Sheikh Bakri told me several months ago,

"We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy."

It's time the West woke up.

(Patrick Goodenough, London, UK)

EGYPT ISLAMIC GROUP ANNOUNCES JIHAD AGAINST THE US EGYPT POLITICS

12/21/1998 - The Egyptian Islamic Group on Sunday issued a statement in which it said that fighting the Americans is a "divine order." The statement added that what is taking place in Iraq "is a shame for the Islamic nation." After the statement asserted a need for Jihad against America, it stressed the need of total boycotting of all American and British products and the expulsion of the British and American ambassadors from the Islamic countries.

It appealed to the Iraqi people not "to permit the return back of the committee of blasphemy, known as inspection committees to come back to Iraq." The statement added that Islamic movements have to carry out their roles in backing Muslims in Iraq and to be united in challenge of the American attacks, adding that, "The scholars of the Islamic nation are demanded to withstand this fierce onslaught and to carry out their roles in this regard and then to work for trying the residents of the US White House as war criminals."

Previous Stories: Cairo denies deal with Islamic Group to halt violence (12/18/1998) Increasing number arrested for Muslim Brotherhood ties in Egypt (11/6/1998) Islamic group in Egypt denies relations with Bin Laden (10/21/1998) http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/981221/1998122135.html

Press Release 1995 Statement on Jihad in America

JIHAD AGAINST ISLAM - REPORTER DISSECTS STEVE EMERSON'S "JIHAD IN AMERICA"

 

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. - A fact here, a fact there, conclusions out of nowhere, and pretty soon you have an Islamic conspiracy to subjugate the United States and terrorize the world. In the recent PBS "documentary" Jihad in America, producer Steven Emerson, in his struggle to piece together a story, has set forth on his own jihad against Islam and Muslims. Emerson begins with scenes of the World Trade Center bombing, and the arguable conclusion that the ultimate goal of Muslim extremists is to establish an Islamic empire. The fact that the so called extremists are waging a struggle to recover their lands from which they were forcibly evicted, or struggling for freedom from foreign domination, a fundamental ideal subscribed to by our founding fathers, is not mentioned.

 

After a perfunctory disclaimer that Islam or Muslims are not the issue in Jihad in America, which aired on PBS on November 21, 1994, Emerson and the "experts" interviewed mention Islam or Muslim about once a minute for the next fifteen minutes (we stopped counting after that). Contrast this with coverage of Christian or Jewish wrongdoing where the religion of the criminal, the militant, or extremist is seldom mentioned. We are told "most Americans understand very little about Islam." Emerson, however, only adds to the misunderstanding.

 

We are not told that Islam is the religion based on God's message conveyed by a line of prophets including Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad. We are also not told that Islam recognizes Muslims, Jews, and Christians as "People of the Book." Where Islam unites Muslims, Jews, and Christians, Emerson struggles to divide. Jihad, the subject of the "documentary," is not even defined.

 

We are not told that jihad has many definitions, that in general it means struggle, and that the highest form of jihad is the struggle against self. Emerson then pieces together film clips from diverse sources, and interviews with a handful of "experts." From this meager "evidence" he takes a gigantic leap to the conclusion that there is an Islamic conspiracy to rule the world.

 

The documentary is filled with half truths, misstatements, and questionable conclusions. Some examples follow. Afghanistan's freedom fighters, which were supported by the U.S. in their fight to expel the Soviet invasion, are portrayed as Islamic rebels "dedicated to spreading jihad." Having expelled the Soviets, these freedom fighters talk of spreading their jihad (struggle) to aid neighboring countries dominated by other foreign powers.

 

Surely "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is not for the U.S. alone. Yes, Islam is used to rally the freedom fighters, but it is hardly a call to an armed war to spread Islam around the world. We talk of our War on Poverty; War on Drugs. President Reagan spoke of a "Crusade Against Drugs." Can Emerson not understand the hyperbole in the language of others? Emerson jumps form the Ayatollah Khomenei led revolution in Iran to the assassination of President Sadat. The viewer is not told that it was the Shah of Iran's brutal suppression of his people, or of foreign meddling and domination in the Middle East that has caused so much suffering. Instead selected events are tied together to draw us to Emerson's conclusion of a grand Islamic conspiracy.

 

Emerson sees danger lurking everywhere. The stationery of the Alkifah Refugee Center in Peshawar, Pakistan (supported by the U.S.) which in translation reads "Office of Services to the Holy Warriors" is a "fact" pointing to a grand Islamic conspiracy. Emerson and the late Senator McCarthy, who saw communists everywhere, would have found a lot in common. Abdullah Azzam, an Afghan freedom fighter, is given prominence in spreading jihad against Jews, Christians, and moderate Muslims. Azzam may be talking of armed war or a struggle to overcome foreign domination in the Middle East. But Azzam's speaking before groups in the U.S. does not prove a conspiracy to wage an Islamic war on the U.S.

 

Was Azzam the sole speaker at these meetings? Who else spoke, what was said, what action was taken, we are not told. Azzam speaks of the Soviets who invaded Afghanistan as the "enemy of Allah." Is this a call to Islamic war as Emerson portrays it, or merely Azzam's way of portraying the Soviet invaders, and their surrogates, so as to rally Afghan Muslims to drive out the Soviets? Emerson is drawn unquestionably to his conclusion of an Islamic jihad against the world. We're shown a map of the Middle East and North Africa, and told that "Islamic holy warriors began launching attacks against Israel, Egypt, and Algeria." Who controls these attacks, what is the motive?

 

We are not told. But Emerson has no doubts that they are all connected in a grand Islamic conspiracy. From the Middle East and North Africa Emerson jumps to Azzam's fund raising efforts in the U.S., and branches of the Alkifah Refugee Center at several U.S. locations, as evidence of jihad in America. Is fund raising by the Irish in America who support the IRA, the Jews who support the extremists in Israel, or the fiery speeches of Louis Farrakhan, evidence of a conspiracy against America? Target shooting practice by unidentified individuals is portrayed by Emerson as evidence of Muslims training for holy war. What is their connection with specific acts of violence? How are they connected in some grand Islamic conspiracy?

 

Emerson tells us that they are, but for all we know the target shooters may only be members of the National Rifle Association pursuing their hobby. In short, Emerson has taken a real act of terror, the bombing of the World Trade Center, and isolated events and persons from Pakistan to the U.S. and woven them with invisible threads into a grand Islamic conspiracy against the world. We know terrorists exist within many countries and communities. We also know one man's terrorist may be another's freedom fighter. Emerson fails to show us the threads which weave these diverse Muslims into a jihad against America. In a nation of immigrants faced with rising tensions among communities, racial divisions, and frustration with immigration, Emerson uses a broad brush to denigrate Islam and Muslims. He misses the opportunity to present issues fairly, to create understanding, and possibly lead to just resolution of legitimate grievances. Jihad in America is not a documentary. It is a propaganda film like those used to demonize Jews in the days of Hitler. http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Jihad.html

 

Writer Steven Abram Emerson burst into American public consciousness by leveling alarming charges in a 1994 film, shown by many public television stations, entitled “Jihad in America.” The film made sensational allegations that a sinister network of foreign terrorists had insinuated itself into America’s rapidly expanding Muslim community. Emerson charged that the various components of this network not only were raising funds for Palestinians resisting Israeli forces in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon, but also were planning deadly acts of murder and sabotage within the United States itself. For the very few Americans familiar with the embryonic national Islamic organizations and their leaders in theUnited States, and who could understand the Arabic words being spoken in the clips of speeches and songs at public meetings of those groups, the charges were ludicrous.

 

Even the clips of more militant speeches made to Islamic groups overseas were taken out of context. They dated back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan rather than any contemporary “holy war” against the West as implied by Emerson. But the vast majorityof Americans who knew few, if any, Muslims, and had never heard of any of these organizations, had little reason to disbelieve the inflammatory charges, particularly because they were made in a video carried without disclaimers by the normally reliable public television network. Initially, therefore, such charges by Emerson, a “terrorism expert” who seemingly had no first-hand familiarity with any Middle Eastern country or language except Israel and Hebrew, and a “journalist” who had never studied journalism, were given some credence by two major events that preceded the showing of his film.

 

These were the World Trade Center bombing in which six Americans were killed on Feb. 26,1993 in New York City, and a conspiracy to bomb the United Nations building and FBI headquarters in Manhattan along with the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, which was aborted by arrests of the plotters in New York and New Jersey in June 1993. The mysterious Middle Easterner, Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, who planned and directed the World Trade Center bombing and escaped to launch other largely unsuccessful terrorist initiatives in the Far East before he was captured in Pakistan and tried in the United States, seemed to conform with Emerson’s warnings. And although other homegrown American “terrorism experts,” some of whom, like Emerson, had Israeli connections, did not echo the most sensational of Emerson’s charges regarding Muslims, they seemed to observe a kind of professional solidarity in not ridiculing Emerson’s allegations either.

 

Ultimately, Emerson’s hyperactive attempts to draw more media attention to himself brought about his professional undoing. Immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, he implied on both CBS and CNN that it was the work of Muslims, even though the perpetrator, Tim McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran with neither Muslim nor Middle Eastern connections, was caught within days largely because a loose license plate on his getaway car caught a state trooper’s attention. Similarly, after Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island in July 1996, Emerson said in media statements he was “confident” and had “no doubt whatsoever” that the plane was brought down by a bomb and suggested to Reuters that it could be the work of “the permanent floating [Islamic] military international.”

 

But after a painstaking investigation involving dredging up the aircraft, piece by piece by piece, from the sea floor, the FBI and FAA ascribed the explosion not to a bomb or a missile but to an accidental electrical spark that ignited fumes in an empty fuel tank. His own unprofessional deportment had largely discredited Emerson before this study was prepared. But this study revealshow Emerson achieved sufficient media credibility to have his astonishing and, as it turned out, poorly documented film accepted by public television. For example, both before and after he prepared the film many of Emerson’s articles were printed in The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and, particularly, by the U.S. News and World Report, where he was employed from 1985 to 1989.

 

The New Republic is owned by pro-Israel activist Morton Peretz. The other two are owned by extremely pro-Israel real estate investor MortonZuckerman. Very recently, Zuckerman added the New York Daily News to his media empire after previous efforts to purchase it were interrupted by the mysterious death of British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who had long-standing ties to the Mossad, Israel’s CIA, according to Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky. The death of Maxwell, who was having trouble putting together the newspaper’s purchase price and who already apparently had looted his company’s employee pension funds, resulted from a nighttime fall overboard a few hours after his personal yacht, on which he was the sole passenger, made a brief stop in the Canary Islands.

 

Ostrovsky described Maxwell’s death as a Mossad assassination. Emerson also served as a free-lance reporter for CNN andpublished articles in The New York Times Magazine, the Arizona Republic, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Wall Street Journal (which still occasionally publishes his articles), and various Jewish publications. This study points out that in writing for mainstream publications Emerson is careful to be politically correct by acknowledging that the “terrorists” of whom he writes are deviating from the teachings of Islam, while he drops such disclaimers in writing for journals which share his alarmist views. Emerson’s articles all seem to imply that the “terrorists” he studies are motivated by a profound butgeneralized hatred of the West, and particularly of America. He does not acknowledge the much more widely held view that what unifies such activists is fury at the Israeli occupation of all of Palestine, and that their anger at the United States is a direct result of its virtually unconditional and unquestioning support for successive Israeli governments.

 

This study also documents the sources of funding not only for Emerson’s efforts, but also for those of other anti-Islamic and pro-Israel media endeavors. Contrary to my own initial expectations, none of the publicly acknowledged funding sources seem directly connected to Israel, nor even to the so-called “neoconservatives” who do have such connections and sympathies. Such “neoconservatives” initially identified themselves as “conservatives who voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt.” My own observation is that, virtually without exception, those who identify themselves as “neoconservatives” are nearly full-time apologists for Israel whose abandonment of liberal causes and views resultedfrom their insistence on maintaining sufficient U.S. military strength to intervene, when necessary, to defend Israel. Instead some of the funding for Emerson comes from foundations publicly associated with the extreme U.S. right wing.

 

Upon closer examination, however, it appears that some of the same foundations in the past funded studies that sought to document ties between secular Arab extremists and terrorists and the Soviet Union, raising legitimate questions as to whether their primary concerns were to alert Americans to threats to the United States from the Soviet Union, or to arouse American opposition to left-leaning Arab extremists who threatened Israel. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which provided $100,000 for Emerson’s “Jihad in America,”also has funded a study by Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs, a think tank spun off by directors of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Israel’s principal Washington, DC lobby. Further, this same foundation has also provided grants to the Foreign Policy Research Institute of Philadelphia, then headed by Daniel Pipes and an associate, Khaled Duran, who also was Emerson’s collaborator producing “Jihad in America.”

 

Whether the grants from such foundations to apologists for Israel or Muslimbashers like Pipes, Emerson, and Duran come from overt sympathizers with Israel among the foundation officers or directors (as seems to be the case with the Bradley Foundation) or from “anxious for Armageddon” Christian fundamentalists (sharing the beliefs of Jerry Falwell or Pat Roberts), or both, cannot be documented with certainty. What this study does document, however, are names of these foundations and of some of the other books, films, and studies they have funded. Other such foundationsbesides the Bradley Foundation include the Olin Foundation, which gave Emerson $20,000 in 1993 for a proposed book on Mohammad’s Army: the Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism, Richard Mellon Scaife, whose Carthage Foundation helped fund Emerson’s “Jihad in America” film, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

 

This study points out that all of these foundations also support Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. Since Gaffney’s organization consistently attacked and sought to undermine peace efforts between Israel’s Labor government and Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, this indicates that at least some persons making the grants for all of these groups understand clearly that their funds are being used to support extreme right-wing Israeli causes and undermine land-for-peace proponents in Israel. Lest there be any doubt where Gaffney is coming from, as this study points out, his board of directors includes former AIPAC director Morris J. Amitay. Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy also receives funding from the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation.

 

Moskowitz has funded real estate takeovers in East Jerusalem by Israeli extremists such as Ariel Sharon and is funding Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem’s Ras Al-Amoud neighborhood where Palestinians are being evicted and their residences are being demolished. Something in Common Moskowitz also funded and was present for the 1997 opening of the tunnel along the foundations of the Haram Al-Sharif, the thirdmost holy place in Islam, which set off extremely bloody fighting between Israeli troops and protesting Palestinians and eventually also involved armed intervention against the Israeli forces by Palestinian Authority police. If the above-named foundations all have Gaffney’s organization in common, some of the other organizations which benefit from their grants also are eye-openers. According to the study, Richard Mellon Scaife bankrolls the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Align Foundation which, in turn, provide grants for the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the American Spectator, and Accuracy in Media (AIM).

 

Together with the Scaife foundations, the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Bradley and Olin Foundations are, according to this study, often called the “four sisters of conservative philanthropy.” This study also names the Adolph Coors Foundation, which supports conservative think tanks, and the Koch Family Foundation as following “similar funding patterns for conservative and libertarian causes.” Other pro-Israel or anti-Muslim American and anti-Arab American efforts funded by these foundations provide further disturbing evidence that some of their efforts have little to do with conservative American causes, and much to do with Israeli extremism. For example, the Bradley Foundation funded Robert Kaplan’s widely publicized book, The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite, whose message seemed to be to dismiss critics within the State Department of the long-standing pro-Israel tilt in U.S. foreign policy as, at best, eccentrics and at worst anti-Semites. Kaplan received Olin and Smith Richardson foundation funding for other book projects.

 

The study reports that The Program on National Security Affairs of Dr. Samuel Huntington, originator of much-discussed predictions of a bloody “Clash of Civilizations” between Islam and the West, received $200,000 from the Bradley Foundation in 1990 and, allegedly, $2.5 million in Olin funds. Similarly, the pro-Israel and anti-Arab Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia received between 1990 and 1994, while it was directed by Pipes, an annual grant of $75,000 from Scaife, half a million dollars from Bradley, $60,000 from Olin and nearly $300,000 from Smith Richardson. In the same vein, the Institute for International Studies in Washington, DC, which publishes Khalid Duran’s journal, Trans-State Islam, received in 1993 and 1994 $235,000 from the Bradley, Olin and Smith Richardson Foundations.

 

Just as this study documents the similar funding patterns for pro-Israel projects by the major foundations named above, and the maze of subsidiary foundations they support, it names other journalists and scholarswho allegedly have assisted with pro-Israel projects initiated by Emerson, Pipes, and Duran. Among these are prominent Orientalist scholar Bernard Lewis (whose son, Michael, has been the longtime head of AIPAC’s opposition research department), Patrick Clawson, who formerly was associated with Pipes’

 

Foreign Policy Research Institute and now is associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, and Barry Rubin, an American writer now living in Israel. It could be argued that just as Emerson’s 15 minutes of media fame seem to have passed, other propagandists named in this study may also lose their mainstream media access as their motives are exposed. Similarly, the foundations funding them may lose their credibility as the bias in their donation patterns is revealed. Unfortunately, however, the general public rarely is aware of the source of funding for such “experts” and their studies, and new names and faces undoubtedly will appear to partake of the same tainted grants.

 

Meanwhile, in addition to being the witting or unwitting catalysts for hundreds of attacks on innocent Muslim Americans and their property in many parts of the United States, Emerson and his ilk already have done lasting damage to the credibility of the United States and its legal system. For example, arrests by Israeli authorities on trumped-up charges of American citizens of Palestinian extraction who are visiting their families in the Holy Land are becoming increasingly frequent. In most cases these Arab Americans are subjected to torture until they “confess” to whatever crimes they allegedly have committed. Israel is the only country in the world where the use of torture— which it calls “mild physical coercion”—to obtain confessions not only is practiced but actually is codified in Israeli law. Some of these American citizens presently are serving long prison sentences on the basis of such coerced confessions.

 

While U.S. consular officials in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem eventually obtain access to detained Americans, the Emerson accusations may have contributed to an almost unconscious atmosphere of “where there’s smoke there’s fire” that may reduce the zeal of such American officials to protect the rights of U.S. citizens. Even more corrosive of constitutional rights enjoyed by all American citizens is the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act. This law was passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996 in the wake of terrorist bombings and after videotapes of “Jihad in America”had been circulated to all 435 members of the House of Representatives at Carthage Foundation expense. It permits the use of secret evidence in deportation hearings against resident aliens in the United States who have not yet obtained U.S. citizenship. Several legal residents of the U.S. have languished for as long as three years in prison in various parts of the United States on charges which neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to see, and which are leveled by persons whose identity neither they nor their lawyers are allowed to learn.

 

Such a law, which undoubtedly will be repealed or amended at some future time when sanity prevails, could have been passed only under the conditions of near hysteria that prevailed after the bombings of the ’90s, further whipped up by Emerson’s charges. Since few Americans are aware of the violations of constitutional rights being suffered by resident aliens in the United States, this study fills an urgent need. It exposes how and at whose behest such abridgments of U.S. freedom have come about. Another result of the activitiesof people like Steven Emerson is the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act. Its primary instigator is Michael Horowitz who, like Emerson, is Jewish, although the act’s ostensible purpose is to enact sanctions against countries where Christian minorities suffer discrimination.

 

The act has been criticized by the National Council of Churches, the U.S. State Department, and representatives of such Christian minorities in non-Christian countries as the Copts of Egypt. Nevertheless, the act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 14, 1998. It professes concern about Christians in China and Muslim countries but, revealingly, makes no mention whatsoever of Israeli persecution of the Christians of Palestine, whose leaders would welcome and have specifically solicited such U.S. concern. Interestingly, in the Atlantic Monthly Horowitz is quoted as paying tribute to, in his words, a “handful of people” who, he says, began “the whole transformation of Conservative philosophy.”

 

Those he names are Richard Larry, grant director for the Sarah Scaife Foundation; Michael Joyce, grant director for the Olin Foundation; and Leslie Lenkowsky, “who once controlled grant awards for the Smith Richardson Foundation.” It is significant that he names no individual from the Bradley Foundation, whose primary purpose seems to be the funding of American projects in support of Israel. Among American Muslims, many of whom are highly trained professionals, it has become almost a cliché to fault their U.S. brethren as a whole for lack of concern for their own civil rights and inattention to detail except in matters directly pertaining to individual educational and career advancement.

 

Whether or not such charges have been justified in the past, this study by a small Islamic think tank in the U.S. national capital area is an obvious, and welcome, exception to any such generalizations. It provides a detailed examination of one of the most persistent defamers of American Muslims, as individuals and as a community. This exposé includes a careful documentation of the media outlets that have made themselves available to Steven Emerson and his associates. Even more revealing, and valuable, is the listing of the foundations which support Steven Emerson and the writers and scholars who share his agenda. It is this writer’s hope that some of the directors, trustees, and executives of these foundations will be as profoundly surprised and disturbed as I have been at this exposure of donation patterns common among supposedly conservative U.S. foundations which conform with Israeli objectives and not with the American national interests these foundations profess to defend and uphold.

 

While I have no doubt that the government of Israel can always find ways to make available funds for activities in the United States similar to those of Emerson and his associates, I hope that as a result of the revelations in this study there will be no more funding for such profoundly un-American, even anti-American, activities from at least some of the foundations cited by the authors of this study. Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0999/9909138.html

 

 

DIVERSITY VS. FREEDOM

 

Jihad on the Campus By James Fulford (With in twenty-four hours of this controversy, the web site of the student paper where the original outrage took place had vanished from the World Wide Web, causing some of the links below to vanish. This may be because the University is taking its summer vacation, but it’s common for universities to destroy the web archives of student papers that offend against diversity by being diverse. See The Orwellian Memory Hole:Vanishing Archives. By Wendy McElroy.)

 

On February 19, Omar Siddiqui, a law student at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall Law School published an article which spoke approvingly of women being flogged for adultery (as long as the skin wasn’t broken), and quoting the old law that, "In cases where a child has been born which is not even seen as direct evidence of fornication, and the mother is breast feeding the child, she must not be punished for fear that the child will lose a mother."

 

Turned around, that sentence means that it’s OK under Islamic law to flog a nursing mother, possibly to death, if her child was born as the result of adultery. He also compared the flogging of a Nigerian woman to the North American problems feminists are always complaining about: While one girl in Nigeria is wrongly punished, thousands of women in the Canadian system are denied equal access and fair treatment under the law. Most people can see a basic qualitative difference between 100 lashes for adultery, and 78 cents on the dollar, but not Omar Siddiqui. Several people complained about this, including Raha Shahidsaless and Demitry Papasotiriou. Papasotiriou used the expression "pathetic and irrelevant religious dogma" and said that there was "NOTHING, absolutely nothing spiritual about that Islamic faith" [sic].

 

All of which, you would think, would be instantly agreed with by any University Administration concerned with religious freedom (non-existent in the Moslem world), or the status of women. In fact, we should be reading that Mr. Siddiqui has been ridden out of town on a rail by enraged feminists, like Skipper Ireson in the poem. But no! According to a May 1, 2000 National Post story, Peter W. Hogg, dean of Osgoode Hall, said he was embarrassed by the response to this anti-female ranting, and he wrote letters saying that he was "sorry that the editors chose to publish the article" criticizing Islam’s anti-woman, anti-freedom laws.

 

"The article was essentially a criticism of Islamic law but it also made some unjustified criticisms of the Islamic belief system. It was very offensive to Muslim students," he said. "I started to get just a torrent of e-mails from Muslims all over North America." Papasotiriou issued an apology of sorts (Intolerance for Intolerance), partly in response to "anonymous and threatening e-mails." But he still feels that that certain Islamic tendencies are to be condemned: To those who uphold inhumane customs and practices based in accordance with their religious teachings that they attempt to qualify as just and humane, I recommend to them to live in a country, if only briefly, where my aunt was murdered when she was gunned down at a bus stop because she was not veiled and where the spokesperson for the police noted that she provoked the attack (July 14, 1994, Algeria).

 

With that sort of attitude, you can see why Dean Hogg’s university is "investigating complaints that the article breached the school's code of non-academic conduct that prohibits hatemongering." After all, Algeria’s local custom of shooting down unveiled women is a Third World custom. And as such, it is above criticism (by Westerners, that is. Muslim women can complain if they like.). Terry Heinrichs of York University wrote a letter to the National Post asking who Dean Hogg thought he was "to legislate what qualifies as unjustified criticisms of Islam?" I presume Mr. Heinrichs is next on the list of people to be disciplined.

 

He’s been studying American history, and has picked up foreign ideas about "Free Speech" and "Civil Liberties." There’s an organization called CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR was established to "promote a positive image of Islam and Muslims in America." Their Canadian chapter may have been the inspiration behind the e-mails that Dean Hogg received. CAIR believes that "misrepresentations of Islam are most often the result of ignorance on the part of non-Muslims and reluctance on the part of Muslims to articulate their case." That’s fine with me. I’m opposed to misrepresentations myself. Unfortunately, it’s not misrepresentations and ignorant prejudice that CAIR fights on a daily basis.

 

They’re fighting the truth, and any criticism of Islamic belief or practice. Daniel Pipes has been subjected to a lot of intimidation and so have many others who have dared to criticize Islam. Steven Emerson, producer of Jihad in America, is actually in hiding. But it would be unfair to blame CAIR for York University’s actions in this case. The Canadian academic community is quite capable of rolling over and playing dead, or worse, without being asked. However, if Dean Hogg wants to make the Osgoode Hall Law School acceptable by Middle Eastern standards, he still has a long way to go.

 

Here is short list of suggestions for reform: No beer on campus, offenders to be flogged. Christian and Jewish chapels to be pulled down, so that no stone shall stand upon another, and their chaplains expelled (with a flogging). All women of any description whatever to be removed from the campus, except for the students’ wives. (Up to four in number per student but no concubines.) All the books in the library to be burned, with the exception of the Koran. (Gibbon says that the Caliph Omar did not do this to the Library of Alexandria, but that doesn’t mean Dean Hogg can’t do it.) Finally, Dean Hogg should change his name, the sound of which is offensive to True Believers, who consider the pig to be ritually unclean. These measures should propel his University both forward into the 21st Century and backward into the 6th. May 2, 2001 http://www.vdare.com/fulford/diversity_freedom_gihad.htm

 

PUBLICATIONS OF THE CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY NO. 94-D 115

DECISION BRIEF 21 November 1994 'JIHAD'!

 

P.B.S. SHOW DETAILS ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS' WAR ON AMERICA -- AND WHY U.S TROOPS ON GOLAN WILL BE AT RISK

Steven Emerson's Crusade By John F. Sugg Did self-styled anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson help push the world toward nuclear war?On Sunday, June 28, a sensational story appeared in the British newspaper The Observer: 'Pakistan was planning nuclear first strike on India.' The stunning revelation that South Asia was on the brink of thermonuclear war was credited to an unnamed 'senior Pakistani weapons scientist who has defected.' The next day, papers on the Indian subcontinent were full of the news. Shock spread and distrust mounted. 'The scenario is frightening,' stated the Times of India (6/29/98).

 

Florida, newspaper. Emerson's Jihad in America video had, in part, targeted Islamic scholars at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Following Emerson's http://www.defencejournal.com/globe/nov99/crusade.htm

 

ISRAEL UNDER SEIGE - RADICAL ISLAM: THE ENEMY IN OUR MIDST

CNS Commentary - by Patrick Goodenough - October 18, 2000

(CNSNews.com) - On Monday morning, an orthodox Jewish student traveling in a bus in London was stabbed more than 20 times in an attack British police said may be linked to the situation in the Middle East. An Arab man has been charged with attempted murder.

 

That same day, leaders of Britain's 280,000-strong Jewish community called on the authorities to arrest militant Muslims in the UK who have been calling for Jews to be murdered. Leaflets had been distributed, said the UK Board of Jewish Deputies, in at least three major British cities during the recent violence in Israel and the Palestinian self-rule areas.

 

They included such slogans as: "The final hour will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews."

Last Friday, outside London's main mosque, similar sentiments were expressed in public. "Kill the Jews," shouted several hundred demonstrating Muslims as leaders on a makeshift platform burned American and Israeli flags.

 

The demonstration was led by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian-born cleric who issued a written statement calling for the murder of Jews. Describing President Clinton as a "murderer" and Ehud Barak and Tony Blair his "co-conspirators," it called U.S. "army, embassies, bases and planes" legitimate targets for Muslims worldwide.

 

"Down, down USA, USA, you will pay, Osama is on his way," the protestors chanted, invoking the anti-western terror chief Osama bin Laden.

 

"Bomb, bomb Tel Aviv, bomb, bomb the White House, bomb, bomb Downing Street."

A line of British policemen stood impassively by, trying to prevent the blockading of a busy road in front of the mosque but otherwise taking no action as the waves of incitement washed over them.

"There are six million Muslims in the UK," one man shouted through a megaphone. "We must stand and fight against the Jews."

 

Actually there are closer to two million Muslims in Britain, and the vast majority of them would repudiate what they would see as the misinterpretation of their religion.

 

But it is the vocal minority, stirred up by such leaders as Bakri, who are setting the agenda, and creating a climate in which 20-year David Meyers is stabbed repeatedly with a six-inch blade on a public bus. Britain's Jewish community is on its highest alert since the 1991 Gulf War because of threats linked to the Middle East violence.

 

(In France - 750,000 Jews, 3-4 million Muslims - some 80 attacks have occurred on Jewish property over the past fortnight. Jewish leaders have asked the government to deploy troops to protect synagogues if the situation worsens, while mainstream Islamic leaders have said the perpetrators are not representatives of the Muslim faith.)

 

In response to Myers' stabbing, Bakri had this to say: "'I warn and advise the Jewish community in the UK to distance themselves from the state of Israel. Muslims are not after the Jewish nations and communities around the world ... [but] if you support Israel financially, verbally or physically you will become part of the conflict."

 

It's not clear how Myers was expressing such support for Israel. But he was wearing a Jewish kippa and reading from a book of psalms - apparently sufficient association with the enemy as far as his assailant was concerned.

 

Bakri is a free man, free to disseminate his vitriolic literature and stir up his followers. There are several other UK-based militants with similar agendas, including the imam (religious leader) of a north London mosque, Abu Hamza al-Masri, whose activities have been the subject of concerned questions in the British parliament.

 

TARGET AMERICA

And it's not just happening in Britain.

As far back in 1994, a PBS documentary called Jihad in America presented video footage and documents which investigative reporter Steven Emerson said proved America has become fertile ground for militants looking for recruits and raising funds for Mideast terror.

 

Footage from several Islamic gatherings around the country shows leaders calling openly for jihad (holy war) against Jews, Christians, and America. One of them, named as Fayiz Azram, tells a meeting in Atlanta: "Blood must flow. There must be widows, there must be orphans. Hands and limbs must be cut, and the limbs and blood must be spread everywhere."

 

The rhetoric could come straight out of a gory description of the aftermath of a Hamas suicide-bombing on a public bus in Jerusalem. Indeed, Emerson argued that legitimate Muslim organizations operating in the U.S. serve as "fronts" for rejectionist groups like Hamas and Hizballah.

 

Emerson's documentary won favorable reviews - the Los Angeles Times in November 1994 called his reporting "dogged and more than slightly gutsy" - but Muslim leaders slammed it.

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which describes itself "a Washington-based Islamic advocacy group," described Emerson in a mailing five months ago as someone with a "long history of defamatory and inaccurate attacks on the Islamic community in this country."

 

Emerson has stressed that he clearly differentiates between militant and mainstream Islam. But State Department figures show that 98.3 per cent of Americans killed or wounded in terrorism between 1993 and 1999 were attacked either in the Middle East and South Asia, or by perpetrators associated with those two regions.

 

That reality, says Emerson, is "not an invention of Hollywood nor a stereotype but rather reflects an accurate and sober assessment of the truth."

 

Nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote in the LA Times this week that the government's primary obligation was to protect and defend the U.S. and its constitution from all enemies, domestic and foreign.

 

Referring to radical Islam, he said: "It's time for a new approach to an enemy that, unlike communism, is unlikely to collapse under its own weight. Rather it is intent on making sure we collapse and is willing to die by the thousands to ensure that happens."

 

The freedoms enjoyed by Westerners are what make their societies so attractive to Islamic militants. But a situation where rights and freedoms are exercised without accompanying responsibilities and duties creates a breeding ground for extremism.

 

In Britain, new terrorism legislation enacted last July widens the current definition of terrorism to include violence for religious and ideological ends, and creates a new criminal offence of inciting acts of terror outside the UK.

 

But the recent introduction of a wide-ranging Human Rights Act is going to make it even more difficult than ever to enforce the law, deport troublemakers, or clamp down on militant organizations.

As Sheikh Bakri told me several months ago, "We will use your democracy to destroy your democracy."

It's time the West woke up.

(Patrick Goodenough is the London Bureau Chief for CNSNews.com)

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