Most Muslims Aren’t Jihadists, of Course. But Some of Them Are: Barbara Kay, National Post, Jan. 27, 2016 — In the era when Communism was the big global threat, we used to be able to say, with impunity, that Marxism could exist without Communism but Communism would not exist without Marx…
Obama's Not Listening to the Right Muslims: Tarek Fatah, Toronto Sun, Feb. 9, 2016— As President Barack Obama’s presidential motorcade turned towards the Baltimore Islamic Centre mosque, he could not have missed seeing three Muslim women holding signs protesting his visit.
Lessons From Al Capone On Countering Islamist Violence: Johanna Markand, Daily Caller, Feb. 15, 2016— Eighty-seven years ago yesterday, Al Capone’s South Side gang lured leading members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Irish gang into a Chicago garage and gunned them down execution style in what became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
How to Fight Homophobia in the Middle East: Benjamin Weinthal, National Post, Jan. 14, 2016 — January began with more horrific news for LGBTs in the Middle East.
Explaining the Islamic State Phenomenon: Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JCPA, Jan. 20, 2016
How to properly beat your wife, according to the PA Mufti in Gaza: Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik, PMW, Feb. 15, 2016
The Muslim Man’s Sexual “Rights” Over Non-Muslim Women: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, Feb. 17, 2016
Inside Al Huda: Colin Freeze, Globe & Mail, Jan. 8, 2015
MOST MUSLIMS AREN’T JIHADISTS, OF COURSE. BUT SOME OF THEM ARE
Barbara Kay
National Post, Jan. 27, 2016
In the era when Communism was the big global threat, we used to be able to say, with impunity, that Marxism could exist without Communism but Communism would not exist without Marx; that fellow travellers in the West who purposefully infiltrated key political institutions in the service of the Communist revolution were a grave threat to democracy; and that informing the public about their methods was a civic duty, not hate speech against socialists.
Today it is the reverse. Islamism is the gravest global threat, but one is pilloried for saying the obvious: there can be an Islam without Islamism, but no Islamism without Islam. It is considered racism to inform the public about the stealth jihad being carried out by fellow-travellers of jihadism. And our leaders seem to be more concerned about offending Muslims than they are with defeating jihadism. This makes no sense to me. Here is some information that should be widely known, but isn’t for the reasons stated above.
There are about three million Muslims in America, and roughly 300 of them have been convicted of jihadism in some form — financial support, weapon supply and other criminal acts up to and including murder — since 9/11. The numbers are increasing every year. Last year, at least 80 people were charged in the U.S. in jihad-related cases. But homegrown jihadism of the lone-wolf variety is difficult to predict since, like Canadian Parliament Hill terrorist Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, most have no previous record.
President Obama does not help matters when he says, as he did on a CNN show about terrorism, “It’s very important for us to align ourselves with the 99.9 per cent of Muslims who are looking for the same thing we’re looking for.” That’s a number Obama conjured from thin air to comfort himself and to chill honest conversation on the subject. He really has no idea of the breakdown in opinions on the question of what Muslims in general “are looking for.”
But if such a breakdown is something that interests you, I recommend a short, but highly informative video in the Clarion Project’s “Challenging Extremism/Promoting Dialogue” series, animated by Canadian Muslim reformist Raheel Raza, entitled, “The Untold Story of Muslim Opinions and Demographics.” Raza, a Sunni Muslim devoted to democracy and pluralism, who has been speaking out against the “disease” of radical Islam for 20 years, is a Canadian treasure. Passionate, transparent and fearless (she has received many fatwas and death threats for her outspoken views), she is a great ambassador for her faith. And very angry at those who would patronize her by pretending that the problem lies with a few “horrible bad people” (as politically correct actor Ben Affleck put it) and not, as she proceeds to tell us, with a very disturbing percentage of the global Islamic population.
Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion, with 1.6 billion Muslims today, and set to surpass Christianity in numbers within the century. So even though the core jihadists are a tiny percentage of the whole, there are plenty of them – up to 200,000 in the Islamic State alone, with many hundreds of thousands in other terrorist groups.
If it were only core jihadists we had to contend with, we wouldn’t have much to fear. Unfortunately the terrorist core is surrounded by circles that are more or less supportive of jihadist goals: the Muslim Brotherhood and the organization CAIR, for example, are composed of Islamists who eschew violence themselves, but support triumphalist Islam through legal means: political/institutional memberships, lawfare and relentless promotion of a demonstrably mythic, but guilt-inducing “Islamophobia.”
The largest group of concern are those Muslims who are neither Islamist or jihad-supportive, but hold beliefs in retrograde cultural practices that cannot co-exist in harmony with western civilization. In-depth Pew research finds that 27 per cent of Sharia-supportive Muslims — 237 million — believe apostates should be executed, and 39 per cent — 345 million — believe honour killings of girls and women are sometimes or always justified. In Muslim-majority countries, 281 million Muslims support cutting off hands and stonings to death as punishments for proscribed behaviours like (female) adultery and homosexuality. Happily, relatively speaking, while support for terrorism is high in Islamic countries, fewer than 10 per cent of American Muslims (about 300,000) say they agree that terrorism — i.e., killing civilians — is sometimes justified to defend Islam, with the numbers significantly elevated in Europe.
There are people who will say it is fear-mongering or Islamophobic to discuss these numbers. Doubtless President Obama would find it distasteful. Based on his actions and statements, so, alas, might Prime Minister Trudeau. But pretending these numbers don’t exist, pretending that “extremism” is a random virus that strikes without warning and is completely detached from a belief system has been a strategy tried and found wanting. Having an honest conversation with lucid, reform-minded Muslims like Raheel Raza might be a more fruitful way to go. You can join the conversation at go.clarionproject.org/numbers-full-film/.
OBAMA'S NOT LISTENING TO THE RIGHT MUSLIMS
Tarek Fatah
Toronto Sun, Feb. 9, 2016
As President Barack Obama’s presidential motorcade turned towards the Baltimore Islamic Centre mosque, he could not have missed seeing three Muslim women holding signs protesting his visit. Standing just a few metres from the mosque were Indian-born American journalist Asra Nomani, Iranian-born human rights activist Nasrin Afzali from Montreal and Nigerian-born convert to Islam Ify Okoye who recently left the Islamic Society of Baltimore after giving up on the widespread misogyny she says is practiced at the centre.
The signs read “Women’s Rights in Mosques” and “Separate is not Equal” to highlight the second-class status of women in that particular mosque. If Obama noticed the protesting women, he did not mention it in his speech. Chances are all three just did not fit the profile of what Obama and the Washington media considers a Muslim—women in tightly wrapped hijabs or bearded moustacheless men in long robes.
As far as Obama was concerned his speech inside the mosque reflected his infatuation with orthodox ultra-conservative Islam that first came to light during his Cairo speech in 2009. Back then it was the Obama administration that insisted at least 10 members of the banned Islamist group Muslim Brotherhood not only be invited to attend his speech in Cairo, but that they sit in the front row. In his carefully crafted speech, Obama talked about American Muslims strictly in terms of religiosity. As if there were no Muslim trade unionists or astronauts in America, no dancers or designers. As far as Obama was concerned, only mosques, minarets and hijabs were relevant to U.S. Muslims.
Obama told his Muslim Brotherhood guests in Cairo: “[T]here is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders … the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.”
Fast-forward to 2016. It was as if he was rounding up his presidency exactly where he began—in the arms of the only Muslims he considers Muslim, the misogynist mosque establishment run by America’s Islamists. There was no mention of the likes of novelist Khaled Hosseini or the self-funded female space traveller Anousheh Ansari let alone the three protesting women outside. In his speech Obama validated the Islamist propaganda that Muslims in America are victims of racism and so-called Islamophobia:
“[S]ince 9/11, but more recently, since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, you’ve seen too often people conflating the horrific acts of terrorism with the beliefs of an entire faith. And of course, recently, we’ve heard inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim Americans that has no place in our country.”
Sabah Muktar was the hijab-clad woman who gave the welcome address to the president who was then greeted by five-year old girls also in hijab, their parents wrapping them up in attire that is both political and a symbol of sexuality. After the president and the press left, the hijabi women and girls in the mosque were herded back to the back of the bus, segregated, not to be seen or heard. Nomani went home to hear her president’s speech. I asked her how she felt and this is what she had to say:
“We are not under attack by the West. We are in a crisis because of the unchecked intrusions of Saudi Arabia’s extremist doctrine into the West, called Wahhabi or Salafi jihadi. We need to respond with Muslim reform that advocates peace, human rights and secular governance.” Imagine if it was Asra Nomani who had Obama’s ears rather than the hijab-clad women perpetuating their self-inflicted addiction to victimhood. Just imagine.
LESSONS FROM AL CAPONE ON COUNTERING ISLAMIST VIOLENCE
Johanna Markand
The Daily Caller, Feb. 15, 2016
Eighty-seven years ago yesterday, Al Capone’s South Side gang lured leading members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Irish gang into a Chicago garage and gunned them down execution style in what became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Amid public uproar, local and federal authorities began for the first time to seriously crack down on Capone, who was listed as “public enemy” number one by the Chicago Crime Commission within a year.
Imagine if Italian-American organizations had responded to all this by claiming that the Italian community was caught in the “middle” of organized crime by Irish and other gangs, that the mafia violence was the result of upheaval in Sicily and discrimination in America, and that there would have to be a comprehensive approach by government, community organizations, law enforcement, and citizens to address all gang violence and discrimination, because an approach targeting only the Italian mafia is “not going to handle it.”
Would anyone who heard that response have believed the organizations offering it were trying to help law enforcement, the American public, or even their own community? Or would they have believed these groups were in the pocket of the Italian mafia and using any and every excuse possible to do nothing to oppose it?
Fast forward to earlier this month, when the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) held a conference of Muslim organizations in the U.S. and other Western nations. Afterwards, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal made a brief statement, then took questions. Asked what his coalition would do “to combat the rising tide of extremism in Europe and the flow of the recruitment of ISIS of European citizens and … young people from the West,” Jammal replied,
“We do acknowledge the rise of extremism on both sides and therefore it is a threat to the society at large, not just the Muslim communities from let’s say right-wing extremism but also from the violent extremism that comes from the Middle East as a result of the chaotic political upheaval and situation in that area and the Muslim communities in the West have been caught right in the middle trying to fight both extremism. And therefore it will take more than just the Muslim community to face these challenges but it’s going to be an integral part of the government, community organizations, and law enforcement and citizens to really face this. We believe there has to be a comprehensive approach to dealing with violent extremism in any side and therefore one single approach to it we believe is not going to handle it.”
Let’s dissect that “answer.” In what has become a trope, Jammal introduces the irrelevant topic of “right-wing extremism” and uses it, first, to imply Islamist extremism is simply one aspect of a more general problem, thereby minimizing the connection between Islamism and jihadi violence. Then, Jammal asserts that Islamist violence is “a result of the chaotic political upheaval and situation” in the Middle East. In other words, Islamist violence is a political problem, resulting from violence in the Middle East. Implicitly, Jammal denies any link between Islamism and Islam or its ideologies, notably the Muslim Brotherhood. One almost expects Jammal to add the claim that Islamist violence is the product of the US invasion of Iraq, as though it did not exist before.
Next, Jammal opines that Muslim communities in the West “have been caught right in the middle trying to fight both extremism.” Exactly what are Muslim communities in the middle of? Jammal seems to be claiming that Muslims are the victims here, of both “right-wing” and Islamist extremists. He does not offer any details of how or in what way Muslim communities are the victims of Islamist extremists. Unsuspecting Muslim parents are certainly victimized when ISIS lures their minor children to Syria. Unfortunately, Jammal offers no response at all about whether the new coordinating body has a plan to combat the flight of young Muslims to join ISIS.
Instead, Jammal laments that “it will take more than just the Muslim community to face these challenges,” while insisting that there “has to be a comprehensive approach to dealing with violent extremism in any side” and “therefore one single approach to it we believe is not going to handle it.” Therefore what, exactly? The implicit gist here is that, according to Jammal, neither Muslim community members nor Muslim organizations can or should do a thing to counter the lure of ISIS or prevent Islamist massacres so long as law enforcement specifically targets Islamist violence and jihadi organizations.
Can one read Jammal’s statement, or the many others like it by USCMO, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and its other member organizations, and believe that these organizations are serious about opposing Islamist violence?
HOW TO FIGHT HOMOPHOBIA IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Benjamin Weinthal
National Post, Jan. 14, 2016
January began with more horrific news for LGBTs in the Middle East. The Islamic State executed a 15-year-old Syrian boy suspected of being gay by tossing him off a rooftop in the eastern Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. Such reports are not new, or rare. The time is ripe for Canada and the United States — two countries where the march of progress has secured marriage equality for LGBTs — to confront lethal homophobia and persecution in the Arab world and Iran.
Just last month, the Empire State Pride Agenda in New York, an important LGBT human rights NGO, announced that it will disband because it achieved its goals of LGBT equalities over its 25-year history. This was a mistake, in large part because the battle for LGBT protections requires advocacy in Muslim-majority countries. Canada, to its credit, seeks to provide priority resettlement to Syrian LGBT refugees because of their dire plight. But it can do much more to influence a change in anti-LGBT behaviour in the Middle East.
The row between Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran over mass executions in the kingdom and the torching of the Saudi embassy in Tehran is a significant opportunity for the West to end the death penalty for LGBTs. The Islamic State organization, which has executed dozens of gays, replicates the anti-gay policies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Qatar, to name just some of the most dangerous countries. According to a 2008 British WikiLeaks dispatch, Iran’s regime executed “between 4,000 and 6,000 gays and lesbians” since the Iranian revolution in 1979. Even Arab countries that on paper limit punishment for homosexuality to prison sentences seek to exterminate their LGBT communities.
Danny Ramada, a gay Syrian who was granted asylum by Canada, said in November, “Legally speaking, in Syria homosexuals (can be punished) for three years in prison. Three years in prison are, to be honest, a death sentence.” In written testimony to the U.K.’s parliamentary inquiry on the refugee crisis, Subhi Nahas, an openly gay Syrian refugee, wrote, “In 2011, at the start of the uprising in Syria, government media launched a campaign accusing all dissidents of being homosexuals.”
Only one Middle East country grants sexual liberty to LGBTs: Israel. An odious campaign called Pink Washing attempts to discredits Israel as part of the larger BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) movement targeting the Jewish state. Sadly, LGBT progress in the Middle East is largely limited to Israel. The case of Payam Feili, a gay Iranian poet, provides a telling example. Feili, a prolific writer who has authored nine books, fled to Turkey in 2014 and arrived in Israel in December. He was tortured during the so-called reform administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Iran’s security forces subjected him to detentions, harassment and a writer’s blacklist. He survived 44 days of gruelling captivity in a shipping container. Feili saw the deceptive nature of Rouhani’s campaign victory in 2013: “Nothing essential has changed. The structure is still the same. It’s a play, a comic and ugly performance. They’re relying on the naïveté of people to be able to succeed.”
In late December, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the first openly gay lawmaker from his conservative Likud party, Amir Ohana, at his swearing-in ceremony in the Knesset. Traditionally, new MPs are welcomed by fellow lawmakers, but Netanyahu sought to make a point with his personal address. “I am happy to accept him in our ranks. Ohana has a rich past in security and is the head of the Likud Pride Group. I accept him with appreciation and pride,” said Netanyahu.
When Arab and Iranian parliaments are mature enough to have LGBT MPs, there might, just might, be stability and peace in the Middle East. While many European parliaments, which support LGBT rights, have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state, they have ignored disturbing remarks from PLO representatives. When asked if gays will be tolerated in a Palestinian state, the PLO ambassador to the U.S., Maen Rashid Areikat, said in 2011, “Ah, this is an issue that’s beyond my (authority).” All of this helps to likely explain why an LGBT film festival organized by Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women could be held in Haifa in Israel this year, but not in the Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority.
What can Canada and the U.S do to improve the conditions of LGBT communities in the Middle East? First, they can provide funds for NGOs seeking to end anti-gay policies in Muslim-majority countries. Second, Canada and the U.S can impose human rights sanctions on individuals and regimes involved in anti-LGBT persecution. Third, economic sanctions should also be considered as part of a pressure-point strategy to change conduct. Lastly, the U.S and Canada should reject nominations from anti-gay Middle East countries to all UN human rights fora. Progress comes slowly. But with help, it can come.
Explaining the Islamic State Phenomenon: Col. (ret.) Dr. Jacques Neriah, JCPA, Jan. 20, 2016—Much has been written about the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (the Levant) — ISIS. Most of the analysts have looked at ISIS as another terrorist organization, an al-Qaeda off-shoot, waging a guerrilla war with cohorts of unorganized thugs.
How to properly beat your wife, according to the PA Mufti in Gaza: Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik, PMW, Feb. 15, 2016—During a weekly Palestinian Authority TV program on social issues, the Mufti of Gaza Hassan Al-Laham discussed divorce in Islam. He explained that Allah directed men to take four steps to resolve conflicts with one's wife before resorting to divorce…
The Muslim Man’s Sexual “Rights” Over Non-Muslim Women: Raymond Ibrahim, Breaking Israel News, Feb. 17, 2016—In word and deed, in Islamic and non-Islamic nations, Muslim men appear to think that non-Muslim women—impure “infidels”—exist solely to gratify their sexual urges.
Inside Al Huda: Colin Freeze, Globe & Mail, Jan. 8, 2015—Inside the Al Huda Institute’s Canadian chapter, the hijabis are earnest and exuberant. Get them going about their shared passion and they start speaking fast, finishing each other’s sentences and consulting their smartphones. That passion is the Koran, and if you ask them a provocative question about it – say, “How do you reconcile conflicts between Islamic law and Canadian law?” – fingers fly in search of a scripture app.
