Moderate Islam is the answer

Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, former teacher of History at many eminent Universities, with a doctorate from Harvard University, and author of 12 books that have been translated into 33 languages, has been recognized as one of Harvard’s 100 most influential living graduates. He visited Perth, Western Australia last week, and I attended all 5 of his speaking engagements here.

Pipes’ opposition to “Islamism” (radical Islam) is sometimes misunderstood. He doesn’t oppose Islam or Muslims. He says:

"It's a mistake to blame Islam, a religion 14 centuries old, for the evil that should be ascribed to militant Islam, a totalitarian ideology less than a century old. Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution."

He points out that Islamic society was a global leader for centuries since Mohammed, but has waned in the last two centuries. It is now least successful on virtually every index (freedom, longevity, innovation, economy etc).

Islamism developed as a response to this failure, at first taking its example from fascism (Mussolini) and communism (Lenin) in the 1920s, but overlaying “Islamic” content. It seeks to return to the heyday of Islamic societies and eventually to global Islamic hegemony by imposing and enforcing an extreme, violent, totalitarian interpretation of Islam.

In 1979 it graduated from a phenomenon of merely academic curiosity to become a serious strategic challenge to the free world, when the Islamic Revolution in Iran gave it control of a major Islamic state actor. Although Iran is not a powerful state like the Soviet Union or Germany was, its aspirations to add the nuclear threat to its arsenal of state-sponsored terrorism around the world, pose a grave danger to the free world.

However in addition to terrorism, violence and the nuclear threat, Pipes is even more concerned about Islamist infiltration of the free world using democratic freedoms and lawful means to acquire power. The "war's center of gravity has shifted from force of arms to the hearts and minds of citizens" he says.

Examples of this infiltration include Turkey, Pakistan and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Even the terrorist group Hamas (like Hitler) gained power in elections before it seized total power from its opponents by force. Moreover, Islamism is a utopian movement that has an attractive appeal to some. Proof of this can be found in the increasing number of Western converts to radical Islam. Pipes estimates that there are probably over 150 million Islamists today - more than all the communists and fascists who ever lived. Thus, it is dangerous to ignore the threat of Islamist infiltration of our free nations.

The Western response to this strategic challenge should be in alliance with moderate Muslims. What is needed, Pipes suggests, is a modern, more liberal re-interpretation of Islamic scriptures which would integrate women, gays and other minorities as full members of society, and would co-exist harmoniously with other religions, not seek to convert or subjugate them by force.

In summary: “Militant Islam is the problem, but moderate Islam is the solution."

Hamas mass murderer got what he deserved, all else is trivia

From vexnews.com, February 26, 2010, by Andrew Landeryou:

If Israel brought the Hamas mass murderer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh to justice – and we’ll never whether they did or whether he fell foul of fellow terrorists – then we can only celebrate.

How they did it is a tenth-order issue.

Why they did it is to stop Hamas blowing buses full of school-children, crowded pizza parlours, airplanes and airports, kindergartens and beach resorts.

Kevin Rudd and his blow-dried Foreign Minister Stephen Smith are good men and they have a role to play on the national stage  ...Protecting the integrity of our passports is a part of the job, we suppose.

...Being a victim of a one-off identity theft is obviously not nice. And we can entirely understand the confusion and unhappiness about the individuals in that position. We’re sure not even the knuckle-headed authorities in the Dubai one-man dictatorship will hold them responsible for the death of the Hamas arms-buyer.

But after everyone has had a Bex and a good lie down, then surely the paramount issue is the need for Israel to protect itself from those who wish to terrorise it into madness, blast Jerusalem with nukes and drive six million Jews into the sea.

The world continues to apply a double-standard to Israel.

Where’s the front-page outrage when missiles land in southern Israel? ...

Where’s the Prime Ministerial or DFAT frenzy over the nuclear arsenal being slowly and hopefully incompetently assembled by Iran’s perverted regime? ...

...Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is dead.
We don’t know why he was killed. But if Israel did it, then that’s fine by me. If it had been possible to do so, I don’t doubt the preference would have been to extract him from the one-man dictatorship of Dubai and bring him to Israel to see how many of his blood-thirsty ghoul comrades he’d give up.

If you really believe that the Holocaust ought happen never again, if you’re really Israel’s friend as I’ve seen Kevin Rudd and Stephen Smith insist over the years then you might consider that true friends stick even when slight offence has been caused. True friends don’t act opportunistically to denigrate the other. True friends see the big picture.

Whining about identity theft, the integrity of passports and such things is not the act of a friend.

It shows a contemptible lack of understanding about the reality of life in the Middle East and situation Israel is put in by those who seek to destroy it.

...From the comfort of suburban Melbourne, I am in no position to second-guess how the brilliant Israel security forces and services do their work. But I thank God they do. And while debate will rage in Israel about whether operations against scum like Mahmoud al-Mabhouh are worth all the grief, real friends of Israel are just relieved that there’s one less genocidal maniac on the loose.

Zionist Muslim Sheikh

From Israelnationalnews.com, 28 December 09, by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz:

Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi
Israel News photo: (file)

...Making the trip from Italy to Hevron for the second time in recent years, the head of the Italian Muslim Assembly, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi, met with local Jewish leaders [of Hevron] in a show of solidarity. The sheikh, an Italian national who received his Islamic education from leading mainstream Saudi and Egyptian Sunni institutions, believes that his religion obligates its followers to support Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. In support of his position, Sheikh Palazzi quotes Koranic passages and traditions that affirm God's assignment of this land for the Jews.

...During Sheikh Palazzi's visit to Hevron, community leaders discussed with him ways in which Islamist fundamentalism might be curbed. "He emphasized Saudi Arabia as responsible for extremism," Arnon said. "It funds mosques in Europe and the United States and then determines who will be allowed to speak in them. In this way, Islam becomes more and more extreme, which is a dangerous trend."

In his activities in Italy, Arnon explained, Palazzi teaches what he calls "the real Islam", which he believes includes tolerance, Jewish-Muslim fellowship and Zionism. "He even organized a protest outside the Iranian embassy in Rome when Ahmadinejad talked about destroying Israel," Arnon added.

Sheikh Palazzi, who is also the Muslim co-founder of the Islam-Israel Fellowship of the Root & Branch Association, told his Hevron hosts that Italian Jews are now shifting their political positions further to the Right. In the past, according to Palazzi, Jews in Italy were primarily supporters of the Left, but a slow change in underway. Arnon said that Sheikh Palazzi believes his efforts, as a non-Jew supporting Israel, have contributed to that shift.

Asked about threats against the Zionist sheikh Arnon was adamant that he was perfectly safe in Hevron. "He walked around [here] without bodyguards," he said. However, Arnon said that he would probably be unable to openly enter Gaza or Ramallah under current circumstances.

Palazzi's visit in Israel continues for another few days, during which he will be making his way to other communities in Judea and Samaria to express his support for continued Jewish development and sovereignty in those regions.

The Course of Obama's Anti-Israel Policy

The following is a reader comment, submitted by Bishop E W Jackson Sr (United States), Bishop of Exodus Faith Ministries, author and retired attorney, Jun 29, 2009, on the following item on the Daniel Pipes Blog: "Barack Obama and Islam: An Ongoing Saga" (January 19, 2009, updated May 25, 2009) [my own emphasis added - SL]:

Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama's policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see.

All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.

We heard it in Jesse Jackson's "HYMIE town" remark years ago during his presidential campaign. We heard it most recently in Jeremiah Wright's remark about "them Jews" not allowing Obama to speak with him. I hear it from my own Muslim family members who see the problem in the Middle East as a "Jew" problem.

Growing up in a small, predominantly black urban community in Pennsylvania, I heard the comments about Jewish shop owners. They were "greedy cheaters" who could not be trusted, according to my family and others in the neighborhood. I was too young to understand what it means to be Jewish, or know that I was hearing anti-Semitism. These people seemed nice enough to me, but others said they were "evil". Sadly, this bigotry has yet to be eradicated from the black community.

In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Most African Americans are not followers of "The Nation", but many have a quiet respect for its leader because, they say, "he speaks the truth" and "stands up for the black man". What they mean of course is that he viciously attacks the perceived "enemies" of the black community – white people and Jews. Even some self-described Christians buy into his demagoguery.

The question is whether Obama, given his Muslim roots and experience in Farrakhan's Chicago, shares this antipathy for Israel and Jewish people. Is there any evidence that he does.

First, the President was taught for twenty years by a virulent anti-Semite, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In the black community it is called "sitting under". You don't merely attend a church, you "sit under" a Pastor to be taught and mentored by him. Obama "sat under" Wright for a very long time. He was comfortable enough with Farrakhan – Wright's friend – to attend and help organize his "Million Man March". I was on C-Span the morning of the march arguing that we must never legitimize a racist and anti-Semite, no matter what "good" he claims to be doing. Yet a future President was in the crowd giving Farrakhan his enthusiastic support.

The classic left wing view is that Israel is the oppressive occupier, and the Palestinians are Israel's victims. Obama is clearly sympathetic to this view. In speaking to the "Muslim World," he did not address the widespread Islamic hatred of Jews. Instead he attacked Israel over the growth of West Bank settlements. Surely he knows that settlements are not the crux of the problem. The absolute refusal of the Palestinians to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is the insurmountable obstacle. That's where the pressure needs to be placed, but this President sees it differently. He also made the preposterous comparison of the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation".

Obama clearly has Muslim sensibilities. He sees the world and Israel from a Muslim perspective. His construct of "The Muslim World" is unique in modern diplomacy. It is said that only The Muslim Brotherhood and other radical elements of the religion use that concept. It is a call to unify Muslims around the world. It is rather odd to hear an American President use it. In doing so he reveals more about his thinking than he intends. The dramatic policy reversal of joining the unrelentingly ant-Semitic, anti-Israel and pro-Islamic UN Human Rights Council is in keeping with the President's truest – albeit undeclared – sensibilities

Those who are paying attention and thinking about these issues do not find it unreasonable to consider that President Obama is influenced by a strain of anti-Semitism picked up from the black community, his leftist friends and colleagues, his Muslim associations and his long period of mentorship under Jeremiah Wright.

If this conclusion is accurate, Israel has some dark days ahead. For the first time in her history, she may find the President of the United States siding with her enemies. Those who believe as I do that Israel must be protected had better be ready for the fight. We are.

NEVER AGAIN!

Replacement Theology (still)

From BESA* Center Perspectives Papers No. 87, July 28, 2009, by Mordechai Kedar**:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state, or as the rightful homeland of the Jewish People, is a necessary condition of any future Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty – according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Arab and Islamic leaders have rejected this demand. The reason for Arab inability and unwillingness to consider Netanyahu's demand is the fact that the Islamic world is ideologically incapable of according legitimacy to the State of Israel, for deep-seated religious, nationalistic and historical reasons.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has set out five conditions for the conclusion of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal involving establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The first, and the hardest for the Arab world to accept, is Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish nation-state, or as the rightful homeland of the Jewish People. In fact, it is close to impossible, because Islam is intrinsically incapable of according legitimacy to the State of Israel for the embedded ideological reasons detailed below.

The First Component: Religion
According to Islam, the Jewish religion was invalidated by the birth of Christianity, which in turn was invalidated by the arrival of Islam. This concept was set down in the Koran: “Surely the true religion with Allah is Islam” (Chapter 3, Verse 19). Thus Allah does not recognize any other religion besides Islam. Islam – according to its own perception – brought the message of truth to the world, after the Jews and Christians changed and distorted the word of Allah given to them. In light of their conduct, Allah removed their religious role and theological message and passed it to the Muslims, who are the sole “believers.” Thus, Islam’s basic approach is not that it came to the world to exist alongside other religions as equal among equals, but to replace them.

A conclusion from this is that Judaism as a religion has lost its significance and role in the world. If so, how could one establish a Jewish state? And how could one claim that land can be holy to Judaism after this religion has been declared null and void? And since when do Jews – members of a meaningless religion – have the right to a state in any land, after they betrayed Allah and refused to accept Din al-Haqq "the religion of truth," Islam? In practice, Islam recognized the Jews as “people of the Book” and not as infidels, although on condition that they live under Islamic rule as "dhimmis" – protégés of Islam, and “pay the Jizya (per capita tax) with willing submission.” (Koran Chapter 9, Verse 29). However, once they conquered land, and killed and deported Muslims, they lost the privileges granted to them by the “Pact of Omar.”

Therefore, Israel’s demand that Islam recognize it as a state for the Jewish People contradicts the most basic tenets of Islam, which view Judaism as null and void. Israel’s demand actually requires Islam to recognize Judaism as a legitimate religion even though God himself stated in the Koran that “whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, will never be accepted” (Chapter 3, Verse 85).

The Second Component: Nationality
Judaism is perceived in the Islamic world as a communal religion, without either an ethnic or national basis. There are other instances of this. The people living in Iraq consist of many religious groups: Muslims, Christians, Sabaiis, Mandeans, Yazidis, and Jews. They are all members of the Arab nation, all sons of the Iraqi people and they all have a place in Iraqi land. There are Arab Iraqi Muslims, Arab Iraqi Christians and Arab Iraqi Jews, all members of religious communities which are part of the Iraqi people. The same goes for Yemen – which has Arab Yemenite Muslims and Arab Yemenite Jews, and for Morocco and the rest of the Islamic states, which have Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Furthermore, from an Islamic perspective this is a way to view other countries: the Jew in Poland is Polish from an ethnic perspective and Jewish from a religious perspective. The French Jew is a member of the French nation who practices Judaism. Thus, there are no ethnic Jews in the world, just as there are no ethnic Christians or Muslims.

Suddenly, Jewish communities declare that they are one people, sharing the same ethnic background, as if all the Jews in the world look alike, speak the same language, share customs and cuisine, and dress in similar fashion! This is the "great lie" of the Zionist movement, according to Islamists: creating a Jewish people out of nothing, and trying to convince the world at large that a Jewish People does indeed exist. Even worse, these Jewish communities have decided to migrate to Palestine, to "displace" the original inhabitants and to establish a state, whose name has no connection to the Jewish people but to the mythological Sons of Israel. So, from the Islamic perspective, how can one recognize this state as the "State of the Jewish People” – an ethnic group that does not really exist?

The Third Component: Land
Palestine was sanctified as Muslim land by two acts. The first was its conquest during the period of Khalif Omar bin al-Khattab in the third decade of the seventh century. This placed Palestine within the group of countries which were under Islamic rule, like Spain, Sicily and part of the Balkans, and which must be returned to the bosom of Islam. The second act was the Islamic tradition which claims that the Khalif Omar declared Palestine, from the sea to the Jordan, as Waqf (holy endowment) land, consecrated for all Muslim generations forever. So how can the Jews – whose religion is illegitimate and who are not an ethnic people – demand that the Muslims recognize the conquest of the land of Palestine which is holy to Muslims alone?

Ideological Realities
Thus, according to Islam, the State of Israel is not legitimate. From a religious point of view, Judaism is void. The Jewish nation is an invention of the Zionist movement. The land called "Israel" is considered Islamic Waqf land, consecrated for Muslims.

Netanyahu’s insistence on recognition of the state as a Jewish nation-state contradicts the Islamic faith, and questions the very essence of Islam, whose relevance is based on the invalidity of Judaism (and Christianity as well).

Therefore, there is no escape from the conclusion that Israel’s struggle for survival is religiously based, even if externally it assumes the form of a territorial struggle. It does not matter what its size, Israel will never gain recognition by the Arab and Muslim world as a legitimate state. Similarly, international documents which legitimize the "Jewish State," such as United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, are viewed by Muslims as illegitimate.

Many say: “You are turning a territorial conflict into a religious one,” when they mean to say that territorial concessions would facilitate the recognition of the Arabs and Muslims in the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Such a statement assumes that the Arab and Muslim world is as secular as our own, and shares our concepts, values and priorities. This is the result of Israeli and Western ignorance of all that is related to Islam and the Arab world, derived from the fact that Westerners do not understand Arabic and Arab and Islamic culture. Israelis and Westerners alike are not exposed to the harsh truths which are expressed in the local tongues, and are well-concealed by spokesmen of “inter-religious dialogue.”

Recognition of Israel as a legitimate Jewish nation-state has no hope or chance as long as Islam perceives itself – and itself alone – as “the true religion with Allah.”
______________________________________________

*BESA Perspectives is published through the generosity of the Littauer Foundation

**Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a research associate at the BESA Center and a lecturer in the departments of Arabic and Middle East Studies at Bar-Ilan University, is a 25-year veteran of IDF Military Intelligence specializing in Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians and Islamic groups.

[US] Pres. Obama Speaks to the Muslim World From Cairo

From C-Span Video, 4/6/09:

TodayPres. Obama delivered a speech on U.S.-Muslim relations from Cairo University. The President called for renewed Middle East peace talks as well as an agenda for economic and social development in the region. Washington, DC

Click here to see a video of the entire 55 minute speech. The section on Israel is 23-33 minutes into the speech.

Obama seeks popularity in the Muslim world

Prof. Barry Rubin (GLORIA, May 17, 2009) asks:

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,
Whose the most popular statesman of all?
Who Cares?

...If President Barack Obama actually succeeds in making himself more popular among Arabs and Muslims, what material advantage would it give the United States? [See below for Prof Rubin's assessment.]

Stephen Collinson, AFP, 1/6/09, explains:

President Barack Obama will journey to the center of Arab-Muslim civilization this week, to begin the daunting task of draining deep mistrust of the United States felt across the Islamic world.

In Egypt on Thursday, Obama will make a personal address to the world's Muslims, harnessing his own ancestral ties to Islam and globalizing his message of change in an speech rich in trademark political ambition.

...Obama targeted reconciliation with Islam and rigorous Middle East diplomacy from his first moments in office.

...This trip's first stop, on Wednesday, will be Saudi Arabia, for talks with King Abdullah, seeking Arab support for US peace efforts. But the highlight will be the speech at the University of Cairo, co-hosted by Al-Azhar University, an ancient hub of Islamic scholarship.

..."I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world," Obama said last week.

...Some analysts predict though Obama may fall short.

...In 2004, a survey by WorldPublicOpinion.org, based at the University of Maryland, found just four percent of Egyptians had a favourable opinion of the United States. A McClatchy/Ipsos poll this month found that only 33 percent of those surveyed in six Arab countries had a favorable opinion of the United States

..."There's nothing Barack Obama could say to Muslims on June 4th that will make the United States popular, and he shouldn't try," said Jon Alterman, of the Center of Strategic and International Studies. "The underlying interests are simply not allied with the policies that many Muslims around the world would like to see the United States pursue."

"We're going to have to agree to disagree, and that's the first task for the president -- to frame US policy in a way that takes some of the passion out of widespread hostility to the United States.

Prof Rubin agrees. If Barack Obama actually succeeds in making himself more popular among Arabs and Muslims, what material advantage would it give the United States? He suggests considering the following points:

--All of these [Islamic] regimes are dictatorships and so popular opinion is of very limited importance.

--Publics are very hostile to America and the West and will not be easily moved by the charm of an American president unless he does things far beyond any possible policy he might follow.

Bashing Israel won't transform this opinion.

--The impressions of U.S. policies and leaders among these groups are mediated by state-controlled media which are hostile for reasons of national or regime interests, and intellectual elites which tend to be carriers of either Arab nationalism or Islamism, world views that have a systematic antagonism to the United States.

--Islamists and radicals such as Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhoods view America in all its varieties and guises as an enemy. No matter what Obama says or does they will deem it a trick. Unless, of course, he gives them concessions in which case they will take them, see him as weak, and give nothing back. That isn't popularity; that's contempt.

--Middle East leaders emphasize a realist, power-oriented model of politics. Obama wanting to be popular is simply incomprehensible to them. At best, they will attribute this to naivete and weakness. Doubting that he will be strong in protecting them they will actually do less for the United States. That isn't popularity; that's fear that you're on the losing side.

So no matter how high Obama gets his popularity in polls-which will be celebrated in the American media and in Washington DC as a great victory-nobody in the region will do more to help him or give him more as a result.

If you need a test experiment for this assertion, think about Europe. Europeans love Obama; Europe is an American ally. European societies are democracies close to America in culture and world view. And yet when Obama asked European countries for cooperation on various issues ranging from economic revival to Afghanistan they gave him nothing.

...International politics isn't high school. Popularity doesn't matter....

“Dialogue” with Islam

From ICJS by Raphael Israeli, Saturday March 28, 2009:

On the eve of this Passover, 2009, we are faced with announcements from the British government, to the effect that it has ceased dealing with the major Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), and that the Jewish organizations of France have discontinued their “dialogue” with French Muslims. In both instances, the reason cited is the same. It is the duplicitous game the Muslim groups have been playing: on the one hand seeking “dialogue” with their partners, as a means of coexistence and smoothing over difficulties in communication; but on the other hand supporting Hamas, which wants no dialogue with Israel.

The non-Muslim parties in these “dialogues” have been late to wake up to the reality that Muslim culture understands “dialogue” not as a means to facilitate rapprochement and understanding through negotiation and clarification, but as a means to lend legitimacy to the monologue it wishes its partners to hear and to heed. Now, after years of empty encounters, the non-Muslim participants finally understand and they have withdrawn from that exercise in goodwill , realising that the other party does not respond in kind.

Some naïve minds in the West have believed that dialogue and negotiation with Muslim radicals can and will alter attitudes and lead to coexistence between Muslims and their rivals. ...But while Europeans have regularly entered a “dialogue” with Muslims in good faith, fully intending to find common ground with their often unruly Muslim interlocutors—for the Muslims, “dialogue” means something else entirely. For them, it signifies the submission of a lesser culture and religion to their own superior one, a culture they seek to impose on others.

Muslims hope to inspire in Westerners and Israelis, conversion to an Islamic view of the world. Anything short of that is regarded by them as an abject “failure of dialogue,” and a signal to resort to threats of violence or acts of terrorism. They are well-practiced at both. Apart from the U.S., most Western nations believe nothing is worth fighting for, and they do not have the stomach for a fight of unlimited duration. They would rather capitulate than investigate what tolerance, understanding, dialogue, and peace really means to the Islamists...

...When the President of Iran vows to eliminate the Jewish people and to wipe Israel off the map, none of those dialoguing Muslim organizations raises a voice in protest; none also protested when Christian churches were torched, as a matter of course, throughout the Muslim world, or when the Tomb of Joseph and the Jericho synagogues were burned and destroyed by Palestinians during the Intifadah.

Only hurting the reputation of Muhammed matters, and justifies the use of violence, whilst the very notion of respect for other religions, simply does not exist.

Therefore, the purpose of dialogue is only to instill respect of Islam into western minds, to which the recently adopted resolution of the Human Rights Commission in Geneva, plainly attests. As more and more western and Jewish organizations come to understand what the meaning of “dialogue” with their Muslim partners actually means, they may at last, also learn how to make it more egalitarian, reciprocal, and perhaps also effective.

Go to the ICJS web site to read the full article.

Demographic implosion in Muslim societies

From THE JERUSALEM POST, Oct. 26, 2008, by YORAM ETTINGER:

... the UN Population Division reports a sharp decline of fertility rates (number of births per woman) in Muslim and Arab countries, excluding Afghanistan and Yemen.

The myth of "doubling population every 20 years" has been shattered ....

...The director-general of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura, stated, during a UNESCO conference on "Population: From Explosion to Implosion," that "there is an abrupt slowdown in the rate of growth... also in many countries where women have only limited access to education and employment... There is not the slightest reason to assume that the decline in fertility will miraculously stop just at replacement level (2.1 births per woman)... Before 2000, the young always outnumbered their elders; for some years now it has been the other way around."

THE collapse of fertility rates in Muslim countries is a derivative of modernization and Westernization, rapid urbanization and internal security concerns by dictators fearing the consequences of the widening gap between population growth and economic growth. As a result, the UN Population Division has reduced its 2050 population projections by 25 percent, from 12 billion to 9 billion, possibly shrinking to 7.4 billion.

For instance, the fertility rate in Iran - the flagship of radical Islam - has declined from nine births per woman, 30 years ago, to 1.8 births in 2007. The Muslim religious establishment has also played a key role in decreasing fertility rates in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, from eight and seven births per woman 30 years ago, to less than four and less than 2.5 respectively in 2007.
Jordan, which is demographically close to Judea and Samaria, and Syria have demonstrated a diminished fertility rate: from eight, 30 years ago, to less than 3.5 in 2007. A substantial dive of fertility rates in Muslim countries - trending toward two births per woman - is documented by the Population Resource Center in Washington, DC.

...THE Bennett Zimmerman-led American-Israel Demographic Research Group (AIDRG) has documented a similar demographic trend among the Arab population of Judea and Samaria (currently four births per woman, and trending downward).

...The sharp lowering of fertility rate among "Green Line" (pre-1967 Israel) Arabs, from nine births per woman in 1969 to 3.5 in 2007, has been the outcome of their successful integration into Israel's education, employment, commerce, health, banking, cultural, political and sports infrastructures. The annual number of Arab births stabilized at approximately 39,000 between 1995-2007. The Arab fertility rate converges swiftly toward the Jewish fertility rate (2.8 births per woman).

ON the other hand, Israel's Jewish demography has been non-normative as far as the impact of education and income levels on the level of fertility rates is concerned. The annual number of Jewish births (including among those immigrants from the former USSR who have yet to be recognized as Jews by the rabbinate) rose by 40% between 1995-2007.

The number of Jewish births has increased from 69% of total births in 1995 to 74% in 2006 and 75% in 2007. The secular sector - and particularly the immigrants from the former Soviet Union - has been by and large responsible for such an impressive rise.

The Jewish demographic tailwind is bolstered by the (highly under-utilized) potential of immigration - which has increased due to the global economic collapse - from the former USSR, the US, West Europe, Latin America, South Africa, etc.

Recent demographic trends bode well for the solid, long-term Jewish majority of 67% within the "Green Line" and in Judea and Samaria, compared with a 33% and 8% Jewish minority in 1947 and 1900 respectively between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Israel's policy-makers and public opinion-molders should base their assessments on thoroughly-documented demographic optimism and not on baseless demographic fatalism, in order to avoid erroneous assumptions, which yield erroneous and self-destructive policy decisions.

Suspicious "Charities"

From The Australian, August 08, 2008 by Richard Kerbaj:

Donations given in good faith in Australia sometimes fall into the wrong hands.

CHILDREN with distended bellies, villages destroyed by earthquakes, a bandaged infant lying in a makeshift hospital bed recovering from bullet wounds. These are images used by some humanitarian organisations to promote their fundraising campaigns.

...funds raised for good causes sometimes have a way of taking other routes.

The most dangerous route delivers the money to the hands of Islamic terrorists to bankroll their suicide bombings and other deadly campaigns. It's a route that continues to dog Western security agencies, which are attempting to significantly curb, if not stop, terror financing through charity organisations.

Two of Australia's most prominent Islamic charities -- Muslim Aid Australia and Human Appeal International -- are being investigated for their alleged links to Palestinian terrorist network Hamas.

MAA was raided by the Australian Federal Police last month following The Australian's revelations of the group's connection to humanitarian aid body Interpal, which is proscribed by Australia and the US for its alleged terror links.

While the MAA and HAI, both Sydney-based humanitarian organisations, have denied having any terrorism connections, they have brought into focus questions about whether charity groups have hidden agendas and the extent to which terrorist organisations go to exploit the finances of such bodies.

And for Australia, the second most generous nation among the 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries, such questions are demanding an answer, especially to put at ease the minds of Australian donors, who in 2006-07 raised more than $750 million for overseas aid through local non-profit charity networks.

National security expert Carl Ungerer says it is difficult to determine whether money raised by charities for humanitarian aid in developing countries is being used for terrorist operations or for the manufacture of things such as rockets and suicide vests.

...He says it must also be remembered there are some Australian Muslims who do not believe that Hamas or Hezbollah -- organisations that do not separate the pool of money between their humanitarian and military wings -- are terrorist organisations. "Hezbollah and Hamas are not only considered resistance groups in the Middle East but ones (that) do charitable work that governments won't do," Ungerer says.

"The Lebanese Government in southern Lebanon is really nonexistent. It really is Hezbollah that is first on the ground after any sort of natural or political conflict." Ungerer's words are a sobering reminder of the declaration of support for terrorist groups by Australia's most senior Muslim spiritual leaders. At a 2006 rally during the Hezbollah-Israeli war, Australian Sunni Muslim spiritual leader Fehmi Naji El-Imam praised the militants as "freedom fighters".

In June last year, The Australian revealed that Shia Muslim spiritual leader Kamal Mousselmani openly declared his support for the Iranian-backed terrorist group. And former mufti Taj Din al-Hilali was investigated by the AFP last year following revelations that he gave $US10,000 ($10,986) of Australian-raised funds to an accused terrorism supporter in Lebanon in 2006. Hilali was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for numerous terrorist attacks and suicide bombings in Israel, was proscribed in Australia on November 9, 2003. Hezbollah was banned in Australia on June 5, 2003.

...Australian Council for International Development executive director Paul O'Callaghan says that in some situations there is nothing local charities can do to stop the flow of humanitarian aid funds being used by the wrong people. He says it is especially evident in some regions of developing nations that are being run by terrorist outfits. Hezbollah in southern Lebanon is one such example. ..."Where you have a whole part of a country which is run by a (banned) organisation ...."

US security expert Robert Looney defines Islamic charities under three categories: legitimate bodies promoting positive activities, those that have their funds unknowingly diverted and others that deliberately engage in supporting terrorist networks.

...Sydney Muslim charity Human Appeal International was among three of 12 HAI branches worldwide named and banned by Israel's Defence Ministry last month for allegedly raising "very large sums of money" for Hamas.

HAI's Sydney director Bashar Al-Jamal rejects the Israeli Government's accusations against his organisation but refuses to concede Hamas is a terrorist network.

HAI and MAA are under investigation by the NSW Government's Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.

The MAA also is being investigated by the AFP and the Australian Council for International Development for its connection to Interpal... also known as the Palestinian Relief and Development Fund ...[which] failed three years ago to have its proscribed status removed from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's consolidated list, which names banned groups and people....

Textbook Islamic Antisemitism

From American Thinker, June 03, 2008 by Andrew G. Bostom:

Palestinian cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 intoned the following about the Jews of Israel:

"By Allah, if each and every Arab spat on them, they would drown in Arab spit."

...the crux of Al-Zarad's remarks explained that the Muslims' blood vengeance against the Jews, "will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times."

These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured in the pre-amble to Hamas' foundational Covenant. This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322). And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews-as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64-of being "spreaders of war and corruption," a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The centrality of the Jews' permanent "abasement and humiliation," and being "laden with God's anger" in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61/3:112, is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah's signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews.."), concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/3:112.

Indeed the Koran's overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews' ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil's minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam-the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)-they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).

Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions.

Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:

[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness ...only a minority of the Jews keep their word....[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims {Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.

Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world's Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on "dialogue" (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as "enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear.

Tantawi's statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis.

Al-Azhar Grand Imam Tantawi's case illustrates the prevalence and depth of sacralized, "normative" Jew hatred in the contemporary Muslim world. Arnon Groiss' thorough examination of modern Egyptian school textbooks, published in April, 2004, reveals that this sacralized hatred continues to be inculcated among future generations of Egyptian Muslims. Groiss observed, regarding the critical depiction of Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Arabia,

The Jews are stereotyped and presented in a prejudiced manner, and the themes of treachery and hostility on the part of the Jews toward the Muslims are present here...

Once again, in this context Koran 5:82 ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews..") is invoked to remind these students, what "God Almighty says about the Jews' hatred toward the Muslims."

And a 3-month long NY Daily News investigation of textbooks widely used in New York city area Islamic schools published March 30, 2003, demonstrated that the same Antisemitic archetypes-based on central motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira-are being taught to American Muslim students. The report provided these examples:

In Long Island City, Queens, for example, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Ideal Islamic School on 12th St. learn that Allah has revealed [pace Koran 2:61/3:112] that "the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah."...Yet a third book, in use at the Ideal school, describes the hostile relations between Jews and the [Muslim prophet] Muhammad in Medina in the 7th century. "The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics," the book says. Numerous Koranic citations follow with negative references to Jews - for example, "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them." [3:71; 4:46]

On Jewish hostility to Islam: "The reasons for Jewish hostility toward the Muslims of 7th century Medina lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran." Example: "You will find the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans." [Koran 5:82; from a textbook "The Messenger of Allah," p. 34; targeting Grades 6-9]

Finally a review of textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, VA published in October 2007 by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, concluded, according to commissioner Nina Shea, that they contain "...blatant Antisemitism, blaming the Jews even for divisions within Islam.." The latter charge is an allegation made continuously for over a millennium since the earliest Sunni historiographies (for example by al-Tabari, d. 923) that a renegade Yemenite Jew, Abdallah b. Saba, is responsible-identified as a Jew-for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence," culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.

When questioned for the March, 30 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,

Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that...[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.

Emerick's triumphant denial at once affirms standard Islamic theological supremacism, while deliberately ignoring Islam's intrinsic, virulent Antisemitism-the latter denial being pathognomonic of the mindset of its Jewish victims, past and present.

Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction.

We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation...All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.

The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages-vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude-can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.

When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.

As a pre-condition to real dialogue-not its miserable simulacrum-Jews and their leadership-religious, political, and intellectual-must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught in Islamic schools, and contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.

Let us demonstrate as Jews that we are no longer living with 12th century expectations of Muslims, otherwise they will oblige us.

Turkey in radical revision of Islamic texts

From BBC News, 26/2/08, by Robert Piggott, Religious affairs correspondent:

Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion.

The country's powerful Department of Religious Affairs has commissioned a team of theologians at Ankara University to carry out a fundamental revision of the Hadith, the second most sacred text in Islam after the Koran. The Hadith is a collection of thousands of sayings reputed to come from the Prophet Muhammad. As such, it is the principal guide for Muslims in interpreting the Koran and the source of the vast majority of Islamic law, or Sharia....

...But the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernise, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam. It says that a significant number of the sayings were never uttered by Muhammad, and even some that were need now to be reinterpreted.

'Reformation'
Commentators say the very theology of Islam is being reinterpreted in order to effect a radical renewal of the religion. Its supporters say the spirit of logic and reason inherent in Islam at its foundation 1,400 years ago are being rediscovered. Some believe it could represent the beginning of a reformation in the religion.

....The argument is that Islamic tradition has been gradually hijacked by various - often conservative - cultures, seeking to use the religion for various forms of social control. Leaders of the Hadith project say successive generations have embellished the text, attributing their political aims to the Prophet Muhammad himself.

Turkey is intent on sweeping away that "cultural baggage" and returning to a form of Islam it claims accords with its original values and those of the Prophet. But this is where the revolutionary nature of the work becomes apparent. Even some sayings accepted as being genuinely spoken by Muhammad have been altered and reinterpreted.

Prof Mehmet Gormez, a senior official in the Department of Religious Affairs and an expert on the Hadith, gives a telling example. "There are some messages that ban women from travelling for three days or more without their husband's permission and they are genuine. "But this isn't a religious ban. It came about because in the Prophet's time it simply wasn't safe for a woman to travel alone like that. But as time has passed, people have made permanent what was only supposed to be a temporary ban for safety reasons." ...Prof Gormez points out that in another speech, the Prophet said "he longed for the day when a woman might travel long distances alone". So, he argues, it is clear what the Prophet's goal was.

....As part of its aggressive programme of renewal, Turkey has given theological training to 450 women, and appointed them as senior imams called "vaizes". They have been given the task of explaining the original spirit of Islam to remote communities in Turkey's vast interior....

....According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey from Chatham House in London, Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy. He says that to achieve it, the state is fashioning a new Islam....

Islamic Reform Movement

From Muslims Against Sharia Islamic Reform Movement web site home page [brief excerpts only - follow the link to the site for the full text]:

OUR GOALS

• to educate Muslims about dangers presented by Islamic religious texts and why Islam must be reformed
• to educate non-Muslims about the differences between moderate Muslims and Islamists (a.k.a. Islamic Religious Fanatics, Radical Muslims, Muslim Fundamentalists, Islamic Extremists or Islamofascists)
• to educate both Muslims and non-Muslims alike that Moderate Muslims are also targets of Islamic Terror

OUR MANIFESTO

Acknowledging mistakes
.... We, as Muslims, find it abhorrent that Islam is used to murder millions of innocent people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Inconsistencies in the Koran
Unfortunately, Islamic religious texts, including the Koran and the Hadith contain many passages, which call for Islamic domination and incite violence against non-Muslims. It is time to change that....

The Koran & the Bible
...Could it be possible that the Koran itself was corrupted by Muslims over the last thirteen centuries?

The need for reform
Islam, in its present form, is not compatible with principles of freedom and democracy. Twenty-first century Muslims have two options: we can continue the barbaric policies of the seventh century ....or we can reform Islam to keep our rich cultural heritage and to cleanse our religion from the reviled relics of the past.

We, as Muslims who desire to live in harmony with people of other religions, agnostics, and atheists choose the latter option.

We can no longer allow Islamic extremists to use our religion as a weapon. We must protect future generations of Muslims from being brainwashed by the Islamic radicals. If we do not stop the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, our children will become homicidal zombies.

Accepting responsibilities
To start the healing process, we must acknowledge evils done by Muslims in the name of Islam ...remove evil passages from Islamic religious texts...War, murder, violence, divisiveness & discrimination are not Islamic values.

Religious privacy
Religion is the private matter of every individual. Any person should be able to freely practice any religion as long as the practice does not interfere with the local laws, and no person must be forced to practice any religion. .....

Equality
Islam is one of the many of the world's religions. There will be no Peace and Harmony in the World if Muslims and non-Muslims do not have equal rights.

Islamic supremacy doctrine is just as repulsive as Aryan supremacy doctrine. History clearly shows what happens to the society whose members consider themselves above other peoples. All moderate Muslims must repudiate the mere notion of Islamic supremacy.

Sharia
Sharia Law must be abolished, because it is incompatible with norms of modern society.

Outdated practices
Any practices that might have been acceptable in the Seventh Century; i.e., stoning, cutting off body parts, marrying and/or having sex with children or animals, must be condemned by every Muslim.

Outdated verses
The following verses promote divisiveness and religious hatred, bigotry and discrimination. They must be either removed from the Koran or declared outdated and invalid, and marked as such.

Outdated words & phrases
Use of the following words and phrases or their variations must be prohibited during religious services:

• Infidel / Unbeliever: these terms have negative connotation and promote divisiveness and animosity; Islam is not the only religion
• Jihad: this word is often interpreted as Holy War against non-Muslims
• Mujaheed / Holy Warrior: no more wars in the name of Islam
• American (Christian / Crusader / Israeli / Zionist) occupation: these terms promote bigotry; at this point in time, Muslims living in non-Muslim lands have more freedoms than Muslims living in Muslim lands

....Islam has no place for violence. Any person calling for an act of violence in the name of Islam must be promptly excommunicated....

......Brothers and Sisters! Do not make the next generation of Muslims clean up your mess! Fight Islamic Fascism now, so your children won't have to!

GLOBAL BANKS ADOPTING ISLAM

From NewsWithViews.com, December 14 2007, by Patrick Wood* [Emphasis added]:

...Islamic/Shari’a banking is coming to the United States and other western nations, thanks to global banks such as Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. With Great Britain now pledging to become the Islamic banking center of the world, the stampede by all global banks to enter the world of Islamic banking is well underway.

...The implications for the west, and especially for the United States, are staggering. Because all Islamic banking products must be created and offered according to strict Shari’a law, global banks are doing for Islam what it could never do on its own: give legitimacy to Shari’a and infiltrate it into the fabric of western society.

...To insure Shari’a compliance, banks must hire Shari’a scholars to review and approve each product and practice as “halal....

It should be noted that most of these scholars are from the school of radical Wahhabi/Salafi Shari’a in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, holding views diametrically opposed to the basic values of Western civilization.

....There were very few Islamic banks prior to 1980. However, with the Khomeini revolution in Iran in 1979, Shari’a was summarily imposed throughout Iran and Shari’a finance took off.

Shari’a is the legal and judicial system of Islam that is brutally imposed on many Islamic countries in the middle east. It is the specific embodiment of the totalitarian ideology practiced by the Taliban, Iranian Mullahs and Saudi Wahhabis.

Shari’a is perpetuated by claiming to have its roots in the Koran, but in fact it is mostly the product of rulings and dictates made by Islamic scholars and caliphs over several centuries.
For non-Muslims, Shari’a is best known for its medieval, harsh brutality. Many rulings handed down by Shari’a courts have shocked the western world....

...To the average western mind, Shari’a is no more than a medieval, barbaric code that somehow survived to the 21st century. It flies in the face of western law, philosophy, liberty and freedom. Furthermore, it is the vehicle used to call for the complete destruction of the west and in particular the United States of America, which then will be replaced by Shari’a dictatorships.

How the banking rocket took off
At the behest of global trade moguls, numerous Free Trade Zones (FTZ’s) were created throughout the Islamic world that were full of windfall conditions.
For instance, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), is a 110 acre free trade zone that was founded in 2004 in Dubai, UAE. According to the DIFC website, participants will enjoy "zero tax rate on income and profits, 100 per cent foreign ownership, no restrictions on foreign exchange or capital/profit repatriation, operational support and business continuity facilities.”
Not surprisingly, Morgan Stanley’s application was one of the first approved by the Dubai Financial Services Authority to operate within the DIFC...

...DIFC and similar Free Trade Zones are a banker’s nirvana into which global bankers have rushed headlong to establish regional financial centers. And the payoff? A chance to enter and then dominate the Islamic banking industry. Such banking has over $1.5 trillion on the table today, and is growing at a steady and explosive rate of over 15% per year.

Understanding that Islamic banking is a very recent phenomenon is underscored by the fact that its largest and most prestigious international conference, World Islamic Banking Conference (WIBC) has met for a mere 14 years. The most recent meeting just concluded in Bahrain and attracted over 1,000 banking delegates from 35 countries.....McKinsey & Company was listed as a “Strategic Partner” of the WIBC, alongside of global accounting firm Ernst & Young and the consummate global investment banker, Goldman Sachs.....

...Britain’s PM Gordon Brown has pointedly stated that he intends to make London the Islamic finance capital of the world. Further, he pledged that in 2008 the British government will issue its own “sukuk”, or Shari’a compliant bonds. Yes, government debt issued as Shari’a compliant.
At the June 13, 2006 Islamic Finance Trade Conference in London, Brown revealed,
"Today British banks are pioneering Islamic banking - London now has more banks supplying services under Islamic principles than any other Western financial centre."

Brown’s statements can only be taken as a challenge by the New York banking establishment to beat him to the finish line. It doesn’t matter who wins this race because the result will be the same: Shari’a banking is quickly encircling the globe and forcing a de facto acceptance of Shari’a law.

Conclusion
International bankers have long ago proven themselves to be completely amoral when it comes to money. They bankrolled the Bolshevik Revolution in 1918 just as blithely as they bankrolled Hitler in the 1930’s. Fortunately for us, neither succeeded in conquering the world.

With Islam, odds of its succeeding are radically different. To start with, there are already 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, and it is the fastest growing religion in history. Secondly, the spread of Islam is richly financed by the oil that is extracted from mid-eastern countries. Thirdly, Islam has already infiltrated most of the west, especially in Europe.

And now, Islam has behind it the combined support and encouragement of the entire global banking community.

The unholy alliance between Islam and global banking may be the final leg on the age-old quest for global domination. Don’t be surprised at the silence of the global elite the next time you hear Islamist mobs chant “Death to America” – their goals are now intertwined.

Bibliography:
1, Sharia’s Trojan Horse 2, Islamic Finance or Financing Islamism? 3, Islamic Economics: What Does it Mean? 4, Federal Reserve speech to Islamic Financial Services Industry Seminar 5, Fed speech on Regulation and Supervision of Islamic Banking 6, Islamic banking rises on oil wealth, drawing non-Muslims 7, How the West Came to Run Islamic Banks8, 12th Annual World Islamic Banking Conference 9, University Islamic Financial
© 2007 Patrick Wood - All Rights Reserved

*Patrick M. Wood is editor of The August Review, which builds on his original research with the late Dr. Antony C. Sutton, who was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution for War, Peace and Revolution at Stanford University. Their 1977-1982 newsletter, Trilateral Observer, was the original authoritative critique on the New International Economic Order spearheaded by members of the Trilateral Commission.

On dialogue between Jews and Muslims

From JPost, Dec 31, 2007, by ISI LEIBLER:

Dialogue with Muslims .... [is] helpful and certainly preferable to exchanging diatribes, [but] if the objective is primarily to ingratiate ourselves with Muslims and gain publicity, the exercise becomes counterproductive.

The Jewish track record of dialogue with the Church illustrates that until Pope John XXIII's dramatic condemnation of anti-Semitism at the Second Vatican Council, our efforts had little impact beyond reinforcing relationships with marginal Christian philo-Semites.

Meaningful dialogue requires that both parties agree in advance to accord mutual respect and genuinely commit to exploring means of forging deeper understandings. It also presupposes a willingness to indulge in honest and open discussion rather than mouthing platitudes or employing glib rhetoric to cover up differences. Above all, it demands the involvement of responsible and sensitive Jewish representatives, knowledgeable about Judaism and its place in the world at large.

There are circumstances in which dialogue must be avoided. For example, if the Muslim group concerned refuses to condemn the anti-Semitic tirades emanating from Islamic quarters, or even indirectly condones global terrorism and suicide bombings, or promotes conspiracies such as implying that 9/11 was an Israeli plot. To share stages or collaborate with groups holding such views merely provides a platform for radicals to exploit dialogue as a vehicle to obtain respectability and cover up their extremism.

The problem we face with Islamic religious leaders is that while a number of their spokesmen, under pressure, do ritualistically condemn Islamic extremism, many continue to express sympathy with the radicals, or at best remain silent. The dominant Islamic voices being heard are apologists for violence, terrorism and intolerance. If there are moderate Muslims, they remain mainly in the closet or are sufficiently intimidated to avoid condemning the excesses of their jihadist kinsmen.

In this environment, it is contrary to our interests to continuously repeat the politically correct but utterly false mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. Whereas all three major monotheistic religions incorporate elements of militant piety and violence, Islam, with its unique jihadism, today represents the most violent doctrine.

This is not to deny that given more enlightened religious leaders it could become moderate. But the export of Wahhabism from Saudi Arabia has led to the creation of new Islamic schools and the domination of existing institutions by a religious ideology which sanctifies violence. It is in these sources that martyrs (shahids) and suicide bombers were incubated and became such a dominant element in contemporary Islam....

....Some Jewish representatives also display an unfortunate penchant for demonstrating their liberal credentials by endorsing Muslim demands to outlaw security profiling. ....It is simply a denial of reality to dismiss the ethnic profiles of Arab Muslims when 95% of acts of global terrorism emanate from this group....

..... If we bask in expressions of mutual love but fail to proclaim to our partners in dialogue that Israel is central to our Jewish identity, we make a mockery of dialogue and effectively capitulate to the extremists.

Of course, Muslims are entitled to criticize Israeli policies. But there must be understandings in advance that, as distinct from genuine criticism, efforts to delegitimize or demonize Israel make it impossible for us to share platforms with them. We must also insist that the condemnation of Muslim anti-Semitism be an agenda item in all such encounters.

None of this detracts from our obligation to raise our voices against those who would condemn an entire religion because of the criminal behavior of its individuals. Alas, it is galling that in the Muslim arena there are virtually no such condemnations when it comes to incitement against Israel, the Jews, or even America.

There are nevertheless genuine opportunities to conduct constructive dialogue with judiciously selected Muslim groups. For example, the recent visits of Indian Muslims and Indonesian imams to Israel under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee represent the kind of positive dialogue that should be commended and encouraged.

Bottom line: Dialogue with Muslims becomes counterproductive when we grovel and demean ourselves in order to curry favor. All that is achieved is a façade of goodwill which ultimately only strengthens extremists at the expense of the few genuine moderates within the Islamic community whom we are obliged to continue to seek out, for their sake and ours.

The writer is a former chairman of the Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress and a veteran international Jewish leader. ileibler@netvision.net.il

Malaysia, 50, turns back morals clock

From The Australian, by Nick Meo, Khota Bharu, Malaysia August 30, 2007:

...celebrations are starting for Malaysia's 50th year as an independent state. Its proud achievements are modern universities, a buoyant economy, and a respected place in the world as a moderate Islamic nation.

Mr Hassan's [Islamist ] party boasts a different set of achievements; banning miniskirts, chastising unmarried couples .....It also closed down nightclubs, banned nearly all bars except a few Chinese restaurants where no Muslims are allowed, and refused to let a proposed cinema open unless there were separate sections for men and women and the lights remained on to prevent immorality.

The Chief Minister is said to have mellowed since then and this year looked favourably on a proposal to open an alcohol-free disco for tourists. The idea never got off the ground after he insisted it be single-sex.

Mr Hassan, a moderate who was once a lawyer, is proud of his party's achievements in Kota Bharu. He says it has kept the rustic capital of Kelantan state upright and clean-living. The biggest building in the city houses the moral enforcement department whose officials spend their time prowling Kota Bharu's parks in search of amorous young sinners.

Mr Hassan is sensitive about the nickname "Taliban lite" often levelled at his party in Kuala Lumpur, where bars do a roaring trade and cinemas are full of dating couples.

"We are not the Taliban, we are in favour of women's education and against violence and corruption," he grumbles. "Malaysia is a Muslim state. We hope we can change people's mindset in Kuala Lumpur so they can live according to Islamic principles."

As it celebrates 50 years of independence from Britain this week, Malaysia has stepped up its long-running and angst-ridden debate about just how Islamic it should be.

Older Malays bemoan a younger generation that has become puritanical, self-righteously declining to attend social functions where alcohol is served. Headscarves, rare 20 years ago, are worn by almost all Malay women now, although often in combination with tight jeans.

Some non-Muslim Chinese and Indians feel increasingly treated like second-class citizens. They complain, usually privately, that Islamic religious schools are much better funded than theirs and that a system of affirmative action favours Malays when it comes to university places.
Some fear assertive Islam threatens to upset the delicate balance between the 60 per cent Malay-Muslim majority and the non-Muslim ethnic Chinese and Indian minorities, which have managed to co-exist, sometimes uneasily, since Malaysia's troubled birth in 1957 at a time of civil war and ethnic tension.

Islam is Malaysia's official religion and the constitution says anyone born Malay is Muslim.
Every state has a religious department with Saudi-style moral enforcers. Nowhere are they more active than Kota Bharu. Unmarried couples sharing hotel rooms are hunted down by enforcers. Couples caught sitting too close together on park benches are fined 2000 ringgit ($706) in the city's shariah court.

Islamists funds monitored

From The Australian, May 16, 2007 , by Cameron Stewart ....

ISLAMIC extremists in Australia are being starved of money by an unprecedented crackdown on the secret flow of funds from Saudi Arabia.

ASIO and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have quietly spearheaded the disruption of funding from Saudi charities and Saudi nationals, reducing it to only a trickle after concerns the money could be used to fund terror plots in Australia. The Government's push has robbed local extremists of a traditional source of funding from a country that has invested more than $120 million into Australia's Islamic community since the 1970s.

Saudi Arabian money has been used to build mosques and schools in Australia but it has also helped to promote extreme Wahabist interpretations of Islam. Saudi Arabia has been accused by the US Government of tacitly funding extremism via quasi-government charities that promote Wahabism. Washington says Saudi government-sanctioned charities have secretly bankrolled the Indonesian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah, responsible for killing 92 Australians in the two Bali bombings.

Despite this, Australia has won strong Saudi government backing for its crackdown here, with Riyadh instructing its embassy in Canberra to alert DFAT to any Saudi funds flowing into Australia....

The Australian understands that ASIO has issued confidential reports opposing the proposed use of Saudi funds to build mosques in Belmore in Sydney in 2004 and the Park Holme mosque in Adelaide this year. The ASIO assessments prompted DFAT to express concern to the Saudi Government, which promptly cut the flow of Saudi funds for the projects. The "tip-off" agreement between the two countries was initiated by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in 2004 after a visit to Saudi Arabia.

"As a result of my visit to Saudi Arabia, they introduced a new system of transparency,' Mr Downer told The Australian yesterday. "Prior to that system we don't know what funding they provided so we can't compare what was done before with what is done now, but we do know that they now report (to us)." Saudi Arabia's co-operation with Canberra on the issue of funding is part of its renewed global effort to rebut allegations that its charities are used as fronts to provide funding for extremists around the world.

....However, Australian authorities remain wary about the possibility of private funds flowing into Australia without the knowledge of either government.

The Government carefully monitors the activities of Saudi diplomats in Australia, who are believed to directly pay the wages of selected imams in Australia. One of these imams, Mohammed Swaiti, was removed this month as the spiritual head of Canberra's Abu Bakr Mosque amid claims he was too radical in his teachings.

In January, the reconstruction of Adelaide's Park Holme mosque was halted when planned Saudi funding was withdrawn by the Saudi Government after DFAT expressed concerns about the project. The mosque is considered Adelaide's most radical prayer centre. It was frequented by an Australian Iraqi Kurd, Warya Kanie, who was captured in Baghdad in October and detained for engaging in anti-coalition activities.

Similarly, Saudi funding of Sydney's Belmore mosque was halted in 2004 after concerns were expressed about the mosque's links with radical sheik Abdul Salam Mohammed Zoud.

The Saudi embassy did not return calls from The Australian yesterday.

Defiant Infidel

From FrontPageMagazine.com May 2, 2007, by Bill Steigerwald, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's associate editor ...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was born and raised as a Muslim in Somalia and is now the New York Times best-selling author of “Infidel” (Free Press), is an outspoken defender of women's rights in Islamic societies. A former member of the Dutch Parliament who speaks six languages, she's a freedom-fighter whose criticism of conservative Islamic cultures and their traditional mistreatment of women and children have made her internationally famous and brought her death threats. Hirsi Ali, who calls herself a “classic liberal” who desires the state to be limited to guarantee as much individual freedom as possible, is currently a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. She says "Infidel" -- the name she found herself being called when she would suggest some oppressive or backward aspect of Islam should be changed or reformed -- is her account of her transformation from "the world of faith to the world of reason."

....Q: Who did you write the book for? Who is the audience?
A: Two audiences. One are those who have inherited the Western system of human rights and freedom and the institutions (that protect them) but who do not understand what it is not to have freedom -- in short, those who take freedom for granted. The other audience are those who share my Muslim background and who reject freedom on the basis of religious dogma or tradition, such as those who say, “I don’t care to send my children to school” or “I’m going to circumcise my daughters because this is what we always used to do.”

Q: What is the significance of the title “Infidel”?
A: That as someone who was born into Islam and brought up with Islam, every call for for change meets with the accusation “You are an infidel.” After the 11th of September, Western leaders started to persuade Muslims all over the world to stand up and say, “This is not done in my religion.” I started to download what bin Laden had said. Pretty much the message of bin Laden is that every Muslim should stand up and fight the enemies of Islam. I started to download his speeches and he quotes abundantly from the Koran and the Hadith (written traditions of the Prophet Muhammad). Bin Laden’s message is consistent. What he says, is in the Koran. What he says that the prophet did, it is true the prophet did. My reaction to that was, let’s not turn away from that but let’s acknowledge that our religion has very violent principles and by acknowledging those deviances, we can correct it. And that’s when I was met with the accusation “You’ve become an infidel.” Then in Holland, I started to point out the position of Muslim women in Holland and in Muslim countries. I said it is inferior and that inferiority and the violence against women and the subjugation against them is justified in the name of Islam. I said “Let’s acknowledge that this deformity is within the religion and reform it.” And the answer to that was always, “Oh, but you are an infidel if you say that.” I said “Let’s correct what the prophet Muhammad said” – “No. The prophet was perfect, he was infallible. You don’t correct what he said. If you do that you are an infidel.”

Q: Is Islam inherently anti-western, anti-individual, or anti woman or has it has been perverted by its leaders?
A: The religion is the problem. The religion is anti-individual. And the notion of equality between men and women...Islam as a doctrine, as a religion, is opposed to all of that. There are leaders who want to change that and move forward, and they are the ones who are accused of being infidels. From really the time the religion was founded until now, they have either been exiled or killed or silenced in some way.

Q: Is there anywhere where Islam is practiced today that you would say is a model situation?
A: Not where sharia – the law of Islam -- is implemented. Anywhere where sharia is implemented, you see incredible inhumanity. People’s hands are cut off. Women are confined to their homes and are stoned. Peopled are hanged. Homosexuals are hanged or must hide. That is Iran, Saudi Arabia … Afghanistan under the Taliban. Parts of Somalia are now under sharia rule. Anywhere there is sharia rule, there is violation of human rights.

Q: What do you want Americans to learn or to understand after reading "Infidel"?
A: Become aware that you have these freedoms. Don’t take them for granted. Protect them against predators with totalitarian ideologies, such as Islam.

Q: Do you feel that people are getting the message you want them to get from your book?
A: I feel that conservatives are getting the message -- and had gotten it before I even started coming to the U.S. I’m having difficulty getting the message to liberals and that has to do with people who are opposed to the Bush administration but at the same time don’t realize that Islam is a doctrine. And that for the agents of Islam, those who want to create a caliphate, it really doesn’t matter whether you are a Democrat or a conservative. You are an infidel all the same.

The Trouble With Islam

From The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 3, 2007 BY TAWFIK HAMID ...

Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence.

... there is much that is clearly wrong with the Islamic world. Women are stoned to death and undergo clitorectomies. Gays hang from the gallows under the approving eyes of the proponents of Shariah, the legal code of Islam. Sunni and Shia massacre each other daily in Iraq. Palestinian mothers teach 3-year-old boys and girls the ideal of martyrdom. One would expect the orthodox Islamic establishment to evade or dismiss these complaints, but less happily, the non-Muslim priests of enlightenment in the West have come, actively and passively, to the Islamists' defense.

These "progressives" frequently cite the need to examine "root causes." In this they are correct: Terrorism is only the manifestation of a disease and not the disease itself. But the root-causes are quite different from what they think. As a former member of Jemaah Islamiya, a group led by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, I know firsthand that the inhumane teaching in Islamist ideology can transform a young, benevolent mind into that of a terrorist. Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam it will be impossible to combat it. While there are many ideological "rootlets" of Islamism, the main tap root has a name--Salafism, or Salafi Islam, a violent, ultra-conservative version of the religion.

It is vital to grasp that traditional and even mainstream Islamic teaching accepts and promotes violence. Shariah, for example, allows apostates to be killed, permits beating women to discipline them, seeks to subjugate non-Muslims to Islam as dhimmis and justifies declaring war to do so. It exhorts good Muslims to exterminate the Jews before the "end of days." The near deafening silence of the Muslim majority against these barbaric practices is evidence enough that there is something fundamentally wrong.

The grave predicament we face in the Islamic world is the virtual lack of approved, theologically rigorous interpretations of Islam that clearly challenge the abusive aspects of Shariah. Unlike Salafism, more liberal branches of Islam, such as Sufism, typically do not provide the essential theological base to nullify the cruel proclamations of their Salafist counterparts. And so, for more than 20 years I have been developing and working to establish a theologically-rigorous Islam that teaches peace.

Yet it is ironic and discouraging that many non-Muslim, Western intellectuals--who unceasingly claim to support human rights--have become obstacles to reforming Islam. Political correctness among Westerners obstructs unambiguous criticism of Shariah's inhumanity. They find socioeconomic or political excuses for Islamist terrorism such as poverty, colonialism, discrimination or the existence of Israel. What incentive is there for Muslims to demand reform when Western "progressives" pave the way for Islamist barbarity? Indeed, if the problem is not one of religious beliefs, it leaves one to wonder why Christians who live among Muslims under identical circumstances refrain from contributing to wide-scale, systematic campaigns of terror.

Politicians and scholars in the West have taken up the chant that Islamic extremism is caused by the Arab-Israeli conflict. This analysis cannot convince any rational person that the Islamist murder of over 150,000 innocent people in Algeria--which happened in the last few decades--or their slaying of hundreds of Buddhists in Thailand, or the brutal violence between Sunni and Shia in Iraq could have anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Western feminists duly fight in their home countries for equal pay and opportunity, but seemingly ignore, under a façade of cultural relativism, that large numbers of women in the Islamic world live under threat of beating, execution and genital mutilation, or cannot vote, drive cars and dress as they please.

The tendency of many Westerners to restrict themselves to self-criticism further obstructs reformation in Islam. Americans demonstrate against the war in Iraq, yet decline to demonstrate against the terrorists who kidnap innocent people and behead them. Similarly, after the Madrid train bombings, millions of Spanish citizens demonstrated against their separatist organization, ETA. But once the demonstrators realized that Muslims were behind the terror attacks they suspended the demonstrations. This example sent a message to radical Islamists to continue their violent methods.

Western appeasement of their Muslim communities has exacerbated the problem. During the four-month period after the publication of the Muhammad cartoons in a Danish magazine, there were comparatively few violent demonstrations by Muslims. Within a few days of the Danish magazine's formal apology, riots erupted throughout the world. The apology had been perceived by Islamists as weakness and concession.

Worst of all, perhaps, is the anti-Americanism among many Westerners. It is a resentment so strong, so deep-seated, so rooted in personal identity, that it has led many, consciously or unconsciously, to morally support America's enemies.

Progressives need to realize that radical Islam is based on an antiliberal system. They need to awaken to the inhumane policies and practices of Islamists around the world. They need to realize that Islamism spells the death of liberal values. And they must not take for granted the respect for human rights and dignity that we experience in America, and indeed, the West, today.

Well-meaning interfaith dialogues with Muslims have largely been fruitless. Participants must demand--but so far haven't--that Muslim organizations and scholars specifically and unambiguously denounce violent Salafi components in their mosques and in the media. Muslims who do not vocally oppose brutal Shariah decrees should not be considered "moderates."

All of this makes the efforts of Muslim reformers more difficult. When Westerners make politically-correct excuses for Islamism, it actually endangers the lives of reformers and in many cases has the effect of suppressing their voices.

Tolerance does not mean toleration of atrocities under the umbrella of relativism. It is time for all of us in the free world to face the reality of Salafi Islam or the reality of radical Islam will continue to face us.

Dr. Hamid, a onetime member of Jemaah Islamiya, an Islamist terrorist group, is a medical doctor and Muslim reformer living in the West.

'Islamic world in cold war'

From Ynet News, 20/3/07, by Yaakov Lappin ...

...The Islamic world is entering a cold war period as the divide between Shiites and Sunnis escalates, Israeli experts said during a conference at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday afternoon.

Dr. Uzi Rabi, of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, said both Iran and Sunni nations were sending envoys to battle it out in Iraq.

"There are many reports of Saudi Arabia indirectly supporting al-Qaeda, in order to prevent a Shiite takeover of Baghdad," Rabi said.

"There is a cold war going on in the Middle East between the agents of Iran and Sunni states," he argued, adding: "pragmatic Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and the small Gulf states, have recently joined into a bloc aimed at checking the Shiite phenomenon sweeping the Middle East."

He added that for the first time in Israel's history, there was a possibility for the country to "partially join this Sunni strategic alliance."

Rabi cited Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said in a speech that Shiites that live in Arab states were disloyal to their home countries, and saved their allegiances for Iran. "Jordan has also warned of the Shiite axis stretching from Iran to the Mediterranean that could split the Arab Muslim heart of the area," Rabi noted.

He stressed a massive growth of anti-Shiite reports in the Sunni media, and an "obsessive" level of coverage on the alleged attempt by Shiites to convert Sunnis to Shiism. "I am amazed by the volume of reports on this," Rabi said.

"There is a sea of articles on the Shiite danger. Sunni states have called for collective action to stop the Shiites, and may even begin nuclear programs to counter the Iranian threat," he added.
Rabi said the Sunni states also used the pretext of a Shiite threat to crack down on radical Sunni opposition groups at home.

"The conflict between Shiites and Sunnis is not a passing phenomenon. This conflict has crossed the borders of Iraq," he concluded.

Iran seeking access to border with Israel
Earlier, Professor David Menshari, an expert on Iran at Tel Aviv University, said the Islamic Republic was seeking to spread its influence to any area in the Middle East that was not strong enough to repel it, with the Palestinian Authority being a prime example of such a region. "Hamas can help Iran link up to the border with Israel," Menshari said. "Wherever the ground gives way, Iran can be found. They go after the soft targets, such as Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, but stay away from the strong countries," he stressed.

Menshari added that "to believe that there was homogenous body of Shiites, a unified axis, would be doing ourselves an injustice."

He cited many voices within Iran that were opposed to the government of the ayatollahs, saying: "There is a series of religious leaders in Iran opposed to clerical control of the state."