Erdogan’s Imperial wet dreams

From HotAiur Greenroom, 13 June 2011, by J.E. Dyer:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a comfortable majority in Turkey’s parliamentary election on 12 June – not enough to change the national constitution without the agreement of a parliamentary coalition, but a solid 325 or so out of 550 seats, and a higher margin of victory than AKP achieved in 2007.

Erdogan wasted no time projecting a decidedly Ottoman-sounding theme in his victory speech. According to foreign media:

In his victory speech, Mr Erdogan … alluded to Turkey’s aspiration to be a voice in the West for the Middle Eastern region and Muslims, saying Bosnians, Lebanese, Syrians and Palestinians also benefited from his victory.

“Believe me, Sarajevo won today as much as Istanbul, Beirut won as much as Izmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, the West Bank, Jerusalem won as much as Diyarbakir.”

Imagine Nicolas Sarkozy proclaiming in a victory speech that Moscow had won as much as Paris, Washington as much as Lyon, Ankara as much as Marseilles. Equally to the point, imagine David Cameron announcing that New Delhi had won, as much as London; Boston as much as York; Dublin as much as Leeds.

You can’t. Because it is freighted wording – imperialist at worst, absurdly arrogant at best – to speak of your electoral victories as conferring benefits on foreign humanity – especially on those once occupied by your nation in its days of empire.

Granted, Barack Obama spoke in arguably similar terms after his election to the Oval Office. He didn’t make the case explicitly, but there was an implied “Cairo won, as much as Washington” theme in his early speeches. So you could make the case that he started it, if you wanted to put in the effort.
But Erdogan’s references are awful darn particular. Sarajevo, Damascus, Beirut, Ramallah, and Jerusalem. The tenor of his appeal is both Islamist and Ottoman – and, of course, from a historical perspective, the two go together. The West’s most recent memories of Islamic conquest involve the Ottoman Empire, which controlled parts of the Balkans – gained in bloody wars of conquest and occupation – right up to the last years before World War I.

Sarajevo, in particular, was an emblem of Ottoman conquest, much as Cordoba, Spain was an emblem of conquest by the Muslim Umayyads several hundred years earlier. Sarajevo’s Ottoman conquerors used the city as a capital from the mid-15th to the late 17th century. Although they were driven out of it by Austria-Hungary in 1697, after their defeat at the “gates of Vienna” in the previous decade, Ottoman rule continued in much of the Balkans, including Sarajevo, for two more centuries. Ottoman officials put down revolts mounted by Bosnian Serbs in the Sarajevo of the 1830s, and it was not until 1878 that Austria-Hungary wrested Sarajevo from Istanbul for good. The Ottomans continued to rule parts of the Balkans until the First Balkan War in 1912.

Erdogan’s allusion to Sarajevo is the exact opposite of a throw-away line. He knows perfectly well how incendiary the reference is for East Europeans – just as he knows that naming cities in the West Bank one after another, and concluding with “Jerusalem” (which he called Al-Quds), implies a direct Turkish interest in the disposition of these cities that evokes the era when they, too, were under Ottoman rule.

His rhetorical pairing of Ramallah and Jerusalem with Diyarbakir is of particular interest, considering that Diyarbakir is in a majority Kurdish area of Turkey, and regularly exploded in protest in the weeks leading up the 12 June election. Many in Diyarbakir would disagree that Erdogan’s win was a win for them; his outreach gesture of allowing the Kurdish nationalist party to field candidates in this election resulted in several jailed Kurdish leaders, deemed terrorists by the central government, being elected to parliament. Their status is unclear, and a number of observers think the electoral gains by the Kurds will only encourage them to press harder for autonomy. But Erdogan’s going to “name it and claim it” anyway. The implied signal to the Palestinian Arabs seems dubious, at best.

Perhaps most interesting of all is Erdogan’s list itself. Sarajevo, Damascus, Beirut, Ramallah, Jerusalem. In four of these former Ottoman holdings, there is, or has been, an acknowledged modern dispute over sovereignty. But what about Damascus? Should the Assads – or Iran – be alarmed that it was on Erdogan’s list? Does Damascus need the healing hand of Erdogan and the AKP? Or is Syria – but not Jordan, Egypt, or Iraq – considered by Erdogan to be properly in modern Turkey’s “sphere”?

The answers to these questions and others we will presumably discern in the days ahead. But there he is, folks. 

[Erdogan ] The new voice of the Middle East in the West – representing Muslims from Sarajevo to Jerusalem.

Christians tortured and killed in the Muslim world

From THE JERUSALEM POST, Dec. 12, 2009, by Matthew Wagner:

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries....

"Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth," said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI)....

...El Shafie said that between 200-300 million Christians are being persecuted in the world, 80 percent of whom lived in Muslim countries and the rest in communist and other countries.

...OFWI is a human rights organization whose headquarters are located in Toronto, Canada. The organization numbers some 3,000 members, divided into 28 branches that are active in countries all over the world, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Iran.
El Shafie, 32, was born in Cairo to a distinguished Muslim family of lawyers and judges. Through a Christian friend he was exposed at an early age to hatred toward the Christian minority in Egypt. He decided to convert to Christianity, wrote a book about it and as a result became an outcast and a victim of oppression. In 1998 he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and condemned to death....

Don’t be fooled by Islamophobia

From the Blog of CST, the British Jewish Community Security organisation, November 30th, 2009:

A small Islamophobic group, called Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE), has called for 1,000 Jews to attend its forthcoming demonstration at Harrow mosque; and for each Jew to bring an Israeli flag.

This is strikingly similar to appeals that have also been made in recent months by the English Defence League (EDL). It is also essentially the same as opportunistic attempts by British National Party ....

...A demonstration against Harrow mosque under the banner “Stop the Islamisation of Europe”, is as stupid and offensive as a demonstration against Harrow synagogue, under the banner “Stop the Zionisation of Europe”.

This has nothing to do with the necessary and legitimate work to counter extremism and antisemitism wherever and whenever it genuinely occurs. CST has raised awareness of the activities of extreme Islamist groups in the UK for many years. But to demonise an entire community, every Muslim and every mosque, in the way that SIOE does, shows exactly the kind of bigotry from which Jews have suffered so often in our history. For SIOE to appeal to Jews to support them shows a complete ignorance of the Jewish experience of being on the receiving end of exactly this type of politics.

It is ludicrous to imagine that one form of racism can be fought by employing another form of racism. Take, for example, the unprecedented wave of antisemitic incidents that British Jews experienced during Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and Southern Israel in January 2009. Here we had Israel being accused of racist bloodshed – by people who were themselves committing racist attacks against British Jews. Similarly, whatever differences of opinion British Jews and British Muslims may have over Israel/Palestine, and however alarmed Jews are – quite rightly – at the antisemitic agitation of groups like al-Muhajiroun or Hizb ut-Tahrir, nobody should be fooled into supporting SIOE’s incitement against all Muslims.

This is by no means the first occasion on which CST has stressed why Jews should not be fooled by anti-Muslim bigotry, even when it dresses itself up in pro-Jewish guise. As we stated previously:

…this is the politics of hatred and division, which has nothing positive to offer any part of society. The fact that Muslims are the current target simply means that it is Muslims who should be the recipients of anti-racist solidarity.

Hatred, division, cycles of inter-communal violence, intimidation and polarisation feed the extremists on every side. They encourage social division and leave all minorities vulnerable. Anti-Muslim bigotry is a vital recruiting sergeant for both the far right, and its Islamist extremist counterparts. It generates votes for the BNP and, at the furthest ends of this political spectrum, it even provides the fuel for terrorism. British Jews should have no part of it.

State Department Islamist Outreach

From IPT News, May 17, 2009 [excerpt only, with my emphasis added ...follow the link to read the full original piece - SL]:

New booklet, "Being Muslim in America," taps the wrong messengers

With the United States battling Islamist extremists, making America's case to Muslims around the world has never been more of a priority for policymakers. Unfortunately, the State Department continues to take a counterproductive approach: serving as a veritable infomerclal promoting Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) while giving the back of the hand to the very anti-jihadist Muslims that Washington should be cultivating. The latest example is a State Department booklet issued in March titled "Being Muslim in America."

It is part of an outreach effort that began under President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and is moving forward under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The goal behind publication of the 64-page booklet is laudable: to arm consular officers and diplomats with information they can take to Muslims around the world to rebut slanders about U.S. "persecution" of Muslims. The booklet deluges readers with color pictures, statistical tables and individual profiles in an effort to show the world that American Muslims are a success story, noting that they have become entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers, doctors, soldiers, firefighters, politicians, fashion designers, and pianists.

...many slanders against the United States come from the same groups that are portrayed favorably in the State Department booklet.

...The purpose of publishing "Being Muslim in America" is "to disabuse people of wildly false myths of the United States -- that 'Muslims are repressed, marginalized...' " according to Michael Friedman, division chief of print publications with the State Department's Bureau of International Information Programs, which is overseeing distribution of the publication.

...Asked whether similar booklets had been produced for other faiths, Friedman said no. With limited funding available, decision was made to produce a publication on American Muslims because "the struggle against Islamic terrorism is a struggle for hearts and minds in the Muslim world," he said.

...Unfortunately, the substance of the booklet is so flawed that it could undermine the struggle against this form of radicalism. It perpetuates the mythology that American Muslims are united in the belief that law enforcement and the public are willing to flout innocent Muslims' civil rights post-September 11...

...From reading it, one would have no idea that there have been numerous convictions and guilty pleas on terrorism-related charges since September 11 that involved Muslims living in the United States, including terrorist plots to attack the military base at Ft. Dix, N.J., to create a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon and to attack U.S. military and Jewish targets in California.

Also omitted from the booklet is the fact that organizations like CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) were listed by the government as unindicted co-conspirators in the federal government's prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) -- in which the Justice Department won convictions of five former HLF officials for providing money to the terrorist organization Hamas.

...from reading ..."Being Muslim in America," one would get the impression that public concern about Islamist terror has no basis in reality and is merely the result of backward Americans' "discrimination and resentment."

...In reality, CAIR was created as a front for Hamas and it has defended radical Islamists since 1994. See the IPT dossier on CAIR here.

CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad typifies this see-no-evil attitude toward jihadist terror. He has repeatedly defended the HLF. At a May 2003 forum at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, an audience member commented that the Justice Department has released reams of information showing that the HLF and another charity whose assets were frozen "have direct connections and in fact their leadership was the leadership of al Qaeda and Hamas." Awad replied: "I am sure if we…put under the microscope, every major civic or political organization in this country, including the Red Cross, you will see that some dollars went here and there in some country, but you don't shut down the entire operation of the Red Cross."

CAIR officials dismissed the verdict of 12 jurors in HLF's Hamas-financing trial as "based more on fear-mongering than on the facts" and predicted it would be overturned on appeal.

Awad has steadfastly defended Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) supporter Sami Al-Arian, despite evidence that Al-Arian served on the PIJ governing board. Al-Arian is fighting a criminal contempt charge, triggered by his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury investigating terror financing in Virginia despite a grant of immunity. He claims his 2006 plea agreement to conspiring to provide goods and services to the PIJ absolved him of any future testimony, be it voluntary or compelled by subpoena. The plea agreement itself contains no such language. U.S. District Judge James S. Moody blasted Al-Arian as a "master manipulator" at his sentencing in the PIJ support case, saying Al-Arian lied to the public about his PIJ support.

Yet, during an August 2008 forum on the contempt case, Awad argued it was motivated by bigotry against Muslims:

"And I believe he's being punished for this, belonging to a minority – Palestinian, Arab, Muslim in America is not like the best thing to be in America today. So he's being the victim of this malicious misunderstanding in this midst of increased Islamophobia in America."

Ignoring Moderate Muslim Viewpoints
Zuhdi Jasser, a Phoenix, Arizona doctor who heads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, likened the booklet's depiction of Muslim life in the United States to Cold War-era propaganda falsely portraying Communist dictatorships as "worker's paradises" in which everyone was working toward a common goal and factionalism didn't exist. American Muslims are divided between Islamists seeking to establish a caliphate and non-Islamists who want to live under the American Constitution on equal terms with non-Muslims, Jasser said. And similar divisions exist in the Middle East between non-Islamists and Islamists.

"In some ways, it's insulting to Muslims in the Middle East -- if we need to portray Muslims as being 'normal' in America," Jasser told IPT News. "It's almost as if we have something to be sorry for in America." Jasser said he would prefer that the State Department not be in the business of distributing a booklet about Islam in this country. "But if they decide to get into it, they need to talk about the ideological differences" among Muslims in the United States, he said. If State fails to do this, Muslims reading this booklet around the world "will wonder why State won't talk about the real schisms in Islam -- schisms they see in their own lives."

No less disturbing is the fact that time and again, "Being Muslim in America" confers undeserved legitimacy on radical Islamist groups and individuals, while whitewashing radical groups. For example, Muslims pictured under a CAIR banner are described as marching "to support volunteerism." On the same page, Salam Al-Marayati of MPAC is cited as an authority on "the American Muslim identity." NYPD Muslim Chaplain Khalid Latif, who helped quash a debate on a college campus over the controversial Danish Muhammad cartoons, is also the subject of a glowing profile. Ingrid Mattson's election as ISNA president in 2006 is included as part of a "Timeline of Key Events" in American Muslim history.

No mention is made, however, of questionable statements and activities of Islamist groups and persons receiving favorable treatment in the booklet. CAIR officials' past statements in support of Hamas and CAIR's connections with the Muslim Brotherhood are ignored. Readers are left in the dark about Al-Marayati's statement during a September 11, 2001 appearance on a Los Angeles radio program, where he suggested that Israel might have been behind the attacks on America earlier in the day:

"If we're going to look at suspects, we should look to groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the list because I think this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies."

In March 2003 MPAC issued a counterterrorism policy paper advocating the removal of Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the U.S. government list of designated terrorist organizations.

In a January 19, 2009 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Al-Marayati attacked Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca for supporting Israel's military operation against Hamas' terror infrastructure in Gaza. As American public officials endorse Israel's "disproportionate military attacks against the Palestinians – put alongside images of carnage and destruction in Gaza," Al-Marayati wrote, they create "the best possible propaganda for fueling anti-Americanism in the Muslim world."

...And nothing was said about Latif's threatening March 2006 letter to NYU President Johan Sexton in which he suggested there would be trouble if the controversial Danish Mohammed cartoons were displayed. ISNA President Mattson's 2007 remarks rationalizing violent extremism as possibly "the only rational choice" to effect change in repressive states also didn't make the cut.

...Non-Islamist Muslim organizations like Jasser's AIFD and Muslims Against Sharia were ignored in the State Department booklet, while Islamist groups and individuals, including organizations like CAIR, MPAC and ISNA, got what amounted to an infomercial.

...Non-Islamist Muslims who have read the document strongly disagree.

Khalim Massoud, president of Muslims Against Sharia, said the State Department booklet "absolutely" legitimates Muslim Brotherhood-type organizations and undermines non-Islamists like him. "It boggles my mind how people who are supposed to protect us (the government) are advancing our enemies' agenda," he told IPT News.

According to AIFD's Jasser, by quoting Islamists like Mattson, the State Department is "reinforcing continued denial from Muslims that we have any role to play in a counter-jihad within Islam." When the State Department gives a platform to members of organizations like CAIR and ISNA (while ignoring the other side), "it sets things back, telling Muslims they don't have to reform their own house," Jasser said. "You tell Muslims these [Islamists] are the people we need to deal with."

And "Being Muslim in America" is not the only example of the messages of weakness that the State Department sends to the Muslim world. Elsewhere at www.america.gov, the State Department's Middle East & North Africa section of the site is replete with items like the transcript of a press conference in which Obama and Jordanian King Abdullah suggest that Israel and the Palestinians are equally responsible for the failure to achieve peace; a speech in which Vice President Biden urges Israel to end settlements and back a "two-state solution;" and a January 9, 2009 statement warning Israel of the consequences of misusing U.S- supplied weapons. Rather than telling the truth about the central role of Islamist radicalism in sabotaging peace, the State Department seems to waiver between moral equivalence and blaming Israel.

In short, the State Department continues to send foolish - - even dangerous -- messages to both friends and enemies of freedom in the Muslim world....

Terror victim dies 7 years after attack

From Ynet News, 11/4/09, by Ahiya Raved:

Shimon Shiran, who was gravely wounded in Haifa bombing, dies after long battle with injuries


Shimon Shiran

Shimon Shiran, 57, who was gravely wounded in a suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant in 2002, has died. The seventh anniversary of the terror attack at the Matza eatery will be marked Sunday.

Shiran sustained head wounds and remained hospitalized in serious condition ever since the attack. His 17-year-old daughter, Adi, was killed in the bombing, while his wife, Hili, was also hurt but recovered since.

On the day of the attack, Shiran – an engineer and owner of a plastics company – went to lunch with his family at the Haifa restaurant. A suicide bomber detonated himself in the eatery while it was packed with visitors, killing 14 people on the spot. Another person died several days later and more than 40 people were wounded in the attack.

Shiran was hospitalized at Haifa's Rambam hospital for a long period, and later was transferred to a rehabilitation facility. His family members were alongside him throughout this period, while also taking care of their wounded mother.

"During the rehabilitation period there was a peak – a period where he was able to walk, eat on his own, and reply to questions – yet ever since then, the situation deteriorated," Shiran's son, Eyal, told Ynet.

The bereaved son added that when it comes to terror attacks, Israeli society tends to focus on the dead, while forgetting the wounded.

"The dead no longer feel anything; the wounded are the ones who bear the scars and pain, and they're forgotten," he said. "There are many such people, and we saw them over the years in the wing where our father was hospitalized."

Shimon Shiran will be laid to rest Sunday at 2:30 pm at the Haifa cemetery. He is survived by his mother, Sylvia, his wife, and two children.

Terror TV backed by Australia's Arabic community

From The Age, August 22, 2008, by Barney Zwartz:

...[Bnai Brith] Anti-Defamation Commission chairman John Searle said yesterday he was disappointed that Australia's Arabic community was supporting the station, al-Manar.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority has twice stopped the channel from being broadcast in Australia, in 2004 and in January this year, because of its support for terrorism. Now it is being transmitted by an Indonesian satellite company part-owned by the Indonesian Government, which has declined American requests to halt the broadcasts.

Al-Manar is operated by Hezbollah... endorses suicide bombing and often broadcasts the final messages of suicide bombers.

Mr Searle said al-Manar went beyond acceptable limits of free speech and was renowned for inciting violence and hatred. He said he was disturbed at statements by Australian Arabic Council chairman Roland Jabbour in The Age yesterday that the channel was popular and should not be restricted. "I would have hoped that a station broadcasting programs which describe Jews as the offspring of apes and pigs and which advocates their annihilation would not receive the support of Australia's Arabic community," he said.

Mr Jabbour responded yesterday by saying that anti-Semitism was wrong and that Judaism should be respected, but that Hezbollah was not anti-Semitic. "We need to make a clear distinction between anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, and between a terrorist organisation and a resistance group," he said. He said he would not call Jews the offspring of apes and pigs, but that in the context of "the crimes of the state of Israel" it was reasonable for al-Manar to do so and to portray Israeli rabbis as killing Christian children to use their blood in Passover meals.

...and from the Andrew Bolt Blog (The Herald Sun), Friday, August 22, 2008:

...If that’s what Jabbour calls “respecting” Judaism, I’d hate to think what he’d get up to if he were a, you know, bigot.

For a reminder of the kind of respectful, non-racist progamming put on by al-Manar, here are a few cheery little clips.

Oh, and as for Jabbour, you’ll be pleased to know that a man with his broad mind and fine taste in television has been showered with all the honors appropriate in our fiercely multicultural land:

• Founding and Current Chairman Australian Arabic Council
• Appointed to the Federal Government, Council for Australian Arab Relations
• Justice of the Peace for the State of Victoria
• Victorian Government Joint-Arabic Standing Committee on Educational Cooperation
• Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s committee on Racism and Discrimination
• Deakin University Academic Advisory Board on Arabic Studies
• Former Committee Member of the Northern Schools Network of Victoria
  

A German's View on Islam

Sion emailed me this essay, purportedly by Dr. Tanay, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University Medical School, Detroit, Michigan*.

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

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

We are told again and again by "experts" and "talking heads" that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the [spectre] of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.

It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor killing. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.

The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority," the "silent majority," is cowed and extraneous.

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

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

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

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.

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


*Dr. Emanuel Tanay MD is a well-known forensic psychiatrist who has been an expert witness in many famous cases. He has served as an officer or committee member on the Michigan Psychiatric Society, the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and others. He is a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and of the American Board of Forensic Psychiatry and a distinguished fellow of the APA and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFC).

A Holocaust survivor himself, Dr Tanay coauthored a book about the survivors of the Holocaust and was asked by the German government to consult on just compensation for the Holocaust survivors. Dr. Tanay has served on several journal editorial boards, authored many publications, and presented countless times on forensic medicine. His efforts have also produced many awards and commendations from groups such as the Michigan State Medical Society, APA, the Detroit Institute of Technology, and AAFC, among others.

You can access Dr Tanay's online Survivor's testimony to the University of Michigan.

We must learn more about our enemies

From The Australian, by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor March 29, 2008:

.... One of the dumbest things you can do in a war is not listen to your enemy..... The worldwide Islamist terror movements are nothing if not voluble and it is amazing how little we listen to them.

A prime case is the Palestinian terrorist movement, Hamas...in all the endless reporting on Gaza, almost no one examines what Hamas says about itself.

...some of the thousands of newly translated documents from the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein... indicated a promiscuous and intense relationship between Saddam's government and international terrorism.

... after the 9/11 attacks a Palestinian leader, presumably a Hamas leader, told the Iraqis that Hamas had 35 armed terror cells across the world, mingled with refugee populations, including in France, Sweden and Denmark. An internal Iraqi intelligence report of March 26, 2003, reads:

"We have lately been visited by representatives of the Hamas movement in Baghdad who inform us of the following points:

• "... we renew our commitment to you against the foolish American attack."
• "A request to open our border checkpoints to let the volunteer fighters participate in the war."
• "An offer from Hamas leader Dr al-Rantisi to carry out demonstrations and suicide attacks to support Iraq."

...A report from August 1, 1998, reads:

"An agent supplied us with information about a pact between (Hamas leader) Sheik Ahmad Yasin and the Iranian leadership. The most significant information was Iran's support for the Hamas movement and the appropriating of $15 million a month, as well as supplying Hamas with commando teams to carry out operations abroad, and forming a new organisation named Hezbollah-Palestine to divert suspicion away from Hamas in case it carries out sensitive operations and assassinations."

Hamas began life in 1988 as the Palestinian branch of Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood. It is extremist, committed to terrorism as a way of life and totalitarian in its Islamist ideology.....

....its proxies have relentlessly fired rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, mainly at civilian targets. Last Wednesday alone there were 20 such rockets and mortar shells. Because of the breakdown of border security between Gaza and Egypt, ever longer range rockets are being smuggled into Gaza, and the big Israeli city of Ashkelon is often hit. But with longer range rockets coming from Iran, there is no reason Hamas ultimately will not be able to fire on Tel Aviv.

As this column has previously assessed, Israel will eventually have to respond. I believe there will be a big Israeli campaign and this will convulse the Middle East. Because to really remove the rocket threat, Israel will have to take back control of the Gaza-Egypt border, establish military intelligence and response posts at least in some parts of Gaza, and possibly occupy some of what have been the rocket launch points in northern Gaza.

Given Hamas's murderous methods, there is no way it will lose control of Gaza through any democratic election.... Anyone who thinks it unfair to characterise Hamas as extremist, terrorist, Islamist and totalitarian should read the Hamas charter.... It is a sickening document, full of violence, crude anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories.

It says, for example, that Rotary and Lions clubs, as well as the Freemasons, of course, are spy organisations in the pay of the Jews. It relies on the notorious tsarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to establish Jewish behaviour. It accuses the Jews of being behind not only the French revolution and the communist revolution and World War I, but even World War II.
Why did the Jews promote World War II, in which six million Jews were killed? According to the Hamas charter, it was for purposes of profiteering and to pave the way for the establishment of the state of Israel.

The Hamas charter demands Islamist control of all the territory of Israel and Palestine and repeatedly denounces any peace process or compromise that allows Israel to continue to exist.

But the most telling feature of the Hamas charter is its pervasive religiosity.

The failure to understand that Islamist terrorism is a religious, ideological movement, with a coherent if grotesque world view, is one of many failures of Western commentators. Reading the Islamists' documents would be a good place to start in remedying that so far abject failure.

"Hitlers of the 21st Century"

From Andrew Bolt Blog (Herald Sun), Wednesday, February 20, 2008:

Just another charming multicultural event from our peaceable friends at the Islamic Information & Services Network of Australasia, raising money and hate:

Follow the link to see a plethora of comments and "discussion" on the blog.

Suspected US missile strike in Pakistan

From DEBKAfile, November 2, 2007, 5:48 PM (GMT+02:00):

A suspected US missile strikes Taliban or al Qaeda hideout, killing 10 people, in Miran Shah, capital of Pakistan’s North Waziristan

Later, armed men surrounded the scene, 20 km from the Afghan border, and carried away the dead and wounded. DEBKAfile reports that al Qaeda makes it a rule to evacuate the dead and wounded so as not to disclose their identities, especially when a prominent operative is hit.
Witnesses reported seeing a drone flying in from the West before a big explosion.

The attack, denied by a US military spokesman, took place as U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon was in Pakistan to meet President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
Suspected US missiles have struck extremist hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal regions in the past but were never acknowledged.

Al Qaeda declares Cyber Jihad

From DEBKAfile, October 30, 2007:

In a special Internet announcement in Arabic....Osama bin Laden’s followers announced ....Electronic Jihad.

On Sunday, Nov. 11, al Qaeda’s electronic experts will start attacking Western, Jewish, Israeli, Muslim apostate and Shiite Web sites. On Day One, they will test their skills against 15 targeted sites expand the operation from day to day thereafter until hundreds of thousands of Islamist hackers are in action against untold numbers of anti-Muslim sites.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that, shortly after the first announcement, some of al Qaeda’s own Web sites went blank, apparently crashed by the American intelligence computer experts tracking them. The next day, Oct. 30, they were up again, claiming their Islamic fire walls were proof against infidel assault.

They also boasted an impenetrable e-mail network for volunteers wishing to join up with the cyber jihad to contact and receive instructions undetected by the security agencies in their respective countries. ....the instructions come in simple language and are organized in sections according to target. They offer would-be martyrs, who for one reason or another are unable to fight in the field, to fulfill their jihad obligations on the Net. These virtual martyrs are assured of the same thrill and sense of elation as a jihadi on the “battlefield.”

... The electronic war they have declared could cause considerable trouble on the world’s Internet.

Islamic elements radicalising Australian youth

From The Australian, by John Lyons October 29, 2007:

AUSTRALIA faces a "London-type bombing" if relations between Muslims and the intelligence and police authorities do not improve, an influential Islamic youth leader has warned.

Fadi Rahman, who runs one of Sydney's biggest youth centres at Lidcombe in the city's west, said overseas Islamic elements were attempting to radicalise Muslim youth with their hardline ideologies.

... Mr Rahman said Muslims did not trust ASIO or the Australian Federal Police and that the bungled terror case against Gold Coast doctor Mohamed Haneef had worsened the situation. "...no one in the Islamic community trusts them enough to give them a heads-up about anything," Mr Rahman told The Australian. "Look at the Haneef thing - why would we trust these guys when all you see is one fumble after another? People are afraid."

...Mr Rahman said a battle for the hearts and minds of young Muslims was under way in Australia between influences from overseas wanting to radicalise youths and more moderate influences in Australia. Mr Rahman said he believed he had been the target of a recruitment attempt but when he responded "defensively" those talking to him said they had merely been joking.

Asked about the anatomy of a recruitment, he said: "Most of the time they start at the local mosque in small groups - they move quickly into the garage, then people's homes. You get sucked in." He said the typical recruiter was in their 40s or 50s, "from overseas, well-educated and tapping into young people's frustrations and anger". "I think we are very similar to London," he said. "There are these individuals from overseas who are basically in their mid-life who have these ideologies and because of the animosity they have experienced in their own countries have deep hatred of the Western world. It's very easy to tap into the mind of someone who has a low education level, unemployment and who has basically given up on life.

"The right ingredients are there. We need to do something or what happened in London, a London-type bombing, will happen here." The "something" includes programs to give opportunities to Muslim youth and a "less hostile" attitude by the federal Government. Mr Rahman said the Government was spending too much on campaigns directed at people who did not know what was going on - such as the Be Alert, Not Alarmed campaign - but not enough in communities such as southwestern Sydney, where about 250,000 Muslims live. "It's not like it will be John Smith on the north shore of Sydney who will have information, it will be Mohammed or Ahmed out here," he says.

Mr Rahman said he and Toufic Mallah, the man he brought into the youth centre to stress moderation, preached non-violence. About 50 of the youths at the centre, which has about 460 members aged 10 to 35, are former criminals who have done time in jail. Mr Rahman said they could go "either way".

At the Independent Centre of Research Australia, he runs anger-management programs and has opened a prayer room run by Sheik Mallah. Sheik Mallah said the second chapter of the Koran stressed that "we have made a moderate nation". He says non-Muslim Australians should approach their local sheiks if there was anything they did not understand or like about their local Muslim communities. "Come and speak to us," he said.

.... In the aftermath of the Cronulla race riots in Sydney in 2005 there was progress between Muslim and non-Muslim communities, but since then "things have taken a nasty turn".
"The blame game" of all Muslims being blamed for terrorism "will only put people offside", he said. "When the shit hits the fan we will all be covered with it. It's just a matter of time before someone says I've had enough. Unless something is done and attitudes change something will happen....

No Convictions in Trial Against Muslim Charity

From The new York Times, October 22, 2007, by LESLIE EATON:

A federal jury today failed to convict any of the former leaders of a Muslim charity charged with financing Middle Eastern terrorists.

DALLAS, Oct. 22 — A deadlocked federal jury here did not convict any leaders of a Muslim charity who were charged with supporting Middle Eastern terrorists, and the judge today declared a mistrial in what has been widely viewed as the government’s flagship terror-financing case.

The case, involving the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its backers, is the government’s largest and most complex legal effort to shut down what it contends is American financing for terrorist organizations in the Middle East. President Bush announced he was freezing the charity’s assets in 2001, saying that the radical Islamic group Hamas had “obtained much of the money it pays for murder abroad right here in the United States.”

But at the trial, the government did not allege that the foundation, which was based in a Dallas suburb, paid directly for suicide bombings. Instead, the prosecution said, the foundation supported terrorism by sending more than $12 million to charitable groups, known as zakat committees, which build hospitals and feed the poor.

The prosecution said the committees were controlled by Hamas and contributed to terrorism by helping Hamas spread its ideology and recruit supporters....

...After 19 days of deliberations, the jury acquitted one of the five individual defendants on all but one charge, on which it deadlocked. A majority of the jurors also appeared ready to acquit two other defendants of most charges, and could not reach a verdict on charges against the two principal organizers and the foundation itself, which had been the largest Muslim charity in the United States until the government froze its assets in late 2001.

The decision today is “a stunning setback for the government, there’s no other way of looking at it,” said Matthew D. Orwig, a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal here who was, until recently, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. .... “If this doesn’t get their attention, they are just in complete denial,” he said of Justice Department officials, whom he said may not have recognized how difficult such cases are to prosecute.

... Jimmy Gurulé , who was an undersecretary of the Treasury when that agency froze Holy Land’s assets, described the outcome as “the continuation of what I now see as a trend of disappointing legal defeats” in terror-financing cases. Two previous cases, in Illinois and in Florida, ended with hung juries and relatively minor plea deals, he said.

In the Holy Land case, lawyers for defendants told the jury that their clients did not support terrorism but were humanitarians trying to lessen suffering among impoverished Palestinians. Though their clients might have expressed support for Hamas, the defense argued, that was before the United States government designated it as a terrorist organization in 1995.

....James T. Jacks, the first assistant United States Attorney, said in court that the government would retry the case. Both prosecutors and defense lawyers have been barred from discussing the case in the press, and Judge Fish said that order continued in force.....

Gretel C. Kovach contributed reporting.

Without Illusions

From GLORIA, by Barry Rubin, October 22, 2007:

The alternative Western view of Middle East strategy--so influential in academic, media, and to some extent diplomatic circles—has a six-point program that boils down as:
Make deals with Iran, Syria, Hamas, and Hizballah; ally with Muslim Brotherhoods; and split Iran and Syria.

Those more extreme who advocate this approach are sympathetic to these forces, seeing them as more misunderstood victim than aggressive oppressor; the more moderate among them merely think the radicals can be moderated through concessions and confidence-building measures. In other words, they are not really adversaries but either already good guys or can be converted into playing that role.

By this analysis, those who claim these radical regimes and movements are dangerous due to their radical ideology, violent methods, and totalitarian goals are standing in the way of solving issues quickly, painlessly, and peacefully. They are warmongers perpetrating needless conflicts.
This analysis generates tremendous anger against the United States and Israel or anyone else who tries to explain that this approach will not work. Through this transformation, those who generate grievances that create terrorists or don’t want to give in to the terrorists’ demands are the real villains.

....let’s focus today on two of these points: the Muslim Brotherhoods and the Syrian-Iran alliance.

The Brotherhoods, particularly those in Egypt and Jordan, are said to be moderate because they do not directly commit terrorist violence (though they do endorse it) and participate in elections. This does not prove, however, that they are moderate but merely that they are not stupid. Rather, they abstain from a terrorist strategy because they fear the local regimes which keep a tight hold on them. And they participate in elections because they realize that this furthers their cause, not because they are devotees of democracy. Moreover, it is laughably easy to show the contrast between their English-language interviews or websites and the continuing radicalism of their Arabic statements, doctrine, and goals.

Now the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has produced a political platform providing its vision for Egypt. And it looks even more like Islamist Iran than one would have suspected. The key proposal is for a committee of Muslim clerics to pass on the validity of all legislation and government policies, just as it is done in Tehran. By this definition, then, Islamic law—as interpreted by the clerics—would govern Egypt. This in itself shows that its goal is an Islamist state and not a pluralist or democratically governed one.

In addition, neither a woman nor a non-Muslim can be either president or prime minister. And the peace treaty with Israel would be abrogated.

But this was not, contrary to media reports, the first such platform. The 2004 version states: "Our mission is to implement a comprehensive reform in order to uphold God's law in secular as well as religious matters."

The program includes the following points

• "The media should be cleansed of anything that disagrees with the decrees of Islam."
• "The economic system should be "derived from Islam."
• "The focus of education should be on learning the Quran by heart."
• "The Zakah [Islamic private charitable] institutions should be in charge of distributing wealth and income."
• "Women should only hold the kind of posts that would preserve their virtue."
• "Our culture has to be derived from Islamic sources."

As for the Syria-Iran alliance, the West has been trying to break it for a quarter-century without success. ...But Damascus and Tehran both understand how mutually beneficial, natural, and long-term is their partnership.

Writing in 1989, Patrick Seale, Hafiz al-Assad’s scribe, described the alliance as a masterstroke creating, an "axis from Tehran through Damascus to South Lebanon. From the moment Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power in early 1979 Asad judged it a supreme Arab interest to befriend him."

Obviously this was no impulsive error which Syrian or Iranian leaders are eager to correct.
Someone who understands Middle East politics better than naןve Western observers is Saad Hariri, a leader of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims and of the government coalition, whose father was murdered by the Syrians. The West, Hariri explained, might as well "engage with al-Qae¬da." By being so eager to appease the extremists, Hariri warned, "The message that is being sent today to our part of the world is you can" subvert neighboring regimes through terrorism "and get away with it." The result would be "There will only be terrorism and extremist regimes like Syria will flourish."

"Shari'a-friendly" investments

From Jewish World Review Oct. 23, 2007 / 11 Mar-Cheshvan 5768, by Caroline B. Glick, senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post [my emphasis added - SL]:

Monday the verdict in the largest terror finance case in US history was read in a Texas courtroom. The case against the Holyland Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its principal leaders — which ended in a mistrial — was predicated on the interconnection between terrorism and international finance. The five men were accused of financing Hamas by transferring millions of dollars to organizations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza that served as distributors of charitable or zakat contributions to Hamas members and entities.

Perhaps the greatest problem with the term "war on terror" is that it confuses both the public and those charged with prosecuting the war on all levels about the nature of the enemy we face. The jihadists who seek to dominate the world in the name of Islam are not merely involved in violent activities. Organizations like Hamas, Hizbullah and al-Qaida devote the majority of their efforts to spreading the message of jihad by proselytizing fellow Muslims through propaganda, educational and welfare activities. These actions are vital for building popular support both for their terror activities and for their larger political goals.

Essential to the aims of the jihadists is the Muslim sacrament of zakat. Zakat, one of the pillars of Islam, requires Muslims to donate 2.5 percent of their incomes to charity.

As the indictment in the Holyland Foundation case showed, most of the money that the five defendants transferred to Hamas was transferred through zakat committees in Palestinian cities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. These committees then transferred the monies to Hamas terrorists, their family members, political leaders and terror cells.

...curbing terror funding has been a central pillar of the US war effort. And targeting supposedly charitable organizations registered in the US, which like the Holyland Foundation served as conduits for money laundering and terror financing was one of the first courses of action that the Bush administration embarked on in its campaign against the global jihadist network.

The targeting of these organizations has been strongly criticized by self-styled Muslim civil rights organizations which protest the government's actions by claiming they are anti-Muslim. Some of the main organizations that have adopted this line were themselves identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Holyland Foundation case. Specifically, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America, which both US government agencies and the US media have treated as credible groups were named in the Holyland indictment as unindicted co-conspirators with Hamas's US front group.

... Today terror analysts fear that a new means has been found to skirt anti-terror laws and finance terror while rendering the financial systems of the West vulnerable to Islamic manipulation and control. The fear is that through the burgeoning presence of Shari'a-compliant investment houses, jihadist groups and financiers will be able to raise enormous sums of money to fund their nefarious activities aimed at global domination.

Islamic clerics tout Shari'a-finance as one of the central components of Islam. But this is untrue. Shari'a economics did not exist until the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood Maulana Abul Ala Mawdudi and Sayyd Qutb invented it them in the 1940s and 1950s. ... the purpose of Shari'a finance is religious and political, not financial.
Shari'a finance became a significant factor in the Muslim world in the aftermath of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo which raised Arab oil revenues a hundredfold in under a decade. The first Shari'a-compliant banks were established in 1975 with the opening of the Saudi-controlled Islamic Development Bank and the Islamic Bank of Dubai. Today the International Monetary Fund estimates that there are some 300 Shari'a-compliant banks operating in some 75 countries. Arab estimates place the number at 400. Close to a trillion dollars are under Shari'a-compliant management.

ASIDE FROM these Shari'a-based financial institutions in the Islamic world, the new trend in the West is for Western financial institutions to offer Shari'a-compliant investment opportunities. So excited is Britain, for instance about the financial benefit to be gained by attracting oil-rich Islamic investors that in January Britain's Treasury Minister Ed Balls announced his government's intention to turn London into the center of global Islamic finance.

....In order for investments to be defined as Shari'a-compliant, they must receive the approval of Shari'a advisors. Only certain Islamic entities are entitled to issue religious rulings or fatwas that can recognize investments as Shari'a-compliant. These entities include the Fiqh Academy in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, which is associated with the Saudi-dominated Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC); the European Council for Fatwa Research, and the Fatwa Council of North America. All of these entities are associated with the radical pro-jihadist Wahabi and Salafi schools of Islam adhered to by groups such as al-Qaida and Hamas.

.... radicals, supported by jihad-supporting Islamic institutions constitute an effective cartel in Shari'a-finance. ...With a trillion dollars now invested in Shari'a-compliant investments, the amount of money available for zakat is staggering.

Islamic financial kingpin Sheikh Saleh Kamel, a Saudi multi-billionaire, founder of the Dallah al-Baraka Islamic banking group and alleged terror financier recently suggested ... that one central institution be established that will distribute all zakat contributions from Shari'a-compliant financial institutions.

...."On April 30, the OIC…established the clerical International Commission for Zakat, replacing more than 20,000 organizations that previously collected the money. [The] Islamic clerics' "expert committee" in Malaysia now supervises and distributes those funds."

On October 24 and 25th, the New York law firm Gersten Savage will host a major conference in New York on Shari'a-compliant investments.

MANY NEW YORK investment houses, banks and hedge funds have indicated their interest in expanding their services to include Shari'a-compliant investments. These organizations should carefully consider the likely moral and criminal implications of enabling Shari'a advisors associated with radical Islamic theologians and a foreign body on record for supporting terror, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism to determine both the composition of their investments and the utilization of 2.5 percent of the revenues stemming from those investments.

It may work out that by bringing what is essentially a cartel sympathetic to jihad into their institutions, they will inadvertently be picking up the slack caused by the shuttering of non-profits like the Holyland Foundation. Like the heads of Islamic charities, these banks also will be held accountable for their actions.

The Muslim Brotherhood shows its true colors

From the Christian Science Monitor, October 12, 2007, by By Mohamed Elmenshawy [my emphasis added - SL]:

The [Muslim Brotherhood]'s latest thinking reveals a troubling agenda.

Washington - If Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini were alive today, he would celebrate the expansion of his Islamist vision. As evidenced by the latest version of the Muslim Brotherhood's recently released political party platform, the late Iranian leader's dream of spreading the ideology of Islamic revolution is gaining ground in Egypt, the largest Sunni Arab country.

The draft .... program that it outlines doesn't herald the democratic values the Brotherhood has claimed to hold in previous public statements and addresses. Instead, it calls for the adoption of a "Civic Islamic State."

Perhaps the most alarming feature of the draft platform is the call to create a Majlis Ulama, or Council of Islamic Scholars, that could end up being elected by Islamic clerics, not through free and fair elections. Reminiscent of Iran's Guardian Council, this undemocratically selected body could have the power vested by the state to veto any and all legislation passed by the Egyptian parliament and approved by the president that is not compatible with Islamic sharia law.

The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, has been outlawed by the Egyptian government since 1954. Today, it packages itself as a moderate organization, and its members hold 88 seats (about a fifth) in the Egyptian parliament as independents. Many Egyptians have long sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood in its struggle against an increasingly authoritarian regime. It was hard not to feel for the banned organization when its members faced the harsh treatment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's military tribunals.

Still, having gone since 1928 without releasing any official party platform, the Muslim Brotherhood has escaped an honest and critical review – until now. In publishing this draft, it missed a golden opportunity to prove its pro-democratic stance.

The Muslim Brotherhood should have looked to Turkey as a model for how to integrate Islam into a secular system...The Brotherhood's consistent call for a purely Islamic state can only mean the marginalization of secular opposition voices.

Also alarming is that the draft document would discriminate on the grounds of gender and religion by denying women and members of Egypt's Christian Coptic community the right to run for presidential office.

The rise to power of a Muslim Brotherhood based on this new party platform could spell disaster for Egypt's already tenuous relations with Israel.... the Brotherhood would not recognize the "Zionist entity" or "unjust" international treaties, in reference to the peace treaty signed with Israel in 1979.

Many people used to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood was simply a political movement using religion to gain support and present itself in contrast to the ruling National Democratic Party, but now it appears that the inverse is true. The Muslim Brotherhood is a religious movement using politics to spread its values and beliefs.

In the wake of 9/11, many analysts have called on the American administration and policymakers to engage with so-called moderate Islamists in the Arab world. While engagement is necessary, and greater diplomatic efforts should be encouraged, the Brotherhood's dangerous political platform should be questioned. Before opening a dialogue with any group – even one that has renounced violence, as the Brotherhood has – there needs to be an examination as to whether a political organization that categorically denies equality on the basis of religion and gender can be lauded as moderate, and whether engagement can lead to positive political reform and democratization.

Egypt is in desperate need of new political blood. With the dictatorial nature of Mr. Mubarak's 26-year rule and the recent sentencing of several editors in chief, the Egyptian people want a viable alternative. But the Muslim Brotherhood's new platform dispels the hope that it could be the lifeline Egypt needs to start becoming a true liberal democracy.

The Egyptian people, lacking a vibrant and diverse political arena, are left to choose between the devil they know and the devil they are now beginning to know.

Mohamed Elmenshawy is editor in chief of Taqrir Washington and Arab Insight, a project of the World Security Institute in Washington, D.C.

The rise and rise of Hizb ut-Tahrir

From GLORIA, October 9, 2007, by Jonathan Spyer [my emphasis added - SL]:


...Hizb ut-Tahrir (the "party of liberation") is ... growing in strength and visibility in the West Bank, especially in the areas of Jerusalem and Hebron. So what does the Hizb's emergence as a political factor mean, and what implications may it have (if any) for the future direction of events between Israelis and Palestinians?

Hizb ut-Tahrir was founded in Jordanian-ruled Jerusalem in 1952 by a sharia court judge, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. The party inscribes on its banner the goal of the restoration of the caliphate - the Islamic government established after the death of Muhammad in 632, and abolished by Kemal Ataturk in 1924.

The party wants the imposition of sharia law - eventually worldwide - and is in favour of the destruction of Israel. However, it sees this as the job of the conventional forces of the restored Islamic caliphate. The party has thus not employed the methods of terror attacks against Israelis, as favoured by other, more prominent Palestinian Islamist currents, such as Hamas and Islamic jihad.

Hizb ut-Tahrir has grown from its beginnings in Jordanian Jerusalem into an international force, with branches in 45 countries in the world. It has achieved particular notoriety in central and southeast Asian countries, in particular in Uzbekistan and Indonesia.

It has also come to prominence in western European countries - particularly in Britain, where a branch was established in 1986. A number of the best-known British participants in Islamist terrorism attended meetings of the group or one of its offshoots at certain stages of their trajectories. These include Omar Khan Sharif, who tried to bomb the Mikes Place bar in Tel Aviv in 2003, and the "shoe bomber", Richard Reid.

In the Arabic-speaking world, Hizb ut-Tahrir was long regarded as an obscure, eccentric current. Some analysts saw its failure to place the Palestinian issue at the centre of its concerns as contributing to its marginality. This is now changing. In the West Bank in the last months, Hizb ut-Tahrir has held a series of successful events, which mark its entry onto the stage as a significant player in Palestinian politics.

In early August, the party organised a number of mass rallies in the West Bank, including a gathering of 10,000 people in the town of Al-Bireh, and similar-sized rallies in Hebron and Ramallah. These took place under the slogan "The caliphate is the rising force", and coincided with similar gatherings held by branches around the world....

.... the emergence of the movement raises a question over the optimistic scenario recently raised in some quarters, according to which once Islamist movements such as Hamas are tested in office and fail, previous, predominantly secular patterns of politics will re-emerge.

It may well be that a deep, and profoundly significant "Islamisation" of the politics of the Arab world is taking place, the implications of which are only beginning to be glimpsed. Looking around the region, the wall-to-wall dominance of Islamist groups in opposition politics appears to attest to such a process.....

.... Such a shift, if it takes place, would have severe implications for hopes of a consensual peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and for wider regional stability..... interested parties among both Israelis and Palestinians will no doubt be keeping a close eye on the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir in the West Bank in the period to come.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

Iran's proxies: a Middle East Volcano

From The Washingtom Post, by Charles Krauthammer, Friday, September 21, 2007; Page A19:

On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria.....Circumstantial evidence points to this being an attack on some nuclear facility provided by North Korea.

....Which raises alarms for many reasons. First, it would undermine the whole North Korean disarmament process. Pyongyang might be selling its stuff to other rogue states or perhaps just temporarily hiding it abroad while permitting ostentatious inspections back home.

Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons -- on Monday, Jane's Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile -- but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran's headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt and partially activate Iran's proxies in the Arab Middle East:

(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault.

(2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The third Lebanon war, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran's order.

(3) Syria, Iran's only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed in a massive car bombing.

(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Why is Iran doing this? Because it has its eye on a single prize: the bomb. It needs a bit more time, knowing that once it goes nuclear, it becomes the regional superpower and Persian Gulf hegemon.

Iran's assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are poised and ready. Ahmadinejad's message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq and U.S. interests -- in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession.

This is an extremely high-stakes game. The time window is narrow. In probably less than two years, Ahmadinejad will have the bomb.

The world is not quite ready to acquiesce. The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran " unacceptable." The French foreign minister warned that "it is necessary to prepare for the worst" -- and "the worst, it's war, sir."

Which makes it all the more urgent that powerful sanctions be slapped on the Iranian regime. Sanctions will not stop Ahmadinejad. But there are others in the Iranian elite who might stop him and the nuclear program before the volcano explodes. These rival elites may be radical, but they are not suicidal. And they believe, with reason, that whatever damage Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic folly may inflict upon the region and the world, on Crusader and Jew, on infidel and believer, the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran's Islamic republic buried under the ash.

Islam's unholy alliance

From The Australian, August 22, 2007 , by Cameron Stewart and Richard Kerbaj ...

....The global divide between Islam's two main groups, Sunnis and Shi'ites, has not become a flashpoint in Australia's Muslim community. On the contrary, as was revealed by The Australian, the nation's Shi'ite and Sunni leaders have formed a united front against Israel, declaring their support for the Iranian-backed terrorist network Hezbollah.

Yesterday Muslim leaders from both sects attacked the Howard Government and the Opposition for meeting a controversial US-based Muslim thinker, Wafa Sultan, who considers the prophet Mohammed evil and who says there is no difference between moderate and radical Islam.

....The unholy alliance of Shi'ites and Sunnis follows comments by Australia's top Shi'ite spiritual leader Kamal Mousselmani in The Australian in which he labelled Israel a terrorist state and expressed his allegiance to Hezbollah militants. Trad says his sect largely supported Sheikh Mousselmani's comments. "Sunnis outside of Lebanon, they still have a great deal of respect for Hezbollah," he says.

Trad is not alone in his thinking. Last year during an anti-war rally in Melbourne, Australia's new mufti, Fehmi Naji el-Imam, called Hezbollah militants freedom fighters.

It remains to be seen how permanent this new-found unity is between Australia's 270,000-strong Sunni community and the much smaller 30,000 Shi'ite population. The tensions that erupted in Auburn in 2005 suggest it is, at best, an uneasy peace between the two sects that is being watched by ASIO. "The ongoing violence in Iraq continues to have an impact on the Middle East community in Australia," ASIO wrote in its most recent annual report. "During 2005, in the lead-up to elections in Iraq, tensions increased between members of the Sunni and Shia communities in Sydney, particularly in the Auburn area."

State and federal police are also keeping a close eye on relations between the two sects. Victorian police recently visited the Victorian town of Shepparton, which has a large Iraqi community, and met leaders from both sects.....

....The most common bond between Australia's Sunnis and Shi'ites is proving to be their shared dislike of Israel.... "There are some Sunni Muslims who are opposed to Israel and so they are willing to put the ideological differences aside because Hezbollah (is) seen to be 'standing up' to the Israelis and doing what, in their view, Arab and Muslim armies and governments have been unable or unwilling to do...." .... last July, several moderate Australian Muslim leaders who had backed John Howard on the war against al-Qa'ida called on the Prime Minister to rethink Australia's branding of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.

Ameer Ali, the then head of the Government's Muslim advisory body, said Hezbollah was wrongly classified as a terrorist group because, unlike al-Qa'ida, it was "not creating violence at random" but merely protecting the state of Lebanon. Howard was unmoved. "Rethink our proscription of it as a terrorist organisation? No chance, full stop. No chance at all," Howard said.

.... Another bond between Sunnis and Shi'ites in Australia is their widely held belief that the Australian Government is persecuting Muslims in general and that the tough new terror laws are aimed at people of Islamic faith. This perception of a common enemy so close to home is further helping to unite these traditional Muslim rivals.

US clamps down on Hizbullah funding

From Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST, Jul. 24, 2007 ...

The Bush administration took action Tuesday against an Iran-based foundation, including its US branch, for allegedly providing support to Hizbullah...the Martyrs Foundation and Goodwill Charitable Organization of Dearborn, Michigan, which the government identified as a fundraising office for the foundation.

....The government also moved against al-Qard al-Hassan, a Beirut firm that the US government believes was used by Hizbullah "as a cover to manage its financial activity."
Two Lebanese - Qasem Aliq and Ahmad al-Shami - also were covered by Tuesday's order.
The US identified Aliq as a Hizbullah official who was once the director of the Martyrs Foundation's branch in Lebanon. The US says he is currently a director of Jihad al Bina, a Lebanon-based construction company allegely formed and operated by Hizbullah.

....The action means that any bank accounts or other financial assets found in the United States that belong to those identified on Tuesday must be frozen. Americans also are forbidden by doing business with them.

....The department called Goodwill Charitable Organization, or GCO, "a Hizbullah front organization that reports directly to the leadership of the Martyrs Foundation in Lebanon. ...[and]... has allegedly provided "financial support to Hizbullah directly and through the Martyrs Foundation in Lebanon..." ....The department alleged that the Martyrs Foundation channels financial support from Iran to Hizbullah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or PIJ, as well as other terrorist groups.

The US says that senior foundation officials were directly involved in Hizbullah operations against Israel last summer.