Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

http://www2.nysun.com/article/63561?page_no=1

By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 28, 2007

UNITED NATIONS — In a sign that U.N. Security Council-based diplomacy is losing steam, a number of sources are reporting that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities may be imminent. France and America also are pushing for tighter economic sanctions against Tehran, without U.N. approval.

Yesterday’s edition of Le Canard Enchaîné, a French weekly known for its investigative journalism, reported details of an alleged Israeli-American plan to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. The frontpage headline read: “A report sent to the Elysée — Putin tells Tehran: They’re going to bomb you!”

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also expressed concerns to reporters in New York that an attack on Iran might be imminent.

Like most stories in the French paper, the article was based on unnamed sources who said that in order to reduce casualties, the attack against Iran is planned for October 15, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel would bomb the first targets while America would orchestrate a second wave of strikes, the report said.

Part Two

Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 28, 2007

[Continued from page 1 of 3]

However, the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who recently spoke of preparing for war with Iran, berated reporters yesterday, telling them that he had said war is the “worst option.” Instead, he is now calling for “diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy.”

As foreign ministers representing the five permanent members of the Security Council — China, Russia, France, Britain, and America — and Germany plan to sit down Friday for a long-planned meeting to discuss ideas for addressing Iran’s refusal to end uranium enrichment, Mr. Kouchner told reporters that China and Russia are likely to delay any significant decision until at least December.

“It would be very difficult to convince the Russians and the Chinese before” December, he said. A Russian diplomat told The New York Sun on Monday that Moscow would call on the council to await the conclusion of a new round of diplomacy conducted by the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei.

At a breakfast with reporters yesterday, Mr. Kouchner said he had “spent hours” with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, trying to convince him to approve council sanctions against Iran. Russia, Mr. Kouchner said, is attempting to regain its top world status, while “we treat them, they told me, like little adolescents.”

Meanwhile, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, indicated yesterday that President Sarkozy of France may be a more reliable ally on Iran than Prime Minister Brown of Britain.

Paer Three

Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

By BENNY AVNI
Staff Reporter of the Sun
September 28, 2007

[Continued from page 2 of 3]

“It’s not at all clear where Brown is at,” Mr. Bolton told the Sun. “The question is, ‘Will Britain follow in the footsteps of France?’” Either way, Mr. Bolton said he did not invest too much hope in Security Council diplomacy.

Some American diplomats are saying the next phase of diplomacy with Iran may involve a separate track of sanctions that would be imposed without Security Council approval.

Mr. Kouchner said yesterday that the French government is trying to lean on companies like the oil giant Total to end ties with Iran. Between 2005 and 2006, he said, French commerce with Iran was cut in half.

But an unnamed German government official told Reuters yesterday, “Unlike the United States and the French, the German government is not ready to go outside the U.N. for sanctions.” The official expressed doubts that Europe could reach a consensus on such sanctions. German companies such as Siemens, BASF, Mercedes, and Volkswagen maintain strong business ties with Iran. In 2006, such companies reportedly exported goods worth $5.7 billion to Iran, up from $5 billion in 2004. In Vienna, Mr. ElBaradei is preparing a report that is not expected to be ready before December. In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly earlier this week, President Ahmadinejad of Iran said the “nuclear issue of Iran is now closed,” and he said Tehran would stop dealing with the Security Council and would negotiate only with the IAEA.

Mr. ElBaradei recently reached an agreement with Iran that allows it to report on outstanding nuclear issues over a long period of time. The Iranians, nonetheless, are “very, very, very firm that they don’t want to stop enrichment,” Mr. Kouchner said yesterday.

Mr. ElBaradei, who is charged with reporting on technical nuclear issues, was berated by Secretary of State Rice, who said the Tehran accords amounted to conducting private diplomacy.

Before he became U.N. ambassador, Mr. Bolton sought to mount a campaign to unseat Mr. ElBaradei. A former secretary of state, Colin Powell, “was never enthusiastic about it,” Mr. Bolton said yesterday. “When Rice became secretary of state, the winds came out of the sails” of the campaign to unseat the IAEA director. “Stopping him would have required a lot of effort,” Mr. Bolton said, but he added that Mr. ElBaradei’s current behavior on Iran “proves that it was worthwhile.”

The eye-opening commentary below illustrates why a government focus on terrorism to the exclusion of “Cultural Jihad” is foolish and dangerous. It illustrates why the purveyors of political correctness, who go to great lengths to tolerate Islamic intolerance, are helping to plant the seeds of our own destruction. Lastly, it illustrates why it is so important that concerned, informed citizens in democratic societies like ours rise up in a unified, organized voice within the civic and political process – before we lose the right to express that voice.

Published: April 24, 2008
The Muslim Brotherhood and Voting
Douglas Farahhttp://www.familysecuritymatters.org/terrorism.php?id=1387347
If one wants to get a more realistic picture of how the Muslim Brotherhood and its international legacy organizations view voting and the democratic process than the usual platitudes of their public discourse, it is well worth reading the Guide to Voting in Islam, posted by the Muslim Association of Britain.

This document and commentary on its content was first posted on the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, available for a free subscription.

Because in political Islam there is no difference between the state and religion, voting itself becomes, as one British Imam is quoted in the document as saying, a form of Jihad:

I consider Muslim political participation, especially in a non-Muslim country, as a form of jihad. This is our country and it would be foolish not to participate in the political processes which eventually shape our future and that of Islam. I support marching in the streets to raise awareness about certain issues. However, if we really want to change the status-quo then we have to influence those who walk the corridors of power. Muslims need not only to vote but put forward Muslim candidates in all the mainstream and serious independent parties. We need to be represented or be present at the tables around which policies are discussed, made and agreed.

The Guide to Voting offers grudging support for alliances with non-Muslims if the alliance is for the good of the Muslim population. Totally absent is the consideration of what is good for the country in which the Muslim individual is voting. This is made explicitly clear in a quote by Abdur Raheem Green, Dawah Administrator of the Central Mosque of London included in the Guide:

It has long been my position that any type of participation in democracy is a type of approval of that system. I have no doubt that democracy is antithetical to Islam. However, having read and listened to the sayings of many scholars on this issue, and being faced with the reality of a growing Muslim population here in the UK, who for all intents and purposes consider this their home, it has become clear to me that we must participate in every aspect of society as much as possible to ensure our rights and continued existence and well being in this society. This participation most certainly includes voting for whichever party or candidate best serves the needs and interests of the UK and indeed world wide Muslim population. This does not mean approval or acceptance of the ideal of secular democracy, but the intention is to use the means and avenues available to benefit Muslims and the communities we reside in.

That seems pretty straightforward to me. There is not a commitment to the fundamental concept of freedom and multi-party democracy. There is solely a commitment to establishing an Islamic state, and if that can be advanced through participating in elections, then so be it.

This ties in with the calls of the MB legacy groups in the United States to get Sen. John McCain to stop using the adjective Islamic to describe radical Islamist terrorists.

The charge is led by Muneer Fareed of ISNA, who says that “I think this is just criminality, fair and square. We should just call them criminals. You want to call them terrorist criminals, fine. But adding the word ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islamic’ certainly doesn’t help our cause as Americans.”

But therein lies the rub, because it is clear from the Guide, and many other writings, that the MB’s primary loyalty is not to whatever country they live in, but to the establishment of an Islamist state. And the terrorists define themselves as acting on behalf of Islam, and embrace the word.

So on whose behalf is Fareed and ISNA speaking? One must always ask that when dealing with the MB.

Europe facing radicalization over the Web
OLIVIER GUITTA

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/04/20/europe_facing_radicalization_over_the_web/5616/

A few months ago Bernard Squarcini the head of the DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire), the French equivalent of the FBI, told the French daily Libération regarding Islamic radicalization: “An ideological transformation can be done in three months on the Web. An individual can at night auto-radicalize himself via the Web and get in touch with leaders of terrorist organizations.” This assessment shows how dire the situation is in Europe when it comes to al-Qaida’s use of the Web.

Al-Qaida uses the web for four different tasks: propaganda; communication, mostly to instruct those in the field; training future combatants, a kind of online university of terrorism; and to send messages to the enemy, mostly to the West.

For instance, one of the most popular jihadist sites in France is one which translates books on the jihad in French and gives lessons on urban guerilla tactics. (This site got more than 3 million visits from France alone). Another Web site explains how to get weapons in the West (hide, assemble and breakdown) and how to manufacture bombs from products found in supermarkets.

The propaganda primarily targets youngsters. Some of them join the virtual jihad or “webtifada”, i.e. cyber criminality.

In March 2006, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Exterieure), the French equivalent of the CIA, tracked down a forum where jihadists recruited hackers to destroy “infidels’” Web sites and government sites. The jihadists recommended: “If you can’t slash their throats, then at least destroy their sites.” And on May 15, 2006 the Metz, France police arrested a young man who, under the alias Yanis, had attacked 1,161 sites including 710 linked to the Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Fortunately in Europe, even though the number is growing only a minority is actually joining the virtual jihad. According to Louis Caprioli, ex-boss of the anti-terror unit of the DST, the number of French volunteers in Iraq is in the tens. Confirming this, expert Walter Akmouche states that statistically, to get one jihadi, you must contact an average 45,000 people.

Which vehicle do the jihadis use on the Web? According to the DST, the chat room Paltalk is regularly used to hide operations. They also use Instant Messaging services such as Messenger or Skype and “dead e-mail boxes” which allow them, with the username and password, to retrieve unsent messages. But they also exchange information and coded files on forums devoted to soccer, music or any topic totally unrelated to Islam.

It is important to note that to access true terrorist sites; one has to be an insider and needs to know the real number-coded URL address, which often changes.

Also after years of research, al-Qaida has developed software called “Secrets of Mujahedin,” that allows secure exchange in Arabic on electronic networks. It has allegedly been in use for over a year on clandestine forums close to al-Qaida, especially for jihadist groups in Iraq and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. This has been a formidable weapon for al-Qaida and numerous intelligence services and private companies have been trying to break it.

How is Europe facing this threat? First by closely monitoring jihadist Web sites. For instance, last year, Holland devoted 10 million euros (about $15 million) to fighting extremism. Thus, more than 150 Internet sites broadcasting extremist ideology were the subject of complaints and were restricted.

In France, about 30 potentially dangerous sites are monitored by some units of the UCLAT (Unité de Coordination de la Lutte antiterroriste), the French counterterrorism coordination unit. Software allows them to trace back the origin of a server or the IP address of a user and if they act fast, they can trace the network and use it against the Islamists using it. For instance, the recent monitoring of a forum allowed the unit to trace a couple of Salafist groups in the suburbs of Paris that were recruiting jihadis and organizing their trip.

One of the main problems facing European authorities is that simply shutting down Web sites is not very efficient since these sites just end up operating under new names.

European countries are also using the legal tool to fight al-Qaida’s use of the Web in Europe. In a first, a Swiss court last summer sentenced several individuals including the widow of the killer of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance’s leader killed by al-Qaida on September 9, 2001, and her boyfriend, for having created and operated four Web sites and chat rooms for extremist propaganda and exchange of information by terrorist groups.

European authorities are taking this issue very seriously. On Feb. 1, France’s interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie told the French daily Le Figaro that the use of the Web by terrorists was “one of my major concerns, and one of the priorities assigned to the [security] services. This requires additional material, forces specialized in fighting cyber-criminality, legal resources. I want us to be able to stop the terrorist propaganda, find the operational networks, track them down and prevent them from acting.”

–

Olivier Guitta, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant, is the founder of the newsletter The Croissant (www.thecroissant.com).

Personal experience is a powerful motivator for future action. As those of you who have read my book Because They Hate know, my experience of losing my country (Lebanon) to the terror of militant Islam powerfully motivates me to warn America to take action.

One of our ACT! for America chapter leaders recently shared with us a little of her personal experience with militant Islam. In it, she asks the very same question I asked my mother as we sat in our bomb shelter: “Why do they hate us?”

Her story is another reminder to all of us what we are up against. I applaud her courage and her devotion to the America we love. I applaud her for choosing to fight instead of running away in fear. She is an inspiration to every one of us!

With her permission it is my honor and privilege to share with you her story. (Please note all names have been changed).

Brigitte Gabriel

Muslim Scouts Political Program Raises Eyebrows

by Linda Keay
IPT Newshttp://www.investigativeproject.org/article/484Seeking to flip a Republican Senate seat, the Muslim American Society used Boy and Girl Scout troops last year as part of a massive get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Muslim voters in Virginia and elsewhere. Virginia has become a haven for such Islamic activities.National leaders at the Boy and Girl Scouts of America say they’ve never heard of using Scout troops in such political activity and it violates Scout policy. They promised to look into the MAS program.

MAS Executive Director Mahdi Bray isn’t keeping the fact that he tapped Scouts to run phone banks a secret. In fact, he’s bragging about it. And while he claims the calls were non-partisan, he also is comfortable saying “Democrats would be a better choice” for his constituency.

In Virginia, incumbent George Allen was struggling to hold onto his Senate seat against former Navy Secretary Jim Webb. “We delivered 80 percent of the eligible voting Muslims to the polls,” Bray said in July at an Islamic Circle of North America-Muslim American Society convention in Hartford, Conn. “48,000 Muslims voted in Virginia. 93 percent of them voted for Webb, seven percent voted for Allen. Webb won by a slim margin of 9,000 votes. Now I don’t care how you slice it, dice it and I don’t care whether you are a mathematician or not, you can figure this out, that if 48,000 Muslims voted and 90 percent of them voted for the successful candidate, then certainly, and he only won by a 9,000 vote margin – we made a difference.”

Those numbers come from a study by a MAS official. While they were widely reported after Bray touted the study, these numbers have never been independently confirmed. Independent electoral consultants have expressed doubts about their reliability.

The Muslim American Society was founded in 1993 by the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-rooted organization that aims to reestablish the Caliphate, a global state governed by Islamic law.

Bray, its leader, has called the war on terror “a war on Islam” and at a 2000 rally, gestured enthusiastically in support of Hizballah and Hamas. In addition, he has defended Hizballah on his Washington, D.C. area radio show.

Bray openly described the scouting program last November in a release posted on the MAS website. “MAS Dialing for Muslim Votes” described how the organization was using a Muslim Voters Database to target calls nationally and encouraged people to vote on November 7, 2006.

“The MAS CEE (MAS Center for Electoral Empowerment) phone banks are being operated by MAS Youth, chapter members and volunteers. Even MAS Boy and Girl Scout Troops are making calls,” the release said.

“Through our MAS Youth department, Boys and Girls Scout Troops, we are training an upcoming generation that will be spiritually grounded and political (sic) savvy.”

That last statement appeared to rankle Boy Scout of America Scout Executive Alan Lambert, who said he’s never heard of Scouts participating in phone banks before. Although he believes learning civic responsibility is an integral aspect of Scouting, he doesn’t like people taking advantage of children.

“We would expect that no organization would use children to play out their political desires,” Lambert said. “From my perspective…we would sever our relationship with anyone who uses children to advance political agendas.”

“If it’s going on and it’s inappropriate, we’ll stop it tomorrow,” he added.

MAS claimed these were national efforts, with MAS Scouts performing similar work in other states, including Tennessee. On Election Day, a MAS release said its troops in Nashville “ran two campaigns of calling on Muslims in Tennessee to go and vote for today’s elections.”

They even posted pictures of the uniformed kids at work.

“The first campaign was on Sunday Nov. 5th, 2006 and the second was on Monday Nov. 6th, 2006. The Scouts used scripts and phone lists that were provided by MAS National in their call center campaign,” the Election Day release said.

Girl Scouts of the USA’s national office was in agreement with the Boy Scouts. Spokeswoman Megan Neuffer, said, “They are not allowed to participate directly or indirectly in phone calls or anything like that in any political campaign.” That includes generic get-out-the-vote non-partisan calls, said Neuffer.

MAS is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. Girl Scouts from there and in Washington, D.C. are under the purview of the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital. That office’s Manager for Program Services, Brigid Howe, said any troop activities must follow Scout rules. That includes those splinter groups such as Muslim Scouts, or what Bray calls “MAS Scouts.”

“I have not heard about anything like this,” she said. Her reaction was similar to the national office’s. It is not allowed, she said.

But Mary Layton, public relations director at the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital saw no problem. “Phone activity in and of itself is not off limits as long as it’s part of a generic ‘get out the vote’ campaign,” she said, “and not part of a partisan effort, including the phone bank component would not be off limits.”

Layton pointed to things such as handing out League of Women Voter pamphlets and organizing mock elections, activities described by the Patriot’s Trail Girl Scout Council (in Massachusetts). But in fact, phone banks aren’t part of the ‘I Promised A Girl Scout I’d Vote’ patch program.

Michelle Tompkins, a spokeswoman at Girl Scouts of the USA New York headquarters disagreed with Layton’s position, saying, “It’s likely that it would be against the rules for kids to be involved in any kind of phone bank situation.” When in doubt, “it’s a pretty good idea” to go with the national office as authority for such a question, Tompkins said.

Scouts have even declined requests to hand out pamphlets, said Jim Waters, Assistant Scout Executive with New York’s Hudson Valley Council of Boy Scouts of America. There are events in which Scouts raise the American flag at things like political conventions, but it’s performed as a civic duty, not in efforts to elect particular people.

When such requests come in, Lambert said he has to discern between faith groups, “and an organization that may be using kids to advance their political agenda.” A good unit leader who doesn’t know about these things, he said, would call for clarification.

“We don’t publish policies on every particular instance and I’m probably not going to find anything I could give you that says, ‘You cannot participate in making phone calls for organizations like this.’ What we do is we encourage leaders and adults to be reasonable and not put kids in situations that could be misconstrued.”

Lambert, Neuffer and Howe said no permission or advice was requested from the national scouting organizations before the political activity took place.

After the elections, the MAS Center for Electoral Empowerment publicized the impact the ‘Muslim Voter Mobilization Campaign’ had in the Virginia Senate race. A surge in Muslim voters, who traditionally vote for Democrats, swung the race to challenger James Webb, MAS claims.

Mahdi Bray has claimed at times that these efforts are non-partisan, but at other times he’s stated political preferences.

“There’s nothing wrong with having kids, nine, ten years old on the phones, like we did for our last youth and our last Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts making phone calls and saying, ‘Go to the polls and vote,’” he said at the July convention. “There’s nothing wrong with having young people, 13 and 14 years old to go from place to place to pass out canvassing information.”

While MAS affiliated Boy and Girl Scout troops nationally worked political phone banks, he emphasized the Virginia effort, where he said scripts read in part, “I can’t vote, but my future can be decided by your vote. You vote.”

He claimed the effort was non-partisan and said Muslims need to be flexible. But: “What I’m saying is that we realize, based on the analysis that the Muslims, the taskforce had come up with, that indeed that it would be better in terms of civil rights – who will be chairing certain important committees that raises civil liberties and like that, that in this case – the Democrats would be a better choice.”

There doesn’t seem to be any legal issue involved. But Rosanna Bencoach, Policy Manager for the Virginia State Board of Elections, said it amounts to “using them. He [Bray] was using the children.”

Bencoach says she volunteered in politics when she was young, but it was as an individual, not through a group, although she’s also a former Girl Scout. She said, “Girl Scouting and the political volunteerism were totally separate.”

“I wish you didn’t have to find these things. I wish these things weren’t happening,” Bencoach said. “But I guess I’m too much of an idealist.”

In getting young people to become politically active, Bray added, “In the years to come, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

“I’m a strong advocate for young people being groomed to be civically involved so that they can run the office. They have a legacy and they have the right to lead America. But they have to be groomed for it. And you prepare them for the political process.”

Lambert, on the other hand, says the Scout troops aren’t the place for such grooming. “I’m more concerned about the judgment of the adults that are serving as the leaders and role models of these kids. Whether or not they understand, we’re not going to be placed in a position to advance any particular political agenda – we won’t allow them to place us in that position.”

Brigitte Gabriel,
President and Founder, American Congress for Truth

One month ago Katherine Kersten broke a story raising serious questions about the Islamic activities at the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a taxpayer-funded charter school.

Our chapter leaders in the central Minnesota area then contacted the State Department of Education and at least one elected representative. The response from both was that the questions raised are being taken very seriously and are being investigated.

This past Wednesday Kersten posted another story that provides an eyewitness account by a substitute teacher of what is going on in this school. As the story notes: “Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.”

Yesterday ACT! for America’s Executive Director, Guy Rodgers, had a phone conversation with an official at the State Department of Education. This official was gracious enough to return Guy’s call and described what steps are being taken to investigate these questions, asserting that the allegations are being taken very seriously. One of the action steps this official described is in fact an action we at ACT! for America recommended the Department take. It was clear this official recognized that national attention is now focused on this school and its practices. We shall see what becomes of this investigation as we continue to review other avenues of possible action.

Wall of silence broken at state’s Muslim public school

By KATHERINE KERSTEN, Star Tribune

Last update: April 9, 2008 – 12:45 PM

Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion. Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.

TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.

Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food – permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”

After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their “main reason for choosing TIZA … was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building,” according to a TIZA report. TIZA may be the only school in Minnesota with this distinction.

Why does the Minnesota Department of Education allow this sort of religious activity at a public school? According to Zaman, the department inspects TIZA regularly — and has done so “numerous times” — to ensure that it is not a religious school.

But the department’s records document only three site visits to TIZA in five years — two in 2003-04 and one in 2007, according to Assistant Commissioner Morgan Brown. None of the visits focused specifically on religious practices.

The department is set up to operate on a “complaint basis,” and “since 2004, we haven’t gotten a single complaint about TIZA,” Brown said. In 2004, he sent two letters to the school inquiring about religious activity reported by visiting department staffers and in a news article. Brown was satisfied with Zaman’s assurance that prayer is “voluntary” and “student-led,” he said. The department did not attempt to confirm this independently, and did not ask how 5- to 11-year-olds could be initiating prayer. (At the time, TIZA was a K-5 school.)

Zaman agreed to respond by e-mail to concerns raised about the school’s practices. Student “prayer is not mandated by TIZA,” he wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, “students are released … to either join a parent-led service or for study hall.” Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other “nonsectarian” after-school options are available, he added.

Yet prayer at TIZA does not appear to be spontaneously initiated by students, but rather scheduled, organized and promoted by school authorities.

Request for volunteers

Until recently, TIZA’s website included a request for volunteers to help with “Friday prayers.” In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that “no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers.”

But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours. Zaman does not deny that “some” Muslim teachers “probably” attend. According to federal guidelines on prayer in schools, teachers at a public school cannot participate in prayer with students.

In addition, schools cannot favor one religion by offering services for only its adherents, or promote after-school religious instruction for only one group. The ACLU of Minnesota has launched an investigation of TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education has also begun a review.

TIZA’s operation as a public, taxpayer-funded school is troubling on several fronts. TIZA is skirting the law by operating what is essentially an Islamic school at taxpayer expense. The Department of Education has failed to provide the oversight necessary to catch these illegalities, and appears to lack the tools to do so. In addition, there’s a double standard at work here — if TIZA were a Christian school, it would likely be gone in a heartbeat.

TIZA is now being held up as a national model for a new kind of charter school. If it passes legal muster, Minnesota taxpayers may soon find themselves footing the bill for a separate system of education for Muslims.

Katherine Kersten • kkersten@startribune.com

President & Founder
Brigitte Gabriel 
 __________________________________________________________________________________________________

         Chet

By Alex Alexiev

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjBhMTM5MTlmN2YzNzE0MmFkOTg2OGYxNWM2MGNiNTQ

If you’ve seen Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, you may not have noticed a single headline amongst all the bombings, beheadings, and earnest expressions of Islam’s eventual world domination: Halal-fund: investments for Muslims. But the investment vehicles referenced are an essential part of radical Islam’s efforts to insinuate itself into Western societies in order to destroy them from within. And Wall Street, barely out of the woods from its disastrous run-in with sub-prime mortgages — and having lost one of its historic investment houses, Bear Stearns, in the process — is now chasing the very kind of “sharia finance” against which Wilders’s movie warns, a business line that may eventually wind up being even more calamitous than the subprime-mortgage fiasco.

For the growing army of its acolytes, who salivate at the prospect of tens of billions of dollars in transaction fees from the burgeoning industry, sharia-compliant finance is seen as little more than a cuddly Islamic version of socially conscious investment — with ethical strictures forbidding usury and sin industries, and emphasizing charity. Indeed, a conference on the subject last Fall co-sponsored by the Wall Street Journal was titled just that: “Islamic Ethical Investment.” According to this rosy interpretation, sharia finance is a windfall for capital markets — allowing Wall Street to skim some foam off the ocean of petrodollar liquidity in the Middle East, and put it to good use.

Other interpretations are possible, of course. Critics see sharia finance as a massive subversion campaign by radical Islam designed to legitimize sharia in the West, to undermine our markets, and ultimately to imperil our free-enterprise system and national security — all the while exposing banks to financial risks that make the sub-prime fiasco look like a walk in the park. For its proponents and ideological enablers — such as the well known suicide-bombing advocate, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi — sharia finance is nothing less than “Jihad with money.” As al-Qaradawi explains, “God has ordered us to fight enemies with our lives and with our money.” Unfortunately for Wall Street, it’s hard to argue with the good sheikh on that score. Far from being a guide to ethical investment, sharia finance is indistinguishable from sharia itself.

Sharia is a reactionary-to-the-core medieval Islamic doctrine that claims control over every aspect of every Muslim’s life. It imposes such “ethical” mandates on Muslims as the obligation to discriminate against women and non-Muslims; to kill homosexuals, adulterers, and apostates; to establish and maintain Muslim rule around the world; and to carry out violent offensive jihad against infidels. Notably, for those Muslims who cannot engage in physical jihad using force of arms, sharia requires that they support jihad financially. This is what sharia finance is all about.

Far from being a legitimate investment vehicle, sharia finance facilitates religiously sanctioned support for terrorist organizations — as well as providing radical Islamists with highly paid sinecures as sharia-finance board advisors in the sanctum sanctorum of capitalism, all the while that they are pursuing a subversive campaign to destroy it.

Predictably, none of this is even remotely disclosed by any of the dozens of Western banks promoting sharia finance today, which obviously exposes them to huge non-disclosure risks ranging from fraudulent misrepresentation, to material support for terrorism.

Consider the board chairman of the Dow Jones Islamic Index (IMANX), one Mufti Taqi Usmani. Mr. Usmani is widely reputed to be one of the world’s top experts on sharia finance. Whatever his stockpicking abilities may be, they are dwarfed by his jihadist credentials. A key executive of Pakistan’s prominent Deobandi jihadist factory, the madrassa Darul Karoom Karachi (currently headed by his brother, Rafi Usmani), Taqi Usmani has openly advocated jihad by Muslims in the West, and just last month again publicly endorsed suicide bombing and the Taliban.

Since sharia-finance funds like the IMANX may invest in companies that are not completely halal — that derive their profit from interest or other sharia-prohibited activities — returns on investment in those companies must be purified by donating a portion of that ROI to charity. More often than not, it is people like Usmani who are paid lucratively to sit on sharia-finance boards in order to determine what charities will receive the sharia-finance institutions’ donations — and it’s a fair bet that the March of Dimes is not among them.

IMANX itself is owned and operated by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), an organization listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator by the Department of Justice in a recent terrorism-finance trial, and the proprietor of hundreds of radical mosques and Islamic institutions in the U.S., including some that have been closed down by the government as criminal enterprises.

The chairman of both NAIT and IMANX, Bassam Osman, has been the top executive of terrorist-funding organizations like the Quranic Literacy Institute (suspected financiers of Hamas whose assets were seized by the U.S. in 1998) and the Islamic Academy of Florida (founded by Sami al-Arian, a convicted financier of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist criminal enterprise), and is a board member of other un-indicted co-conspirators like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Is Dow Jones aware of all this? Is Rupert Murdoch? And if they are not, shouldn’t they be?

The IMANX marketing slogan is “Markets Fluctuate. Principles Don’t.” Judging by the ideological principles of those involved in its leadership, that is precisely what Wall Street — and the West — should fear.

The legitimization of sharia in the West and its gradual imposition in Muslim communities and beyond is a key objective of sharia finance, and there is no doubt it has already made huge strides. Indeed, the precedent of legal sharia-finance transactions was used by the hapless archbishop of Canterbury to buttress his argument that introducing sharia in the United Kingdom was unavoidable.

Given the reality of malignant Islamism now spreading into our own capital markets to the loud cheers of the same Wall Street masters of the universe who gave us sub-prime mortgage securitization, Americans have a right to ask: Where are the U.S. Treasury Department and the SEC, whose job it is to protect our markets? Given the outright fraudulent misrepresentation of the potential liabilities of sharia-finance funds under existing regulations, they should get involved soon.

— Alex Alexiev is vice president for research at the Center for Security Policy.

The commentary below is circulating on the internet and provides an excellent historical context for us to view the current rising tide of militant Islam. Let us not forget George Santayana’s remarkable insight: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

A German’s point of view on Islam.

A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

‘Very few people were true Nazis ‘he said,’ but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’

We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.

It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the ‘peaceful majority’, the ’silent majority’, is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands world wide, read this -think about it – and send it on.

American Congress for Truth
P.O. Box 6884
Virginia Beach, VA 23456
member@americancongressfortruth.org
http://www.americancongressfortruth.org