire, Alwaleed bin Talal, who controls an influential number of voting shares in the Fox News parent company. We noted that Alwaleed had prompted the Fox News Channel to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he admitted calling the channel to complain.

At that time, Fox News and other media outlets had noted that “Muslim riots” had erupted in the mostly Muslim suburbs of Paris and other French cities. These are some of the no-go zones. Acting offended, Alwaleed said he had called Rupert Murdoch to complain and that Fox News anchors changed the term “Muslim riots” to “civil riots.”

In the latest case, CAIR called on Fox News to stop using “Islamophobic commentators,” a smear term for critics of radical Islam, and focused on terrorism expert Steven Emerson’s description of Birmingham, England as “totally Muslim, where non-Muslims just simply don’t go in.” Emerson admitted he was wrong and had misquoted his sources.

Although Emerson exaggerated the problem, the fact is that Muslim groups and even gangs are known to be a problem in the city and a threat to some non-Muslims. In 2008, for example, two evangelists said they were threatened with arrest and warned by a police officer in Birmingham that they should not hand out Christian literature in a certain area of the city because they could get “beaten up” by mobs and charged with a hate crime.

At the time, a senior Church of England bishop, the Right Reverend Michael Nazir-Ali, had warned about “already separate communities” in Britain turning into no-go areas. During a 2009 visit to the United States, he was reported to have said that “Christians have been prevented from advertising church events in these parts of town and even police have been reluctant to enter these communities.”

So while Emerson made a mistake, his basic point about Muslim intimidation of outsiders remains valid.

Evidence of the problem has been available for years. In Belgium, for example, the district of Molenbeek was investigated in an undercover capacity by Moroccan-Belgian journalist Hind Fraihi, who wrote a 2006 book, Undercover in Klein-Marokko (Undercover in Little Morocco). She found the area to be an essentially ungovernable hotbed of extremism, anti-Semitism, and a breeding ground for jihad. The book “shocked” Belgium, one television news reporter noted. “Many police officers are afraid that the state no longer wields authority here, at least not the sole authority,” the reporter said. “They know that Islamists view Molenbeek as subject only to Muslim law.”

This is the same general area where Muslim riots are reported to have just taken place, following the anti-terror raid by police that left two terror suspects dead. The suspected leader of the terror cell, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, is described as a 27-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin who once lived in Molenbeek.

The term “no-go zone” is certainly politically incorrect. For that reason, other more obscure terms have been put forward to refer to the Muslim-dominated areas. For example, the term “Territories of Identities in France” has emerged as one of the descriptions. One academic analyst traced their emergence in France to a French Socialist Party policy in 1981 which allowed foreigners to create their own “voluntary associations,” based on a supposed “right to difference.”

Another more popular term is “exclusion areas.” Whatever they may be called, there can be no doubt they exist. And that was the main point of the Fox News coverage. There was nothing to correct except for Emerson’s inaccuracy about Birmingham. And he had already apologized for that.

Yet, anchor Julie Banderas said in her on-air correction and apology that the channel was sorry for being offensive.

Banderas said the channel had “made some regrettable errors on air, regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.” She explained, “Now this applies especially to discussions of so-called no-go zones, areas where non-Muslims allegedly aren’t allowed in, and police supposedly won’t go.”

But she went on to distort what the channel had actually put on the air. She said, “To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country, and no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion. There ARE certainly areas of high crime in Europe, as there are in the United States and other countries, where police and visitors enter with caution. We deeply regret the errors, and apologize to any and all who may have taken offense, including the people of France and England.”

Of course, nobody claimed on the air that these enclaves are “formal” or “specific” areas in the sense that the national government has decided to recognize or categorize them as such. In addition, they don’t “exclude individuals based solely on their religion” in a government-recognized legal sense. Rather, these areas take the form of segregated neighborhoods or enclaves. That was the point made by several commentators.

The dramatic correction from Fox News is proof that the Muslim Brotherhood lobby, of which CAIR is a part, has demonstrated clout at the channel, perhaps through figures such as the Saudi billionaire Alwaleed, who also happens to be a financial contributor to CAIR.

There’s no reason for the channel to pander to radical Islam in this dramatic fashion. Clearly, the dramatic Fox News correction of its coverage of the no-go zones was overblown and unnecessary, since Emerson had already admitted his mistake. As a result of the Fox News “correction,” many media outlets are now saying that the concept of no-go zones in Europe for non-Muslims has been thoroughly “discredited.”

What is desperately needed is more, not less, coverage of the Islamization of Europe. Fox should have let Emerson’s correction speak for itself and moved on.

Several observers point to the 1980 book, Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States, published by the Saudi-funded Islamic Council of Europe, as helping to develop this deliberate strategy of establishing Islamic enclaves in European countries that are marked by religious customs and rules. This is shariah—the supremacy of Islamic law.

Political figures can keep the debate going, even if the media now shy away from it. Bucking the tide of appeasement, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal framed the issue in specific and accurate terms in a January 15 speech in London, saying, “It is startling to think that any country would allow, even unofficially, for a so called ‘no-go zone.’ The idea that a free country would allow for specific areas of its country to operate in an autonomous way that is not free and is in direct opposition to its laws is hard to fathom.”

In a column, Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney praised Governor Jindal, saying that he said what has been “the unsayable about Islam’s supremacist ideology known as shariah and the holy war, or jihad, it demands all of its adherents to engage in or support.”

However, it appears that the “unsayable” may now be left unsaid on Fox, a channel many conservatives have come to rely on for information about jihad. It’s “highly unlikely” that Emerson will “ever be booked again” on Fox News, a spokesman for the channel said.

If true, this will be a great victory for CAIR and its collaborators, including what Gaffney calls in a new report “The Global Jihad Movement.” The report identifies a victory strategy, in part by identifying the components of this movement, including CAIR.

For his part, Emerson has been consistently correct about the development of the Islamic extremist networks that now threaten America and the world. His latest film, “Jihad in America: The Grand Deception,” describes how Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as CAIR, have pursued a strategy described in secret documents as the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” of destroying Western civilization from within.

It is this kind of work that has made Emerson into a target.

As far back as 1994, Emerson had served as the executive producer and reporter for the public television documentary “Jihad in America.” The film included previously unknown videos of the clandestine activities of radical Islamic terrorist groups in the United States. Oliver Revell, former associate deputy director of the FBI, stated that Emerson’s program had discovered details about these terrorist networks that the FBI didn’t have.

Emerson testified before Congress on the subject of “Foreign Terrorists in America” in 1998. It was five years after the first World Trade Center attack and three years before 9/11.

Emerson has been proven correct again and again about the terrorist problem we face.

But to make matters worse, Fox media reporter Howard Kurtz made much of the fact that Emerson was only a “guest” on the January 10 edition of the “Justice with Judge Jeanine” show, and not a paid contributor. It was as if he was also trying to separate Emerson from the channel.

For being right about the threat over the course of decades, Emerson deserves our thanks. We need more journalism of this quality. He deserves better treatment from a channel that has now clearly shown it could use more and not less of his expertise.

01/8/15

Jews cope with Egypt’s hysteria and revision of Jewish-Egyptian history

By: Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
Voice of the Copts

Abu Hasira

At the end of last month, the Egyptian courts of Alexandria delivered a verdict to ban annual visits to the historic mausoleum of Moroccan Rabbi Yacoub Abu Hasira in the nearby village of Demto. After thirteen years in the court system, the Administrative Court of Alexandria issued a definitive verdict to abolish the annual celebrations of the Rabbi’s birth on the merit of evidence that Jewish visitors “violate public order and morality and use the opportunity to desecrate the land of Egypt.” In response to the verdict, Israelis requested to have the tomb of Abu Hasira transferred to East Jerusalem. Egyptian authorities denied their request.

The Jewish tradition to journey to the Demto Abu Hasira tomb began in 1907. Jews from around the world — in particular, France, Morocco and Tunisia — made the week-long pilgrimage each year to the Demto tomb to celebrate the Rabbi’s birth (December 26 through January 2). The new ruling now forbids this. Until now, Egypt has always allowed foreign Jews (except for Israeli Jews) to visit the Jewish historical landmark despite the fact that virtually all Jewish-Egyptian citizens have been expelled from Egypt since the Nasser regime – only twenty Jews reside in Egypt today.

Israeli Jews were only allowed visits into Egypt after the signing of the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Special permission was sought from the Sadat government to allow organizing celebration tours (pilgrimages) to the Abu Hasira mausoleum and shrine. This current ruling has put an end to these tours.

Who was Yacoub Abu Hasira, and why is his birthday celebrated? His original name was Jacob Ben Massoud, and he was born in 1805 in southern Morocco. Jewish narrative depicts him as an aged rabbi leaving Morocco by ship on a journey to the Holy Land. During his trip the ship sank, and he clung to a mat (hasira) until he safely reached the shores of Syria. Upon his return from the Holy Land he chose to travel by land. While transiting through Egypt he died, but the miracle of his journey to the Holy Land has been kept alive.

Critically, last month’s court ruling also includes an order for Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities to remove the Rabbi Yacoub Abu Hasira mausoleum from the records of Egyptian Antiquities where it is officially designated a historic monument. The tombs physical conversion into a mausoleum and simultaneous entry into the records of Egyptian Antiquities can only be considered a second miracle in the Abu Hasira story. Egypt, with its climate of relentless racial bias and paranoia against Jews, is more likely to disavow Jewish-Egyptian history than to embrace it.

But the reason for the tomb’s designation has more to do with a political decision made by the ambitious former Egyptian Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, in preparing for his bid for the head of UNESCO and the favor he sought for that upcoming election. This occurred shortly before Egyptians and their courts began to stir up the issue of prohibiting visitors to the Abu Hasira tomb. Today, Hosni denies that the tomb conversion and upgrade in 2001 was his doing, citing a committee’s responsibility for it.

However, as Culture Minister, committee decisions came through him, and now his response to distance himself

Abu Hasira’s Tomb

His efforts to seal Egypt’s Jewish heritage only serves to highlight his bigotry. At the time, advocating for the rabbi’s tomb had been politically useful for Hosni in mitigating the impact of one of his previous ideas, publicly declared, to burn all Hebrew books found on the shelves of Egyptian libraries. He was widely known for this anti-Semitic initiative (never materialized) both inside and outside of Egypt which ultimately deprived him of the UNESCO position.

Grievances from Egyptians concerning the Abu Hasira mausoleum and Jewish celebrants began as early as Sadat’s 1977 visit to Israel as a form of indirect opposition to Sadat’s show of friendliness toward the Jewish state. Years later, during Mubarak’s presidency, a heated debate began in 2001. Poor villagers expressed gratitude for the increase in local business during the week-long visits. Although they claimed the Jews were harmless, and no harm would come to them by allowing the festivities, the opposition expressed the standard complaint that Jews in Egypt were a national security problem.

Brainwashed by mosque indoctrination and the public school system, Egyptians tend to believe that Jews coming to Egypt from Israel are spies for the Israeli government. Town’s people backed by Muslim Brotherhood members in the Egyptian Parliament began a case in the Alexandria courts and won an injunction against the Jewish celebrants. A ruling was issued prohibiting the pilgrimage. But this verdict was appealed and reversed within the same year.

The warfare against Abu Hasira continued. In 2010, Jews around the world were warned by Israeli authorities and the Egyptian embassies that attending the pilgrimage might be dangerous in view of the Muslim Brotherhood rise to power and anti-Jewish graffiti smeared on the mausoleum walls. A national television talk show videotaped the Jewish Abu Hasira festivities and saw nothing wrong, but bystanders claimed they saw vicious acts. One witness recalled seeing “slaughtering of pigs in the streets.” A reporter from the Egyptian press described “hysteria and half-naked dancers, unethical behavior.” Chancellor Jaber Qasim, Deputy General of Sufis, ranted that, “the pilgrims are a plot and plan of Zionism to rape the nation by claiming that Jews have roots in Egypt …”

This frenzy — fabrications and hysteria — was the “evidence” used by the courts to decide last month’s verdict — ignorance and prejudice once again leading to the discrimination of minorities. This court ruling now sets a precedent whereby every non-Muslim religious monument, artifact and sacred place in the historic registry becomes vulnerable to the whims of Egypt’s biased courts. In the first place, Egypt’s courts do not have jurisdiction over the status of antiquities or the registry of monuments in the Ministry of Culture where its protection act has the absolute authority. It is not the job of the courts but rather for panels of experts to decide. Moreover, this case sets a precedent which directly contradicts Egypt’s constitution – Part 1, Article 4 and Chapter 3, Article 47-50, 64 – which declares freedom of religion and respect for all religions. Israeli authorities have now launched a complaint with UNESCO where the Abu Hasira mausoleum is recorded as a historic Egyptian monument.