Imam Abdullah's Death a 'Martyrdom'?

FBI Agent in Charge Andrew Arena no sooner played down the violent Islam embraced by Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his band of disciples by saying, “I don’t know that I’d call it a religion,”-- before the mainstream Muslim community was tossing a wing-ding religious memorial for Abdullah, talking about what a righteous dude he was, and calling him a “martyr” for Allah. (“Radical leader killed in federal raid, others arrested”).

A couple days ago, it was like this:

Arena and Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg cautioned the public not to equate what they described as a radical group blending radical Islam with political ideology with mainstream Islam in America.

"Any Muslim who took a look at what these people believe in would not recognize this as the Muslim faith," Arena said. . . .

"This is a very hybrid, radical ideology," Arena said. "Mainstream Muslim groups would not recognize this ideology with what they view their faith is." (“One suspect in FBI probe arrested”).

Oh, really?

And yet obviously Muslims do recognize it. Otherwise, why would Detroit/Dearborn’s “mainstream” Muslim community pour out to honor the renegade member of an breakaway ideology?

Like Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom. He was there, asking Allah to bless Abdullah’s soul. Elahi is so mainstream he even gets a regular column in The Detroit News to talk about religious stuff. (“Muslims call for justice at funeral for lslamic leader”)

Then there was Harlem’s Imam Talib Abdul-Rashid. He didn’t think Imam Abdullah was mixed-up and off the reservation. Talib told mourners ''Imam Luqman had the consciousness...I never heard him discuss any subject whatsoever, even sports, without talking about Allah.''

Talib went further and asked "Allah to reward him with the promised reward of those who are martyred." ("Hundreds mourn slain mosque leader”).

Islam has its own standards for what makes a martyr, but I’m sure the criteria still include dying in the cause of Allah. Except for Dawud Walid’s disingenuous protests that it was the feds, and not the slain Islamic radical, who dragged religion into the case, I’d say an imam saying it was an act of martyrdom to die in a shootout with law officers raises some big questions about what exactly Allah expects from his soldiers.

It’s been our point here to emphasize that Imam Abdullah was indeed showing forth a well-recognized Muslim faith by “talking about Allah” when he preached killing feds, shooting Kuffar cops in the head to steal their bullet-proof vests, violent jihad against the U.S. government, cutting ties with all nonMuslims, and all the people he bragged about killing.

As much as the FBI and Department of Justice officials repeat Abdullah wasn’t really a Muslim, none of the Muslim spokesmen echo it.

Interesting?

Cry, Baby, Cry

In an attempt to deflect the hard-hitting criticism by former Vice President Dick Cheney of President Obama’s “dithering” on the War in Afghanistan, Michigan’s Senator Carl Levin said on Thursday:

"This pressure on the president ... is dangerous -- it creates growing pressure for decisions before the president has considered all the options, when what the nation needs and the troops deserve is careful, thoughtful deliberation."

Yes, it’s a hard job to be president. The hardest part may be having to make decisions under immense pressure, and the next hardest part may be the Force Five hurricane of daily criticism. Cheney knows about all that from serving three presidents, one as Secretary of Defense, and having spent eight years in the administration of the most unfairly reviled, criticized, and “pressured” president in our history.

Obama wanted this job. And when his sycophants told him, beginning the day after Election Day, that he was already the greatest president who ever lived, he accepted it as if it were understood.

Is Levin seriously suggesting now that sharp criticism of President Obama is a threat to the nation?

Islam and Black Nationalism

After last week’s Joint Terrorism Task Force raid on radical Islamic imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers, I think this article by Brendan Goldman at American Thinker I downloaded October 11 is more than timely. (“Black Nationalism Provides Foundation for African-American Islamist Movement”).

Goldman’s article obviously was written before the raid, but as you read it bear in mind noting that Abdullah was a member of the board of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). And as is evident from the taped comments of Abdullah quoted in the federal complaint, he held many of the violent, radical views described in Goldman’s article.

Black Nationalism Provides Foundation for African-American Islamist Movement

By Brendan Goldman

"America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem," Malcolm X wrote in 1964 during his pilgrimage to Mecca. Though Malcolm's anti-white rhetoric was moderated after his conversion from the Nation of Islam (NOI) to orthodox Sunni Islam, his disdain for the West, rooted in extremist black nationalism, remained integral to his Muslim identity.

Malcolm's words now appear on countless Islamist websites dedicated to finding black, English-speaking converts. The assumption that all African-American Muslims broke their ties with the anti-Western, anti-white, and anti-Semitic worldview of the NOI is a naive one. Though Warith Deen Muhammed, who led the majority of the members of the NOI to Sunni Islam in the mid-1970s, was more interested in alleviating domestic problems like crime and poverty than in creating an Islamic political movement, many of his followers were loath to abandon their radical ideology.

Islamists have harnessed these radicals'anti-Western black nationalism for their own purpose: establishing an indigenous Islamist movement in the United States that can advocate their political agenda in the foreign and domestic policy spheres. The Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) and the As-Sabiqun movement are proof that their efforts have not been in vain.

Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the founder of the primarily African-American MANA, is a product of the volatile intersection of black nationalism and politicized Islam. A former member of the NOI, Wahhaj often has been portrayed as a "moderate" by the mainstream media. However, his words speak for themselves: "In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing, and the only thing that will remain will be Islam," Wahhaj has predicted.

Imam Abdul Alim Musa of the As-Sabiqun movement is even more overt about his Islamist worldview. As-Sabiqun, founded in the early 1990s, advocates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in place of America's democratic system. Though officially a Sunni Muslim, Musa's views echo those of the NOI.

"Who ran the slave trade?" Musa asks rhetorically. "You'll study and you will find out: the Jews." His words suggest the influence of the NOI's The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, which first outlined this conspiratorial distortion of history.

Another prominent leader of the African-American Islamist movement is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown, who is now incarcerated for murder. Like his colleagues, Imam al-Amin has only disdain for his country of origin, saying, "[The main essence of the U.S. Constitution] is diametrically opposed to what Allah has commanded." At al-Amin's mosque in Atlanta, attendees sported combat uniforms and long robes, reflecting the influence of both Black Panther-style nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.

African-American Professor Robert F. Reid-Pharr, in his article "Speaking through Anti-Semitism: The Nation of Islam and the Poetics of Black (Counter) Modernity," ascribes the susceptibility of African-American Muslims to anti-Western and anti-Semitic rhetoric to their rejection of modernity and capitalism. According to Reid-Pharr, many African-Americans view Western modernity as flawed from its inception because it was built on the foundation of slavery.

This distrust for the modern world is evident in the words of Malcolm X, who said, "Show me a capitalist and I'll show you a bloodsucker." Many African-American Muslims have therefore embraced the Islamist agenda as a means to overcome inequalities they see as inherent to the modern Western system.

The irony of this situation is that the argument that politicized Islam inherently improves the position of racial minorities is entirely untenable from both a historical and a modern perspective. Though many Islamist websites make claims like "only ... through Islam has this idea [‘of racial equality and of human brotherhood'] ever been realized in action," reality tells a different story.

According to historian Bernard Lewis in his book Race and Slavery in the Middle East, slavery was an established practice in the lands of Islam from the time of Muhammad. The Islamic states later hosted an extensive slave trade network that rivaled that of the Europeans. A look at the modern world is even more telling: in the Arab Islamic states of Mauritania and Sudan, black slavery is still so pervasive that the word "black" in the local Arabic dialect has become synonymous with "slave."

Mainstream Muslims have begun to realize that Islam is not a cure-all for society's racial ills. They have subsequently started to address the prejudice of immigrant Muslim groups against African-Americans. For instance, Altaf Husain, a former president of the Muslim Students Association, said at a 2007 MANA conference, "It is a shame that in the 21st century, the problem in the Muslim-American community is the color line."

However, fringe elements of the African-American Muslim community still identify with Islamist causes, because, from their myopic perspective, it is more important to impose the hijab or combat the "Zionist media" than to address issues like prejudice, drug abuse, or crime. This distorted set of priorities provides a catalyst for African-American Islamists' disregard for U.S. laws, expressed in numerous violent crimes and terrorist plots. These plots include those most recently against a U.S. military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, a Jewish community center in Riverdale, New York, and Jewish and U.S. government targets in Los Angeles.

Today, many African-American prisoners are turning to radical Islam. The government has neglected its oversight responsibilities, allowing men like Imam Warith Deen Umar to become influential Islamic chaplains in the prison system. Umar has noted the utility of prisons for terrorist recruitment and made such reassuring statements as, "Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud [the 9/11 hijackers]."

Under the supervision of men like Umar, Saudi-funded programs have introduced the most intolerant Salafi and Wahhabi interpretations of Islam to convicts. These interpretations, claiming that an Islamic caliphate will alleviate racism and societal strife, support the radical doctrines of imams like Wahhaj and Musa over the moderate positions of W.D. Mohammed.

Since abandoning the NOI and turning to orthodox Sunni Islam, most African-American Muslims have mitigated their anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideology. However, the danger of Islamists who seek to take advantage of black nationalism's legacy of intolerance remains. It is therefore imperative to marginalize fringe Islamist elements of the African-American Muslim community and empower those who seek personal fulfillment, not political dominance, in their Islamic faith.

Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University, majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum. Research for the article was conducted under the auspices of Islamist Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Imam's Giving Us Excitations

Imam Abdullah El-Amin, of the Muslim Center, is the site of Luqman Ameen Abdullah's funeral.

After the funeral, the mosque plans to hold a peace gathering in the afternoon to promote positive vibes, said Imam El-Amin.

"We want to create peace...some good vibes," he said. ("Muslims gather at funeral for lslamic leader").

What a fitting way to memorialize a man who taught his followers that “revenge is Islamic,” and who preached, “We should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar. You see, we need to figure out how to be a bullet.”

H. Rap Brown, ISNA, and Homegrown Terrorism

Another opinion on Detroit’s “Ummah” excitement:

The Detroit 'Ummah' and Radical Islam in America [Alex Alexiev]

Full details about the FBI’s arrest in Detroit yesterday of a group of radical Muslims, during which their leader was killed in a shootout, are yet to become available, and it is too early to judge the real significance of these events. Nonetheless, what we already know is sufficient to make some general observations on the growing threat that homegrown radical Islam poses to America. It’s a question that is generally absent from both government discussions and media coverage, even though all the American wannabe terrorists recently exposed by the authorities were radicalized in this country long before seeking contacts with al-Qaeda abroad.

Media spin already has it that the group was just a bunch of bumbling African-American ex-con converts who engaged in some heated Islamist rhetoric but were guilty of little more than petty criminal activity. They had nothing to do with terrorism, it is being argued, and are certainly not representative of either African-American Muslims or American Muslims more generally. Both points are true to a degree, but they serve to obscure a larger reality. None of these people had committed a terrorist act yet, at least to our current knowledge, but people who believe in violent jihad against their fellow citizens and train in the use of firearms are just a small step from becoming terrorists. After all, the shariah law that they dreamed of imposing on the ummah that they fancied gives only three options to infidels: Convert to Islam, submit to Muslim rule and discrimination, or be killed.

It is true that most American Muslims hold views that are far from the radical mindset governing the Al-Haqq mosque. Yet it is also true that radical Islam has become the dominant idiom in the American Muslim establishment, particularly among African-American Muslims. For instance, the slain leader of this group, Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was a high official of the top national organization of African-American Muslims, the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA), a group founded and led by radical Islamists such as the notorious Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj.

The larger group to which Abdullah and his cohorts belonged and pledged allegiance, the “national community” of Imam Jamil al-Amin, a.k.a. H. Rap Brown, also enjoys an excellent standing in the American Muslim establishment, despite the inconvenient fact that the good imam is a convicted cop-killer serving a life sentence in a maximum-security prison in Colorado. Indeed, Imam Jamil, a former Black Panther leader and frequent fugitive from justice, served in key positions with some of the most important Muslim organizations in America, like the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the American Muslim Council (AMC). To this day, there isn’t a single large Muslim organization that has not participated in the noisy “Free Imam Jamil” campaign that’s been going on for years.

It is this disturbing reality of an American Muslim establishment in charge of countless mosques, Islamic cultural centers, madrassas, and charity organizations dominated by radical Islamist ideology and funded by Saudi money that Washington — under both Bush and now Obama — has long refused to acknowledge or do anything about in a systematic way. Until that happens, homegrown terrorism is not a matter of if but of when.

—Alex Alexiev is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

Religion? What Religion?

Detroit FBI head Andrew Arena said of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque raid, “This is a very hybrid radical ideology . . . I don't know that I'd call it a religion.” (“Radical leader killed in federal raid, others arrested”)

I’ve got one word for federal cops hazarding opinions on religion—Waco. It’s amazing that when there’s a Cross in a desert standing 70 years as a memorial to World War I dead, two crossed beams are alleged to scream through law offices and courts across the land: “Religion!”

But when self-identified Muslims, organized into a “mosque,” led by an “imam,” devotees of the Koran, the hadiths, abstemious about mixing with Kuffar non-Muslims, and who state repeatedly: “We are bound by our God Allah to force our religion on all the rest of you,” someone holding all the evidence in his hand can actually say he doesn’t know if he’d call that a religion.

There are some lies that, once told, require a great deal of untelling and pushback before the truth can again come into sight. Then again, some lies just fall flat.

I think this one’s flat.

Or are you buying it?

Hand Holding De-Criminalized!

The President of the United States of America signed a bill Wednesday, a defense funding bill, that had hidden inside it a hate crimes provision.

The law expands the definition of violent federal hate crimes to those committed because of a victim’s sexual orientation. Under existing federal law, hate crimes are defined as those motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion or national origin.

Prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes,” Mr. Obama said, speaking in the East Room of the White House at an evening reception, “Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love.” ("Obama Signs Hate Crimes Bill").

I’m sure those words will ring down through the ages like, “Brought forth a Nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and “A day that will live in infamy,” and “Pay any price, bear any burden,” or at least, “But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.”

Or maybe not.

“Holding the hands of the person they love”?

FBI to CAIR: 'I Wish I Knew How to Quit You'

Yes, there were smart skeptics who pooh-poohed the FBI’s very public statements that they were no longer going to spoon with unindicted terrorism-supporting CAIR.

In fairness to moi, who wanted to believe it was so, I did maintain the FBI was carrying a torch. After Wednesday's raid it’s obvious that the FBI is still jonesing for CAIR and the ADC.

I don’t have all the details on Wednesday’s raid of the radical Sunni group in Dearborn, but I’m not exactly chuffed with the FBI for giving Imad Hamad and Dawud Walid what sounds like nearly contemporaneous notice. I thought the FBI had grown out of its need to include CAIR and the ADC in its enforcement decisions.

These investigations are kept under tight wraps, and you can be sure the agents and investigators who prepare for them have security clearances. When the feds ask the court for arrest warrants, they frequently file their court documents under seal to protect security and secrecy. The National Security Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office handled the court filings for this raid. The complaint in this case was filed under seal, and only unsealed after the raid was over.

I can’t believe that either Hamad or Walid, (especially Walid, who has a criminal rap sheet as Delano Willis, Jr.) have security clearances entitling them to national security information.

'He's Got Plenty of Jihad Left in Him'

From Andrew McCarthy in today’s NRO:

After Justice’s sweetheart deal, judge gives al-Marri a slap on the wrist

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Five months ago, when al-Qaeda jihadist Ali Saleh Kallah al-Marri pleaded guilty, it was obvious that the Justice Department had given him a sweetheart deal. On Thursday, a federal judge in Illinois dutifully finished the job. Al-Marri, a committed sleeper operative sent by our enemies to carry out a post-9/11 second wave of mass-murder attacks inside the United States, was given an appalling sentence: He’ll be eligible for release in about six years.

When al-Marri entered his plea back in May, Attorney General Eric Holder crowed that the case demonstrated the criminal-justice system’s capacity to confront and quell international terrorism. As I observed at the time, though, the plea bargain was a travesty. It marked a dramatic step backwards even from the wayward 1990s philosophy that saw international terrorism as strictly a law-enforcement issue, not a national-defense matter.

Prior Justice Department practice required prosecutors to charge the most severe, readily provable offense. And in 1996, to ensure that this practice would result in sentences of death or life imprisonment for terrorists, Congress — with significant encouragement from the Clinton Justice Department (in its pre-Holder days) — overhauled federal counterterrorism law. These new laws did not solve the underlying problems: that terrorism is not a mere crime, and that regarding it as such badly compromises national security. But they did at least mean that terrorists who were successfully prosecuted would never again be able to harm Americans or anyone else. The new laws were tailor-made for terrorists like al-Marri, who joined al-Qaeda in 1998, reported directly to the network’s top echelon, and was sent to the United States by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s operations chief and 9/11 master planner, to carry out mass-murder attacks using chemical and biological weapons.

In stark departure from prior Justice Department practice, Holder permitted al-Marri to plead guilty to providing material support for terrorism. The material-support offense is generally reserved for non-terrorist sympathizers who facilitate the jihad but are unlikely to carry out atrocities themselves. It is a significantly less serious charge than the crimes — the acts of war — that Marri had actually committed, such as full-fledged membership in the al-Qaeda conspiracy to kill Americans, as well as conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction.

Because of Holder’s abandonment of past DOJ practice, al-Marri was looking at a maximum sentence of 15 years. Had the Justice Department filed appropriate charges and taken the case to trial, the 43-year-old al-Marri would have been looking at a life sentence. I am not just speculating here: As I recounted back in May, the terrorist conceded at his guilty plea that the government was in a position to prove his conduct went miles beyond material support. He agreed that he had been sent to the U.S. by KSM to conduct attacks, and that the government would prove at trial that his research into cyanide compounds is consistent with research conducted by persons trained in camps teaching advanced poisons courses to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. He also agreed that the government would prove at trial that his research into cyanide compounds is consistent with research conducted by persons trained in camps teaching advanced poisons courses to terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda. He also agrees that the government would prove at trial that an almanac recovered in his residence was bookmarked at pages showing dams, waterways, and tunnels in the United States, consistent with al-Qaeda planning for the use of cyanide gases.

The Justice Department absurdly spun the plea as harsh, with Holder portrayed as sternly holding out for a sentence of at least 15 years. But this was nonsense. As I also pointed at the time, “The sentence will at most be 15 years, and Holder has expressly agreed that al-Marri may argue to the judge that he should receive a lighter sentence, as little as the time he has already served.”

As every prosecutor knows (indeed, as virtually every American knows), judges are generally predisposed to treat criminal defendants more leniently than most prosecutors and the public would. Thus, in sentencing practice, the signals that the Justice Department sends the court are at least as important as the crimes at issue. When DOJ pleads out a case on the cheap, and when — under circumstances in which it does not have to — the prosecution agrees to allow the defense lawyer to seek a light sentence, DOJ is effectively telling the judge that the case is not as serious as it may seem. It is telling the judge that the public interest would not be disserved if a light sentence — as little as time already served — were imposed. After all, the Justice Department was in a position to make certain that the terrorist was treated like a terrorist. If DOJ didn’t do that, then why should the judge?

In Peoria federal court yesterday, that’s exactly what Judge Michael M. Mihm figured. Remarkably, at the sentencing hearing, the Justice Department presented evidence that al-Marri was still “likely to engage in hostile acts towards the United States.” Plainly, the judge reasoned that, if that were really true, then DOJ would have charged more appropriate terrorism offenses and made certain that al-Marri is never in a position to harm Americans again. Justice hadn’t done that, and Mihm predictably treated the case just the way DOJ did.

Judge Mihm pronounced a sentence of a mere eight years. He gave al-Marri credit for the nearly eight years he has already spent in custody — including more than five in a Navy brig when, under the Bush counterterrorism approach, he was detained without trial as an enemy combatant. With various credits for good behavior and other reductions, al-Marri could be released, in the United States, in six years or so. And he’s got plenty of jihad left in him.

Many Justice Department lawyers, including Attorney General Holder, come from firms and institutions that spent the last eight years as defense counsel for terrorists. Should we be surprised that, even compared with the “terrorism is just a crime” era of the 1990s, terrorists have never had it so good?

— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).
#

Here's One from the 'This Ain't Helping Your Case' Folder

Here’s are some of the community responses to this week’s raid on the radical Islamic group in Dearborn:

"Muslims had no other choice: They had to go out and talk about their faith; they had to condemn violence. It's a matter of survival for them," says Malika Zeghal, associate professor of the anthropology and sociology of religion and Islamic studies at the University of Chicago. ("Terror arrests compel US Muslims to talk about their faith").

I’m not sure why it’s a matter of survival for America’s law-abiding Muslims to have to talk about their faith. But I’m also not sure I’ve seen Islam’s spokesmen exactly condemning the violence of the recent surge of American Muslims caught red-handed plotting major violence. What we hear instead are refusals to explain Islam. The comments of Islamic spokesmen tend to follow this familiar pattern:

First, we’re told the people who did this are not “mainstream” Muslim. This shuts up discussions about how domestic Muslim terrorists express so much zeal for their Islamic mission. The Christian Science Monitor, discussing the recent arrest of two Chicago Muslims planning to blow up the offices of the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper that published cartoons of Mohammed, reports this:

Muslim groups like the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago often find they are forced to play offense whenever news of an arrest is linked to Islam. "The council rejects any association between the alleged plot and Islam," said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, the council's chairman, in a prepared statement regarding the Chicago arrests. "The two alleged plotters are not representative of mainstream American-Muslims.

This way, the so-called “mainstream” Islam of CAIR, ISNA, ADC, the Council of Islamic Organizations, and the rest have no need to be reflective about the Koran's message of violence against infidels and domination of the whole world. Their "this isn't mainstream" approach bypasses attention to the copious testimony of the terrorists themselves that they’re doing what they’re doing for Allah, for Mohammed, and for Islam.

Next, we’re reminded that all religions are violent, not just Islam. Dr. Sahloul observes, “There are criminal elements in every faith community, whether Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim or Buddhists. An entire faith should not be hijacked by the actions of disturbed or maligned individuals."

While it’s true that every religion has criminal elements, which is a trusim meaning nothing more than that there are Catholics who are criminals, Jews who are criminals, etc., the criminality of a Catholic or of a Jew is a mark that that person is an utter failure at his religion. It’s the rare Catholic IRA bomber who says he’s blowing up Provos because the Catechism tells him it’s right. Neither Meyer Lansky nor the infamous Jewish gang Murder Incorporated justified their misdeeds by quoting the Ten Commandments.

By contrast, jihadists who have slain innocents and committed barbaric acts of violence are commonly praised throughout the Islamic world as martyrs, heroes, and examples to the young. Luqman Abdullah was a mosque leader, and, according to Dawud Walid, a “respected imam.” He relied heavily on the Koran and the hadiths to explain his urge to kill Kafir-pig cops if they tried to pull him over.

Third, conspicuously absent from the comments of Muslim community leaders are condemnations of the violence of domestic Muslim terrorists, expressions of gratitude, and commitments to greater cooperation with law enforcement agents who risk their lives to stop these guys. Instead, Muslim spokesmen denounce succesful investigations and arrests as proof that the FBI/law enforcement is out of control. They are persecuting Muslims, we're told, because the whole country is Islamophobic.

"The FBI has shown that they consider it prudent from their point of view to be more aggressive with the Muslim community, and I think that's largely because they can get away with it and there's not going to be too much of an uproar," says Ihsan Bagby, general secretary of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). Mr. Bagby finds the practice of sending informant agents into mosques without any provocation "well past acceptable."

In Detroit yesterday, 25 Muslims leaders met with federal officials in Detroit to hear explanations about the circumstances of Luqman Abdullah’s death:

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said agents told him Abdullah was killed after firing on an FBI dog that died.

"(We're) not accusing the FBI of using excessive force, but there needs to be some answers," he said. (“Muslims, FBI discuss death during raid”).

Of course Walid is accusing the FBI of using excessive force. That’s why he’s ringing the bell. A diversion might be welcome to him right now, in view of an allegation in the federal complaint that the Windsor mosque attended by Abdullah’s son and co-suspect, Mujahid Carswell, is “affiliated with CAIR.”

Walid says that is “bogus.”

Walid said Abdullah was never a board member or employee of CAIR, nor did he have any business dealings with CAIR.

"No one in that mosque has ever been a board member, or a staffer, or even a dues-paying member for that matter," he said. (“Muslim leaders caution against hasty judgment”).

Okay, I partly believe Walid about that, but only because CAIR has no dues paying members.

The point is, these protests get stronger as the cases of domestic Islamic behavior get worse.

Why?

Flying Imams Update

Speaking of what is said as opposed to how things are done, the six “flying imams” of a few years back have wrung a cash settlement from the Twin Cities Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC)—handing a win to CAIR and a loss to airline safety.

The case made news three years ago when the six imams were removed from a
U.S. Airways jet after passengers and airline employees reported that the six were engaging in suspicious behavior, including changing seats into a so-called 9/11 pattern; cursing the United States and its conflict with Saddam Hussein; chanting "Allah, Allah" when boarding was called, and unnecessarily requesting seat-belt extenders that could be used as weapons.

The imams were questioned and released. Subsequently, they sued U.S. Airways, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), the officers involved and even passengers they suspected of reporting their behavior, until an outraged, bipartisan Congress passed a law giving the passengers immunity.

Last week, a settlement was announced in the case. Details remain confidential, and the judge must approve the agreement. But the parties have said publicly that -- though there is no admission of guilt or fault -- money will change hands. MAC's insurance company exercised its right to take charge of the defense and chose to settle, according to MAC spokesman Patrick Hogan. (“Katherine Kersten: 'Flying imams' case is settled at our expense’”).

U.S. District Judge Ann Montgomery, in a ruling this past July, wrote that the MAC officers involved “were actually guilty of a ‘willful or malicious wrong.’” Kersten writes that the judge, who had the benefit of hindsight, second-guessed officers who had to respond quickly to a highly suspicious and possibly deadly set of circumstances.

The judge used the words “willful or malicious wrong” because that's the statutory language that allows her to justify stripping away the immunity law enforcement officers are afforded in the ordinary exercise of their duties. You can’t have cops wondering every time they write a ticket or chase down a purse-snatcher if they’re going to end up in a civil lawsuit.

Obviosuly there are times when police, acting from genuine malice in abusing their power, should be deprived of immunity and made to be liable for harm they do. I don’t believe for a second this is one of those cases.

I believe that these officers, when faced with the totality of the circumstances that day, (including their awareness of how seemingly innocent passengers got control of four planes on 9/11), believed it was more likely than not that these guys had something dangerous in mind.

I still believe that the actions of the imams on that day were deliberately provocative, and objectively suspicious. But once the judge had dissected every component part of those actions in isolation from every other action, she decided that there was no sign anywhere of anything illegal these poor imams had done. So why all the alarm?

Actually, she didn't ask, why all the alarm? She skipped the question of why the opinions of the investigators, police, MAC officers, FBI, flight crew, and passengers were unanimous that these guys were hinky. Instead, she simply concluded thay they all harbored a malicious hankering to hassle these guys and stop the flight because they didn't like Muslims. She figured, (again, in hindsight), that because no one thing the imams did that day in and of itself was a terrorist act, therefore all of what they did that day, combined, did not justify being asked to leave the plane or create a suspicious pattern. So they asked for seat belt extenders, says the judge. They'd never been used as weapons before.

Neither had boxcutters, your honor, until 9/11.

This is a very frustrating circumstance.

As Robert Spencer wrote last year,

Even if they are completely innocent, abhor terrorism, reject Islamic supremacism, and weren't doing anything but praying on that fateful flight, they should recognize that people will make honest mistakes in trying to prevent terror attacks. But by pursuing this lawsuit, they show that they're unwilling to grant that -- and the result of their suit, whether it is successful or not, will be to make it more difficult to take people off planes even when they are acting suspiciously. The only beneficiaries will be jihad terrorists.

It’s not far-fetched that jihadists planning our harm might send out advance teams to test security systems and reactions. As we wrote two years ago:

“The 9/11 Commission found that the 9/11 hijackers had conducted dry runs in advance. Certainly had they been detained on those dry runs they also would have been found to have not committed any federal crime--yet.”("I'd Like an Aisle Seat")

Though none of the objective acts of such testers may be unlawful, our law enforcement footing has to be such that we’re able to stop and take a closer look when something doesn’t seem right. There have been real plots foiled because perceptive people sensed something wasn’t quite right and alerted authorities. By the same token, others have had the same intuition and held back from fear of being guilty of profiling. (“How Profiling Saves Lives, and Fear of ‘Islamophobia’ Gets People Killed”).

Debra Burlingame described one instance of someone ignoring his instinct:

It has been nearly six years since 19 ordinary-looking men boarded four commercial airliners, killed all the pilots and then flew the planes into buildings and the ground.“One of those most haunted by that day is the airline employee who checked in two of the hijackers that morning. He told the 9/11 commission that the pair, traveling on first class, one-way, e-tickets, ‘didn't act right.’ Though he selected them for secondary screening, he didn't request a more thorough search because ‘I was worried about being accused of being “racist” and letting “prejudice” get in the way.’”

Airport screener Michael Touhey gave into that fear on 9/11, when he handed boarding passes to Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari.

“’I looked up, and asked them the standard questions. The one guy was looking at me. It sent a chill through me. Something in my stomach churned. And subconsciously, I said to myself, “if they don't look like Arab terrorists, nothing does”. ‘Then I gave myself a mental slap. In over 34 years, I had checked in thousands of Arab travelers and I never thought this before. I said to myself, “that's not nice to think. They are just two Arab businessmen”.’ And with that, Tuohey handed them their boarding passes.” (“The Price of Being Nice”).

Nor does this mean arbitrarily arresting Middle Eastern looking people just to be on the safe side. As Touhey said, he'd checked in thousands of Arabs, but these two were wrong. Nor were the six imams deprived of their civil rights in any substantial way. They weren't arrested, they weren't charged, they weren't forbidden to fly, (except by the private carrier, U.S. Airways), and they were not detained beyond the time it took to find out that they weren't especially dangerous.

But wasn't their being Muslim a factor in their being detained? And aren't we all forbidden to take that into account?

Yes, being Muslim was a factor, and no, we aren't forbidden to take that into account.

Because of the 19 Muslims on 9/11, we can’t board a plane with nail clippers. Because of the Muslim shoe bomber, we have to take our shoes off every time we board a plane. Because of the Muslim terrorists who tried to board planes in the UK with liquid explosives, we can’t board with toothpaste or an ounce of perfume.

The whole transportation security regime since 9/11 is a fairly misguided, often clumsy, always inconvenient, but very direct response to the mortal danger we find ourselves since 9/11 and after from Muslim terrorists. Not, I say, mortal danger from IRA terrorists, pro-lifers, homeschoolers, Hindus, grandmothers, migrant workers, fundamentalist Christians, or soccer moms. Not even, to recall a now obsolete term, mortal danger from nondenominational “terrorism.” Jihad is our enemy. And though jihadis are not always Arab, nor always Middle Eastern, they are always Muslim, because only Islam wages jihad. Judge Montgomery thinks the Consitution requires we exclude that fact from our collective memories.

Who knows how many plots were thwarted because of the actions of those officers three years ago?

Walid Says Feds Drag Religion into Raid on Radical Mosque

Of very little surprise, Dawud Walid of CAIR-MI has nothing but kinds words for his late colleague, Luqman Ameen (“Revenge is Islamic”) Abdullah, the radical Detroit imam killed in a shootout with officers of the Joint Terrorism Task Force on Wednesday. (“FBI kills leader of radical Muslims; 12 charged”).

Federal officials said Abdullah was the leader of a group that calls itself "Ummah, a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States."

Walid only knows that Abdullah was a humanitarian, knew him as “respected imam in the Muslim community . . . He fed very hungry people in the neighborhood who were Christian,”-- Christian, or, as brother Luqman liked to call them, “Kuffars” and members of “the party of the devil.” He’d give people the shirt off his back, Walid says. And on surveillance tapes Abdullah did several times offer an undercover informant a bullet-proof vest, or suggested simply “shooting a cop in the head and taking his.”

I figured it out now about Walid and the things he says: he loves to kid. I saw him last night on the news commenting on all this, looking remarkably blasé and almost amused, a strange reaction in view of how he holds himself out as spokesmen for every Muslim in Michigan, and was commenting on news that a dozen of his Muslim flock were just charged with major felonies, and a 13th killed in a shootout with the Feds.

Walid even said he had to “chuckle”, when he read that Abdullah’s separatist group is called the “Ummah”, because all Muslims belong to the Ummah. I noticed that odd thing, too, but it didn’t make me chuckle.

In spite of the FBI complaint describing numerous alleged statements from Abdullah "about bombs, weapons and his de sire to overthrow the government," none of the charges against Abdullah or other mosque members were for terrorism. This got Walid wondering "why their religion was so prominent in the complaint against them.'They have no linkage to terrorism nationally or internation ally. What in the world does Islam have to do with these charges? Why is religion being brought into play?'” ("Shocked friends say imam was generous and helpful").

Did the charges really have nothing to do with religion?

According to the Complaint, “Abdullah believed he and his followers were soldiers at war against the government and non-Muslims.”

If you’re a Muslim at war with non-Muslims, I’d say that qualifies as a religious motive. If you’re an imam and the leader a mosque, where you are regularly preaching violence and justifying with references to the Koran and Mohammed, I’d say that brings religion into it. Also according to the complaint, Abdullah saw the world as divided into only two parties, the party of God (Muslims), and the party of the devil (everyone else). Which may not be radical Islam, as it's normative Islam, but is a religious motivation. In fact, U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said everything this gang did was motivated by their ideology.

Walid wants to know why religion is so prominent in the complaint? It's certainly not because the Feds keep bringing it up.

Over and over on surveillance recordings of his sermons and his conversation, Abdullah wouldn’t shut up about his religion—about his violent, vengeful, militant, Kuffar-hating, Jew-hating, Christian-hating, and America-hating religion. He discussed spreading his own religion, Islam, by force. Everyone on his hate list -- police, the US government, the FBI, Christians, Jews—everyone he hated was because they were Kuffars, non-Muslims, the best of them worse than the worst Muslim. At least, that’s what Allah said, said Abdullah.

But no. Religion had nothing to do with what happened with Abdullah.

It’s just an ordinary criminal gang, that just happens to be led by a Muslim cleric, headquartered in a mosque, and sharing the common goal of creation of a Sharia state.

The Detroit News has made the Complaint available here, but here are some excerpts:

Agents found clear evidence corroborating S-1’s statements that firearms training had taken place inside the mosque. There were empty shell casings on the basement floor, and large holes in the concrete wall of the “shooting range.” According to S-1, all weapons and fight training was geared towards violent confrontation with law enforcement and/or with local street gangs.

* * *
These and other recorded statements by Luqman Abdullah confirm reporting by S-1 and S-2 that Abdullah and his followers view themselves soldiers at war against the United States government, and against non-Muslims.
* * *

S-1 saw and participated in extensive and regular firearms and martial arts training inside the Masjid Al-Haqq [mosque]. S-1 saw Luqman Abdullah discipline children inside the mosque by beating them with sticks on their hands, knees, and legs, until they were covered with bruises, including a boy Abdullah beat so badly that he was unable to walk for several days.

* * *
[T]he overall picture was, uh, to advance Islam. So, uh, always remember, uh, revenge is Islamic. But, you have to make sure it’s not personal. It’s very difficult. . . .But you have to start. . . .You got to get mad about it.

* * *
During the Jum’uah prayer, Abdullah stated that Muslims need to cut the ties with Christians, Jews, and Kuffars, and said there is no such thing as a good or bad Kafir -- the only thing that matters is whether or not someone is Muslim. In reference to Christians, Jews, and the Kuffar, Abdullah stated:

. . . .Obama is a Kafir. McCain, all the rest of them are Kuffars, are Kuffars. You can’t make them a good Kafir, bad Kafir . . .

The premise of Allah, and Islam said, “the worst of [unintelligible], the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir.”

Abdullah went on to preach that Muslims need to stop fighting each other and start fighting the Kuffar. Abdullah stated:

Contrary to your own [unintelligible], we should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar. You see, we need to figure out how to be a bullet.

* * *

America's Real Trustbusters

Bridge-building operations between law enforcement and the Muslim community are continuing apace. There was a town hall meeting last week near Charlotte, NC, sponsored by the Muslim American Society, which is the global terrorist organization Muslim Brotherhood’s alter-ego in the USA.

The Muslim community in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area known as the “Triangle” is described as “reeling from the indictments of eight Triangle men on terrorism charges.” (“Muslims, law officials meet”).

Three of those defendants, including Daniel Patrick Boyd, have been indicted on charges of “conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel.”

But to the 100 or so Muslims who attended, (not to mention Boyd’s wife, son, and daughter) it’s not the terrorism charges that has brought unwelcome attention to their community. Instead, many of them “feel they are being unfairly targeted and subjected to profiling and surveillance because of their faith.”

Because of their faith.

It seems that the 9/11 attacks, (once you subtract all those dead people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania and their loved ones), fell disproportionately hard on Muslim-Americans.

One participant, Burhan Ghanayem, “said the backlash following the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, left many American Muslims so bruised and vulnerable that they haven't had the chance to recover.”

The story’s bottom line is that, in spite of eight years' worth of effort by law enforcement to convince them they aren't singling them out for persecution, the Muslim community still somehow doesn’t trust the law enforcement agencies. Take a hint, law enforcement: you need to try harder.

Meanwhile, Paul Egan at The Detroit News has written about how FBI special agent in charge Andrew Arena meets with Middle Eastern residents several times a month. (“FBI works to cut tension with Arab community”). Dearborn attorney Ihsan Ali Alkhatib says that FBI-community relations are "conflicted."

“There is a strong sense in the community that we are a subject and not a partner with the government.

“I think engagement is a must, but I am not as sure as I used to be about its usefulness.”

And sure enough, (these articles are pressed out of a Play-Doh mold), we’re told that "On both sides, building trust remains a work in progress.”

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, says:

"I see the progress, I see the advances. I think they are trying hard. Definitely they need to try harder. Giving people trust is not a matter of what you say. It's a matter of what you do, and more than that, how you do it."

The only ones who don’t have to try harder are America’s Muslims. You read over and over how trust is an issue on both sides. You always get the sense that the feds are guiltily creeping upstairs with their shoes in their hands for fear of waking up the old lady and getting a rolling pin over the head.

But even though “trust is an issue on both sides,” you’ll never hear why the feds don't trust the Muslims. You won't read a story that quotes an FBI agent saying, “For the love of Mike, these people just aren't helping!”

You see, the unspoken assumption beneath all these stories, and these are only recent samples, is that it’s America that’s broken trust with Muslims. The message is incessantly reinforced that non-Muslims have to prove to the Muslim community that we can be trusted. Remember how bruised and vulnerable those North Carolina Muslims were? That was their complaint in the wake of eight Muslims indicted on terrorism charges!

For the 1,000,000th time, we’ve never said that all Muslims participated in 9/11. But 9/11 was an all-Muslim operation, and it was unmistakably an Islamic attack on America. And still, in the insane histories of the ADC, CAIR, and countless other Islamic spokesgroups, 9/11 wasn’t an attack by Muslims on America, but an attack by America on Muslims. Ever since that day, when 19 Muslims, screaming “Allahu Akhbar!”, murdered 3,000 Americans, no Muslim in America feels safe—and shame on the FBI for making them feel that way!

I don’t expect innocent Muslims to apologize to America for what wicked Muslims have done. But isn’t it just a bit much to expect America to constantly be apologizing to Muslims because 9/11 cast Islam in a bad light?

If you’re an American Muslim, law-abiding, patriotic, and devoted to the idea of America, it’s unfortunate and unfair that so many, and such a variety, of your co-religionists keep making your religion look bad by claiming the religion of peace is compelling them to slay and destroy Jews, infidels, polytheists, and Americans. But there it is. If your religion looks bad because of these people, you need to put the blame on them, not on us.

Not one day has passed since 9/11 on which Americans haven’t heard reports, and on some days multiple reports, of horrendous violence claiming lives, committed somewhere on Earth by Muslims against their fellow human beings. We’re eight years after 9/11 and still we’re uncovering numerous plots, right here in the United States, by self-identified Muslims intent on committing violent jihad against Americans here or abroad. Western Europe, the historic beneficiary of the heroic Christian armies that broke the sieges of Islam, are seriously getting used to the idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran with a nuclear missile capability.

In spite of the million repetitions we’ve heard that every other religion in the world has a comparable history of violence, that bin Laden is a marginal character who no more represents Islam than David Duke represents Christianity, that al Qaeda no more represents Islam than the Ku Klux Klan represents America, the record doesn’t bear that out.

Even at the height of its terror the KKK never took over anyone’s country and invited racist armies to train there, the way al Qaeda did in Afghanistan, tried to do in Iraq, and is trying now to do in Pakistan; David Duke never pulled a 46% favorability rating in polls of the international Christian community as Osama bin Laden has done in the Muslim world; no one has seen a YouTube video of Jehovah's Witnesses beheading some poor guy because someone else tore up a copy of Awake! magazine; nor, in spite of uncountable hack references to them, does anyone, anywhere, even American Muslims, actually fear arrest by the Spanish Inquisition or pillage by rapacious knights of the Crusades, or even lynching by the Klan.

We all know the fear is of Islamic terrorism, and that the fear is rational and well-founded. And the more a person takes the time to investigate, the more rational and well-founded that fear becomes. And we all know that supporters of violent jihad number at least in the many millions, that they are global, that they are funded, that they are determined, and that they are growing in boldness and desperation.

But the American Muslim community, through its spokesmen like Imad Ahmad, and its false friends like the MAS and CAIR, continues to refuse acknowledgement of Islam as a contributing factor to jihadist terrorism, even if they were to say (if they can) that this jihadism is false Islam, and why it false, or even if they were to say (if they can) that true Islam is compatible with democracy, with free speech, with equality of women, with religious tolerance--in other words, compatible with America. Instead, the Muslim community keeps demanding apologies and concessions as the Number One victims of 9/11.

I believe that if the imams and the Muslim community organizers like Imad Ahmad had renounced Hezbollah and al Qaeda and Hamas and bin Laden and all these other prominent Islamic terrorists by name, many more Americans would believe that the Muslim community in America was not a nesting place for jihadists. But I know now, from all I’ve learned, that that is never going to happen. Not from these imams, these leaders, these community organizers, these front groups of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I do agree with Imad Ahmad that “giving people trust is not a matter of what you say. It's a matter of what you do, and more than that, how you do it."

And what are America’s Muslim leaders doing to make us trust them?

'Imprison Here, Release Here'

Advocates of shutting Guantanamo and transferring its jihadist population to the US prisons often tell us we’ve nothing to worry about--because no one has ever escaped from any of America’s supermax prisons. Apparently, that record may be in some doubt, but even if it weren’t, the issue is not that Guantanamo’s detainees might break out of jail, but that they are very likely to be released in the United States.

Andrew McCarthy considers the security of supermax prisons as “the most hollow of strawmen”:

These terrorists are not going to escape — they are going to walk right out the prison gates. They are going to be freed by a perverse new legal system, an ad hoc creation of progressive federal judges, assisted mightily by an Obama Justice Department rife with lawyers whose former firms and institutions spent the last eight years representing America’s enemies. (“Imprison Here, Release Here”).

As America lacks a national security court that is equipped to manage international terrorists under the laws of war, predictions that captured jihadists would be extended every presumption of innocence intended to protect American citizens under the Bill of Rights have proven deadly accurate. Left-leaning activist judges have been more than willing to invade the executive branch’s prerogatives for managing the national defense, the judges simply creating their own system.

Because judges are products of the American legal culture (as a class, they lean left, often radically), and because they have no political responsibility for national security (they don’t answer to the voters), a judicially crafted system was guaranteed to be terrorist-friendly.

Even these dire predictions failed to factor in the Obama administration’s radicalism. In the current Justice Department, several top officials, including the attorney general himself, are recused from various national-security cases under
conflict-of-interest guidelines. The reason? They, or their former firms, represented enemy combatants in lawsuits against the American people. Indeed, such is the mindset of the Obama DOJ that, to help formulate detention policy, Holder recruited Jennifer Daskal — a Human Rights Watch official with no prosecutorial experience — who had been a tireless advocate for terrorists held by the United States.

Please read the rest of the details on this situation here.

'Enough of Freedom'

Thanks to Islam in Action:

This is from the web advertisement for the March4 Shari'ah event schedule for October 31st in London.

We have had enough of freedom, and enough of liberalism it is time for sovereignty to return to the Creator of the heavens and the earth, Almight Allah (SWT) and it is time for authority to be handed to the Muslims.

This March will begin from the House of Parliament, followed by 10 Downing Street, and culminate in Trafalgar Square, to let the people of Britain know that Islam and Shari’ah is coming to them very, very soon.

Obama’s Advisers

The following is an excerpt from a lengthy, but very informatative, well- documented article in American Thinker describing a “sampling” of President Obama’s inner circle. In fact, it doesn’t even include Anita Dunn! The article is too long to post here, but I strongly urge people to check out the link and hang onto it for later reference.

Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors

By Mac Fuller

The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port.
The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that after a mere nine months we are in terrible danger of sinking.

In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge - fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages - a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.

Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.

____________________________________________________________

A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"

1. Valerie Jarrett

2. Patrick Gaspard

3. Eric Holder

4. Cecelia Muñoz

5. Samantha Power(s)

6. Charles Freeman

7. Scott Gration

8. Rahm Emmanuel

9. Ezekiel Emmanuel

10. Cass Sunstein

11. Van Jones

12. Carol Browner

13. John Holdren

14. Kevin Jennings

15. Chai Feldblum

16. William Ayers

---------------------------------------------------------------------------


1. Valerie Jarrett -- Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama's, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.

Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama's mentor from age 10 until college - a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama's "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" -- conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.

According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama's "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama's environmental "Green Czar."

2. Patrick Gaspard -- White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.

The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled $200,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over $800,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) - to "get out the vote."

Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds - ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.

ACORN pledged $35,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.

In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio.

Keep reading this article here.

Soldier-mom Home from Iraq

Here’s an encouraging story I ran across in the Dearborn Press & Guide. We at DU have known all along that many of Dearborn’s Middle Easterners and Muslims have served our country in the armed forces, some of them heroically. It’s not reported much. The media seem to prefer the simpler and less accurate story line that all Arab-Americans are opposed to what we’re trying to do in the Middle East.

Anyway, I said these stories are too rare, and here’s one:

Soldier-mom visits Kinloch classroom

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
By Sean Delaney, Press & Guide Newspapers

DEARBORN HEIGHTS -- It’s been said the power of the written word can move mountains, but it did something even more spectacular last Wednesday when it reunited a mother and her son at Kinloch Elementary School following a six-month separation.

That’s how long former Dearborn and current Dearborn Heights resident Maya Allen was stationed for her third tour of duty in Iraq — a country more than 6,000 miles away from her home — and her son — in Dearborn Heights.

“It’s not easy being away from my son, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to protect our country,” said Allen, who has served for five years as a military adviser and translator for the U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq.

It’s a job she loves, but one that’s kept her away from her son for months at a time. On Oct. 7, the two were reunited for the first time in six months when Allen came to the school to read a story to Susie Krupa’s second grade class, of which her son is a member.



“I really missed her,” Hussan Al-Idani said after wrapping his arms around his mom’s waist. He held on to her tightly as Allen read from a book about the U.S. Army while relating her own experiences there.

“I joined the Army because I’m very proud to be a part of the military,” she said. “As an Iraqi-American, it was tough, but my father always encouraged me.”

He continued to do so even as others told her it wasn’t a woman’s place to join the military.

“In the Middle East, women are often sitting at home — it’s definitely a man’s society,” Allen said. “Because I am an Iraqi-American, it was against my culture to join, but my father always encouraged me to do what I want. Now I get to be a part of the change that’s happening there.”

Allen told the students Iraqi women — who were once confined to their homes or forced to do menial jobs — are now joining the local police force and the military.

“I feel really proud and excited when I see that,” she said. “It was a hard decision, but every time I see a child see a child smile I know I’ve made the right decision.”

Allen saw plenty of smiles Wednesday when she entered Krupa’s classroom dressed in full uniform. For many students, it was the first time they’d seen a soldier anywhere but on television.

“Unfortunately, the media exaggerates many of the things we do,” she said. “We’ve faced a lot in the last few years, but some of my proudest moments are giving gifts to Iraqi children.”

She said many children and their families suffered under the regime of Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq.

“I lost two uncles and my oldest brother to him,” Allen said, declining to discuss the specifics of the war or the political debate surrounding it.

Instead, she told the students about the comradery that exists between her fellow soldiers.

“The soldiers there are like my extended family,” she said.

Allen also touched on how life in America differs from life in the Middle East.

“We, in Iraq, have many strict traditions,” she said. “I like it better (in America).”
###

Is CAIR Looniphobic?

CAIR-MI executive director, Dawud Walid is having a bad reaction to the four U.S. Representatives calling for a closer look into CAIR’s Capitol Hill activities. On his blog, “Pushback against Islamophobes & loons in motion” and “Maddow ridicules attacker of CAIR,” you’ll be able to read descriptors applied to CAIR’s critics, including “Islamophobes,” “silly,” “extremist,” “fringe,” “xenophobe,” “racist,” and “paranoid racist loon.” (You can also read Dawud plugging himself for his work with an organization called “Hate Hurts America.” “Loon,” “paranoid,” and “xenophobe” are terms of endearment, you see.

What you won’t find on Walid’s blog posts to support of all that name-calling are any responses to the substance of the four representatives' stated concerns. To have an organization like CAIR, that has known ties to terrorism and is an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorist-funding federal case, placing interns on key national security-related office, is a bad thing.

Rachel Maddow’s eight-minute yukfest with Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post starts with her smart-ass question, “Do you think that the secret plot to Islomize [sic] America starts with interns?” The resulting exchange between Maddow and Robinson can be summarized thusly:

Robinson: Ha, ha, ha, interns!
Maddow: Hee, hee, hee.
Robinson: Hoo, hoo, hoo! etc. But seriously, Rachel, . . . .the House should silence these representatives.”

Maddow completely misstates Myrick and the others as objecting to CAIR’s lobbying and intern efforts because they are being done “while Muslim.” The reps never said that. Maddow never mentions that the opposition stems from CAIR being a terror-related group.

Maddow also repeat the undying propaganda point that “CAIR” and “Muslim” mean the same thing, as if CAIR is the appointed spokeman for every Muslim in America. I’m sure Walid and Ibrahim Hooper love to hear that. They always talk as if it’s true, anyway. In fact, CAIR’s actual membership numbers hover somewhere between those of the Keep Garden City Beautiful League and the Veterans of the Spanish-American War. Some American Muslims even congratulated the FBI for finally ditching CAIR.

As someone who sympathizes with the efforts of the “Fringe Four,” the answer to Maddow’s pointedly silly question about interns is, no, CAIR’s mission to Islamize America did not start with interns. It started with the Muslim Brotherhood, and isn’t even that secret, except it’s almost completely unknown to Americans because of the willful blindness of the American media. When every liberal media person who mentions CAIR helpfully repeats their cover story that they’re a harmless civil liberties group trying to improve peace, love, and understanding between America and her Muslims.

That CAIR is a Muslim Brotherhood creation, has ties to Hamas and Palestinian terrorism, and has stated goals including the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with Sharia law, is not controversial. It’s simply unreported. And when news of CAIR’s true colors do manage to get into the news the hard way, (such as through this type of press conference, or through last years Holy Land Foundation prosecution), CAIR’s terrorist pedigree is ignored and covered up by useful media people like Maddow, Cynthia Tucker, and Glenn Greenwald.

CAIR’s dubious ties are so evident that even the FBI, after years of going steady, found themselves forced to break it off with CAIR. No more letting CAIR review their investigations into the Muslim community, approve their arrests, and no more diversity training of agents by CAIR operatives. The FBI is still carrying a torch, though.

The media is going to continue to repeat that CAIR, as a lobbying group, is only doing what lobbying groups do, including trying to place interns into key positions in the Capitol, so what's wrong with that? But the question isn’t what CAIR is doing, but why.

I found it on NRO.

Chairman Mao Says: 'Seniors! Live Your Dreams!'

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't gonna make it with anyone, anyhow
--Lennon/McCartney, “Revolution”

A Tale of Two Soundbites
Which one sounds “divisive” to you?

By Mark Steyn

Here is a tale of two soundbites.

First:

“Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

Second:

“The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. Not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is: You’re going to make choices. . . . But here’s the deal: These are your choices;
they are no one else’s. In 1947, when Mao Tse-Tung was being challenged within his own party on his own plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-Shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army. . . . They had everything on their side. And people said ‘How can you win . . .? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?’ And Mao Tse-Tung says, ‘You fight your war and I’ll fight mine . . . ’ You don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things. . . . You fight your war, you let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.”

The first quotation was attributed to Rush Limbaugh. He never said it. There is no tape of him saying it. There is no transcript of him saying it. After all, if he had
done so at any point in the last 20 years, someone would surely have mentioned it at the time.

Yet CNN, MSNBC, ABC, other networks, and newspapers all around the country cheerfully repeated the pro-slavery quotation and attributed it, falsely, to Rush Limbaugh. And planting a flat-out lie in his mouth wound up getting Rush bounced from a consortium hoping to buy the St. Louis Rams. The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the talkshow host was a “divisive” figure, and famously non-divisive figures like the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson expressed the hope that, with Mister Divisive out of the picture, the NFL could now “unify.”

The second quotation — hailing Mao — was uttered back in June to an audience of high-school students by Anita Dunn, the White House communications director. I know she uttered it because I watched the words issuing from her mouth on The Glenn Beck Show on Fox News. But don’t worry. Nobody else played it.

So if I understand correctly:

Rush Limbaugh is so “divisive” that to get him fired leftie agitators have to invent racist soundbites to put in his mouth.

But the White House communications director is so un-divisive that she can be invited along to recommend Chairman Mao as a role model for America’s young.

From my unscientific survey, U.S. school students are all but entirely unaware of Mao Tse-Tung, and the few that aren’t know him mainly as a T-shirt graphic or “agrarian reformer.” What else did he do? Here, from Jonathan Fenby’s book Modern China, is the great man in a nutshell:

“Mao’s responsibility for the extinction of anywhere from 40 to 70 million lives brands him as a mass killer greater than Hitler or Stalin.”

Hey, that’s pretty impressive when they can’t get your big final-score death toll nailed down to closer than 30 million. Still, as President Obama’s communications director might say, he lived his dream, and so can you, although if your dream involves killing, oh, 50–80 million Chinamen, you may have your work cut out. But let’s stick with the Fenby figure: He killed 40–70 million Chinamen. Whoops, can you say “Chinamen” or is that racist? Oh, and sexist. So hard keeping up with the Sensitivity Police in this pansified political culture, isn’t it? But you can kill 40–70 million Chinamen and that’s fine and dandy: You’ll be cited as an inspiration by
the White House to an audience of high-school students. You can be anything you want to be! Look at Mao: He wanted to be a mass murderer, and he lived his dream! You can too!

The White House now says that Anita Dunn was “joking.” Anyone tempted to buy that spin should look at the tape: If this is her Friars Club routine, she needs to work on her delivery. But, for the sake of argument, try a thought experiment:

Midway through Bush’s second term, press secretary Tony Snow goes along to Chester A. Arthur High School to give a graduation speech. “I know it looks tough right now. You’re young, you’re full of zip, but the odds seem hopeless. Let me tell you about another young man facing tough choices 80 years ago. It’s last orders at the Munich beer garden — gee, your principal won’t thank me for mentioning that — and all the natural blonds are saying, ‘But Adolf, see reason. The Weimar Republic’s here to stay, and besides the international Jewry control everything.’ And young Adolf Hitler puts down his foaming stein and stands on the table and sings a medley of ‘I Gotta Be Me,’ ‘(Learning to Love Yourself Is) The Greatest Love of All,’ and ‘The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow.’” And by the end of that night there wasn’t a Jewish greengrocer’s anywhere in town with glass in its windows. Don’t play by the other side’s rules; make your own kind of music. And always remember: You’ve gotta have a dream, if you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”

Anyone think he’d still have a job?

Well, so what? All those dead Chinese are no-name peasants a long way away. What’s the big deal? If you say, “Chairman Mao? Wasn’t he the wacko who offed 70 million Chinks?”, you’ll be hounded from public life for saying the word “Chinks.” But, if you commend the murderer of those 70 million as a role model in almost any school room in the country from kindergarten to the Ivy League, it’s so entirely routine that only a crazy like Glenn Beck would be boorish enough to point it out.

Which is odd, don’t you think? Because it suggests that our present age of politically correct hypersensitivity is not just morally unserious but profoundly
decadent.

Twenty years ago this fall, the Iron Curtain was coming down in Europe. Across the Warsaw Pact, the jailers of the Communist prison states lost their nerve, and the cell walls crumbled. Matt Welch, the editor of Reason, wonders why the anniversary is going all but unobserved: Why aren’t we making more of
the biggest mass liberation in history?

Well, because to celebrate it would involve recognizing it as a victory over Communism. And, after the Left’s long march through the institutions of the West, most are not willing to do that. There’s the bad totalitarianism (Nazism) and the good totalitarianism (Communism), whose apologists and, indeed, fetishists can still be found everywhere, even unto the White House.

Rush Limbaugh’s remarks are “divisive”; Anita Dunn’s are entirely normal. But don’t worry, the new Fairness Doctrine will take care of the problem.

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