Destroying Sculptures of Muhammad

Daniel Pipes provides an essay that demonstrates (what he calls) soft Islam is as dangerous to the West as violent Islam.

There is a bit of irony though I would like to point out. The theme is the removal of depictions of Mohammed from public buildings especially Court Houses that depict Mohammed as on of a long line historical figures that that were Law Givers. The irony is that I agree with the Mohammedans that these depictions of Mohammed should be removed; however for different reasons than Mohammedans would express.

You see, I am a proud Islamophobe that believes Mohammedanism is a threat to Western Culture. So yeah, let’s dump Mohammed depictions.

JRH 2/29/08

Obama and his Anti-Israel Friends

I posted suspicions about Barack Hussein Obama’s allegiances regardless of his public profession of Christianity and his public stipulation that close ties would be imperative with our ally Israel if elected President.

I openly wondered just how believable Obama’s assertions are considering his association with people that have been mentors or are current mentors (personally or from afar). These influential people in Obama’s life have been Louis Farrakhan and his UMC Pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. Also Obama has associated with pro-terrorist individuals in fund raisers. And apparently has developed a friendship with Weathermen terrorists who were American anti-war Lefties that murdered people to bring attention to their message.

I openly wondered how the Mainstream Media (MSM) and even Conservatives do not want to rock the boat of Obama’s charismatic popularity. The MSM because they primarily Leftist and they think they have found the man that hasten America’s change to the delusion of an American utopia. The Conservatives because it is Politically Incorrect call Obama on his assertions as opposed to his associations. Unfortunately we all know that Political Correctness is the current paradigm of the ages in Western/American Government and polite society in general.

A bold person stepping up to the plate to ask the tough questions about Obama would be condemned as the falsely maligned Joe McCarthy looking for a witch hunt to victimize innocent people.

Here is another news article by a News Service outside of the MSM. Cybercast News Service asks the questions about why Obama’s website has links to Mohammedan-American organizations promoting their events.

You might ask, “So what?”

Some of these organizations are Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and the Muslim American Society (MAS). ISNA was an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF trial which was about funding Arab-Palestinian terrorists Hamas. ICNA has promoted Islamist terrorist speakers to come to event in America and terrorist expert Steven Emerson has noted ICNA’s close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The MAS was founded as the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and has tried to deceive the public with anti-terrorist rhetoric.

I know I have a lot of links to back up my assertions and you should check them out.

Can Americans seriously potentially elect Obama as President with all of these associations directly and indirectly linked to his political career? What does Obama really mean with his slogan of “Change?”

JRH

Obama Public Statements Do Not Line Up With Public Associations

John R. Houk
© February 28, 2008
I am aware that many people look upon World Net Daily (WND) and most of its Columnists and Writers as the news version of the National Enquirer. I believe that is a bad rap. Yes there are some sensationalist articles that are unbelievable; there are also a great number of articles backed up by documentation and photographs dealing with political matters.

The thing is WND is willing and bold enough to report news that the Mainstream Media would frown upon.

Here is a case of Aaron Klein who is a frequent Reporter and Columnist for WND that has sent out an email list using WND servers about Barack Obama’s association with known anti-Semites and pro-terrorist funders for Palestinian Arab murderers.

Aaron Klein is stepping on the toes of MSM who has anointed Obama as a proud Liberal American that is a Christian.

My problem with this MSM anointing of Obama as the Liberal American Patriot is that it elevates him to a level that Conservatives fear to waste their credibility. Contradicting the new political “Messiah” might test a journalists’ credibility; however I am a blogger. I am merely speaking my mind in you agree or disagree. My credibility is not an issue. There are some astonishing tidbits of news that do not line up with Obama public denials of anti-Semitism and his public pro-Israel stand.

Here is an example of news that does not line up from an Aaron Klein article I received by an e-news list:

JRH
****************************

Obama Worked With Terrorist
Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Isreal's [sic] existence

Aaron Klein Reports from Jerusalem
2/25/2008 11:50 AMlists@newsalerts.worldnetdaily.com
World Net Daily

The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2001. Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The $40,000 grant from Obama's Woods Fund to the AAAN constituted about a fifth of the Arab group's reported grants for 2001, according to tax filings obtained by WND. The $35,000 Woods Fund grant in 2002 also constituted about one-fifth of AAAN's reported grants for that year.

The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago's Palestinian immigrant community, describes itself as working to "empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community organizing, advocacy, education and social services, leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other communities."

It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open boarders and education for illegal aliens.

The AAAN in 2005 sent a letter to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson in which it called a billboard opposing a North Carolina-New Mexico joint initiative to deny driver's licenses to illegal aliens a "bigoted attack on Arabs and Muslims."

Speakers at AAAN dinners and events routinely have taken an anti-Israel line.

The group co-sponsored a Palestinian art exhibit, titled, "The Subject of Palestine," that featured works related to what some Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948.

According to the widely discredited Nakba narrative, Jews in 1948 forcibly expelled hundreds of thousands - some Palestinians claim over one million - Arabs from their homes and then took over the territory.
Historically, about 600,000 Arabs fled Israel after surrounding Arab countries warned they would destroy the Jewish state in 1948. Some Arabs also were driven out by Jewish forces while they were trying to push back invading Arab armies. At the same time, over 800,000 Jews were expelled or left Arab countries under threat after Israel was founded.

The theme of AAAN's Nakba art exhibit, held at DePaul University in 2005, was "the compelling and continuing tragedy of Palestinian life ... under [Israeli] occupation ... home demolition ... statelessness ... bereavement ... martyrdom, and ... the heroic struggle for life, for safety, and for freedom."

Another AAAN initiative, titled, "Al Nakba 1948 as experienced by Chicago Palestinians," seeks documents related to the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding. A post on the AAAN site asked users: "Do you have photos, letters or other memories you could share about Al-Nakba-1948?"

That posting was recently removed. The AAAN website currently states the entire site is under construction.

Pro-PLO advocate held Obama fundraiser, describes Obama as 'sympathetic'

 

AAAN co-founder Rashid Khalidi was reportedly a director of the official PLO press agency WAFA in Beirut from 1976 to 1982, while the PLO committed scores of anti-Western attacks and was labeled by the U.S. as a terror group. Khalidi's wife, AAAN President Mona Khalidi, was reportedly WAFA's English translator during that period.

Rashid Khalidi at times has denied working directly for the PLO but Palestinian diplomatic sources in Ramallah told WND he indeed directed WAFA. Khalidi also advised the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference in 1991.

During documented speeches and public events, Khalidi has called Israel an "apartheid system in creation" and a destructive "racist" state.

He has multiple times expressed support for Palestinian terror, calling suicide bombings response to "Israeli aggression." He dedicated his 1986 book, "Under Siege," to "those who gave their lives ... in defense of the cause of Palestine and independence of Lebanon." Critics assailed the book as excusing Palestinian terrorism.

While the Woods Fund's contribution to Khalidi's AAAN might be perceived as a one-time run in with Obama, the presidential hopeful and Khalidi evidence a deeper relationship.

According to a professor at the University of Chicago who said he has known Obama for 12 years, the Democratic presidential hopeful first befriended Khalidi when the two worked together at the university. The professor spoke on condition of anonymity. Khalidi lectured at the University of Chicago until 2003 while Obama taught law there from 1993 until his election to the Senate in 2004.

Khalidi in 2000 held what was described as a successful fundraiser for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, a fact not denied by Khalidi.

Speaking in a joint interview with WND and the John Batchelor Show of New York's WABC Radio and Los Angeles' KFI Radio, Khalidi was asked about his 2000 fundraiser for Obama.

"I was just doing my duties as a Chicago resident to help my local politician," Khalidi stated.

Khalidi said he supports Obama for president "because he is the only candidate who has expressed sympathy for the Palestinian cause."

Khalidi also lauded Obama for "saying he supports talks with Iran. If the U.S. can talk with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, there is no reason it can't talk with the Iranians."

Asked about Obama's role funding the AAAN, Khalidi claimed he had "never heard of the Woods Fund until it popped up on a bunch of blogs a few months ago."

He terminated the call when petitioned further about his links with Obama.

Contacted by phone, Mona Khalidi refused to answer WND's questions about the AAAN's involvement with Obama.

Obama's campaign headquarters did not reply to a list of WND questions sent by e-mail to the senator's press office.

Obama, American terrorist in same circles

 

Obama served on the board with Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has written about his involvement with the group's bombings of the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.

"I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough," Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released on Sept. 11, 2001

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers wrote in his memoirs, titled "Fugitive Days." He continued with a disclaimer that he didn't personally set the bombs, but his group set the explosives and planned the attack.

A $200 campaign contribution is listed on April 2, 2001 by the "Friends of Barack Obama" campaign fund. The two taught appeared speaking together at several public events, including a 1997 University of Chicago panel entitled, "Should a child ever be called a 'super predator?'" and another panel for the University of Illinois in April 2002, entitled, "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?"

The charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn, who has also served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was once on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 murder and robbery that left 4 people dead.

Obama advisor wants talks with terrorists

 

The revelations about Obama's relationship with Khalidi follows a recent WND article quoting Israeli security officials who expressed "concern" about Robert Malley, an adviser to Obama who has advocated negotiations with Hamas and providing international assistance to the terrorist group.
Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state.

Malley's contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp David, including President Bill Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom squarely blamed Arafat's refusal to make peace for the talks' failure. 

_______________________________ Obama Public Statements Do Not Line Up With Public Associations

John R. Houk
© February 28, 2008
_______________________________

Obama Worked With Terrorist

To interview Aaron Klein, Middle East correspondent and author of "Schmoozing with Terrorists," contact M. Sliwa Public Relations by e-mail, or call 973-272-2861 or 212-202-4453.

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Paleocon Buckley Passed Away Today

William F. Buckley Jr. died today at the age of 82. I did not always see I to eye with Buckley since his was more of a rigid Paleocon and I leaning toward a Neocon; however it must be said he was a bastion of Conservatism in a day when it was ridiculed as followers without intellect and the true political giants were the supposed intellectual Left Wing Liberals.

Buckley did not buckle and demonstrated an intellectual wit that diminished a Lefty even if the person had key factual points to support an argument. Buckley was no moron as the Leftists of his day considered a Conservative in the 50’s and 60’s. Lefties might think twice before locking horns a truly superior political intellect with a remarkable command of the English language.

I cancelled my RSS feed of Buckley today when I read that he had left this world for the next. My RSS feed was from Yahoo and Buckley last post about a debate between Obama and Hillary had. The article was dated February 1, 2008.

I wonder if any of Buckley’s observations will prescient of the race.

JRH

E Pluribus Unum

Maybe Harvard did not get the memo that the English translation for E Pluribus Unum is Out of the Many, One. The implication of America’s National Motto that diverse cultures come to America to be ONE people.

That would include Mohammedans.

JRH (Hat tip to The Dougout) 2/26/08

Moral Relativity in America

Here is an example of Leftist Judges establishing Secular Humanism as a religion in America. A father in Massachusetts in 2005 was upset that the Public School sent home reading material for his son promoting the acceptance of homosexual behavior.

The Father file a civil suit against the Public school which was dismissed in Federal Court and in the Appellate Court ruled that teaching homosexuality did not violate parental rights. Now the Father is taking his cause to the Supreme Court.

Another family became upset with a Public School in 2006 because it sent home reading material for their second grader about two homosexual Kings that were lovers. This family joined the Father of the five year old in the Law Suit which is on its way to the Supreme Court.

On paper this Law Suit is about Parental Rights VS what the Government can instruct children in Public School.

The reality is different. It is about establishing the value and moral system of Secular Humanism in America. That makes a system that calls itself “secular” a religious system.

Leftists have interpreted the First Amendment’s intent of NOT establishing a State religion as Separation of Church and State. The phrase “Separation of Church and State” is found no where within the United States Constitution in the original document or the first 10 Amendments that has come to be known as the Bill of Rights.

Leftist Courts have used the illusion of Separation of Church and State to slowly erode Christianity from any connection in government on the local, State and Federal level. These Leftist Christophobes have changed Community Nativity Scenes that have been found on public grounds because it violates the Separation of Church and State myth. Leftist Courts have begun telling the Government to remove references to Judeo/Christianity from public buildings because it violates the Leftist interpretation of the First Amendment. The primary public property removals usually relate to the Ten Commandments or Crosses at Public Memorials. These representations of Christianity are symbols of values and morality; thus Leftist Courts are refuting Christian values and Christian morality in the name of the delusion of the Separation of Church and State.

Secular Humanism has emerged as a religion that places faith in the objective evidence of human discovery (facts derived by the validation of Science). Secular Humanism glorifies humanity as self-existent rather than created by God. In other words values and morals are relative to what feels good for humanity in the sense realm. Thus what is normal like a male and female is the foundation to producing progeny. The progeny learning their roles in life from the examples set by male and female parents.

Since it feels good to a group of humanity to have same gender sex, Secular Humanist morals and values would dictate that children acquired (obviously not produced from the same gender) can learn what is normal from same sex cohabitation.

In Secular Humanism, values and morality are measured on a sliding scale rather than a paradigm that fixes normality, values and morals.

Faith in Secular Humanism has probably led to the greatest degeneration of Western Society. Violence, promiscuity (homosexuals and heterosexuals), community trust, the disintegration of the cohesion of the family which leads to mutual disrespect between human individuals and on and on.

In essence Secular Humanism is a religion.

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Judicial Branch of Government has basically ESTABLISHED Secular Humanism as the Religion of the Land. The Judicial Branch’s extra-Constitutional legislation has overstepped it’s purpose. The Congress is the Legislative Branch which exists to create law and the parameters of a fiscal budget within the confines of the Constitution. The Presidential Administration is the Executive Branch which exists to manage the Government and enforce the Laws enacted by the Legislative Branch. The Judicial Branch exists to adjudicate civil and government law. The Judicial Branch interprets law and provides clarity to gray areas of law.

Legislation is not the Judicial Branch’s jurisdiction; yet that is exactly what Leftists in the Judiciary have done by ESTABLISHING Secular Humanism as the religion of the Land. Thus forcing the traditional religion of the Land too often being in contradiction of the unconstitutional Established State religion of Secular Humanism.
______________________

Moral Relativity in America
John R. Houk
© February 26, 2008

Hat tip to Jim Phelan.

Does America Really Want a Dem in the White House?

A lot of people think the Democratic Party is on the fast track to winning the White House in 2008. Of the many people, the prediction is Barack Hussein Obama will be that Democrat.

With that in mind, the primary theme of Obama is the word “change.” The only defining allusion to the word “change” at this moment is something different from the status quo of Washington politics. Anyone with any sense is aware that a fringe Leftist like Obama is not going to change the status quo of politics in Washington. He will be just as polarizing receiving enmity from the Right as GW received enmity from the Left.

The first item of “change” will be for a Democratic Party President to bring the troops home from Iraq preventing victory which is now just a hands grasp away and probably throwing the oil rich Iraq into a chaos with an Iranian predator next door.

Thus leaving Iraq would probably lead numerable bad things, of which the Saudis and Europe will clamor for the return of the American military to clean up.

A chaotic Iraq will lead to an invasion from the north from Turkey to make sure oil endowed Kurds do not form an independent nation. A chaotic Iraq will lead to a civil war between Sunnis and Shias that has nearly been solved by the current Troop Surge. Then Iran will make its play to either create a Shia Islamist Iraq or simply annex the Shia dominated part of Iraq next door to Iran.

The in between time of the Democrats removing troops from Iraq and an impending chaos in Iraq, an international proclamation that transnational terrorism (of which al Qaeda appears to be the most notorious to Americans) has defeated the most powerful nation in the world – the United States of America – will be shouted from the Islamist roof tops.

This will place some swagger on some goals of transnational Islamist terrorism to spread Islam by further terrorism and embolden Western Islamists to require more concessions in the rule of law to practice Sharia Law as opposed to the Rights and Liberty oriented values of Western Culture.

Since Europeans tend to be appeasement minded lefties supporting many of the issues of why Islamism exists, the rule of law debate between Islam and Western values is already an issue.

In America where Islamist dominated organizations in private yet publicly deluding the American public and Left that they are of a moderate nature, will begin to emulate their Islamist brothers in Europe. The demand for Sharia exclusivity apart from Constitutional Law will begin. This kind of demand will undermine the current Leftist stand on Separation of Church and State as the Islamic religion is given government privileges and perks to practice Islam under government protection and involvement all in the name of the delusion of multiculturalism.

Thus all those years of work by the Left to rid the local, State and Federal government of Christian heritage will become a hypocrisy as Islam is protected by the Government. For example it will be a hate crime for Christians to condemn Islam according to Biblical Scriptures but it will be Freedom of Speech for Islam to proclaim its superiority over all other religions and those religions that criticize Islamic superiority will be a hate crime. Can anyone say self-imposed dhimmitude?

The Islamist deception is already spreading in America’s public domain via the so-called moderate non-profit Islamic organizations and non-profit Islamic civil rights organizations. Islamists are highly involved in American Mosques and American Public and Private Schools.

Steven Emerson recently has wrote a blog post which I found at Political Mavens criticizing the Mainstream Media (specifically the New York Times in this instance) for proclaiming moderate bona fides to obvious Islamists who wish to bring down the American way of life by hook or by crook.

In this case the Islamists are members and speakers the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), which was directly founded by the Muslim Brotherhood out of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood’s roots reach all the way back to the cooperation of Hassan al Banna and Amin el-Husseini that supported and received support from Adolf Hitler due to a mutual hatred of Jews.

Steven Emerson demonstrates there is ABSOLUTELY nothing moderate about the MSA which is highly involved on American University campuses nationally.

Is this the scenario you as an American wish to get rolling by supporting the Democratic Party? God Almighty I pray not! Vote Republican!

JRH
***************************
Soft Pedaling Radical Islam: The New York Times Discovers the MSA

By Steven Emerson
February 21st, 2008
Political Mavens

Neil MacFarquhar’s latest paean to radical Islam appeared in Thursday’s New York Times, “For Muslim Students, a Debate on Inclusion,” in which he praises a known radical leader of the Muslim Students’ Association as some kind of moderate. MacFarquhar begins the story with a sweet vignette about Mertaban’s alleged moderate bona fides:

Amir Mertaban vividly recalls sitting at his university’s recruitment table for the Muslim Students Association a few years ago when an attractive undergraduate flounced up in a decidedly un-Islamic miniskirt, saying “Salamu aleykum,” or “Peace be upon you,” a standard Arabic greeting, and asked to sign up.

Mr. Mertaban also recalls that his fellow recruiter surveyed the young woman with disdain, arguing later that she should not be admitted because her skirt clearly signaled that she would corrupt the Islamic values of the other members.

“I knew that brother, I knew him very well; he used to smoke weed on a regular basis,” said Mr. Mertaban, now 25, who was president of the Muslim student group at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, from 2003 to 2005.

Pointing out the hypocrisy, Mr. Mertaban won the argument that the group could no longer reject potential members based on rigid standards of Islamic practice.

Mertaban the non-hypocritical “moderate,” as MacFarquhar would have you believe. Mertaban apparently likes girls in miniskirts – at least enough to not refuse them admission to the MSA.

But what does Mertaban have in store for this flouncing, attractive, be-miniskirted undergrad? Here’s what he told an MSA audience at U.C. Berkeley in April 2007:

So you never compromise on your faith. You be confident in every aspect of life. In every aspect of Islam you are confident. Four wives? Yes men are allowed to have four wives within this context.

Of course, polygamy is illegal in the United States. And Mertaban’s speech that day was not limited to Islamic marital relations. He continued:

Jihad? Yes Jihad! Jihad is the tightest thing in Islam. Don’t compromise on these little things. Be proud of it. Why? Because Islam is a perfect religion. If you sit here and you start saying, ‘Jihad is only an internal this and that,’ you are compromising on your faith.

That’s very moderate, indeed. Of course, you won’t read this in the New York Times, but Mertaban began his speech that day with a stirring defense of none other than Osama Bin Laden, imploring his audience that, no matter what Bin Laden may – or may not – have done, Muslims are obliged to defend him “to the end.” Here’s what he said:

War in Iraq or Afghanistan or Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. Don’t ever compromise on Islam! And don’t ever compromise on your Muslim brothers and sisters in which you have no evidence. Osama bin Laden- I don’t know this guy. I don’t know what he did. I don’t know what he said. I don’t know what happened. But we defend Muslim brothers and we defend our Muslim sisters to the end. Is that clear?

At the same conference, Mertaban defended radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr on the same grounds:

Time magazine had this one article on Muqtada al-Sadr. Who knows who Muqtada al-Sadr is? He is one of the individuals in Iraq who is one of the leaders of the Shi’a resistance movement against U.S. troops. Anyways, Time magazine dramatizes everything. So here is Muqtada al-Sadr, ok? And I want you to look at my facial expression, because this is very powerful how they used him … They’re attacking Muslims not based on you and how you look and how you look - based on how he looks.

I don’t even know the guy. The guy is probably a tight Muslim. I don’t even know him. I don’t really care too much about him to tell you the truth. But the idea is how they use individuals like that to portray Muslims.

So, according to Mertaban, not only is Muqtada al-Sadr a “tight Muslim,” but Time Magazine should not show images nor report on an influential radical Islamic leader having a major impact in the Iraq war because of how he looks. But again, you won’t read about this speech in the Times, just about how “inclusive” Mertaban is.

Not content to simply downplay one of the MSA’s most radical leaders, MacFarquhar goes on to sanitize the founding of the entire organization. In describing the MSA’s origins, he writes, “Organized in the 1960s by foreign students who wanted collective prayers where there were no mosques, the associations were basically little slices of Saudi Arabia.”

That is a complete whitewash. It is well known that the MSA was not merely founded by “foreign students.” It has been reported in multiple sources that the MSA was formed by members of the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood. The Chicago Tribune reported just that nearly four years ago:

“While the U.S. Brotherhood was influential from its beginning–in 1963 it helped establish the Muslim Students Association, one of the first national Islamic groups in the U.S.—(American-based Ikhwan leader Ahmed) Elkadi thought the group could expand its reach.”

More conclusive information linking the MSA to the Muslim Brotherhood came out during last year’s Hamas-fundraising trial in Dallas against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). A 1991 document entered into evidence titled “Shura Council Report on the future of the Group: Work paper #1,” (”Group” is the code name for the Ikhwan) stated:

In 1962, the Muslim Students Union was founded by a group of the first Ikhwans in North America and Meetings of the Ikhwan became conferences and Students Union Camps.

That history matters. The Muslim Brotherhood, an 80-year-old social and religious order established in Egypt, seeks a global Islamic state governed by Shariah law as its ultimate objective. Its guiding ideologues have served as the inspiration for virtually all Sunni terrorist organizations from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Al Qaeda.

Other exhibits from the HLF trial, dated in the early 1990s, show Muslim Brotherhood members in the U.S. saw their role as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

And while MacFarquhar writes of the MSA, “That past has given the associations a reputation in some official quarters as a possible font of extremism,” he immediately undercuts that by adding, “but experts in American Islam believe college campuses have become too diverse and are under too much scrutiny for the groups to foster radicals.”

And yet he makes no attempt to cover the fact that MSA’s routinely invite radical Islamic speakers who justify suicide bombing and make virulent anti-Semitic and anti-American statements. We are just simply to believe there is some kind of “debate” going on concerning “inclusion.”

Well, let’s talk about inclusion. Here’s radical Imam Abdul Malik Ali speaking at an MSA event at San Francisco State University in April 2002:

Brothers and sisters. Stop calling them suicide bombers!

When a person commits suicide, they are depressed! When a person commits suicide, they are without hope! When a person commits suicide they are losing their patience. They are in a state of despair! These brothers–and sisters– before they go out on their martyr missions, are doing videotapes, and they are saying “Yeeeuuhh! I’m doing this! I’m doing this!” And their mothers are right next to them saying, “Go ahead and go!”

I wonder which side of the “inclusiveness” debate Mr. MacFarquhar thinks suicide bombers belong to. Or what MacFarquhar would write about this, as Malik Ali continued:

You cannot win against a people like this! Because you have Israelis whose ideology is so bankrupt–You never hear an Israeli talkin’ about “I hope I’m going to die.” They want to live, they want to live. And once you go up against a people who love death, more than you love life, you in trouble man! You in serious trouble!

Very inclusive, indeed. Another MSA favorite speaker is Mohammed al-Asi. At a 2002 MSA event at the University of California, Irvine, al-Asi had posed his own unique contribution to the inclusiveness debate, telling the crowd:

If the only thing the Israelis and their mentors, and their sponsors and their superiors in Washington DC are going to understand is the use of force, than that’s the language we’re going to communicate with, we’re going to use force. And whatever was taken by force can only be retrieved by force.

Not every story is going to be an investigation. But every story, even soft features with appealing anecdotal leads, require some real reporting and a challenge to the assumptions and conclusions a reporter reaches. As we have pointed - out - repeatedly, there is no evidence of this in MacFarquhar’s reporting.

You can look it up.
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Does America Really Want a Dem in the White House?
John R. Houk
© February 25, 2008
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Soft Pedaling Radical Islam: The New York Times Discovers the MSA

Steven Emerson bio: Steven Emerson is an internationally recognized expert on terrorism and national security and considered one of the leading world authorities on Islamic extremist networks, financing and operations. He now serves as the Executive Director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, one of the world’s largest archival data and intelligence institutes on Islamic and Middle Eastern terrorist groups. Mr. Emerson and his staff frequently provide briefings to US government and law enforcement agencies, Members of Congress and Congressional committees, and print and electronic media, both national and international. Since 9-11, Mr. Emerson has testified and briefed Congress dozens of times on terrorist financing and operational networks of Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hizzbollah, Islamic Jihad, and the rest of the worldwide Islamic militant spectrum. He and his organization have been quoted or profiled in hundreds of newspaper and television stories since 09-11.

Mr. Emerson started The Investigative Project on Terrorism in late 1995, following the broadcast of his documentary film, “Jihad in America,” on Public Television. The film exposed MORE …

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