Funding an Enemy

By Janet Levy
FrontPageMagazine.com

Last Friday, President Bush certified Saudi Arabia as a cooperative anti-terrorism ally and released U.S. financial aid to Riyadh. This occurred despite charges leveled against the “Kingdom” by Stuart Levey, the U.S. Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, who one day after the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, declared that Saudi Arabia had failed to prosecute terrorism financiers.

Media fantasy land

By Joel Mowbray
The Washington Times In the terrorism case of two young Egyptian nationals and University of South Florida students arrested Aug. 4 in South Carolina, fascinating twists and turns abound.

There’s a secret recording of the defendants discussing strategy shortly after their arrest. There’s a YouTube video in which one of the defendants gave instructions in Arabic on converting a remote-control toy into a bomb detonator, which he allegedly told police was made to help people in Arab countries “defend themselves against the infidels invading their countries,” specifically “against those who fought for the United States.”

That’s not all. The father of one of the defendants, Youssef Megahed, all but pointed the finger at the co-defendant, Ahmed Mohamed, as the sole culprit, thus implying that his son was ignorant or duped.

Yet this compelling drama has drawn scant attention from the mainstream media. And while apologists might attempt to write off the paucity of coverage for various reasons, a slew of other terrorism cases since September 11 have been met with the same media disinterest. [emphasis added].

Following the arrests of Mr. Mohamed and Mr. Megahed on Aug. 4 with explosives in the trunk of their car — just seven miles from a naval weapons base in Goose Creek, S.C. — The Washington Post and New York Times made fleeting references. [emphasis added]. Each paper ran a brief overview from the Associated Press, with no independent reporting.

After the federal government indicted the two defendants on explosives charges and Mr. Mohamed on terrorism-related charges, the Times devoted not even 500 words — on page 14, no less. That was actually more aggressive than The Post, which discussed the indictment, but only in the context of the revelation of the YouTube video, which included asking what might happen to the Internet giant.

Neither highly esteemed outlet reported the full contents in the trunk of the vehicle the pair was driving: a box of .22-caliber bullets, gun powder, several gallons of gasoline, PVC piping, 20 feet of fuse, and a drill.

Neither paper even mentioned perhaps the most amusing part of the case: the conversation between the two defendants in the back of the police car after the arrest. Not knowing an audio recorder was capturing their words, the two had the following exchange:

“Did you tell them there is something in them?” Mr. Mohamed asked, presumably referring to the PVC pipes.

“Water,” Mr. Megahed said.

“Water! Right? The black water is in the Pepsi.”

Also left unreported by the Post and the Times was that Mr. Mohamed’s computer contained a file named “Bomb Shock,” which contained detailed information on TNT and C-4, a military-grade plastic explosive.

Most shocking is the apparent animus Mr. Mohamed harbors for the U.S. military. According to a court document, Mr. Mohamed “considered American troops, and those military forces fighting with the American military, to be invaders of Arab countries.”

When someone with seething anger toward U.S. soldiers drives a car filled with explosive materials two states away to a naval station, how is that not major news? [emphasis added].

Contrast that to the coverage afforded the recent mistrial in the government’s case against Holy Land Foundation, an alleged front for Hamas.

The mistrial was spun by most mainstream media outlets as a major defeat to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The New York Times dedicated over 1,200 words in a page-one story. The Washington Post was a bit more restrained, putting its coverage on page three, but the editorial page ran a stinging criticism by Georgetown Professor David Cole of supposed government overreach.

Defenders of high-profile treatment of the Holy Land mistrial likely would assert the connection to September 11, as the Islamic charity was shut down with great fanfare in October 2001.

But what about the case of Ali al-Timimi, a Muslim cleric who was convicted in 2005 for urging his followers shortly after September 11 to wage jihad against the United States. The Times ran its coverage of the April 2005 conviction on page 12. The life sentence Mr. Timimi received that July was bumped back to page 21.

At least The Post placed the story about Mr. Timimi’s conviction on the front page. This might have owed to the local angle, though, as Mr. Timimi taught at an adult Islamic education center in Northern Virginia.

Just three months later, The Post editorialized against Mr. Timimi’s life sentence, under the headline, “Sentenced for Speaking.” Emphasizing that none of his followers had actually waged successful jihad, The Post wrote, “[he] has been sentenced to life in prison for words that had little effect.”

So, success is the barometer for importance? Does this mean continued media avoidance of thwarted terrorism on our soil until the government fails to stop an attack?

<*><*><*><*><*><*>o<*><*>*<*><*><*><*>
Chet Bowen
<*><*><*><*><*><*>o<*><*>*<*><*><*><*>

The Camel in the Tent

The Washington Times
By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20071008/EDITORIAL/110080005/1013 Objections to Borse Dubai’s proposed acquisition of 20 percent of Nasdaq last week prompted Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank to quip, “In the ports deal, the concern was smuggling something or someone dangerous… What are we talking about here — smuggling someone onto a stock exchange?”

It is not “who” Dubai will smuggle into the stock exchange we should worry about. It’s the arrival of the world’s first Islamic stock exchange exerting unprecedented Islamic influence in the heart of the U.S. and Western economies that should raise our alarm. [emphasis added]. Dubai’s handsomely paid Washington lobbyists see nothing wrong with that. Rather, they claim the deal benefits U.S. financial markets, giving “Nasdaq access to rich Mideast pockets.” Unfortunately, the deal also increases the appeal and influence of Islamic financing in the West.

What is “Islamic” finance? Islamic, or Shariah-based finance, is the 1920s invention of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna. He ordered the Muslim Brothers to create an independent Islamic financial system to supercede the Western economy, facilitating the spread of Islam worldwide. He set the theories and practices and his contemporaries and successors developed Shariah-based terminology for “Islamic economics,” finance and banking. [emphasis added]. Attempts by Muslim Brotherhood members in the early 1930s to establish Islamic banking in India failed. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser shut down the second attempt in 1964, after only one year, later arresting and expelling the Muslim Brothers for attempts to kill him. Saudi Arabia welcomed them and adopted their ideas.

In 1969, soon after a mentally deranged Australian Christian fundamentalist, Michael Dennis Rohan, tried to set fire to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, the Saudis convened the Conference for the Islamic Organizations (OIC) to unify the “struggle for Islam,” and have been its major sponsor ever since. The 56 OIC members include Iran, Sudan and Syria.

Based in Jeddah, “pending the liberation of Jerusalem,” the OIC mandates and coordinates actions to “support the Palestinian people, assist them in recovering their rights and liberating their occupied territories.” The OIC’s first international undertaking was the 1975 establishment of the Islamic Development Bank “in accordance with the principles of the Shariah,” marking the beginning of the fast-growing, petrodollar-based Islamic financing market. From 1975 to 2005, the bank approved more than $46 billion in funding to Muslim countries. Since 2000, it has transferred hundreds of millions of dollars raised especially to support the Palestinian intifada and suicide bombers’ families — and has channeled United Nations funds to Hamas. Yet the bank received U.N. observer status in 2007.

Overseeing Shariah finance are the 1991-Bahrain-registered and -based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), which laid the groundwork for the global Islamic financial network and the “de facto Islamic Central Bank” — the Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB), established in 2002 in Kuala Lumpur “to absorb the 11 September shock and reinforce the stability of Islamic finance.” Chairing the meeting, then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir stated: “A universal Islamic banking system is a jihad worth pursuing to abolish this slavery [to the West].”

According to Saleh Kamel, president of the Saudi Dallah Al-Baraka Group and the Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI), more than 400 Islamic financial institutions currently operate in 75 countries. They now hold more than $800 billion in assets — growing at a rate of 15 percent annually. All investments with Islamic financial institutions are subject to the minimum zakat (Islamic charitable wealth tax). On April 30, the OIC, the organization that initiated global Muslim riots after the Danish cartoon publications, established the clerical International Commission for Zakat, replacing more than 20,000 organizations that previously collected the money. Islamic clerics’ “expert committee” in Malaysia now supervises and distributes those funds. The new committee will shortly distribute to Muslim charities roughly $2 billion collected during Ramadan.

But not all charities are equal. In 1999, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi decreed: “Declaring holy war [and] fighting for such purposes is the way of Allah for which zakat must be spent.” If past zakat distribution is any indication, all Muslim jihadist-terror organizations (including Palestinian Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and the many al Qaeda offspring) will benefit.

Shortly after September 11, Osama bin Laden called upon Muslims “to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means. Look for the key pillars of the U.S. economy. Strike the key pillars of the enemy again and again and they will fall as one.”

Most Arab and Muslim states publicly denounced bin Laden. But the impending Nasdaq acquisition, the purchases of over 52 percent of the London Stock Exchange and 47.6 percent of OMX (Nordic exchange) and the vigorous expansion of Shariah financing apparently follow the Muslim Brotherhood-bin Laden script.

President Bush on Sept. 25 at the United Nations called on all nations to open their markets. Surely, he did not mean opening the markets to domination by Shariah.

Rachel Ehrenfeld is director of the American Center of Democracy and a board member at the Committee for the Present Danger. She is also a member of the American Congress for Truth Board of Advisors. Alyssa A. Lappen is a senior fellow at the American Center of Democracy.

“Cultural jihad” is alive and well in America. Muslim leaders and organizations here in the U.S. call for the overthrow of our constitutional form of government and refuse to denounce jihad and terrorism, while leaders at all levels of our government bend over backwards to not only accommodate Islam but affirm Islam as a “religion of peace.” Dozens of American Muslim organizations are unindicted co-conspirators in the terrorist financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation. These Muslim leaders and organizations are not the “extremist fringe” of Islam in America — they are the mainstream of Islam in America!As the article notes, this is “political correctness run amok.” This article is a must-read that we encourage you to forward to everyone you know.

This is but one more illustration of why our efforts to organize the ACT for America citizen action network are so vital. To help support our efforts financially, please click here.Sharia By The Inch

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY

Islamofascism: In a monumental nod to political correctness, the Empire State Building is to be lit up green in honor of the Muslim holiday Eid. The separation of Islam from terror is officially complete.

Six years ago, Islamic terrorists screamed “Allah is Greatest!” as they slammed fuel-laden jumbo jets into two other New York skyscrapers. Six years ago, New Yorkers were worried about the Green Menace.

Now, for the first time, New York’s remaining famous skyscraper will be aglow in green – the color of Islam – to mark the end of Ramadan, a month of intense Islamic renewal. Officials say it’ll be an annual event, in the same tradition of the yearly skyscraper lighting for Christmas and Hanukkah.

Going green six years later.

What’s next, Ground Zero festooned with crescent moons and stars?

Political correctness is running amok. Last week, the White House held a Ramadan dinner for Muslim leaders and activists, even though we are still waiting for them to condemn Islamic terror groups by name.

To their delight, President Bush praised, and even suggested we all worship Allah. “I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian or any other religion, prays to the same God,” he said, adding, “I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace.”

A nice sentiment. But militant Muslims believe peace cannot be attained until Islam dominates the globe. And they make up much of the Muslim establishment in America. We know this by the words they’ve been caught on tape mouthing to Muslim audiences. We know this by their radical associations.

But more damning, investigators recently uncovered smoking-gun documents revealing that many founders of the major Muslim groups in the U.S. were involved in a secret plot to take over the U.S. by using our religious and political freedoms against us.

They call themselves Americans, but they view our system of government, our way of life, as an abomination to Allah. They’ve devised a scheme to sabotage our “miserable house” from within and dismantle it piece by piece, replacing it with “Dar al-Islam” — the House of Peace.

Then, and only then, will there be the kind of peace the president believes Islam represents today.

Ignorance and blind tolerance only make it easier for the Islamists to make inroads. Inch by inch, sharia is creeping into our society. We see it:

• At airports, where authorities have agreed to Muslim taxi drivers’ demands to build footbaths in public restrooms for Islamic washing and praying.
• On college campuses, where trustees have agreed to demands by the Saudi-tied Muslim Student Association to add Islamic holidays, prayer rooms and footbaths.
• In Congress, where officials have set aside a room for a growing number of Muslims to meet and pray inside the otherwise high-security Capitol building.
• At Quantico, where Marine brass have agreed to build an Islamic center at the request of a former Gitmo imam who previously insisted on Islamic meals, Qurans, prayer beads, oils and other amenities for the terrorists held there.
• At West Point, where Army officials have followed Quantico’s lead and set up their own mosque for Muslim cadets.
• In Brooklyn, where school officials agreed to provide local Muslims and Arabs with their own publicly funded madrassa.
• In Detroit, where city planners have caved to demands to let mosques broadcast the call to prayer in Arabic five times a day, including the early-morning hours, noise ordinances be damned.

And on and on . . . until we, too, resemble Eurabia.

By Bill Gertz
Washington Times

Defense officials involved in waging the global war against Islamist extremism are increasingly frustrated by the apparent failure of senior military and civilian officials to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys.

They are concerned that community outreach efforts have helped legitimize some U.S. Islamic groups with covert or overt ties to extremists, a problem that also is occurring at the FBI and Justice Department.

Officials said the Pentagon’s problem was highlighted by a recent Marine Corps ceremony marking Ramadan. The little-noticed “iftar,” or fast-breaking, was held Sept. 26 at the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast and was hosted by Marine Corps Deputy Commandant Gen. Robert Magnus.

Among the guests was Agha Saeed, national chairman of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), a political group that has been linked to Muslim organizations that voice support for Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.

Official Pentagon backing for the Marine Corps event and a similar Oct. 1 Pentagon iftar celebration were demoralizing, several Pentagon and military officials said.

“During the Cold War, we at least had the brains to recognize Soviet front groups and didn’t invite them to the Pentagon for vodka and caviar,” one defense official said. “Now, the Islamic militant front groups are [the Department of Defense's] guests of honor.”

According to the Web site DiscoverTheNetworks.com, AMA is a political group that works to get Muslims elected or appointed to senior influential positions in the U.S. government.

“AMA is an active member of the American Muslim Political Coordinating Council,” DiscoverTheNetworks stated. “It also is affiliated with Muslim groups — such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council — whose members have publicly supported Hamas and Hezbollah, or have been linked to the funding of terrorist activities.”

As noted in this space earlier, Stephen Coughlin, a counterterrorism analyst on the Joint Staff, warned in a recent memorandum that U.S. government efforts to work with front groups for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood had increased the danger that instead of countering Islamist extremists, the government is helping to legitimize groups that are potential terrorist and insurgent support groups.

Officials said Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has been among the least careful in associating with various suspect Muslim groups and their leaders.

The information below is an excerpt from a summary that can be found on the website of the American Textbook Council. The website states: “The American Textbook Council is an independent national research organization established in 1989 to review the history and social studies textbooks used in the nation’s schools.” To read more about ATC’s reviews of textbooks and how they treat Islam go to http://www.historytextbooks.org/islam.htm

The biased and politically correct treatment of Islam in school textbooks is very alarming because of the impact this is having on both the knowledge base and attitudes of American children.

Last month, a French court heard an appeals case whose forthcoming verdict will have far-reaching ramifications for all who value truth and accuracy in Middle East news reporting. The case involves Philippe Karsenty, a French journalist and media commentator, who was found guilty of defamation after he called for the firing of two France 2 Television journalists responsible for the September 30, 2000, news report on the alleged killing of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammad al-Dura, by the IDF.

It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Muhammad and his father, Jamal, crouching in terror behind a barrel at Gaza’s Netzarim junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from IDF soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery.

The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the second intifada. The boy Muhammad was the iconic martyr, his name and face gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against America, and in the ghastly video of the beheading of American Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.

Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. The official IDF investigation concluded that, based on the position of IDF forces vis-à-vis al-Duras, it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that an Israeli bullet hit the boy. Research by The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and Commentary magazine concurred. Then a German documentary revealed inconsistencies and probable manipulations in the account of France 2’s lone journalist on the scene that day, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh.

And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh’s full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

Subsequently, alleging gross malfeasance, Karsenty called for the firings of Enderlin and France 2 News Director Arlette Chabot. But France 2 stood defiant, suing Karsenty for defamation.

The defamation trial passed almost unnoticed in Israel, to the apparent detriment of Karsenty’s case. In his ruling in favor of France 2, Judge Joël Boyer five times cited the absence of any official Israeli support for Karsenty’s claims as indication of their speciousness.

Israel’s decision to stay on the sidelines was unfortunate because the truth always matters. The al-Dura incident wasn’t the only media report to inflame passions against Israel in recent years, but it was the one with the highest profile. Moreover, if, as Karsenty and others have claimed persuasively, the al-Dura incident is part of the insidious trend in which Western media outlets allow themselves to be manipulated by dishonest and politically motivated sources (recall the Jenin “massacre” that never was, or the doctored Reuters photos from Israel’s war against Hizbullah in 2006), then France 2 must be held accountable.

It is important to note that the al-Dura news report profoundly influenced Western public opinion. When I served as minister of Diaspora affairs from 2003 to 2005, I traveled frequently to North American college campuses. I heard first hand how Muhammad al-Dura had shaped the perceptions of young people just beginning to follow events in the Middle East. For many Jewish students, the incident was a stain of dishonor that called into question their support for Israel. For anti-Israel students, the story reaffirmed their sense of Zionism’s innately “racist” nature and became a tool for recruiting campus peers to the cause.

To its credit, Israel has come to recognize that it must play an active role in uncovering the truth. The IDF recently sent a letter to France 2 demanding the release of Abu Rahmeh’s 27 minutes of raw footage, asserting the implausibility of IDF guilt for the death of Muhammad al-Dura, and raising the possibility that the entire affair may have been staged.

Tragically, there is no way to repair the damage inflicted on Israel’s international image by the France 2 report, much less restore the Israeli and Jewish victims whose lives were exacted as vengeance. It is possible, however, to deter slanderous news reporting – and the violence that often accompanies it – by setting a precedent for media accountability via the handover of Abu Rahmeh’s full 27 minutes of raw footage. Encouragingly, the judge presiding over Karsenty’s appeal has now requested the tapes. France 2 must make a full public disclosure. If there is nothing to hide, why should it refuse?

Natan Sharansky is chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal.

Iran has summoned a top French diplomat to protest remarks by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who said world powers should prepare for a possible war over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iranian state media say France’s charge d’affaires in Tehran was summoned Wednesday to Iran’s Foreign Ministry.

Kouchner said last month that the world must prepare for the worst if the issues with Iran’s nuclear program remained unresolved, adding that “the worst is war.”  He said he does not believe war is imminent.

One would think Mahmoud Maawad, a 29-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt living in Memphis, Tenn., would lay low and stay out of trouble. But no, he defiantly did just the opposite.

He used a fake Social Security number to open a bank account, arrange for household utilities, and enroll at the University of Memphis business school. He worked off-the-books at a convenience store and in early 2005 sold alcohol to a minor, for which he was arrested. And then, in mid-2005, he ordered US$3,300 worth of airline-related goods from Sporty’s Pilot Shop, including such items as an airline pilot’s uniform, a flight gear bag, a radio communications handbook, and an instructional DVD titled “How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act.”

To top it off, he placed the order on an overdrawn credit card.

Sporty’s, not surprisingly, informed the FBI about Mr. Maawad’s order and federal agents searched his apartment in September. There they found flight simulation software and detailed information on Memphis International Airport. Mr. Maawad was then indicted for wire fraud and fraudulent use of a Social Security number.

While it’s far from established that Maawad had terrorism on his mind, his actions are sufficiently suspicious to enroll him as an honorary member in my newly created “Stupid Terrorists Club.” He joins plenty of others.

• Mohammed Salameh, the terrorist who returned to the rental agency in 1993 to retrieve the $400 deposit he had paid on a truck subsequently used to blow up the World Trade Center. His penny-pinching lead to his own capture and that of several other bombers.
• Zacarias Moussaoui, thought to have been the would-be 20^th hijacker of the September 11, 2001, attacks, was sitting in jail on that date because his disheveled and impoverished appearance at a flight instruction school was so discordant (”there’s really something wrong with this guy”) that two of its staff phoned the FBI. In April 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy to commit terrorism.
• Michael Wagner, an African-American convert to Islam associated with Al-Qaeda, did not wear a seat belt and that got him stopped by the police in July 2004 near Council Bluffs, Iowa. His car contained “flight training manuals and a simulator, documents in Arabic, bulletproof vests and night-vision goggles, a night-vision scope for a rifle, a telescope, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.”
• Zaynab Khadr, accused by Canadian authorities of having “willingly participated and contributed both directly and indirectly towards enhancing the ability of Al Qaeda to facilitate its criminal activities,” returned to Canada in February with a computer chock full of documents that the authorities say “provide insights into the tactics, techniques and procedures” of Al-Qaeda and other groups.
• Sami Ibrahim Isa Abdel Hadi, 39, was stopped in May for tailgating in Ridgefield Park, N.J. When a police officer called in Abdel Hadi’s North Carolina license plates, he learned that Abdel Hadi had been ordered deported to Brazil in December 2001 and is listed in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database. Even more alarmingly, he had a valid temporary identity card permitting him to paint the George Washington Bridge (a high-profile potential terrorist target).
• When an accused Los Angeles terror gang, the Assembly of Authentic Islam, needed money for arms, it robbed gas stations rather than obtain funds legally. One of its holdup artists dropped a mobile phone during a June robbery, which the police retrieved and used to unravel the plot and arrest the conspirators.

Other famous dumb terrorists include Yu Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army whose odd behavior prompted a search of his car at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop in April 1988, turning up three powerful bombs. Or Timothy McVeigh, apprehended in April 1995 after bombing the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people, because his car lacked a license plate.

Counterterrorism is a difficult business, so it is fortunate that terrorists often act dumb.

Why can’t they keep out of trouble until the big day? In part, because terrorists, like other criminals, are usually not the sharpest knives in the drawer; and in part because their ideology and hatred cause them to disdain the enemy, leading them to take unnecessary risks.

As a result, the rest of us are a little bit safer.