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The Brotherhood and America Part Four

Photo of the former Secretary General of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood Ali Sadreddin Bayanouni

By Manal Lutfi, Asharq Al-Awsat
There are at least two levels of relations between the various Islamic organizations in the region; the first is on the level of ‘coordination of ideologies and positions’, which is prevalent and the information about it readily available to a large extent, and the second is the ‘coordination on an organizational, operational and financial’ level. This second level, which is rarely spoken of, clearly indicates interrelations within the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) global framework. The level of coordination and the type of relations between the different organizations is determined in accordance with a number of factors; among them are geography, ideological similitude and the political disputes – if they exist between given organizations.

As a result, the map for ‘relations within the Brotherhood’ is a complicated one. There exist old cracks and divisions that still have an impact to this day, in addition to recent conflicts that affect the MB’s interrelations today, which in turn affect its global organization and its performance.

But what exactly is the nature of this map of relations between Islamic organizations in the region, from their viewpoint, and does the existence of interaction signify the global organization’s activity and efficacy? How can one gauge the level of the international organization’s aptitude today? Can one consider it to be in a state of ‘hibernation’ and evasion of security attacks following September 11th – or is it on the brink of a real demise because of the structural problems it suffers?

First, we must establish a connection between The MB in Egypt and its international organization counterpart since the latter was born at the hands of Egyptians amidst the political and security needs pertaining to the Brotherhood in Egypt. The guide presiding over the international body is also Egyptian [General leader and supreme guide, Mohammed Mahdi Akef]. Given the difficulty of the circumstances for the MB in Egypt; affiliates are not allowed to form an official political party and restrictions are placed on members entering and exiting the country, it makes it all the more difficult for it to function efficiently, or with the necessary transparency and openness. Resultant of that, the past few years in particular have witnessed a conspicuous deterioration in the performance of the international organization, in terms of the frequency of the meetings and the role it plays in national and Islamic issues. Add to that the increased disputes (both political and ideological) between the various national MB organizations, which have largely contributed to transforming these international meetings into a place to ‘meet and vent’ rather than being an opportunity to operate within a frame that coordinates between policies and positions.

Activists in Egypt, those affiliated to the MB and others who are not, regard the international organization to be a “coordinative group” rather than an “organizational frame”, pointing out that the various political situations in the different Arab states allow the MB group in a given country to be more knowledgeable about their interests and affairs – even when they make decisions that go against the MB’s supreme guide in Egypt.

Gamal Heshmat, independent Egyptian MP and MB affiliate confirmed this and added that only opinions and guidance are exchanged, citing Algeria previously and present Iraq as examples. He confirmed that in the end, the decision falls upon the native country’s MB members. Heshmat revealed that they had been in contact with the MB affiliates in Iraq and said that they are in a very difficult situation and that the MB in Egypt was not satisfied with some of the Iraqi MB’s positions. They have been advised, he said. The core issue is the unity of Iraq and putting an end to the occupation – not participating in the government, he elaborated. According to Heshmat, this is the MB’s stance in Egypt (To not participate in a government that is representative of the occupation in Iraq) and that the Brotherhood in Iraq heard this view but had a different one. Moreover, he said that although there was a form of dialogue between MB organizations regionally, he stressed the lack of relations on an organizational level.

The Egyptian MP emphasized that there was no support for any armed operations in Iraq, although he said there was support for the resistance against the occupation – not against the people of the country. Heshmat revealed that the international organization was active in coordinating between MB groups regionally, which he said was basic, normal and logical. He added that there were relations with other parties such as Pakistan’s Jamia Islamia and Refah party in Turkey led by Najmuddin Erkaban [also known as Necmettin Erkaban], all of which are moderate trends, he said. Furthermore, Heshmat explained that coordination only takes place when it comes to international, rather than national, issues and that it takes on the form of recommendations that are not binding, such as general talk of the reform needed in the Arab world but not about a specific country. Communication and the exchange of opinions between local groups take place via the international organization, he said, but that they were not as regular or organized as needed despite the fact that the official position are fixed and the issues ongoing. He explained that this was why no regular meetings are required to reexamine the issues, adding that there are no reasons to hold regular meetings.

For his part, Ali Abul Sokar the MB representative of the Brotherhood in Jordan confirmed that there was coordination among the MB organizations in the region, however he says that this is by reason of the common ideological thread that runs through al of them. Abul Sokar said that although it [the movement] all generates from the same origin and Hassan al Banna is acknowledged as the founder of the MB, the fact that the movement has branched to include many countries means that every country’s national leadership faces different problems. He stressed his point by saying that despite the lack of an organizational bond to tie the MB in Jordan, Morocco and Egypt, for example, that they were still bound by an ideological bond. Abul Sokar affirmed that there was coordination amongst the MB organizations over the public issues and subsequently the meetings that take place in different countries deal with such matters. He stated that because the international organization does not represent an organizational dimension it meant that some regional members could participate with the MB’s supreme leader and that this does not satisfy the ambitions and needs of the various states. Abul Sokar said that he believed that the MB affiliates throughout the different countries were looking for a real and correlated organizational set up – which is lacking.

This belief is not only one shared by MB members internationally, even Deputy Guide of the MB, Mohamed Habib, said that there were no organizational connections but rather ideological and doctrinal bonds, which he believes lends the required flexibility needed to manage the affairs in each country. He added that the Brotherhood organizations are semi-autonomous entities united by ideology and method and that this decentralization allows for flexibility in movement, which operates according to the given country’s internal circumstances. And yet, the common ground that unites the multiple MB organizations may not be a constant factor – it is known that there exist conflicts between the Brotherhood’s affiliates in Egypt and those in Iraq as has been aforementioned. There are also disputes between the MB members in Kuwait and Egypt over the second Gulf War. Habib explained that in some cases there were discrepancies over general matters facing the Islamic nation, in terms of major challenges. International organization implies that there is a physical connection and an organizational structure responsible for regulating the pace, conduct and practices on the movement on a level that includes all the countries, he said and added that there were attempt towards a unity in ideology, objective and method. However, he stressed that every country has its own views, opinions and decisions regarding its own situation internally.

It is perhaps by virtue of these common bonds such sharing the same origin and the ideological similarities that are responsible for making some MB organizations in the region regard themselves to be part of the whole Islamic phenomenon, however there are some other organizations who perceive of themselves, by reason of their different ideologies, to be forming “a new Islamic ideology” that is not part of the current MB ideologies and thereby far removed from the international ties that would connect them to the Brotherhood. One of these organizations is the Parti de la Justice et du Développement (PJD – Justice and Development Party) in Morocco, which considers itself to be part of a growing trend among Islamic orientations in the region, ‘democratic Islam’, which also denies all organizational links to the Brotherhood.

Parliamentary representative of the PJD and prominent figure in the party, Mustafa al Ramid, denied any organizational relations or otherwise with the MB and added that the party is not branch of the Brotherhood nor does it coordinate with it. He stated that it was a common knowledge that the PJD is not concerned with any position that the MB assumes. We adopt stances in accordance with our own political framework, he said, confirming that the PJD does not base its positions on any organization whether internal or foreign. Al Ramid explained that the PJD was originally affiliated with the Mouvement unité et réforme (MUR – unity and reform movement), which he also stresses is not affiliated to the MB in any way. Al Ramid said that there might be an ideological relation; the PJD followed a special school that was the result of an interaction between various schools, regardless of whether these schools were related to the MB’s school of thought or other schools and that by virtue of these interactions the PJD has emerged with its own discipline. Communications and exchange are not regular and when they occur they take place during times when conferences are held, such as the Arab Summit [annual summit held in Beirut], he said.

But if the Islamists of the PJD are not involved with the MB by reason of historical considerations and ideological differences, the Kuwait’s Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) is disassociated primarily because of political reasons. There are a number of factors involved such as the method of electing the supreme guide and the issue of centralization. Regarding the latter Mohamed al Dalal, a senior member of the ICM said that he didn’t know the boundaries of the meetings or the role of the international MB organization. He revealed that there was a sentiment that it does not fulfill the required role in supporting the Arab and Islamic causes. This is a prevalent feeling in the ICM, he said. Al Dalal explained that in his view the joint Islamist efforts on the whole, whether the MB international formation or any other types of coordination have yet to reach the necessary stage whether between trends that adopt the MB ideology worldwide or among the mainstream Islamic ideologies, he said. Additionally, he believes that this mechanism is in need of development, actualization and further openness, even in dealing with others among the Islamic trends and the national social movements.

Perhaps it can be said that the divisions among the Islamist trends in and of itself is capable of shedding light on the real reasons behind the ineffectiveness of the international MB organization. One of the conspicuous cases of discord is that of the Sudanese MB with its Egyptian counterpart, of which the result was the severance of all ties between the Egyptian MB and the main trend in the Sudanese Islamist movement. Abdullah Hassan Ahmed, a member of the National Congress Party (NCP) leadership said that the MB in Sudan has been embroiled in conflict with the international MB organization for a long time and has nearly completely disassociated themselves from it and members no longer attend its meetings or heed its decisions. However, he pointed out that the relationship could be summed up as one of friendship and as Islamist organizations striving for their causes in the same field. The senior member of the NCP explained that this signified the exchange of opinions and ideas over public issues and that in some cases the positions are compatible without prior coordination or meetings.

And yet according to Ahmed, an international MB organization existed in the sixties and NCP affiliates attended meetings to which they were invited in Lebanon, Jordan, or any other country where these meetings were held and that they would invariably participate in these meetings. In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat he revealed that the NCP had a disagreement with the MB’s supreme leader at the end of the sixties and that prior to that, they had attended meetings and conventions. One of the disputes revolved around the fact that the Sudanese MB is founded on elections, citing the example that the NCP elects its own secretary-general and that this was practiced even when it operated under the name ‘Muslim Brotherhood’. We used to say that the secretary-general is not concerned with the center of operations in Egypt, he said. He added that the dominant tradition then was that the Egyptian supreme guide who heads Egypt’s MB was the one to appoint the secretary-generals in Sudan, Syria and Jordan in the same way he appointed Brotherhood officials in the Egyptian governorates, such as Tanta and az-Zaqaziq for example. Ahmed added that the groups in Arab countries were considered to be organizations inside Egypt, in the Egyptian governorates. We objected to this and said that our secretary-general or supreme guide or whatever that title may be, must be elected in Sudan.

According to Ahmed, the other bone of contention lies in the secrecy that surrounds the supreme leader. The Egyptian MB considered that the general guide to be a figure that should not be publicly known, you had no right to inquire as to his identity nor elect him and his name remained undisclosed, he said. Regarding the efficacy of the international MB international, Ahmed sees that it has fallen short by virtue of only including Arab Islamic organizations and that the ones that were no longer part of the international MB organization have the advantage of having established relations with all the Islamic movements outside of the Arab world, in Asia, Africa, and Europe. He sees that the second shortcoming is the lack of a real and effective counsel, which would enable every group to have its freedom in its native country to follow the discipline of its choice, which is something that is unavailable to the members of the Islamic movements that are part of the international organization.

The senior member of the NCP acknowledges that another reason for discontent is the fact that the leadership has always been in Egypt, by reason of it being the place of inception he believes, however he uses the analogy of a father and son to say that when the former ages it is possible for the latter to take over. Ahmed said that this was the reason behind the Islamic movements outside of Egypt sensing that the leadership was being monopolized. He added that it was also what prompted the Islamic movement in Sudan to distance itself from the international organization. Perhaps an understanding could have been reached, but the Brotherhood in Egypt felt that the Sudanese Islamic movement’s opinions were influencing the rest of the Islamic movements within the larger international organization, especially since the Islamic movement in Sudan employs a different approach – one that got it to power making it the first Islamic movement in the world to come to power, he said.

You Can Read the full article at ikhwanweb.com

The Brotherhood and America Part Three

By Manal Lutfi, Asharq Al-Awsat
First Published at Ikhwanweb.com, March 2007

Reports on the international Muslim Brotherhood movement are few and far between and information on the movement is even scarcer. A number of leading figures within the movement in the region, who spoke to Asharq Al Awsat, asserted that they know little about the Muslim Brotherhood as an international movement. There are various reasons behind the lack of knowledge on the organization, including the absence of updated and accurate information as well as the existence of fundamental political differences between various affiliated organizations of the MB, such as the Kuwaiti Constitutional Front and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which hampers communication at the regional level and accordingly weakens the knowledge of international relations between affiliated organizations of MB. Furthermore, there are some associated organizations of the MB that do not consider themselves “part” of “an integral whole” but rather regard themselves as “independent Islamic” organizations which evolved in their political practices more than the Muslim Brotherhood movement in Egypt for example. However, they do not deny that they emerged from the same body as the ideological and Daawa movement of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s.

Nevertheless, there is another reason behind the vagueness or “deliberate vagueness” surrounding the international movement, which appeared in the 1980s at the hands of the late supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mustafa Mashhur. In light of the background of prosecutions practiced against Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt, many of them had fled to the Gulf region and Europe. Consequently, a need for creating a conceptual and regulatory framework had emerged so as to preserve relationships between Muslim Brotherhood members inside and outside of the country. Another reason for such ambiguity is that the Muslim Brotherhood members are not comfortable discussing their external relationships outside of the national framework as this causes the Brotherhood to be perceived as an “international” threat. Concerning the security level and along this line, a campaign of arrests had taken place in Egypt recently against leaders of the movement and resulted in the arrest of around 140 members, most notably chairmen of boards of financial and business companies that are affiliated to the movement. A warrant was issued to arrest two leading members of the MB; Youssef Nada (Egyptian) and Syrian member of the Brotherhood, Ghalib Hamat, directors of the Al Taqwa Bank. The two were accused of managing the financial activities of the MB and funding the Egyptian member organization. At the political level, the warning issued by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in which he stated that the Muslim Brotherhood endangers the national security of Egypt, had intentionally or even inadvertently drawn attention to the international nature of the MB. The Egyptian President stated “If we assume that there is a rise in this trend we will see a repeat in Egypt of other experiences … of regimes representing political Islam,” and that Egypt would suffer from isolation as a result. With that, he referred to Hamas in Palestine based on the fact that affiliated organizations to the Muslim Brotherhood are “part of an integral whole,” and that they all enjoy the same political and ideological background as well as regulatory relationships.

From the US perspective, the differences between viewpoints of American officials were apparent regarding the affiliated organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood as independent entities. A number of American officials whom Asharq Al Awsat spoke to said that the US administration tackles the Muslim Brotherhood movement on a “country-based,” individual and independent basis. Nevertheless, the US administration does not overlook the fact that these affiliate organizations are gathered under the umbrella of the international organization and that there are financial, regulatory and political links that bind them together even if the link is not apparent to the public. However, other American officials said that the United States tackles “states”, not “international organizations”, and that there is no “unanimous comprehensive policy” that asserts that the Muslim Brotherhood movement is a “global organization”.

So how exactly does the United States regard Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the region? Does it consider these organizations separate regional entities or does it consider them organizations which gather under “a single framework”? One of the criteria that determine the extent of the comprehension of the nature of the international organization by US administration is the “abundance of information”. In this regard, we must clarify that there are a number of ambiguous aspects surrounding the activities of the organization and that there is no sufficient information to cover this topic, especially concerning the financial side, the organization’s meetings and regulatory relationships.

A prominent American official in the US State Department explained that the US administration deals with Muslim Brotherhood organizations on an individual level. He does not believe that the American administration has sufficient knowledge on the links that bind the Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the region, or their funding. He stated that undoubtedly, after the 9/11 attacks, there is an increasing state of sensitivity in tackling the issue; this is not to accuse the Muslim Brotherhood movement of involvement in the 9/11 attacks but rather all issues are now linked to funding. He continued to say that there is considerable American concern regarding the funding of terrorism more than ever before, however, that the Islamic ascent in the region is not considered a global conspiracy. The American official added that the related concerns are both local and individual concerns. With regard to Hamas for instance, he explains that the associating question is whether Hamas is a purely Palestinian organization or has it become a tool for Iranian foreign policy and the Syrian regime. The debate in Washington revolves around similar issues. The official states that he does not believe that there is a “Pope for Islamists” somewhere and that there is a state of coordination between them owing to their similar ideologies, challenges and clashes with their countries’ regimes.

Another official in the US State Department attributed the individual manner in which the American administration deals with Islamic organizations in the region to the absence of a specific political or geographical entity for the international movement of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Former American Ambassador to Egypt, Daniel Kurtzer, agreed with the aforementioned view and told Asharq Al Awsat that the US had been studying the evolution of the Muslim Brotherhood movement since its onset in the 1920s. The US is aware that it is an Egyptian movement; however its leaders and ideologists have influence upon others who sought to imitate the same ideologies and follow the path of the Muslim Brotherhood in other countries.

On the other hand, there are those who do not place the blame on the lack or absence of updated and accurate information on the ties between the affiliated organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood. There are those who believe that the problem has historical roots, since the United States had not set a clear foreign policy towards global relations between Muslim Brotherhood member organizations. Included in this group is Marina Ottoway, director of the Middle East program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who explained that she was not sure whether the United States has a specific policy towards the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. She also stated that she did not think that anybody had a clear idea about the MB and the nature of relationships and ties with different member organizations. Ottoway stated that the need to conduct research on this topic was discussed at the Carnegie Endowment as “the issue is not fully understood.”

Ottoway told Asharq Al Awsat that she was aware of ties between different organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and that some of these links were strong and that nobody could fully understand these links. She explained that a colleague of hers had undergone research in Kuwait, where the Muslim Brotherhood was no longer as close as it used to be to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and that the relationship was quite complicated.

However, other former officials of the American administration were more certain about the international organization and its role. These included Dennis Ross, the Middle East peace envoy of the former US administration of President Bill Clinton, who told Asharq Al Awsat that he considered the Muslim Brotherhood movement an international organization. With regards to the issue of dialogue with Hamas, Ross stated that he was against this as the movement refuses the two-state solution and rejects the cessation of violence. However, Ross is fully aware of who makes up the movement and that the Muslim Brotherhood movement is a global, not a local movement. Ross also claims to know about the decision-making process and the role of Shura (Consultative) Council within this international organization. He added that he would not talk to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and that despite its assertion that it wants to engage in the political process in Egypt, the movement supports the use of violence in other areas and this is the main problem. He firmly stated that as long as the movement supported violence as a means to achieve political objectives, then dialogue could not be established with such an organization.

Others believe that the American administration combines two features. The first of these is distinguishing between different member organizations of the MB in the region and the other aspect is the fact that the US administration realizes that there is an international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood movement that acts as an umbrella for various organizations. Among those who adopt this view is Danielle Pletka, a researcher at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. In this regard, she told Asharq Al Awsat that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is not the same as the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria or in Jordan. And that American administration distinguishes between different member organizations of the MB. She explains that the US administration also differentiates between the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliated local organizations in different countries. Pletka believes that there are some people within the US administration who know the difference between these organizations as well as the financial and political relationships between them. It is for this reason that the American administration had stopped all transactions with the Iranian Bank Saderat owing to its links to Islamist organizations. However, she added, this does not mean that the administration is fully aware of everything.

One could say that the approach of American foreign policy defines the way in which American officials understand and recognize the issue of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement. Staff members of US State Department are responsible for country-based issues. An official in the US State Department told Asharq Al Awsat, “We work on a local level, that is, on the case of a certain country or state. In the state department we work also on a regional level, where we study cases for example in Lebanon or in the Maghreb region. We all work in the same bureau but there is no solid coordination between the different cases. There are members who study religious parties in the Maghreb region and who specialize in this field. However, they do not coordinate with members who are specialized in tackling the issue of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan for example. Despite that, they all work within the same realm of the Middle East, but we generally work on the level of a certain country in the US State Department.”

The General Statute of the International Organization of Muslim Brotherhood Movement

* The General Statute of the international organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was ratified on July 29 1982, emphasized that security, political and financial constriction upon country-based organizations affiliated to the MB is an incentive for the organization to endorse international cooperation. Despite the fact that it is difficult to obtain information about MB meetings and its role in coordinating between affiliated organizations, it is possible to assume that there is a direct relation between the frequency of the meetings and coordination of efforts of the international organization on one hand and the security, political and financial constriction upon country-based organizations on the other hand. The general statute that was ratified during Mustafa Mashhur’s term as Supreme Guide stated that “In the light of the expansion of the activities of the movement, as well as the experiences that the movement has encountered, and taking into account all the circumstances that affect the movement and the requirements of the current period, the Shura Council, which was established according to the provisional regulation, decided to accredit the general statute of the movement.” This asserted upon the international nature of the movement. Some of the most important items of the general statute follow:

– Definitions of the main administrative bodies of the MB: the Supreme Guide, the General Guidance Bureau and the General Shura Council.

The Supreme Guide – The Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood is the official in charge of the movement who heads the General Guidance Bureau and the General Shura Council and undertakes the following tasks:

A) To supervise all departments of the movement as well as directing and monitoring officials in charge and holding them accountable for negligence, according to the statute of the movement.

B) To represent the movement and its affairs and to speak on its behalf.

C) To assign members of the movement to carry out tasks within its scope.

D) To summon general supervisors representative of different countries for meetings when necessary.

The Supreme Guide is selected by virtue of the following steps:

– After consulting with executive offices in different countries, the General Guidance Bureau nominates the two most popular candidates from these offices if there is no agreement on a single individual who fits the criteria.

– According to the previous step, after a decision by the Guidance Bureau, the Deputy Supreme Guide summons the Shura Council for a meeting to be held that may take up to a week, in order to elect the new supreme guide. The invitation for the meeting should include the time, place, topic and the quorom and should be addressed at least one month earlier than the set date of the meeting.

– The Shura Council, headed by the Deputy Supreme Guide, convenes. If the Deputy Supreme Guide is one of the nominated candidates then the council is to be headed by the eldest member and in the presence of at least four-fifths of the members of the Shura Council. If the quorum was not met throughout the week, the meeting is to be postponed for another date that should be held no earlier than one month and no later than two months after the date of the first meeting. If the three-quarters majority of the Council members did not attend this meeting then the meeting is to be postponed once again. In this case, the council should set a date for the new meeting within the previously mentioned time-span. It should announce the objective of the meeting and the fact that the meeting will only be valid in case of an absolute majority.

– If there is only one nominee then he should receive at least three-quarters of the votes of attendees where the vote can be recast only once. If the candidate does not receive the required majority, the council is summoned for another meeting during the week, wherein the Guidance Bureau nominates another member. The second nominee can also run in a re-vote once only and if he fails to meet the required majority then the council is to be held again during the week. The Guidance Bureau is to nominate another member and a re-vote could be held once. If the nominee fails to achieve the required majority, the voting process is to be repeated among candidates according to the next step…

– If there are two nominees, then the voters would consider the one who receives the majority of votes of at least half the members of the Shura Council.

– The Guidance Bureau

The Guidance Bureau is the supreme executive office of the Muslim Brotherhood and the authority that supervises the conduct of Daawa and that controls its policies and administration.

The Guidance Bureau is composed of thirteen members, as well as the Supreme Guide, who are selected according to the following criteria:

– Eight members are elected from among the members of the Shura council from the region in which the Supreme Guide resides.

– Five members are elected from among the members of the Shura Council in accordance with regional representation.

– The Supreme Guide selects a treasurer from among the members of the Guidance Bureau.

– The General Shura Council

The General Shura Council is the legislative authority of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its rules are binding and its term in office is four years according to the Hijri calendar.

– The Shura Council is composed of at least 30 members who represent accredited Muslim Brotherhood organizations in various countries. They are selected by Shura councils in different countries or their alternative representatives. The number of representatives of each country is determined by the Shura Council.

– The Shura Council is entitled to include three specialized and experienced members who are to be nominated by the Guidance Bureau.

– Any new Muslim Brotherhood entity could be represented if the Guidance Bureau accredits it.

The relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood movement and country-based organizations is determined according to the following domains:

The First Domain: Leaders of country-based organizations commit to the decisions of the general leadership represented by the Supreme Guide, the Guidance Bureau and the General Shura Council. It includes the following:

– Commitment to the principles mentioned in the statute, when the country-based organization drafts its own statute, regarding membership, its conditions and ranks as well as the need for the existence of the Shura Council alongside the executive office. This is in addition to the necessity of committing to consultations and the results of these consultations by all bodies affiliated to Muslim Brotherhood etc.

– Commitment to the Muslim Brotherhood’s understanding of Islam that is derived from the Quran and the Sunnah (Prophetic traditions) and which is emphasized by the twenty principles [of Imam Hassan al Banna] and commitment to the educational approach which is ratified by the General Shura Council.

– Adherence to the policies and positions of the Muslim Brotherhood towards public issues as determined by the General Guidance Bureau and the General Shura Council.

– Commitment to obtaining the approval of the Guidance Bureau before making any important political decisions.

The Second Domain: Leaders of country-based organizations should consult and receive the approval of the Supreme Guide or the Guidance Bureau before the adoption of resolutions. This domain also includes all important local issues that could affect the organization in any other country.

The Third Domain: This domain deals conclusively with the freedom of leaders of member organizations. They are expected to inform the Guidance Bureau of their activities as soon as possible or through the annual report that is submitted by the general supervisor. This domain includes the following:

– All that is related to the plan of the member organization in the country, the activities of its divisions and the growth of its organization.

– The political stances towards all local issues, which do not affect Muslim Brotherhood organizations in other countries, provided that general positions of the movement are adhered to.

– The legitimate means adopted by the member organization which aims at achieving the objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood in light of its conditions and circumstances.

– Each country is to set its own statute for organizing its activities, which should be set according to its own circumstances and that should be approved by the General Guidance Bureau before being put into effect.

– Each general supervisor is to submit an annual report on the progress of Daawa, the organizations activities and proposals that they deem capable of realizing the interests of the organization in its region, to the Guidance Bureau before holding the meeting with the General Shura Council.

– To contribute to Daawa, each member organization should pay an annual subscription. The value of this subscription is to be determined in agreement with the General Guidance Bureau.

– Muslim Brotherhood members who do not live in their native countries should comply with the leadership of the movement in the country in which they reside.

The Brotherhood and America Part Two

By Manal Lutfi, Asharq Al-Awsat
First Published at Ikhwanweb.com, March 2007
Despite what may be considered a ‘stalling’ in the interactive activities between the Americans and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) members in the region by virtue of the Iraqi war (2003), there still remain talks between America and the Brotherhood in various capitals whenever the need arises or interests dictate. The US claims to have ‘fixed standards’ for dealing with Islamic organizations in the region – but the picture is more elaborate and involved. Essentially, there are five criteria that define the relationship with such organizations:

1- Their state of legitimacy in their native counties

2- Their position on the US State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations

3- Their agenda and ideological discourse

4- Their actions on the ground

5- Interests resulting from engaging in dialogue with the organizations in question

However, in political practice, these standards ravel to the point where they enter ‘grey’ domain. According to what American officials, both current and former, have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat, the American administration does not hold talks with groups that are legally banned, which is not entirely true as it is known that the past two years have seen unofficial and unannounced meetings between US officials and the MB group in Syria, despite Damascus’ refusal to recognize the Brotherhood in Syria as a legitimate organization. While it is assumed that the legal recognition is amongst the requisite standards for establishing a relationship with Washington, there remain two important exceptions: Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which despite being present on the US terrorist list, America still refuses to engage in dialogue with them even though they are both legitimate groups in their native countries.

And while talks between the Americans and Jordan’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) [Jabhat al Amal al Islami, the political wing of the MB in Jordan] are supposedly strong by reason of their legitimacy and their absence from the terrorist list, it is not the case, as indicated by an American official. Agreeing to speak on condition of anonymity, the official told Asharq Al-Awsat that this was because the IAF, despite not advocating violence directly, like its Egyptian counterpart; it too supported suicide-bombing operations that the Palestinians execute in Israel. As a consequence, the official said that the US relationship with Jordan’s MB is one of the “weakest” among the legitimate organizations in the region with which Washington has direct relations.

In contrast is Morocco’s Justice and Development party [PJD – Parti de la Justice et du Développement], with which Washington has a good relationship and which conforms to the five aforementioned standards. Perhaps the best way to describe the degree of accord in the relationship between the Americans and the PJD, is what was stated by Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East Program and senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment when she said that many non-Islamic political activists in Morocco had told her on her latest visit that Washington wants the PJD to govern Morocco. Ottaway indicated that it may not be entirely accurate.

Despite the majority of American officials and researchers that Asharq Al-Awsat interviewed stressing the importance of the legitimacy factor in determining the ability to hold talks with these Islamic organizations, illegitimacy does not mean the ‘severance of relations’. Regarding this matter, a US official told Asharq Al-Awsat that their clear policies state that banned groups are not to be dealt with, he cited the MB in Egypt as an example and said that in order to avoid awkward situations or stir up sensitivities the organization is not dealt with in an official manner or capacity. He added that meetings may be held between Egyptian MPs who are affiliated to the MB or figures who are close to the group on an individual basis but not as members of the MB. He also clarified that the US administration does not associate between the Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan or Morocco and that the US had previously engaged in talks with the Brotherhood in Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco and that the members of these groups had indeed met with US officials, but that opening dialogue depended on certain issues and particular interests.

The official explained that aside from the legitimacy element, the presence or absence of a given group on the US State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations similarly plays a defining role in dialogue with the Islamists, such as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad with whom no dialogue exists. The same applies to the armed groups that engage in violence or who support it elsewhere.

The outcome of the interviews conducted by Asharq Al-Awsat revealed that the

content and understanding of these proposed standards when dealing with the agendas and ideologies of Islamic organizations have two ceilings: there are some who view issues such as renouncing violence, tolerating diversity and respecting public freedoms to be the measure by which to judge Islamic organizations in order to determine the likelihood of establishing dialogue with them, while others view that the ceiling must be raised to include issues such as the group in question’s stance on the rights of women, religious- and racial- minorities, and the application of Shariah penalties.

Dennis Ross, formerly the special Middle East coordinator and envoy during Bill Clinton time in office, adopts the first basic approach; he sees that the renunciation of violence should be the point of entry which would enable dialogue with the external world. He told Asharq Al-Awsat that in all matters related to dialogue, the definitive factor is the denouncing violence as a means to achieve political goals. He added that if the MB were to make that announcement that his position towards them would change but that as long as violence comprised a part of their ideology that there would be little hope for dialogue, or any other relationship to be established for that matter. He said that he believed dealing with such groups is wrong because it sends out a message that the US somehow feels, in some way or another, that they are the future.

Ross stressed that he preferred to establish dialogue with those who possess a vision about the future of the Middle East, one that is founded on economic prosperity, tolerance and the acceptance of diversity. He continued to say that the majority of Muslims in the Middle East did not want a world steeped in violence and animosity and that they wanted a better life for themselves. He stated that although perhaps these organizations often criticize the US on a number of aspects that this fact does not make partnership impossible. It is not necessary that they should agree with the US on everything as it is not infallible but that there must be political regulations accepted by all, he said. According to Ross, the use of violence for political ends is not a legitimate method to achieve political goals because it means that you possess the ability to decide that you are right while all else is wrong and thus justify imposing your way on others. There are some who criticize American policy worldwide because they think that we want to impose our way on all, he said, adding that he believed that it was an erroneous assumption because one cannot enforce their ways on others.

However, current officials in the US administration admit that the picture is greyer than that and say that the obscure areas between the black and the white provoke much misunderstandings and ambiguity. According to one senior official the positions and viewpoints towards the Islamic organizations vary. He told Asharq Al-Awsat that there are no clear factors to differentiate between moderate and extremist Islamic groups and that there were figures in the administration who adopted a more rigid approach towards the Islamists while others were less rigid, and that it was also pending the situation of the country in question. He stated that in the case where the choice was between the MB party in a particular country or a bloodthirsty takfiri [Muslims holding fellow Muslims to be infidels] group that they would choose the former although they may not agree with the MB’s political ideas. So far, he said, there is still no broad unanimity within the US administration regarding the Islamists in the Arab world. He questioned the possibility for there to be major participation by the citizens of a given country and whether other Islamic parties would allow for this participation. He emphasized that their objective was for the region to have complete freedom for all, including the leftists and the secularists whom the Islamists consider disbelievers.

The senior official who agreed to be interviewed on condition of anonymity said the interaction between the US administration and the MB takes place on an individual basis, adding that he speaks from experience since he occupied a diplomatic post in Jordan some years ago and that they had normal relations and contact with the IAF and dealt with it as they did with other political parties despite the fact that it had a definite position against the US, but that there was normal communication between the two sides. He said that he had personally visited the IAF’s newspaper office [the weekly Islamist Al Sabil newspaper] and that he used to have discussions with the people working there. He added that the situation is different in Egypt as there is delicacy surrounding the US’s relationship with the MB by reason of the party’s illegitimacy in the country.

There is a conviction that we deal with Brotherhood organizations in the region as a single broad position, he explained, refuting it by saying that these organizations are dealt with in accordance to several criteria. The first of which is the state and the political situation in each given state. He added that the proof of this was that the relations with Jordan’s MB were normal, while issues existed with their Egyptian counterparts – which applies to all countries where the MB is banned as an organization of a political party, such as Tunis or Syria. He said that while he was in Syria he knew various Islamists but did not know whether or not they were affiliated to the Brotherhood, who were then, as they still are, an illegitimate organization. Another exception to the rule is the Brotherhood in Iraq where there is significant communication and deliberations between Americans and the MB members who participate in Iraq’s present government and who also considerably engage in civil life – Iraq’s MB group art the only ones who have their own television channel, Baghdad satellite channel.

The US senior official stated that in their view and dealings with the Islamists, the second factor is these groups’ agendas regarding democracy. We are not against the Islamists as such, neither are we against the Muslim Brotherhood, he said. He added that the question was one about the rules of participation and that Washington does not regard the presence of the MB in politics or political life to be the problem, whether in Egypt, Jordan, or elsewhere, in fact it views it as a positive thing because we want everyone to participate. The main question is: do the rules of the game allow for the equal participation of concerned parties, Islamists and secularists, liberals and leftists? Or does the Islamic trend manipulate the rules of the game to practice a form of blackmail and extortion against those not affiliated to it? To Washington, this formulates the important question, a more important one than the existence of Islamists or the lack thereof, he said.

The official revealed that they were aware that the Islamists have a strong public appeal on the Arab street for a number of different reasons, among them the fact that they have an advantage by not being the governments in these countries. Regarding the grey areas in dealing with the MB organizations in the region, the senior official cited Hamas as a good example and said that they had no problem with the party’s participation as a civil political organization. Likewise, he said they had no problem with Hezbollah’s participation as a civil party that has a presence in civil life and that the problem was that they considered Hamas a terrorist organization that has practiced – and will continue to practice – terrorism.

He added: This was the former American stance regarding the Palestinian elections; if Hamas had decided its participation would be as a political party rather than an oppositional organization then there would be no problem. He explained that this did not mean that they supported the ideologies of Islamists in Palestine and that the problem was the use of violence, furthermore adding that they were not against Hamas in principle. He added that they were not sympathetic to communist ideals because fundamentally they were against communism but Washington had no issues with the participation of communist parties in the Arab world or anywhere else. The same applies to the Islamists, he said, differentiating between the use of violence on the one hand, and the belief in religious or conservative ideas in politics on the other. He stated that the latter was the citizens’ choice and that the US does not interfere in this matter.

Marina Ottaway, director of the Middle East Program and renowned researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shares a similar view, she told Asharq Al-Awsat that the official position that the US administration adopts in dealing with Islamists in the region is that they are subject to the laws of the countries in which they have a presence. If the Islamic organizations are not banned in their countries of origin, the US administration sees no problem in contacting them and establishing relations, she said. Citing Morocco’s PJD as an example, which is recognized by the US, she added that leaders from the party had been invited to the American embassy in Morocco to mark the occasion of America’s independence anniversary on the 4th of July.

She negated claims by political activists in Morocco who were not affiliated to Islamic organizations that the PJD was touted as the next party to come to power and added that the PJD is viewed as moderate and legitimate, which is why America converses with it, she said. Although the IAF is a legitimate party that is officially registered in Jordan, Ottaway said that the US did not favor it and yet it still held talks with it as it does with Islamic organizations in Iraq, such as the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), led by Abdulaziz al Hakim or any other Sunni or Shia organization that is legally authorized to operate. She explained that the official position is that if an organization is legally registered, it is contacted and dialogue is established. Like US officials, Ottaway states that Palestine’s Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are the exceptions to the rule as their respective situations are complicated. The result is that you have two legitimate parties that the US does not recognize; in the case if Hamas the reason being its refusal to recognize the state of Israel while in the case of Hezbollah, the main reason is the fact that it is backed by Syria and Iran, which connotes a lot more than just being a religious party. She affirmed that the US only deals with Egypt’s MB on an individual basis, the ‘independent MPs’ affiliated to the party since it is officially banned. Ottaway added that to the best of her knowledge, American diplomats have not held talks with Egyptian MPs affiliated to the MB.

Although American officials stress that Washington deals with the MB presence in the region on an individual basis so that the policies that apply to one country may not apply to another, they emphasize that the US has its eyes on the regional intra-relationships between the various MB organization groups worldwide.

The Brotherhood and America Part One

by Manal Lutfi, Asharq Al-Awsat
First Published at Ikhwanweb.com, March 2007

There are three major events that have shaped the Western world’s knowledge of political Islam; namely, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1981 assassination of the late Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat and the 9/11 attacks. Amidst these incidents that have defined the negative Western view of political Islam, there was the Afghan anti-Soviet jihad in which the US administration backed the Mujahideen only to abandon them after the Soviet departure. But the shift in the relationship between the Americans and Mujahideen in Afghanistan was not the driving force behind America’s identification of political Islam as an important variable in the region. It was not as a result of this that they began to produce general policies to deal with Islamists, regardless of the intellectual, ideological, political and geographical differences that exist across political Islam. After all, Afghanistan is not the heart of American strategic interests in the Middle East.

The 1980s was the decade that witnessed most of the key shifts in political Islam. In 1989, the world saw the Islamic National Front gain power in both Sudan and Jordan, and witnessed other Islamic groups actively participating in parliamentary elections in Egypt and Algeria, in which they achieved considerable results. However, most regional Islamist organizations sympathized with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and opposed sending American forces to liberate it from Iraqi occupation in 1991.

A delegation of leading Muslim Brotherhood figures in the region headed for Iraq for mediation. It is key events, such as this one, that showed the organization’s capability and the extent of transnational relations between the Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the region. For the first time in the early 1990s, the US administration embarked on an attempt to lay down foundations for the US policy towards the brotherhood organizations in the region. It was Edward Djerejian, at that time the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, who led the initiative with a paper he presented during the term of George Bush, Senior, in which he reviewed America’s policies and the Islamist expansion in the region and stated that “Islamists in the region are not enemies”.

However, it is the developments in the last two decades which have perhaps led to other conclusions. Since September 11th, some US administration officials and members of the politically elite have labeled Islamists as a threat, and the narrow steps taken towards openness with the Muslim Brotherhood movements in the region were halted or at least obstructed as a result of the 2003 American war in Iraq. With the exception of the Islamic Constitutional Movement in Kuwait and the Justice and Development Party in Morocco, no further meetings have been held between American diplomats and leading figures and activists in the Muslim Brotherhood, as was the case prior to the war in 2003.

American policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood became questionable and raised some allegations. The accusation leveled against America by regional Muslim Brotherhood groups, suggested that it wanted “pluralism without Islamists” and that Washington was changing its policies towards the brotherhood with the ebb and flow of governments. They argued that the doors to dialogue were opened when agreement existed between successive governments, however the doors were firmly shut if a government adopted a stringent policy towards the brotherhood.

Asharq al Awsat investigates the relationship between America and the Muslim Brotherhood in the region. In 6 installments, attempts will be made to answer a number of questions through interviews with officials in the US administration, including Scott Carpenter, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Partnership Initiative, Daniel Kurtzer, former US Ambassador to Cairo, who is currently professor of Middle East studies at Princeton University, and Denis Ross, the Clinton Administration’s Middle East peace envoy, who is currently fellow of the Washington Institute (for Near East Policy), and researchers at American research centers closely linked to the administration, such as American enterprise, Carnegie Center, Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, New America Foundation, as well as leading Muslim Brotherhood figures in the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of Jordanian brotherhood, the Justice and Development Party, the political wing of Moroccan brotherhood, the Constitutional Movement in Kuwait, the political wing of Kuwait’s brotherhood and leading figures from Egypt’s brotherhood, including Deputy Supreme Guide Muhammad Habib.

The six installments deal with a number of issues, including the relationship between America and the Brotherhood, how the relationship evolved and Djerejian’s role in the early 1990s in launching the idea of America’s dialog with “moderate” Islamists as part of the American foreign policy in the region.

The series will also address a number of questions such as: How does America view the Muslim Brotherhood? What are the various criteria that determine America’s relations with Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the region? How does America regard the International Muslim Brotherhood (IMB)? Does it regard it as an umbrella that covers all brotherhood organizations in the region? Is there sufficient information about the International Muslim Brotherhood’s position, funding and role in coordination with the rest of brotherhood organizations in the region? How does the modus operandi in the US State Department affect America’s knowledge of the international organization? What is the Muslim Brotherhood’s view of dialog with the Americans? What is the role of the International Muslim Brotherhood? What are the differences between the various brotherhood organizations? What are the US administration’s conditions for dealing with the brotherhood organizations in the region? Why does America deal with the Muslim Brotherhood organizations on case-by-case local basis? What are the dialog issues between the Americans and Brotherhood organizations in the region? What are the conditions for dialog with the Americans from the perspective of leading brotherhood figures?

Contrary to the present time, America’s relationship with regional brotherhood organizations was not hostile in 1950s. In light of the Cold War and Egyptian President, Jamal Abdul Nasser’s socialist trends and hostility towards the Americans and Egypt’s brotherhood, the doors of communication were open for America and the Brotherhood. This alliance was intended to undermine Abdul Nasser and confront the Soviet influence in the region. However, due to political hardships and the “closed-door” policy, meetings could not take place in Egypt. As a result, they took place abroad, particularly in Europe and the Arabian Gulf, and ended with various results; from financial to political support. The relationship turned hostile due to the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as the Afghan coup d’etat. Prior to this, America did not have a firm policy on direct dialog with the Brotherhood.

In the initial stages of the US government’s attempts to develop a clear policy towards moderate Islamists, Kurtzer, an ambassador involved in making contacts with Muslim Brotherhood members during his service in Egypt told Asharq Al-Awsat that for over 15 years, America has been interested in dialogue with the so-called moderate Islamists in the Middle East region, while in the early 1990s, Djerejian delivered a key speech in which he said that, Dialogue with moderate Islamists is part of the administration’s policy during the transitional period between the presidential terms of George Bush Sr. and Clinton. A red line was always drawn with regards to dialogue with organizations practicing terrorism because the successive administrations did not want to engage in discussions with such organizations. During the past decade, Congress requested a list of foreign terrorist organizations. The difference here is between organizations involved in terrorism with which the US administration does not engage in dialogue, whether of Islamic or of any religious background and any other organizations not involved in terrorism. Kurtzer stressed that during that period US concerns were not the ideologies behind these organizations, but rather their actions and whether they practice terrorism.

Kurtzer also revealed that during his time as ambassador to Egypt he had met with various Islamist figures affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood outside of the Embassy, but had not met any official Brotherhood figures.

A US State Department official confirmed to Asharq al Awsat that dialogue with Islamic groups is not a current concern for the US administration, however, he added that US policies clearly state that banned groups are never to be dealt with. Discussions are opened with regards to specific issues and not merely for the sake of opening dialogue with Islamists because they gained power on the Arab street. If there are reasons, dialogue will take place, however if there is no specific or known reason, discussions will not take place.

Kurtzer is of the belief that the current US administration is engaged in talks with Islamic organizations in the region in Might be a calculated move.

Kurtzer also stated that there are a large number of individuals from various parties within the Egyptian parliament, who are known to have ties with Islamists and if the Egyptian government accepts this, the Americans cannot be more radical.

It is notable that the intellectual and legal differences between regional brotherhood organizations concerning a number of issues may not fully account for the varied American policies towards these organizations. Washington has good relationships with the brotherhoods of Kuwait, Morocco and Iraq but it has less warm relations with Jordan’s brotherhood, despite it being a legal political party like those in Kuwait, Morocco and Iraq. Also, it shunned Hamas though it came to power in a legitimate election.

Washington’s relationship with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is marked with disregard despite their powerful presence as elected political force in parliament. What is also confusing is that the American dealing with regional Muslim Brotherhood organizations was not positively affected by, for example, the Middle East Partnership Initiative, which was approved by the US State Department in 2004 and intended to support public freedoms, political openness and the promotion of the participation of women.

Although the initiative was aimed at opening the way for the moderate Islamist current, by pulling the rug from under the feet of the extremist currents and urging regional governments to take steps to avoid forcing tens of thousands of young people into fanaticism or extremism, it also intended to allow the liberal current to take the stage in Arab politics. However, what happened was that Islamists were in fact the ones who benefited the most from the initiative (in the parliamentary elections, as was the case in both Egypt and Palestine). Islamists suggest that this led America to take a few backward steps with regard to supporting political openness. This can be noticed in the way Washington turned a blind eye to the arrests of Muslim Brotherhood figures in Egypt.

Recently, the Egyptian authorities have detained Khairat al Shater, the Deputy Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with a number of Brotherhood activists. They also closed down the Islamic Distribution and Publishing House in Sayyeda Zainab neighborhood and Dar al Tiba’a for Publishing and Distributing. They also sealed off an outlet of the Distribution and Publication House in Qaliub, closed down Dar al Bashair in al Haram neighborhood, Nasr City-based Al Ilam bookshop, a printing press of another publishing house in 10th of Ramadan City and Al Hyat pharmaceutical company. All this before President Hosni Mubarak declared that the Muslim Brotherhood posed a danger to Egypt’s security, in a possible escalation of the crackdown against them.

Scott Carpenter, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Partnership Initiative, told Asharq al Awsat that it is wrong to deduce from the existence of the initiative that the United States only recognizes the Islamists as opposition forces in the region.

The reason for this according to Carpenter is that the situation and the prevailing expectations in the region are that the active and reliable opposition forces are the Islamic parties, which Carpenter disputes.

People in the region expect America to focus on the idea that Islamists are the existent opposition force which is not necessarily the case since there are various Islamic groups. In Morocco, and Yemen, they are sharing power. When discussion takes place between the US and Islamists, the same issues are raised from women rights, Power sharing, Free trade, Economic development and capital freedom – Difficult issues that are related to the world today.

The question according to Carpenter is the position of Islamic organizations towards these issues, and that talking to a given group does not necessarily mean that the US backs it.

Carpenter said that the goals of the reform initiative are openness and involving all constituents of society in the open political practice. “There is no doubt that Islamic parties are part of these constituents or at least should be. But they are not the only group that has to benefit from political openness. This is why we spend a long time talking to governments in the region about the important need to create mechanisms for the rise of political parties, and to allow other elements of society, that do not have the organizational capabilities, to present themselves as an alternative, in order to arrive at real political pluralism in society. The issues of globalization and modernization are not simple but complicated ones. The idea that one political group has the answers to all queries is not possible. What we want to see in the region is active and dynamic pluralism.”

But the situation may be more complicated than this, as there is real fear of Islamists because of some ideas that the Americans fear might affect their interests. In this regard, another prominent State Department official who served in the Middle East said, “The dialogue with moderate Islamists is an old debate. First, we have to respect people’s religious feelings. Second, if we believe in and are faithful to the idea of democracy – and I believe so, despite everything in the region – we have to recognize that Islamists have the right to take part in civil life, and we have recognized that. For example, we are against Hamas, but Bush recognized their triumph in the election. There has always been a sort of American duplicity towards the issue, because we in principle respect the concept of popular participation and the right of everyone to participate in civil life. This involves the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the Islamic organizations. At the same time, however, we are not in a state of blindness. We know that these parties in general represent an anti-American political option and criticize America. This does not mean entire American rejection but means admitting that there is a problem. There is American dialogue with Islamists that exists on a modest and simple scale in some Arab countries, but this does not mean it exists in a systematic way or on a high level. In the case of Jordan, there are ordinary contacts and sometimes an exchange of views with some people. There is another problem—skepticism of some Arab regimes.

The Egyptian government, for example, always thinks of a conspiracy if the Americans talk to Islamists. The matter is exaggerated. There are contacts but no more than contacts. In principle, we are not against the brotherhood’s participation in civil life.”

In the last year of the presidential term of George Bush Senior and after the Second Gulf War and the calling for holding the Madrid peace conference, with the attendance of the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese, the atmosphere indicated possible reformulation of the American policy in the Middle East against a less hostile background. At the heart of that were the policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood. Against this background on June 2, 1992, Edward Djerejian, who served as US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs between 1991 and 1993 and as Ambassador to Syria between 1989 and 1991 and to Israel in 1993, presented a vision on the American policy and interests in the Middle East, including the relationship with Islamists.

In his proposal, Djerejian said that the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War between the Eastern and Western camps had put the world in a new mode that he called “collective engagement,” pointing out that such “collective engagement” had been manifested in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Djerejian defined the American intentions in the Near East as two goals only—namely, the pursuit to bring about just, lasting and comprehensive peace between Israel and all its neighbors, including Palestine, and seeking security arrangements that could ensure stability and access to the Gulf oil reserves.

Djerejian then talked of the so-called “Fundamental Values”, saying that, Politics in the Middle East has increasingly focused on change and openness…The role of religion has become more apparent, and much attention is being paid to the phenomenon labeled political Islam, the Islamic revival, or Islamic fundamentalism. Some say that it is causing a widening gap between Western values and those of the Muslim world. It is important to assess this phenomenon carefully so that we do not fall victim to misplaced fears or faulty perceptions…The Cold War is not being replaced with a new competition between Islam and the West. It is evident that the Crusades have been over for a long time.

“I Stayed to Fight” — Being a Muslim Immigrant in Post 9/11 America

Mona Eltahawy | Source

For most of my life, the US was never anything more than vacation memories. My family visited almost 30 years ago for a vacation that marked the end of our years of living in the UK and which came just before we moved to Saudi Arabia.
New York City dazzled, of course, and a road trip with an uncle and his family from Wyoming through the Rockies to California where Mickey Mouse greeted us in Disneyland, was a lesson in the sheer vastness that is the United States.

But then I fell in love with an American and I flew to NYC to meet him for the millennium celebrations and even though we fought and I gave him back his engagement ring, I agreed to marry him and I did what I vowed I’d never do: I left my job and my home for a man.

The year after I moved to be with him in Seattle, early one Tuesday, his mother called us from her home at the other end of the country – three time zones away in Florida – urging us to turn on the television because something terrible was happening in New York. I rushed to awaken my brother and his wife who were visiting us.

That morning of 11 September 2001 as we watched the twin towers crumble on live television, America and I would develop a bond that has proven deeper and more enduring – for better or worse, through sickness and health – than the one I had with my now ex-husband.

“If this is Muslims, they’re going to round us up,” I told him. He took the day off work and we didn’t leave the apartment for two days, worried that my sister-in-law would be attacked for her headscarf. A drunk unsuccessfully tried to set our local mosque on fire; the neighbourhood stood guard outside the mosque for weeks afterwards holding signs that read “Muslims are Americans”.

“What’s it like to f**k a terrorist?” a group of young men asked the white American husband of a Pakistani-American woman I knew.

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion; nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated we visited NYC one more time together for a friend’s engagement and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks. I had no words. Just tears and prayers as we took in the gaping hole, the makeshift shrines of teddy bears and notes desperately seeking the whereabouts of loved ones.

Ironically, he now lives in Asia and I’ve stayed in the US. I stayed to fight. To say that’s not my Islam. To yell Muslims weren’t invented on 9/11. Those planes crashing again and again into the towers were the first introduction to Islam and Muslims for too many Americans but we – American Muslims – are sick and tired of explaining. None of those men was an American Muslim and we’re done explaining and apologising. Enough.

I stayed to give my middle finger to Tea Partiers who tried to intimidate a group of us in 2010 because we supported the right of an Islamic community centre to build near the site of the attacks. They came to bully us and I bullied them right back. I wanted them to know Muslims will not be intimidated so think twice before you try to bully another one.

I became an American in April of this year, almost 11 years after I moved here. I could’ve become naturalised earlier but I realised soon after I took the oath and we watched a video of President Obama congratulating us that if it had been President Bush I would’ve probably run out, screaming.

Despite an appearance by Bush at a mosque after 9/11 to show he didn’t hold all Muslims responsible, his administration proceeded to do exactly that: military trials for civilians, secret prisons, the detention of hundreds of Muslim men without charge, the torture and harsh interrogation of detainees and the invasions of two Muslim-majority countries.

And the latest stain on the US civil liberties record: an Associated Press expose in August on ways the CIA and the NYPD are combining forces to spy on Muslims in New York City. The thought that someone could be following me to my favourite book shops or night clubs is as pathetic and sinister as when the Mubarak regime tapped my phone and had me followed when I lived in Egypt.

And I will continue to stay in the US for my nieces and nephews. I have chosen not to have children. I am a happy aunt to two girls and two boys between the ages of three and eight. They were the first Americans in our family and the thought that anyone could question either their nationality or faith – or demand they choose between the two – enrages me.

Over the past 10 years, American Muslims have fought not just the hate and stereotypes and the profiling from those outside the community, we’ve also had major fights within the Muslim community. As a friend described it, 9/11 pushed many Muslims to “come out” as liberals or progressives. For too long, huge, conservative national organisations claimed to speak for all of us but there is a much greater diversity of American Muslim voices now and that benefits everyone. Conservative does not equal authentic.

People think I’m Brazilian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, anything but Muslim because many people equate a Muslim woman with the wearing of a headscarf. So like someone who’s gay who might make sure to tell you soon after you meet, I try to include within the first three sentences of a new meeting that I’m a Muslim.

Before 9/11, some Muslims lived quiet, uneventful suburban lives; the dentists and the accountants and the attorneys. 9/11 robbed them of that boring existence. But in struggling to become boring again, American Muslims have over the past 10 years made our community here the most vibrant of any Muslim community in the world, Tea Party and Bush legacy be damned!

We’re your friends, lovers and spouses, America. We’re your comedians, taxi drivers, chefs, politicians and singers. And we’re your doctors, like my brother and his wife who were visiting me from the midwest in Seattle 10 years ago.

My brother, a cardiologist, was visited by special agents from the FBI in November 2001 who asked him if he knew anyone who celebrated the attacks. His wife is an obstetrician/gynaecologist.

One day she and I were watching one of those medical dramas when she told me an anecdote that neatly sums it all up: “I was delivering a baby the other day and the father was watching via Skype cam. He was a soldier in Afghanistan. And I thought, here I am: a Muslim doctor in a headscarf delivering a baby whose father is an American soldier in Afghanistan, a Muslim country.”

Let’s draw the curtain on 9/11 anniversaries after this 10th one. Every year on 11 September you can taste the grief in NYC. The wound will never heal if every year we scratch the scar off and open the way to hate and prejudice.

Some of the earliest Muslims came to the US across the Atlantic on slave ships from west Africa. Not far from where I live in Harlem, there’s a west African community complete with a mosque, restaurants and French-speaking people. 9/11 changed everything and 9/11 changed nothing at all. America – I’m not going anywhere.

Mona Eltahawy is a writer and lecturer on Arab issues. She writes for Qatar’s Al Arab, Israel’s The Jerusalem Report, Metro Canada, the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune.

Right-wing think-tanks fuelling Islamophobia, report suggests

Source | By Hamed Chapman

Two of the country’s most influential right-wing think-tanks have used the fear of terrorism and of Islam to push forward an authoritarian political agenda on the Conservative-led Government, according to a new study entitled The Cold War on British Muslims.

The report shows how the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) and Policy Exchange have rejected counter-terrorism policies based on public safety and have instead sought to revive discredited counter-subversion policies of the Cold War era which targeted a generation of trade union leaders and peace activists including future Labour ministers.

Published by Spinwatch, which monitors PR and spin, it warns that the policies advocated by the neo-Con think-tanks, and apparently endorsed by the Coalition Government, will have “grave consequences for British politics if they are not challenged.”

“Such an approach will inevitably mean the curtailment of civil liberties and the narrowing of political debate. For British Muslims the consequences may be even more serious,” the report says.

“A community already facing routine vilification, racial intimidation and violence would potentially face even greater monitoring, intimidation and harassment by the state,” it said.

The Islamophobic undercurrent of such policies, it concluded, risk “further fuelling the racist violence against Muslims perpetrated by groups like the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) – ironically the very extremism that organisations like the CSC and Policy Exchange claim oppose.”

The study examining the UK’s two leading radical think-tanks was carried out before Norway’s worst-ever terrorist atrocities, but is seen timely following the concern about the dangers posed by far-right extremists peddling an Islamophobic agenda.

It found that both CSC and Policy Exchange were funded by wealthy businessmen and financiers and conservative and pro-Israel trusts and foundations, who, inspired by the operations against peace activists and trade unionists during the Cold War, were explicitly seeking to revive the tradition of political counter-subversion.

“Their modern targets are politically engaged Muslims, liberals and leftists, as well as liberal institutions such as schools, universities and public libraries,” it said.

“Their efforts should be understood as a response to a resurgence in progressive political movements which have challenged the militarism of the United States, Britain and Israel, as well as the model of globalisation championed by these states.”

Three influential Government ministers, Michael Gove, David Willets and Ed Vaizey, who are members of the British neo-Con movement, were identified as being in charge of universities, schools and libraries.

The report suggested that even Prime Minister, David Cameron, though initially reluctant to publicly associate himself too closely with the neo-conservatives, took part in announcing a so-called war on multiculturalism, when advocating a “muscular liberalism” in defence of Western values during his Munich speech in February this year.

Co-author of the report, Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University, said that the policies advocated by the two-think-tanks “inevitably mean the curtailment of civil liberties and the narrowing of political debate.” The consequences the Professor warned, “for British Muslims though will be even more serious.” Revelations about them “arguably calls into question their ability to produce fair and balanced research and certainly underlines the need for greater transparency over the funding of think-tanks,” he said.

The Surge in Islamophobia

Source | By Grace Nasri

If you didn’t know the history of the United States — a country born largely in objection to religious discrimination — the extent of religious persecution being carried out against Muslim-Americans today might not be so hard to understand.

A recently released report co-conducted by the UC Berkeley Center for Race and Gender and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization, found that vandalism, Islamophobic rhetoric and violence targeting Muslims and their places of worship has risen considerably — and in some cases more than doubled — between 2009 and 2010.

According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center, the public’s favorable rating of Islam actually decreased 10 percentage points to 30 percent between November 2001 and August 2010. The same study found that at the end of 2010, 45 percent of Americans shared the view that Islam is at odds with American values.

But studies show that Americans don’t hold the same sentiments toward other major religions. A Time poll carried out late last year found that the majority of Americans hold positive views of Jews, Protestants, Catholics and Mormons, yet only 44 percent held favorable views toward Muslims — despite the fact that the majority of respondents admitted they didn’t personally know any Muslims.

The fact that Americans on the whole hold unfavorable views toward Muslims yet at the same time admit to not personally knowing any, has some wondering why the negative feelings toward the reported 3 million Muslim-Americans — and approximately 1.6 billion worldwide — continue to rise a decade after the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The answer, at least partially, lies in anti-sharia legislation swirling across the nation. The legislation has been described as the newest push by Islamophobes to stoke the distrust of Americans toward their fellow Muslim-Americans. Anti-sharia legislation proposed by David Yerushalmi, a Hasidic Jew who is credited with starting the national movement to ban the foreign law that has to date never overshadowed U.S. Constitutional Law, is being promoted as “preemptive” legislation. Yerushalmi, whom the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes as “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black,” himself acknowledged that Muslims aren’t advocating sharia over U.S. law. Yerushalmi himself says the issue is one of heuristics — he wants the issue of sharia to be brought to the attention of Americans. “If this thing passed in every state without any friction,” he told The New York Times, “it would not have served its purpose.” The purpose: Seemingly to raise fear about something that Yerushalmi himself agrees is not currently even an issue.

Ibrahim Hooper, the national communications director and spokesperson for CAIR, explained, “Unfortunately, in the last year and half there has been a tremendous rise in the level of anti-Islamic sentiment and this Islamophobic rhetoric has moved towards the mainstream. Mr. David Yerushalmi’s bizarre anti-sharia campaign nationwide is unfortunately being used by politicians to gain cheap political support.”

Georgetown University Professor John Esposito, author of the book “The Future of Islam and Islamophobia and the Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century,” explained:

“The anti-Shariah movement is simply the latest wave of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice. Organizations like ACT (which describes its mission as mobilizing Americans in response to “the multiple threats of radical Islam”) and Mr. Yerushalmi, who has been the major force behind the anti-Shariah movement, politicians in mainstream parties, particularly Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, and Christian Zionist preachers exploit what in fact is a non-issue. Shariah has never superseded US constitutional law. … Moreover, there has been no Muslim movement nor major Muslim organization who has advocated implementing Islamic law in place of American constitutional law.”

This growing Islamophobia and distrust of Muslims comes at a great cost and was evident during the recent Norway bombings; before any evidence was found, the media reported that initial thoughts were that the attacks had been carried out by Muslim terrorists, as a recent report by The New York Times highlighted. Evidence later found that the radical, self-proclaimed Christian Anders Behring Breivik confessed he had carried out the attacks on July 22 because of his growing fear — a fear heightened by right-wing, anti-Islamic rhetoric — of a Muslim takeover of his country.

But the people who stoke and perpetuate Islamophobia remain blind to the consequences of their rhetoric and actions. Before Breivik carried out the bloody terrorist attacks in Norway, he cited anti-Muslim hate speech by radicals like Pamela Geller and Robert Spenser, who co-founded the controversial Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America.

It’s important to realize that all religions, including Islam, contain a range of followers. It is generally accepted that there are four groups of Muslims: Fundamentalists, traditionalists, modernists and pragmatists.

Fundamentalists advocate a strict adherence to the fundamentals of their religion and follow a literal interpretation of both the Quran and the Sunnah (the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad). This group wants strict sharia to effectively be the law of the land.

Traditionalists, who are typically scholars of Islam, are religiously conservative and largely disapproving of the Western lifestyle. But unlike their fundamentalist counterparts, traditionalists tend to be apolitical and don’t advocate violence, as do the fundamentalists.

Modernists, as opposed to the above-mentioned groups, want to promote their version of Islam — one of tolerance and social justice. Modernists believe that science and Islam can exist together and they prefer a secular state to an Islamic one. Pragmatists, the final group of Muslims, are seen by some Muslims as pseudo believers because they don’t believe following the traditional practices of Islam is necessary for being a true Muslim.

The majority of Muslims fall into the latter two more moderate groups, despite the fact that oftentimes those on the fringe are more vocal. But by lumping all Muslims into one group, the smaller and more radical fundamentalists and traditionalists are given disproportionate recognition and legitimacy. These more radical groups then claim to represent all Muslims, while the more moderate groups lose their voice.

Many may not realize this, but the majority of Muslims are victims of these fringe believers who have all but hijacked Islam, drowned out the religion’s message of peace and fundamentally changed the way people view its believers. But it is important for their message of hate not to overshadow the true message of Islam, which is peace.

In the same way that radical Jews like Baruch Goldstein — who massacred 29 Muslims and injured 125 more in 1995 while they prayed in Hebron — are not representative of Judaism and self-proclaimed Christians like Anders Behring Breivik — responsible for the fatal bombings in Oslo in July — are in no way representative of the majority of peace-loving Christians, radical Muslims responsible for carrying out fatal bombings and other terrorist-activities in no way represent Islam.

Top Ten Right-Wing Responses To CAP’s Islamophobia Report: ‘Cowards,’ ‘Straight Out of Mein Kampf,’ ‘A Pile Of Dung’

Source | By Eli Clifton

The Center for American Progress’s new report, “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” is receiving a positive welcome from neutral observers as journalists and pundits pore over the 139-page exposé on the U.S. Islamophobia network.

The report’s authors have appeared on CNN.com, Al Jazeera English, Current TV, Guardian.co.uk and numerous radio interviews. Print media outlet such as The Jewish Daily Forward, The Atlantic, Salon.com, The Washington Post and The Nation have all run articles discussing the report’s findings.

Unfortunately, that accuracy and thorougness has proven a challenge for many of the Islamophobes mentioned in the report. With no serious factual errors with which to attack the authors, they’ve fallen back on attacking straw men and offering vitriolic, if at times colorful, ad hominem attacks.

Here’s the top ten list of right-wing responses to “Fear, Inc.”

10.) Townhall.com columnist Karen Lugo concludes that the report’s authors are “the real cowards” and claims “it was the authors of this 138-page report that demonstrated a real phobia when they evaded the urgent question: Does America have a reason to fear Muslims?” (Actually, that was a major part of the report.)

9.) Writing on David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag, Daniel Greenfield runs with the new meme that the report blames Jews for Islamophobia. He writes, “Any report on Islamophobia that scapegoats Jews is not a report on bigotry, it is an act of bigotry.”

8.) Ed Lasky, writing on The American Thinker, inaccurately claims that the report pins blame on Jews, arguing, “…this ‘report’ relies on the conspiracy and age-old anti-Semitic trope that Jews fan prejudice towards others and promotes divisions for their own nefarious purposes (to support Israel in this case). This mindset is straight out of Mein Kampf.”

7.) Adrian Morgan, editor of Family Security Matters, takes issue with report author Wajahat Ali, writing, “Ali is said to be a ‘humorist’ but there is pitiably little that appears in his blog ‘Goatmilk’ that displays this purported sense of humor.” Morgan also identifies a typo in the report and ponders “Was there no money left for a proof-reader, to here strike out the superfluous word, ‘he’?”

6.) Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes told The Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein that, “I am not against the religion of Islam but am very much against the political ideology of Islamism, which I see as the third great totalitarian movement after fascism and communism. This lack of distinction points to the intellectually shoddy premise of the report.”

5.) Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer wrote on Human Events that the report’s authors are assisting jihadists because “Fear, Inc.”, “ignores jihad activity altogether, portraying Muslims as victims and demonizing all who stand in the way of the misogynistic and unjust agenda of the Islamic jihad, whether advanced by violent or nonviolent means. It thus reveals itself to be just another tool of those same jihadists.”

4.) Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney bizarrely, and we might add inaccurately, describes the report as CAP’s “…latest ‘copy and paste’ effort [duplicating] large sections of five nearly identical ‘investigations’ just this year, complaining that millions of concerned Americans are Islamophobes.” Gaffney, in what might be an editorial misstep, proceeds to interview himself, writing, “Frank J. Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, noted that ‘The ‘Shariah Defense Lobby’ is in a race against time to hide the grim reality of Shariah law as it is actually enforced…’”

3.) Daniel Pipes’ PipeLineNews.org observed that the report “neatly falls into lockstep with the efforts being exerted by Muslim Brotherhood front groups to incrementally Islamize the West.”

2.) Blogger Pamela Geller calls the report “a predictable misfired missile by Islamic supremacists and leftist useful idiots” and “a pile of dung masquerading as research” that “reads more like a Mein Kampf treatise.” She encourages her readers to “watch [the authors] choke on their own vomit” and concludes “they will never defeat me.”

1.) Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling, inaccurately attributed an outlandishly anti-Semitic quote to the report, saying, “I’m reading directly from this report: ‘The Obama-allied Center for American Progress has released a report that blames Islamophobia in America on a small group of Jews and Israel supporters in America, whose views are being backed by millions of dollars.’

To be clear, neither that quote nor anything resembling it, appears in our report. Please email Brian Lewis, VP for Corporate Communications at Fox Business (brian.lewis@foxnews.com), and tell him that Bolling’s wildly inaccurate reporting on “Fear Inc.” requires an on-air correction.

Fear, Inc. The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

By Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes, Faiz Shakir | Source

Download this report (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):

• Introduction and summary
• Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
• Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
• Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
• Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
• Chapter 5: The political players
• Conclusion

Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia

On July 22, a man planted a bomb in an Oslo government building that killed eight people. A few hours after the explosion, he shot and killed 68 people, mostly teenagers, at a Labor Party youth camp on Norway’s Utoya Island.

By midday, pundits were speculating as to who had perpetrated the greatest massacre in Norwegian history since World War II. Numerous mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, speculated about an Al Qaeda connection and a “jihadist” motivation behind the attacks. But by the next morning it was clear that the attacker was a 32-year-old, white, blond-haired and blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Breivik. He was not a Muslim, but rather a self-described Christian conservative.

According to his attorney, Breivik claimed responsibility for his self-described “gruesome but necessary” actions. On July 26, Breivik told the court that violence was “necessary” to save Europe from Marxism and “Muslimization.” In his 1,500-page manifesto, which meticulously details his attack methods and aims to inspire others to extremist violence, Breivik vows “brutal and breathtaking operations which will result in casualties” to fight the alleged “ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.”

Breivik’s manifesto contains numerous footnotes and in-text citations to American bloggers and pundits, quoting them as experts on Islam’s “war against the West.” This small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals in our nation is obscure to most Americans but wields great influence in shaping the national and international political debate. Their names are heralded within communities that are actively organizing against Islam and targeting Muslims in the United States.

Breivik, for example, cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars we profile in this report, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Spencer’s website, which “tracks the attempts of radical Islam to subvert Western culture,” boasts another member of this Islamophobia network in America, David Horowitz, on his Freedom Center website. Pamela Geller, Spencer’s frequent collaborator, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times.

Geller and Spencer co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America, a group whose actions and rhetoric the Anti-Defamation League concluded “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy “American values.” Based on Breivik’s sheer number of citations and references to the writings of these individuals, it is clear that he read and relied on the hateful, anti-Muslim ideology of a number of men and women detailed in this report&a select handful of scholars and activists who work together to create and promote misinformation about Muslims.

While these bloggers and pundits were not responsible for Breivik’s deadly attacks, their writings on Islam and multiculturalism appear to have helped create a world view, held by this lone Norwegian gunman, that sees Islam as at war with the West and the West needing to be defended. According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman, just as religious extremism “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged,” the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.” Sageman adds that their rhetoric “is not cost-free.”

These pundits and bloggers, however, are not the only members of the Islamophobia infrastructure. Breivik’s manifesto also cites think tanks, such as the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism—three other organizations we profile in this report. Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of “creeping Sharia,” Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran.

This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.

And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations. A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.

Some of these foundations and wealthy donors also provide direct funding to anti-Islam grassroots groups. According to our extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in our country:

• Donors Capital Fund
• Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
• Russell Berrie Foundation
• Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
• Fairbrook Foundation

Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.

And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”

Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In fact, CSP is a key source for right-wing politicians, pundits, and grassroots organizations, providing them with a steady stream of reports mischaracterizing Islam and warnings about the dangers of Islam and American Muslims. Operating under the leadership of Frank Gaffney, the organization is funded by a small number of foundations and donors with a deep understanding of how to influence U.S. politics by promoting highly alarming threats to our national security. CSP is joined by other anti-Muslim organizations in this lucrative business, such as Stop Islamization of America and the Society of Americans for National Existence. Many of the leaders of these organizations are well-schooled in the art of getting attention in the press, particularly Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, The Washington Times, and a variety of right-wing websites and radio outlets.

Misinformation experts such as Gaffney consult and work with such right-wing grassroots organizations as ACT! for America and the Eagle Forum, as well as religious right groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and American Family Association, to spread their message. Speaking at their conferences, writing on their websites, and appearing on their radio shows, these experts rail against Islam and cast suspicion on American Muslims. Much of their propaganda gets churned into fundraising appeals by grassroots and religious right groups. The money they raise then enters the political process and helps fund ads supporting politicians who echo alarmist warnings and sponsor anti-Muslim attacks.

These efforts recall some of the darkest episodes in American history, in which religious, ethnic, and racial minorities were discriminated against and persecuted. From Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, European immigrants, Jews, and African Americans, the story of America is one of struggle to achieve in practice our founding ideals. Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.

Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 alone did not drive Americans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam. President George W. Bush reflected the general opinion of the American public at the time when he went to great lengths to make clear that Islam and Muslims are not the enemy. Speaking to a roundtable of Arab and Muslim American leaders at the Afghanistan embassy in 2002, for example, President Bush said, “All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith—face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It’s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It’s a faith based upon love, not hate.”

Unfortunately, President Bush’s words were soon eclipsed by an organized escalation of hateful statements about Muslims and Islam from the members of the Islamophobia network profiled in this report. This is as sad as it is dangerous. It is enormously important to understand that alienating the Muslim American community not only threatens our fundamental promise of religious freedom, it also hurts our efforts to combat terrorism. Since 9/11, the Muslim American community has helped security and law enforcement officials prevent more than 40 percent of Al Qaeda terrorist plots threatening America. The largest single source of initial information to authorities about the few Muslim American plots has come from the Muslim American community.

Around the world, there are people killing people in the name of Islam, with which most Muslims disagree. Indeed, in most cases of radicalized neighbors, family members, or friends, the Muslim American community is as baffled, disturbed, and surprised by their appearance as the general public. Treating Muslim American citizens and neighbors as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, is not only offensive to America’s core values, it is utterly ineffective in combating terrorism and violent extremism.

The White House recently released the national strategy for combating violent extremism, “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” One of the top focal points of the effort is to “counter al-Qa’ida’s propaganda that the United States is somehow at war with Islam.” Yet orchestrated efforts by the individuals and organizations detailed in this report make it easy for al-Qa’ida to assert that America hates Muslims and that Muslims around the world are persecuted for the simple crime of being Muslims and practicing their religion.

Sadly, the current isolation of American Muslims echoes past witch hunts in our history—from the divisive McCarthyite purges of the 1950s to the sometimes violent anti-immigrant campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has compared the fear-mongering of Muslims with anti-Catholic sentiment of the past. In response to the fabricated “Ground Zero mosque” controversy in New York last summer, Mayor Bloomberg said:

In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center. … We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.

This report shines a light on the Islamophobia network of so-called experts, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets, and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute, and mainstream an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Let us learn the proper lesson from the past, and rise above fear-mongering to public awareness, acceptance, and respect for our fellow Americans. In doing so, let us prevent hatred from infecting and endangering our country again.

In the pages that follow, we profile the small number of funders, organizations, and individuals who have contributed to the discourse on Islamophobia in this country. We begin with the money trail in Chapter 1—our analysis of the funding streams that support anti-Muslim activities. Chapter 2 identifies the intellectual nexus of the Islamophobia network. Chapter 3 highlights the key grassroots players and organizations that help spread the messages of hate. Chapter 4 aggregates the key media amplifiers of Islamophobia. And Chapter 5 brings attention to the elected officials who frequently support the causes of anti- Muslim organizing.

Before we begin, a word about the term “Islamophobia.” We don’t use this term lightly. We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.

It is our view that in order to safeguard our national security and uphold America’s core values, we must return to a fact-based civil discourse regarding the challenges we face as a nation and world. This discourse must be frank and honest, but also consistent with American values of religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and respect for pluralism. A first step toward the goal of honest, civil discourse is to expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America by actively working to divide Americans against one another through misinformation.

Wajahat Ali is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Eli Clifton is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a national security reporter for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center’s Middle East Progress. Lee Fang is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher/blogger for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Scott Keyes is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Faiz Shakir is a Vice President at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org.

Download this report (pdf)

Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)

Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):

• Introduction and summary
• Chapter 1: Donors to the Islamophobia network
• Chapter 2: The Islamophobia misinformation experts
• Chapter 3: The grassroots organizations and the religious right
• Chapter 4: The right-wing media enablers of anti-Islam propaganda
• Chapter 5: The political players
• Conclusion

Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia

To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:

Print: Anna Soellner (economic policy)
202.478.5322 or asoellner@americanprogress.org

Print: Anne Shoup (education policy)
202.481.7146 or ashoup@americanprogress.org

Print: Christina DiPasquale (foreign policy and security, energy)
202.481.8181 or cdipasquale@americanprogress.org

Print: Raúl Arce-Contreras (ethnic media, immigration)
202.478.5318 or rarcecontreras@americanprogress.org

Radio: Anne Shoup
202.481.7146 or ashoup@americanprogress.org

TV: Andrea Purse
202.741.6250 or apurse@americanprogress.org

[scribd id=63489887 key=key-15nxgg2azw3yqelkv5v8 mode=list]

REPORT: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America

Source

Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America. The authors — Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and myself — worked to expose the Islamophobia network in depth, name the major players, connect the dots, and trace the genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda.

The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” lifts the veil behind the hate, follows the money, and identifies the names of foundations who have given money, how much they have given, and who they have given to:

The money has flowed into the hands of five key “experts” and “scholars” who comprise the central nervous system of anti-Muslim propaganda:

FRANK GAFFNEY, Center for Security Policy – “A mosque that is used to promote a seditious program, which is what Sharia is…that is not a protected religious practice, that is in fact sedition.” [Source]

DAVID YERUSHALMI, Society of Americans for National Existence: “Muslim civilization is at war with Judeo-Christian civilization…the Muslim peoples, those committed to Islam as we know it today, are our enemies.” [Source]

DANIEL PIPES, Middle East Forum: “All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most.” [Source]

ROBERT SPENCER, Jihad Watch: “Of course, as I have pointed out many times, traditional Islam itself is not moderate or peaceful. It is the only major world religion with a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers.” [Source]

STEVEN EMERSON, Investigative Project on Terrorism: “One of the world’s great religions — which has more than 1.4 billion adherents — somehow sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” [Source]

These five “scholars” are assisted in their outreach efforts by Brigitte Gabriel (founder, ACT! for America), Pamela Geller (co-founder, Stop Islamization of America), and David Horowitz (supporter of Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch). As the report details, information is then disseminated through conservative organizations like the Eagle Forum, the religious right, Fox News, and politicians such as Allen West and Newt Gingrich.

Over the past few years, the Islamophobia network (the funders, scholars, grassroots activists, media amplifiers, and political validators) have worked hard to push narratives that Obama might be a Muslim, that mosques are incubators of radicalization, and that “radical Islam” has infiltrated all aspects of American society — including the conservative movement.

To explain how the Islamophobia network operates, we’ve produced this video to show just one example of how they have mainstreamed the baseless and unfounded fear that Sharia may soon replace American laws:

Click here to read the full report.

Background of Islamophobia

Source | By ALİ BULAÇ

Although the Muslim conquest of certain Western territories and the Western conquest of certain Eastern lands may be similar military acts, they differ from each other in terms of how they are culturally perceived.

The Umayyads dominated Spain and Sicily and the Ottomans ruled parts of Eastern Europe for several centuries, building lasting monuments of civilization in these places. After conquering Byzantium, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror perhaps also sought to conquer Rome, this being a part of his vision. But there was nothing sacred about conquering Byzantium other than following the Tradition of the Prophet of Islam, peace and blessings be upon him, who said: “Constantinople will certainly be conquered. How blessed is the commander who conquers it. How blessed are the soldiers who conquer it.” The Prophet’s Tradition certainly motivated many people, but otherwise, Byzantium was simply a choice location to be conquered from a political and military standpoint.

We cannot assume that Muslims always conducted their conquests with legitimate or pure intentions, such as promoting the Word of God, or conveying the correct Message of Islam to the masses who were as yet unaware of it. Such desires as obtaining the spoils of war, economic wealth, world domination, political standing and military necessities also played an important role in these conquests. Oddly enough, Muslim states even conquered other Muslim states, as in the conquest of Syria and the military campaign against Egypt carried out by Ottoman Sultan Yavuz Sultan Selim and the conquest of Baghdad by the Seljuks. These reasons may be understandable to some extent. When Muslims were subsequently forced to leave the territories they had conquered and dominated, they accepted it as a fact of life, as in the case of Andalusia and the Balkans.

Europeans, on the other hand, developed such strong religious motivations for their military campaigns against the East that these motivations still linger today within their cultural codes, albeit in modified or disguised forms. Thus, Westerners have never accepted the Muslim domination of Jerusalem or Constantinople (now İstanbul). The Palestinian territories surrounding Jerusalem are as sacred to Christians as they are to Jews. So Christians saw the Muslim conquest of these territories as a breach of their sacred values and as the extortion of their religious rights. The center of the Kingdom of God and anticipated place of the second coming of Christ is under the rule of others, they thought. In their eyes, this delayed the proper flow of history and postponed salvation. This line of reasoning left a heavy responsibility felt on the shoulders of every Western Christian. Furthermore, Constantinople had been the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire — founded by Constantine, who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity — and Muslims had seized this holy city.

These perceptions underlie the very subconscious of all Westerners, urging them to launch military expeditions against the East in order to conquer its territories, to ethnically cleanse its people and to Christianize or Westernize them so that they will no longer pose a threat to the West. If Christianity can be considered to preach the eternal truth and if Christianity itself is the “true faith” and all other religions are just beliefs, then the sword may be wielded against all others. Interestingly, although the principle that “the Church hates the sword” has been embraced, Western leaders, old and new alike and including such figures as George W. Bush, have readily used their power against Muslims from the historic Crusades to the modern Crusades that include the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Of course, Bush and other evangelicals do not represent the entire US, and there are those who seek the Middle East purely for the exploitation of energy resources and the security of Israel. Christian Zionists may be pursuing a destructive policy via Islamophobia, but the most hostile ideas to develop in the US could be those in the Clash of Civilizations thesis, which can hardly serve as a lasting motivation for strong enmity. Indeed, Islam has still not yet established itself as an object of fear in the historical subconscious or collective memory of the US. Perhaps, over time, the clash of civilization may bring about Islamophobia in the US, but it is Europe that is currently gripped with Islamophobia.

One may suggest that religion is no longer a decisive factor in shaping social or political life in Europe thanks to secularism, democracy, human rights and other secular European ideals. However, we must also pay attention to the fact that many destructive codes and cultural elements are actually derived to some extent from the secularization of religious ideas.

The Sharia Paranoia Industry is very lucrative

Source | By Adam Serwer

That’s according to a new report from the Center for American Progress, which tracks the funding sources of America’s most prominent Islamophobes. Over the past ten years, that money has flowed from primarily from seven foundations: The Donors Capital Fund; the Richard Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation and Newton and Rochelle Becker Charitable Trust; the Russell Berrie Foundation, the Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund and the Fairbrook Foundation.

This funding has allowed the Islamophobic right to amplify and mainstream an anti-Muslim message that remained on the fringe while President George W. Bush urged a message of tolerance. Think tanks like Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security policy have used the funding to produce reports promoting the myth that most Muslim Americans are conspiring to replace the Constitution with Sharia law. It’s helped people like attorney David Yerushalmi design anti-sharia legislation being pushed in at least 23 states, in four of which those the bans have actually passed. It’s helped anti-Muslim writers like Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, cited frequently by alleged anti-Muslim Oslo terrorist Anders Breivik, promote and sustain their work.

The campaign to persuade Americans that Islam is the enemy and that American Muslims are all potential radicals and terrorists has borne bitter fruit.

Last year a Washington Post poll found that almost half of Americans, 49 percent, now have an unfavorable opinion towards Islam, up ten points from 2002 and “the most negative split on the question in Post-ABC polls dating to October 2001.”

With the conservative media no longer held back by the need to support a Republican president who publicly espoused tolerance towards Islam, outlets like Fox News, National Review, and conservative talk radio have freely promoted Sharia Panic conspiracies — ones that have dovetailed neatly with conservative distrust for the president. Likewise, a few Republicans in Congress, such as Reps Peter King, Allen West, and Michele Bachmann, have used their authority to bolster the idea that America is at war with Islam and that most American Muslims are radicalized. Increasingly, religious right figures like Pat Robertson and John Hagee are embracing the rhetoric of Sharia Panic.

The flipside is that there’s no similarly well funded and single minded infrastructure opposing them. Groups like the Muslim Public Affairs Council and Muslim Advocates have recently tried to put forth an alternative narrative, pointing out that American Muslims have been key to preventing terror attacks. Likewise, civil liberties groups like the ACLU have debunked the idea that Islamic law is trumping civil law in American courts.

These efforts however, won’t succeed as long as Republican leaders continue to tacitly and sometimes explicitly embrace and enable those in the Sharia Panic Industry. Until Republican leaders try to appeal to the better angels of their constituents’ nature — rather than feeding on and profiting from their paranoia — things are unlikely to change.

5 Questions About Glenn Beck’s Restoring Courage Rally

By Andrew Belonsky | Source

1. Why Aren’t More Politicians Participating?

It was initially reported that at least four potential GOP presidential candidates — Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee — planned to attend Restoring Courage in Israel this week. Senator Joe Lieberman had also promised to participate in the event, which Beck describes as “an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that Israel does not stand alone.”

Well, the Senator pulled out last week, and none of the declared or potential candidates plan to fly over for Beck’s event. Well, almost none: Herman Cain, a long-shot candidate with little sustainable political power, is attending.

Does this mark the end of Beck’s pull among conservative leaders and their followers? Right wing leaders like Sarah Palin made a show of supporting Beck during his rally last August. But that was when Beck still had a widely viewed Fox New show.

Now that Beck’s departed the cable channel, it seems he’s lost some of his luster — among the mainstream, at least: Christian nationalist David Barton and controversial Pastor John Hagee, a pastor who has suggested that Jews brought on the Holocaust themselves, have endorsed Restoring Courage. Maybe that’s why people are staying away? The dearth of political leaders is especially odd because 80 Congressmen and women visited Israel this month. None were willing to show up to Restoring Courage?

Although, to be fair: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are planning a “Defending the Republic” event come October, so perhaps the old boy’s still got it…

2. Is This the End of Glenn Beck?

On a related note, last year’s religion-tinged event Restoring Honor brought in about 100,000 attendees, depending on the various numbers. Only about 3,000 people, 2,000 of them Christians, showed up to the Caesarea Amphitheater for the opening night of Beck’s Israeli adventure, according to Hot Air.

He’s either not as popular in Israel as he would like to believe, or else “Restoring Courage” is on its way to being a huge flop, another indicator that Beck’s 15-minutes are almost up. We’ll know more after the rally’s main event, which happens tomorrow.

3. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Arab Sentiment Here At Home?

Though Beck and his partners want to strengthen ties between America’s conservative Christians and Israel’s right-leaning Jewish and Christian activists, that inter-religious cooperation also comes with plenty of anti-Islam sentiment.

“Old hatreds have begun to rear their ugly head once more, yet those who swore to never let it happen again are inexcusably sitting silently by and allowing the hate to fester,” Beck wrote on his website earlier this month. “The Muslim Brotherhood, long banned in Egypt, was immediately allowed re-entry and enjoys popular support. Turkey has moved aggressively towards Sharia Law and has befriended Iran – a nation who has renewed its long standing call to wipe Israel off the map. That is just the tip of the iceberg.”

The Brotherhood is but one of the many groups whose names are casually invoked to mean “Shariah law,” something Beck and his ilk see as a threat to the United States and to Israel. While some Islamic groups do indeed want to take down Israel, the Brotherhood does not.

As journalist James Traub explained in ‘Foreign Policy’ magazine the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t pose much of a political or terrorist threat:

…Not only because the Muslim Brotherhood is not Hamas, but because, in the wake of the thoroughly secular mass protest movement, the Brotherhood is no longer likely to attract a majority of Egyptian voters.

Still, that’s not a risk Clinton or the Muslim Brotherhood’s more vocal American detractors are in the mood for. The “specific agenda” they fear is not that the Brotherhood will impose sharia, but that it could destroy Israel. The Brothers with whom I spoke were not only anti-Israel, but pro-Hamas. Israel has every reason to fear the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood government. But would a secular democracy in Egypt be more sympathetic to Israel than an Islamist one? In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Arab world, elites have learned that accepting Israel’s existence is the price of admission to international good opinion.

Despite common opinion that the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic parties will have to take a more moderate stance to curry international favor, and because they know Israel will always exist, it’s almost guaranteed that Beck and his fellow speakers, especially infamous Islamophobe Herman Cain, will use the next few days to stoke historic hatreds that are easily exploited for political ends.

4. Will Beck’s Event Stoke Anti-Mormon Sentiment?

Meanwhile, as Beck takes aim at Islamic organizations, Christian conservatives in the States are calling for a boycott of Christian TV Network for its support of Mormon Beck’s event.

“It is absolutely ridiculous for a supposed Christian TV Network, that purports to be propagating the gospel, like TBN, with major Christian figures like John Hagee and David Barton, to be supporting and advocating for a member of a satanic cult,” said Bill Keller of the 2.4 million-strong website LivePrayer.com

As Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaigns continue, we’re hearing sporadic discussion of long-simmering tensions between Evangelical and Mormons: a majority of Americans have previously said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon president. Romney’s popularity shows that historic divides are being bridged; if Keller and other anti-Mormon Evangelicals actually gain traction, they could remind Christian voters about worries of which they had forgotten.

Plus, many LGBT activists and their allies are no fans of the Mormon Church for its role in pushing through Proposition 8, California legislation that bans marriage equality there. They’re sure to be displeased with the equally-hateful Beck’s display, and may misguide their disgust with him toward the church as a whole.

5. Do Beck and His Friends Really Support Israel?

Despite touting their love for Israel, do Beck and his fundamentalist Christian pals support it as a Jewish state or simply as the backdrop for their Christian rapture. Media Matters has a roundup of some of Restoring Courage’s comments on Judaism, and they’re not very flattering.

One endorser, Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, runs a group called Samaritan’s Purse. That group, like so many Evangelical groups, tries to convert Jews to Christianity. Their efforts include working with the Omega Project, which distributes Bibles to Russian Jews so that they will accept Jesus as their savior, an idea that flies in the face of traditional Jewish teaching.

Meanwhile, another backer, Tim LaShaye, author of the rapturous ‘Left Behind’ series, once said, “Some of the greatest evil in the history of the world was concocted in the Jewish mind,” and David Barton has been tied to neo-Nazi groups and wrote in his book that only Christians should hold public office.

While this crew may support Israel, their support for Jewish Israelis, rather than just Christian Israelis, is certainly suspect.

COVERING-UP, UNCOVERED: The Veil’s Revival

by Erin O’Donnell | Source

ONE EVENING in the late 1990s, Thomas professor of divinity Leila Ahmed saw a group of people gathered on Cambridge Common. All of the women were wearing hijab, the headscarf worn by some Muslim women but rarely seen at that time in the United States. Just the sight of hijab provoked a negative, “visceral” response in Ahmed, who was born and raised in Cairo in the 1940s, when even devout Muslim women of the middle and upper classes did not wear veils because they considered them old-fashioned. She took the appearance of veils in Cambridge, she explained recently, to mean that “there could be some fundamentalism taking root in America.”

That incident launched her on a 10-year study of women and Islam and their choices about the veil, and led ultimately to her new book, A Quiet Revolution (Yale). It also led her “into studying the very lively, complicated politics and history that were critical to—and in fact were the driving forces behind—both the unveiling movement of the early twentieth century and, later, of the re-veiling movement in the closing decades of the century,” Ahmed says. In the process, she says, she reexamined her own prejudices and reached surprising new conclusions about hijab. (Among women who wear it today, Ahmed explains, “hijab” usually refers to a veil that covers only the hair and neck; the burqa and niqab cover the face.)

Women in Egypt initially began to unveil around the turn of the twentieth century, as British occupiers sought to rescue Muslim women from what they took to be the oppression of Islam. But local women who unveiled had different reasons for doing so. “Unveiling,” Ahmed writes, “would become ever more clearly the emblem of an era of new hopes and desires, and of aspirations for modernity: the possibility of education and the right to work for both women and men, and of equal opportunity and advancement based on effort and merit.”

In the 1970s, most women began covering their heads again. After Egypt’s defeat in the Arab-Israeli War in 1967, groups that aimed to “Islamize” society, such as the Muslim Brotherhood—quashed under President Gamal Abdel Nasser—reemerged and flourished. At the same time, Saudi Arabia wielded increasing influence as an economic superpower that sought to spread its strict Wahhabi Islam globally. Islamist leaders of the period worked to persuade women to wear Islamic dress, but scholars who interviewed women during this period found that those who adopted it typically reported doing so willingly.

“As is the case sometimes today in America, many of the women who took on hijab did so against parental wishes,” Ahmed says. “Islamic dress gave them new authority as strictly observant religious women, and in a society where men and women were expected to maintain a certain separateness, it gave them the freedom to attend school and go to work—in offices, for example, shared with men—in ways that were socially acceptable. It certainly had some positive outcomes.”

The recent movement in Europe to ban Islamic dress for women echoes the old colonial concern for Muslim women, but Ahmed says it’s layered with something new. Hijab is now identified—wrongly, she believes—with violent strains of fundamentalist Islam. These assumptions, which she shared at the start of her research, “were quite mistaken,” she says now. “Certainly there are violent elements at the extreme edges, but the broad mainstream of the Islamist movement—according to all the experts—is overwhelmingly opposed to violence and committed to nonviolence.” She also emphasizes that the Muslim Brotherhood in particular has a long-standing commitment to social justice, including provision of education and medical treatment to the poor, and she believes such social activism is part of the organization’s legacy in America.

American Islam, she reports, was dramatically altered by 9/11, with more Muslims speaking publicly about their faith, and young Muslims insisting on a new dialogue within Muslim-American organizations. Immediately after 9/11, some women shed their veils to avoid harassment, but others began covering themselves for the first time in their lives. They cited a range of reasons: a desire to affirm their Muslim identity, to educate others and counter stereotypes, and sometimes to express solidarity with the Palestinians. Ahmed was particularly surprised to meet an American Muslim woman in Boston who said she hoped her headscarf would prompt other women to think about gender bias in society, including how clothing choices and physical appearance may influence the treatment of women.

Ahmed’s book has been widely reviewed in the United States and Britain, and she has faced some criticism for suggesting that the veil might symbolize a new kind of Muslim feminism in America; critics say it cannot shake its history as an emblem of oppression. Clearly, Ahmed responds, hijab can’t stand for empowerment in a place like Iran. “In a country where you’re free to choose to wear a veil, its meanings are worlds away from what it means when you’re forced to wear it,” she says. “That’s a critical point. The veil today has no universal meaning. Its meanings are always local.”

The Muslim Brotherhood Can Be a Moderate Voice in Islamist Politics

By Cameron Glenn | Source
In a country struggling to navigate an unprecedented transition to democracy, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Egypt is positioned to make a strong showing in the upcoming parliamentary elections. While there is reason to be wary of the Islamist group, the U.S. decision to engage the Muslim Brotherhood diplomatically was necessary and practical. Not only are fears of their influence in Egypt’s government somewhat overblown, but the emergence of a moderate Islamist movement could even enhance our security interests. If Egypt’s Islamists are able to successfully reconcile Islam and democracy, it would discredit extremist groups who rely on violence, and not the political process, to achieve their goals.
An Egyptian government with a strong Islamist presence makes Americans understandably uneasy. The Muslim Brotherhood holds troublesome positions on the status of women, religious minorities, and Hamas. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emphasized that the contact will be limited and focused on democratic principles, but some lawmakers, like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), oppose all communication with a group “committed to violence and extremism.”
There’s no getting around the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has historical ties to individuals like Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who were influenced by the Brotherhood’s views early in life. But the minority of Islamists who support violent jihad became disillusioned with the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970’s, when they denounced violence and condemned attacks on civilians. Rather than use force to achieve their goals, their actions show that they strive to become a legitimate political force.

Once given a role in government, practical concerns will likely overtake ideological ones. The experiences of Turkey and Iraq show that Islamists do not necessarily revert to their most extreme stances once in power. Instead, they often soften their ideological slant once they are forced to move beyond rhetoric and deal with actual policy issues.
In Egypt, this is already happening. The Muslim Brotherhood has conceded that women and Coptic Christians have a right to run for president. And they formed an unlikely alliance with the Wafd party, a liberal and secular group formed after World War I. Despite substantial differences in ideology, cooperation will bolster both parties’ chances in the upcoming elections.
Now that fair elections are an actual possibility, the Brotherhood must grapple with these strategic concerns, which has led to another problem: As they struggle to keep up with the tide of change, there is dissent in the ranks. The more conservative policies of the older generation are at odds with the younger generation’s focus on democracy and human rights.
So while all Muslim Brothers wish to maintain an Islamic identity in theory, what this means in practice remains a point of contention. Support for the group as a whole is estimated to be a healthy plurality, but the influence of any one faction will likely be diffused if members continue to split off to form their own parties.

In this uncertain environment, we have a chance to advance our own security interests. If the Muslim Brotherhood can emerge as a moderate Islamist movement, it has huge potential to act as a counterweight to Al-Qaeda, who has repeatedly criticized them for their opposition to violence. While Al-Qaeda relies on asymmetric force and impractical apocalyptic worldviews that have no place in any real political system, Egypt’s Islamists have a unique opportunity to discredit the notion that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
Although it may be fashionable for American politicians to run screaming from the word “sharia” we should be careful not to alienate those for whom the term simply describes the ideals of compassion and justice, rather than a strict legal code favoring oppression and anti-Americanism. We may not like the idea of limited contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is a clear reason why we want these moderate voices to be heard.
Of course, Egypt has a long road ahead in the transition to democracy, and contact with the Muslim Brotherhood should still be approached with caution. But if the U.S. is truly committed to democracy in the Middle East, engaging with influential, non-violent parties — no matter how begrudgingly — is an important step in supporting democratic development.
More importantly, it is an opportunity to reshape the Middle East in a way that empowers moderate Muslim voices, pushing Al-Qaeda further into irrelevance.

Muslims Smash Right-Wing Stereotypes

By: Kelley B. Vlahos | Source

Of the many revelations and questions still unresolved following the recent riots in Britain, a novel yet not altogether surprising thread has emerged but has hardly been noticed by the mainstream media:

These riots were not dominated, driven nor taken advantage of by angry, ghettoized, Shariah-demanding Islamists.

Much to the chagrin, we can assume, of many a jihad-hunter here in the United States, which we know tried, early on, to insert an Islamofascist element to the street violence. Here’s Robert Spencer, fresh from having to distance himself from the Norwegian mass murderer who quoted Spencer’s anti-Islamic writings 64 times in his own hate-filled manifesto, on his blog, Jihad Watch, on Aug. 11:

Jihadists employ a variety of means of warfare to create a vacuum of stability and security for which they will claim Sharia is the only solution, because it is the only one they will allow. In this case, anarchy is already present, and they are encouraging its growth because they see in it an opportunity to peddle their wares.

Spencer linked to a brief and curious Associated Press report, datelined Cairo, on the day before that said “militant online forums are abuzz with calls to Muslims in Britain to launch Internet campaigns in support of the British rioters and to urge them to topple the government. … Dozens of contributors on Wednesday suggested Muslims in Britain should flood social media websites, such as Facebook and Twitter, with slogans and writings inciting the British youth to continue rioting.”

One “contributor,” according to the report, suggested that “chaos is useful to militants in London.”

The report is completely unsourced, suggesting that the “contributors” are nothing more than fringe forum feeders and comment posters, much like those who frequent Spencer’s site. One such Jihad Watch poster responded to the AP’s non-news story with this:

From “Istanbul_Chick”:

The islamopithecaii will not dare to start the rioting here in America because they know, unlike the British population, we’re armed to the teeth, myself included.

Rather they’re pressing their jihad here through politics and lawsuits.

I actually wish they’d start riots here because then their intentions and true nature would be there in living colour for all to see and they’d be viable, legitimate targets

Of course there has been no visible evidence that Muslims — “islamopithecaii,” “kuranimals,” “militants,” disenfranchised-over-indulged-immigrants or whatever the online jihad-hunters are calling them these days — were the majority, or even a sizable minority, of the thugs responsible for the looting and violence in Britain.

In fact, stories in contrast to that meme began emerging as it became more obvious that British Muslims were busy protecting not only their own businesses and places of worship, but their non-Muslim neighbors’ properties, too. In the course of this activity, three Birmingham residents of Pakistani descent were run over and killed. Court records and subsequent reports do not reveal the ethnicity of the perpetrators, but their names and witness reports suggest they were not members of the Muslim community.

The Wall Street Journal, probably hoping for this event to finally set off simmering racial/religious tensions, wrote a story shortly after, saying “the deaths led to an outpouring of anger from the city’s large population of Asians (Muslims from Asian countries).” The story quotes members of the community suggesting an ethnic war between “Asians” and blacks (the accused driver of the hit and run is reportedly Afro-Caribbean). The riots themselves were reportedly sparked by the police shooting of Mark Duggan, a black man with reported ties to gangs and drug dealing.

So far there have been no reports of racial violence between the two groups, nor violent demonstrations from the mourning Muslim community. So far, the courts and the media in Britain have kept a careful lid on the ethnic face of the street rioting and looting overall. Reports of those charged and arraigned in British courts so far tell a tale of mostly kids — 69 percent under the age of 24, 95 percent male and 70 percent residing in another city or neighborhood than where they were arrested.

Reporters who have sat in the courtroom say the suspects represent different backgrounds and class interests, though they rarely speak of race. Official statistics have included the names of those charged. Muslim surnames are certainly represented, but definitely not a majority.

“In the broadest sense, most of those involved have been young men from poor areas,” reported Paul Lewis and James Harkin at The Guardian last week. “But the generalization cannot go much further than that. It can’t be said that they are largely from one racial group.”

An analysis on Aug. 12 by Robert Lambert at Al-Jazeera was the first to make the point that “Muslims have played an important role in helping to tackle the looting and preserve public safety. This would be an especially important acknowledgement if it came from those Islamophobic commentators who consistently denigrate Muslims.”

Lambert, a Brit, said he wasn’t surprised that the Muslim community acted “swiftly to protect shops, businesses and communities against looters.” He said he first saw their “street skills” put to the test in 2005 “when volunteers from the Muslim Association of Britain and Muslim Welfare House ousted violent supporters of Abu Hamza from the Finsbury Park Mosque.”

More recently, Muslim bravery has been seen in Brixton when extremists spouting the latest manifestation of Al Muhajroun hatred were sent packing out of town. In all these instances, and so many more, the brave Muslims involved have received no praise for their outstanding bravery and good citizenship, and instead faced a never ending barrage of denigration….

Now, we realize that Spencer’s group is called “Jihad Watch,” not “Islamic Community Hero Watch,” but it’s certainly worth noting that he has had nothing to say about the riots and British Muslims since it became apparent there was no Shariah revolution on which to assail.

Truth is, the positive things happening in the Muslim immigrant community never seem to get the full media treatment. We’re so used to hearing about “ghettos” of the unassimilated in London and France, fatwa-inspired extremists chasing cartoonists and authors and cutting down filmmakers, honor killings, headscarves and British deference to Shariah — that we can hardly think of anything else when it comes to Muslims living in Europe.

Here in the U.S., thanks to a right-wing agenda hell-bent on conflating the growing xenophobic ripples in society with a river of post-9/11 paranoia, surging economic insecurity, and politically driven neonationalism that tacitly condones open social discrimination against other Americans and legal residents based on their piety and their religion, Muslims here have hardly enjoyed what one would call “evenhanded” treatment in American media culture, either.

If there were such fairness in reporting, we would realize that Muslim-Americans are more “Main Street, USA” than we are often led to think. If anything, they might be a little bit happier, and a lot more confident in the future than the rest of us.

Shiny, Happy Muslims…

A major poll [.pdf] issued by Gallup’s Center for Muslim Studies and the newly established Abu Dhabi Gallup Center in early August found that 60 percent of Muslims living in America feels as though they are “thriving,” up 19 points from a similar survey in 2008 and higher than any other faith group surveyed, save for American Jews.

They also feel their life is on an upward trajectory, more than any other faith group, including Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and Jews. Some 64 percent say their standard of living is increasing.

This and earlier surveys of the community released by Pew in 2007 [.pdf] and Gallup in 2009 [.pdf] indicate that Muslims here are far more integrated than their counterparts in Europe, according to Gallup. Muslim Americans, and especially Muslim women, are above the national averages in employment and education stats. According to the 2009 poll, 40 percent of Muslims had a college degree, compared to 29 percent of the general population. Some 42 percent of women had college degrees, compared to 29 percent of women in the general population. Also in that poll, 70 percent of Muslims in America reported having a job, compared to 64 percent of Americans generally. At the same time, one in three Muslim American women was working in a professional capacity and one in six was self-employed, according to the survey.

In the 2007 poll, American Muslims did not stand out as more low income than the rest of Americans, yet in countries like England, France and Germany, Muslims were far more likely to be living in poverty compared to the general population. Also in those countries, Muslims were way more likely to consider themselves “Muslim first” — Britain in particular, where 81 percent of Muslims there felt that way — compared to America, where less than half of Muslims considered themselves “Muslim first.”

More recently, like other groups, Muslims expressed some dissatisfaction with their cities and communities, but they register more optimism than other faith groups that their problems will be fixed.

According to the most recent poll, Muslims here abhor political violence. In fact, they were far more likely (78 percent) than Catholics (39 percent), Protestants (38 percent), Jews (43 percent) and Mormons (33 percent) to say that military violence against civilians is never justified.

They are also more likely than any group to say individual violence against civilians is never justified. Some 95 percent insist that U.S. Muslims have no sympathy for al-Qaeda. Of all the other religious groups, Jewish Americans believe them the most — some 70 percent agree that American Muslims have no tolerance for the extremists believed responsible for 9/11 and for other terrorist acts across the globe.

The same goes for loyalty to the U.S. — 93 percent of Muslims surveyed believe that American Muslims are loyal. Again, 80 percent of Jews believe them, while only 56 percent of Protestants think this is true. In the 2009 Gallup Poll, only 45 percent of all Americans believed that Muslims were loyal to their country.

Not everything is positive, of course. While Muslims put more faith into elections than other religious groups in America, they are still the least likely to vote. They strongly believe (60 percent) that Muslims are discriminated against in American culture. While 91 percent of Americans of other faiths have confidence in the military and 75 percent in the FBI, only 70 percent and 60 percent of Muslims do, respectively. This should come as no surprise since Muslims in the U.S. have taken the full brunt of the war on terror. Despite their willingness to work with the FBI, for example, mosque leaders across the country have complained about government surveillance and infiltration and mistrust, particularly in recent years.

Also, the 2007 Pew Poll indicated that nearly a quarter of young Muslims felt that suicide bombing was justified in certain circumstances, compared to 13 percent of all Muslims surveyed in the poll. Experts suggested at the time that the poll had been weighted by African American Muslims (20 percent of all U.S. Muslims, according to the poll, and more recent converts) who tended to express less desire to integrate, and felt more discrimination than their Asian, foreign-born counterparts (this is true in later polls, too).

While Walid Phares, who saw the Pew Poll as cause for alarm, told me, “It is precisely because an indoctrination is taking place. It means that a huge jihadi political effort is ongoing within the United States to brainwash young minds,” others saw natural youthful bravado and rebellion in the numbers and said they still trailed far behind the negative sentiments held by young Muslims in Europe.

The latest Pew Poll did find one positive indicator where age was concerned. The 2007 poll indicated that only 40 percent percent of Muslim youth (ages 18 to 29) felt they were thriving, the lowest of all Americans. Today, that number is up to 69 percent — on par with the rest of their peers in other faith groups.

For the last decade, American Muslims have used as shameless props and foils in shrill political debates, targeted by hyperbolic demagoguery, scapegoated for the country’s deeper social and economic problems. Overall, these polls help smash the stereotypes and provide much more depth and complexity to this group of Americans, who today number more than 2.3 million strong.

Too bad we don’t hear more about them.

“The findings of the recent Gallup poll about the vibrancy of the American Muslim community should come as no surprise: it points to the strength of the same pluralistic national framework that neoconservatives have been working so hard to destroy,” said M. Junaid Levesque-Alam, a Muslim American who publishes the Crossing the Crescent blog.

“The mainstream media has all too readily blurred out the broader picture of Islam in America and zoomed in on one or two sensational cases — probably because fear sells, whereas patience and wisdom carry considerably less value in the neoconservatized ‘market of ideas.’”

The fear of terrorism has definitely ignited the negative view of Muslims here, but even that is suspect. A recent book by Charles Kurzman notes that only 40 people have perished to terrorism in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks compared to 140,000 murders in the U.S. in that time. He also offers a provocative argument that is sure to set the jihad-hunters’ hair on fire — that there are actually very few Islamic terrorists in the world today, period.

Will the data stand up to the sensational headlines? Probably not. According to some of the loudest voices in right-wing politics today, jihadists are not only infiltrating the government and the military, but the U.S. court system and public utilities, too. Christian conservative leaders — even those who run universities and serve as role models — say Islam is not a true religion. We spent an entire summer debating whether an Islamic center should be built near the 9/11 site and years debating whether President Obama is a Muslim in disguise.

It’s probably safe to say that while the Muslim community may have advanced, the general perceptions of it by the rest of America has not gone beyond middle school. A Pew Poll released last August found Americans’ favorable view of Islam had actually declined, from 41 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2010.

Unfortunately, this sad view will probably be reinforced doubly as the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches and all the old tropes and fears start to bubble up once again.

Heaven knows there are wingnuts cracked enough to hope for riots on the streets here in the U.S. — a final reckoning if you will — but if what happened in the U.K. is any indication, their worst prejudices won’t be validated, at least when it comes to the Muslims.

Commentary: MB and Democracy, Mutually Exclusive?

Ikhwanweb.com

Latest events in the Middle East, particularly Egypt following the January 25 revolution, have proven that the conservative Muslim Brotherhood is the true pro-democracy advocate, compared to liberal groups which ironically behaved so undemocratically after the fall of the regime. The MB is a staunch supporter of free choice, freedom of expression, peaceful rotation of power, respect to the rule of law, and protecting the rights of electoral minority.

The Muslim Brotherhood declared from the beginning of the transition period in Egypt that free elections are the only way to express the peoples’ choice, achieve democratic society and replace military council with civilian elected government, at a time where so-called liberal or secular groups attempted to circumvent the will of people following an overwhelmingly transparent referendum, extend military rule for years until new constitution is drafted by a select group that meets their narrow political interests, regardless of the interests of the entire nation.

Therefore, putting the MB on one side, and pro-democracy opposition on the other as this article is suggesting, implies that MB and democracy are mutually exclusive, which indeed defies realty on the ground in many Middle East countries revolting against their oppressive secular regimes. This belief is not just hollow promises, but translated into actions which have been felt across the world and earned the MB international respect and recognition, and led governments such as the US, which was untill few months ago wary about even the notion of MB winning elections, into accepting MB as fully credentialed democractic parter potentially in power.

Islam and Europe: An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Source | By Eric Walberg

Ramadan exemplifies the powerful spiritual calling of Islam. Dry fasting is more a test of the spirit, the will, proof of devotion, than just some health gimmick. And it is precisely this cultivation of mass “mind over matter” that frustrates Western secularists, so used to indulging every consumer fetish on a whim. Why are Muslims so stubborn in nurturing ancient beliefs and rituals when they fly in the face of modern capitalist society? Secular critics dismiss Islam as a harmful, even dangerous anachronism. Why disrupt one’s busy day five times to pray, slow down the whole economic order for an entire month every year, ban alcohol and interest — the bedrock of Western society?

Yet the now rich and self-satisfied secular West, after centuries of conquest and imposition of its colonial and now neocolonial order, has found itself at a nightmarish deadend. Wars, riots, drug addiction, corruption, famine, ecological Armageddon … There is little to cheer for and no coherent explanation for the impasse and the way forward. So the demand that the Muslim world follow in Western footsteps rings hollow.

For non-believers, there are social laws that can help to understand Islam’s continued relevance. One is Mayer Rothschild’s dictum: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” The other is Carl Clausewitz’s “War is the continuation of policy by other means.” Together, they point to the underlying economic and political problems which have led to the current crisis. In a nutshell, the dominance of banks (as opposed to governments representing the popular will) in controlling economic affairs has created a world where politics serves their particular needs (interest and profit), and the politics which promotes the interests of banks is — just look around — war and speculation (read: pillage and theft).

This is the “logic” underlying modern Western society, especially in the past three decades, with the alternative to capitalism, the Soviet Union, now dismantled, discredited, and more or less absorbed into the Western economic order. This triumph over the “enemy” left the field open to the Rothschild-Clausewitz mechanism. Electoral democracy is vaunted, but is a threadbare facade, for while the popular will consistently rejects war and banker hegemony, no political party is able to get elected to represent this popular will.

Believers need no explanation for the why and how of Islam and the devilish deadend the West now faces. Islam advocates a social order where there are no one-sided usurers using their monopoly on money to control economics and politics, a social order where peace (Islam) is the highest attainment of society, the goal of all “policy”, to which all should submit. If presented with the choice between the current chaos and the true Islamic alternative, there is little doubt that the Islamic alternative would be the overwhelming choice of the common people, both in Europe and America, despite the fact that Muslims represent only 2-8 per cent of the population in the West.

Of course, this social order is the ideal. The history of Islam witnessed periods of benign and far-from-benign rule. It began with military victories and the spreading of the Caliphate from Atlantic to Pacific. The majority of conquered peoples decided to adopt this powerful religion, converting from polytheism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, though, contrary to Western prejudice, not “by the sword”. Throughout the various Islamic political orders, Christians, Jews and others continued to profess their faiths, enjoying a peaceful coexistence with Muslims. There was no period of imperial conquest and genocide equivalent to the Western imperial order from the fifteenth century to today.

The westward march of Islam was stopped in Spain and on the fringes of Byzantium by Emperor Charlemagne in the ninth century. The Iberian peninsula — Al-Andalus — was the pearl of Islamic civilisation from 711 to 1492, as a province of the Umayyad Caliphate, and later the Caliphate of Cordoba and the Emirate of Granada.

Islamophobes portray Europe today as in danger of a new Muslim conquest, politicians and mass media egging on the likes of Norway’s Anders Breivik, who calls for the ethnic cleansing of all Muslims from Europe, much like Christian conquerors expelled Muslims and Jews following the reconquest of Spain in the fifteenth century. But consider for a moment the legacy of Moorish Spain. This period saw Muslims, Jews and Christians living in harmony, creating a prosperous, peaceful society, a highpoint in Spain’s history. Under the Caliphate of Cordoba, Al-Andalus became a beacon of learning, and the city of Cordoba became one of the leading cultural and economic centres in both the Mediterranean basin and the Islamic world.

As part of the Alliance of Civilisations, Spain is now rediscovering this Golden Age before the Christian re-conquest of Spain, which saw the torture, murder, forced conversion and expulsion of Muslims and Jews, and the genocide of American natives following the “discovery” of the American continent by Christopher Columbus. While Al-Andalus lasted eight centuries, the post-Islamic period of Spain has lasted only six centuries, and suffers poorly in comparison to the Islamic Golden Age that preceded it.

This was acknowledged by Spain’s current leader, Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, when he co-sponsored the Alliance of Civilisations along with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2005, as a way to “bridge the divide” between the West and Islam, through projects in youth, education, media, and migration. Forums have been held in Madrid (2008), Istanbul (2009) and Rio de Janiero (2010).

Given the current tyranny of money that characterised Western civilisation, it is not surprising that the Zapatero/ Erdogan attempt at bringing peace and understanding among the founding faiths of Spain and the Middle East is greeted with sneers and resentment by Israel and its supporters in the West. Israel-firsters such as Soeren Kern twist the positive moves to bring East and West together as a cover for “Muslim countries in the Persian Gulf and North Africa funnelling large sums of money to radical Islamic groups in towns and cities across Spain”.

But there is a more enduring dialectic at work in Europe. Despite the Israel lobby’s energetic efforts to blacken Islam, the wave of revulsion against Israeli apartheid continues to grow throughout Europe, but especially in Spain. Ilan Pappe describes how all Israeli ambassadors to Europe are more than glad to end their terms, complaining about their inability to speak in campuses and whining about the overall hostile atmosphere in Europe these days. The Israeli ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, just finished his term in Madrid, and in an op-ed in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition he summarised what he termed as a very dismal stay, charging that he was the victim of local and ancient anti-Semitism, comparing the situation to the Inquisition of five centuries ago.

In “Why the Spanish hate us”, Schutz states that the people of Spain are anti-Israeli because subconsciously they are anti-Semitic and still approve of the Inquisition. He ignores the fact that the Muslims were the main victims of the Inquisition, that Jews fought and suffered side by side with their Muslim allies as the Christian invaders flood into Spain. Claiming that Spaniards who criticise Israel are racist and motivated by 500-year-old Christian bigotry rather than by Israeli’s criminal policies is just a feeble attempt at hasbara (public diplomacy) by desperate Israeli diplomats who have long ago lost the moral battle in Europe.

The Kerns and Schutzes are supported by Spain’s real latterday Inquisition, the National Intelligence Center (CNI), which published a report in July, warning of tens of millions of dollars coming to Spain from Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to support Muslims, and calling for close monitoring of these funds. The CNI’s report hinted that the money would be used to promote Islamic courts, remove girls from schools, and encourage forced marriages. The Spanish government’s knee-jerk response was to call for all donations from the Gulf Arab states to be channelled through a government-controlled “Islamic Commission of Spain”.

The CNI pointed to the Kuwaiti government’s funding of the construction of mosques in Catalonia, from which Islamic preachers are supposedly “spreading a religious interpretation that opposes the integration of Muslims into Spanish society and promotes the separation and hate towards non-Muslim groups.” Qatari donations are made through the Islamic League for Dialogue and Coexistence in Spain, a group the CNI says is “linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria”.

While the CNI talks only of the need to monitor funds, such as Kern argue that this is all part of a conspiracy by Muslim countries to take back Spain. He points to “the UAE, together with Libya [sic] and Morocco”, which paid for the construction of the Great Mosque of Granada. Says Abdel Haqq Salaberria, a spokesman for the mosque: “It will act as a focal point for the Islamic revival in Europe. It is a symbol of a return to Islam among the Spanish people and among indigenous Europeans.” Worse yet for Islamophobes, Muslims in Cordoba are demanding that the Spanish government allow them to worship in the main cathedral, which was originally the Great Mosque of Al-Andalus and is now a World Heritage Site.

Pointing to Saudi financing of the construction of Islamic Cultural Centres and mosques in Madrid and elsewhere, Kern conjures up the Saudi Wahhabi bugaboo, arguing that most Muslim immigrants in Spain are poor, and their low standard of living and low level of education make them susceptible to Saudi propaganda, ignoring the fact that Saudi Arabia is a close ally of the US, that Wahhabism is the quietist brand of Islam, and the only real way to improve the security situation is to raise the standard of living and level of education of the poor.

Despite such cries of “Wolf!”, attempts to reintegrate Islam into the fabric of Spanish culture are proceeding. Morocco recently co-sponsored a seminar in Barcelona titled “Muslims and European Values” explaining that the construction of big mosques would be “a useful formula” to fight Islamic fundamentalism in Spain. According to Noureddine Ziani, a Barcelona-based Moroccan imam: “It is easier to disseminate fundamentalist ideas in small mosques set up in garages, than in large mosques that are open to everyone.” Using this logic, Spain should welcome more Libyan funding of Great Mosques, rather than participate in NATO’s efforts to destroy the Libyan state and create real grounds for terrorism.

Ziani also said that Islamic values are compatible with European values and that the so-called Western “Judeo-Christian” civilisation is really an “Islamo-Christian” one. The cultural construct “Judeo-Christian heritage” entered the English language only in the 1940s as a reaction to Nazism, and is used by the imperial elite in its “clash of civilizations” targeting Islam. A concept useful to a largely Christian empire where Jewish elites play a powerful role, but one which is rejected by serious scholars, both Christian and Jewish. Talmudic scholar Jacob Neusner calls it a “secular myth favoured by people who are not really believers themselves”. Not only Ziani but American scholars such as Richard Bulliet argue for the use of “Islamo-Christian” to characterise Western civilisation.

Spain suffered several terrorist bombings in the wake of 9/11, notably the 2004 11-M bombings in Madrid, but no evidence was ever presented to suggest Al-Qaeda or Muslims were the perpetrators. Many observers point to Basque and other independence movements as the culprits, or even the Spanish police themselves as part of a false-flag operation. The reality of Spain today is not the existence of any external threat from Islam, but on the contrary, domestic unrest due to the economic crisis and political paralysis.

This gloomy situation prompted concerned young people to boycott Spain’s elections in May and — ironically — emulate their largely Muslim Arab Spring heroes by constructing tent cities in protest at the lack of meaningful democracy. Just as Egyptian revolutionaries borrowed techniques from their Western counterparts to throw off their taskmasters, so Spaniards are emulating them in turn — a true Alliance of Civilisations. European, US and Canadian youth are also impressed by the endurance, the resolution of Palestinians in the face of Israel and its supporters, a 21st-century Judeo-Christian Inquisition persecuting Muslims, not only in Palestine, but in so-called Eurabia and North America.

The Islamophobes turn the truth on its head, attacking the Alliance of Civilisations as a “one-way bridge” undermining European society. But the West’s relations with the Muslim world show just the opposite — the West has invaded and continues to try to shape the Muslim world to meet capitalism’s requirements. That Muslims stubbornly hold to their beliefs and traditions is an important contribution to the search for a way forward for a crisis-ridden world.

Britain’s riots prove that Muslims are a boon to European society, being inherently peaceful and law-abiding. Muslims from the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum Europe played an important role in helping to fight the looting and preserve public safety. Three Muslims died in Birmingham defending shops from looters, though in the media they were merely called Asians. “When accused of terrorism we are Muslims, when killed by looters, we become Asian,” a Muslim student told Al-Jazeerah bitterly.

Rather than the “clash of civilisations” advocated by Islamophobes, those who seek social and economic justice can find inspiration in the eternal truths of Islam, looking to Europe’s own Islamo-Christian heritage — past and present — to discover an alliance of civilisations that rejects war, theft, moral degeneration and racism. This is the lesson that Ramadan offers to the West today.

Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/. Walberg’s Postmodern Imperialism is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html

Hate Group Head Pamela Geller, Breitbart Label SPLC “Threat To Freedom”

Source | by DAVID BADASH
Pamela Geller, the head of a Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) certified hate group has decided to add the SPLC to her new “Threat to Freedom Index.” Geller, who writes the anti-​Islam Tea Party radical blog Atlas Shrugs, is also the head of the anti-​Islam hate groups, American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America (SIOA).

Geller, who calls the SPLC an “über-​left communist group,” most recently made national news when it was discovered that she had been in contact with Anders Behring Breivik, aka the Norway Shooter, a right-​wing Christian domestic terrorist who shot to death 77 people in Oslo, Norway, and at a youth camp nineteen miles away.

Geller, by the way, stands accused of scrubbing her blog, Atlas Shrugs. Specifically, according to former conservative blogger, Little Green Footballs (LGF) founder Charles Johnson, Geller posted an “Email From Norway” in 2007 that Johnson says “sounds a lot like the Oslo terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik,” and now seems to be removing evidence that she knew of its of its violent rhetoric.

It’s important to note here that the SPLC is “an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that promote tolerance,” according to Wikipedia. In other words, they’re the good guys. “The SPLC classifies as hate groups organizations that denigrate or assault entire groups of people for attributes that are beyond their control.”

“In 1971, Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. founded the SPLC as a civil rights law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama. Civil rights leader Julian Bond soon joined Dees and Levin and served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979. The SPLC’s litigating strategy involved filing civil suits for damages on behalf of the victims of hate group harassment, threats, and violence with the goal of financially depleting the responsible groups and individuals. While it originally focused on damages done by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, throughout the years the SPLC has become involved in other civil rights causes, among them, cases concerned with institutional racial segregation and discrimination, the mistreatment of aliens, and the separation of church and state.”

Readers of The New Civil Rights Movement are very familiar with the good and important work the SPLC does, most-​notably, labeling Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council and Bryn Fischer’s American Family Association, along with Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth About Homosexuality as hate groups.

“Geller has seized the role of the anti-​Muslim movement’s most visible and influential figurehead.” writes the SPLC. “Her strengths are panache and vivid rhetorical flourishes — not to mention stunts like posing for an anti-​Muslim video in a bikini — but she also can be coarse in her broad-​brush denunciations of Islam. Geller does not pretend to be learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to SIOA partner Spencer. She is prone to publicizing preposterous claims, such as President Obama being the “love child” of Malcolm X, and once suggested that recent U.S. Supreme Court appointee Elena Kagen, who is Jewish, supports Nazi ideology. Geller has mingled with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists and defended Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. She is a self-​avowed Zionist who is sharply critical of Jewish liberals.”

For her part, Geller, on media-​mogul Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, states, ludicrously, but oddly reminiscent of language used by the SPLC itself,

“Freedom is more embattled in America today than ever. My group, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has begun tracking the activities of numerous active groups that are threats to freedom in the United States today on our Threats to Freedom Index. We plan to augment it periodically and publish it annually.

“All Threat to Freedom groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign American Constitutional freedoms and/​or lawful initiatives for American self-​defense.”

“Threat to Freedom group activities can include misrepresentation of anti-​terror and other law enforcement initiatives, attempts to restrict the freedom of speech regarding Islamic jihad or other threats to freedom, defamation of freedom fighters, disinformation campaigns in the mainstream media regarding attempts by the U.S. and Israel to defend themselves, and more.”

In other words, the SPLC was mean to me.

(Image: Facebook)

Tariq Alhomayed: Do the Egyptians trust the Muslim Brotherhood?

By TARIQ ALHOMAYED | Al-Arabiya.net

What is happening in Egypt today is a state of bickering, not all bad and indeed in some parts good, carried out by Egyptians in general and political groups in particular, especially with regards to calls for a civil state, or at least a state of law, following the Egyptian revolution.

The simplest example of this is the controversy about the declaration of constitutional principles, which the Muslim Brotherhood alongside other Islamic groups oppose, whilst they have been accepted by civil political forces. The declaration of principles does not mean depriving the Muslim Brotherhood, or Islamic groups in general, of access to power, but rather it means ensuring the future of Egypt and its democracy, just as it means that the country will be heading in the right direction towards becoming a state of law, whether it is ruled by the Brotherhood or any other political force. This matter deserves the acceptance of all Egyptians, just as it deserves tremendous political and media effort on the part of civil forces to explain the idea to ordinary Egyptians, to educate the Egyptian public about the importance of declaring the principles of the constitution now, and before the entire political process is completed.

Of course, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the constitutional principles means that they have fallen into the trap they had set for the young people and other civil political forces. The Brotherhood has been extensively preoccupied with minor issues after the fall of Mubarak, rather than the issue of ensuring the future of Egypt, which is the most important. The Brotherhood’s mere rejection of the declaration of principles makes Egyptians skeptical of the sincerity of the organization. Is the group, for example, sincere in its talk about democracy, and the transfer of power, or does the Brotherhood intend to secure power, and then change the rules of the game? Declaring the constitutional principles now is like declaring the rules of football, before all Egyptian political forces, of all kinds, take to the political playing field, with elections and so on, according to the rules of the game which are known and agreed in advance, instead of the rules of the game being developed inside the political arena.

The fear of all fears for today and tomorrow – if the constitutional principles are not declared – is that the Muslim Brotherhood will play the game of the “Maghreb goal” after the elections in Egypt. This, for those who do not know, is the way football was often played in the neighborhoods of Saudi Arabia. Usually children would play in the afternoon, and usually before Salaat al-Maghreb the losing team would begin to exert pressure to score one more goal in order to nullify the result. Here, the two teams are playing for the “Maghreb goal”, meaning that whoever scores the final goal before the Salaat al-Maghreb is the winner, even if the other team had scored more goals previously. Often, if the losing team’s players are physically stronger or more experienced, thus intimidating for the opposition, they would wait until just before Salaat al-Maghreb and then exert all their effort to score. This is a form of trickery, or Taqiyya [Shiite principle whereby true intentions or beliefs may be concealed when an individual is under threat].

Therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rejection of the declaration of principles today can be considered a political version of the “Maghreb goal”. Following the overthrow of Mubarak, the Brotherhood wants to exclusively rule Egypt, and this is a danger to Egypt as a whole. The Brotherhood’s lack of acceptance for the declaration of constitutional principles is an opportunity for all Egyptian civil political forces to explain to the Egyptians the seriousness of their country becoming an extremist state like Iran. Those who want to rule Egypt must offer a political project to serve the people, not Islamic slogans and promises, otherwise the post-Mubarak era will become more dangerous than the reign of Mubarak itself.

(Published in the London-based Asharq Alawsat on August 16, 2011.)

Editorial Comment:

It seems that the writer doesn’t know “any”thing about the Egyptian circumstances since the revolution. To be clear, the Supra-Constitutional principles had been rejected -in advance- through the referendum over constitutional amendments in March. On the other hand, we can’t neglect the fact that not only the Muslim Brotherhood are rejecting these principles.

The majority of political parties, political activists and non-politicized citizens are standing against the proposed principles. In Egypt, The MB sees that there is no need for any extra constitutional amendments or declarations. Therefor, The Muslim Brotherhood is rejecting the imposing of any declarations on the Egyptian people, and if these principles put on a referendum before the Egyptian voters, No one -including the Muslim Brotherhood- will refuse its results.

Debunking stereotypes of Muslim Americans

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT | Salon.com

Gallup asks Americans of different faiths about terrorism, prejudice and foreign policy — with surprising results

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Gallup has released a major new study on attitudes of the Muslim community in the United States, as well as views of Muslims among other religious groups.

The report, which is based primarily on polling conducted in 2010, covers politics, social identity and religious engagement. And some of the results radically undermine popular stereotypes of Muslims Americans. They, for example, are the religious group that is most likely to reject attacks on civilians by individuals (like terrorists) or the military.

Muslim Americans are also more likely than any other religious group to report discrimination in the last 12 months.

For context and analysis of the report (.pdf), I spoke with Mohamed Younis, a Washington-based senior analyst at the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center.

What was the single most surprising result in this poll to you?

It would definitely be the fact that Jewish Americans are more likely than Muslim Americans to say that Muslims face prejudice in the United States. Sixty-six percent of Jewish Americans agree that most Americans are prejudiced toward Muslims in the United States; 60 percent of Muslim Americans agree with that statement. That was something I don’t think a lot of people expected.

Do you have any theories as to why that is?

At the study’s launch event, Rabbi David Saperstein argued this may be because the Jewish community has a large component of people who are socially and politically liberal-minded, and more likely to find that there is prejudice against minorities and want something done about it. Another reason could be that Jews generally are a community that has experienced a lot of distrust, allegations of disloyalty and prejudice — whether it’s in the U.S. or in Europe. In this poll, American Muslim and American Jewish perspectives, even on foreign policy issues like Iraq, are all very similar and closer to each other than to a lot of the other religions.

What about the fact that Muslim Americans are actually most likely to oppose attacks on civilians?

We asked the question in a couple of ways. We asked about military attacks on civilians, and we also asked about individual or nonmilitary group attacks on civilians. We found that Muslim Americans have the highest rates of saying that it is never morally justified. Some of the other religious groups were much more likely to say that military attacks on civilians could be justified. I think what you’re seeing there is a confidence in the military — and the idea that a more institutionalized type of violence will be done in a more responsible manner. Muslims see it differently. That’s consistent with their confidence level in the military, which, at 70 percent, is the lowest of any religious group in the U.S. Historically in Gallup polling, the military tends to have rates of confidence in the high 80s and low 90s all the time.

Also to a greater degree because of their faith, Muslim Americans identify with civilians dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s fair to say most likely Muslim Americans are keeping track of what’s happening in these countries more closely than the average person in America who has no connection to that part of the world whatsoever. It’s important to note that Muslim American attitudes about violence and civilians are actually very consistent with the polling we do globally within Muslim-majority countries. Muslims in countries across Asia and the Middle East also have extremely high rates of respondents who say that military attacks or individual attacks on civilians are never justified.

Is there one area of the poll where the response contradicted a popular stereotype about Muslim Americans?

Definitely one area is in the identity question. We asked how strongly respondents identified with a series of things: the United States, your religion, people around the world in your religious group, etc. What we found is that Muslim Americans are as likely to say that they extremely strongly or very strongly identify with the United States as they are to say about identifying with their religion. In the discourse in the United States about Muslim Americans is this fear that if Muslims organize on the level of religious community, they become more isolated, less loyal to the U.S. and less integrated. But we actually found the opposite. We found that those Muslims who do attend places of worship regularly are actually more likely to be politically active, registered to vote, and are less likely to report stress or anger the day before the interview.

The report also includes some recommendations. What are the most important?

One thing we have been talking about with civil society organizations is increasing the opportunity for education and engagement in and among faith groups, particularly with the Jewish American community. That’s because we found there are a lot of similarities between Muslim and Jewish Americans on many of the poll questions. The fact that we see less of a suspicion of Muslim Americans among Jews than among other groups shows that there is fertile ground for cooperation.

With regards to government, the rate of reported discrimination among Muslim Americans was 48 percent. They’re the most likely religious group to say they’ve experienced discrimination in the last year. That’s on par with Hispanic and African-American rates of reporting discrimination. So we’re suggesting there needs to be a more comprehensive nationwide strategy to study the level of prejudice and discrimination targeted toward Muslims specifically. And a majority of all the other religious groups said that Muslim Americans are facing prejudice in the United States. So the fact that we have such a high rate of respondents who report this who are not Muslim means that this is something that needs to be investigated more closely.

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott

Using Shariah to create fear

By BARBARA FERGUSON | ARAB NEWS

Critics argue that such legislation is based on anti-Islamic paranoia, noting that the US Constitution forbids the imposition of Shariah law — or any religious law — on anyone in this country and that Muslims make up only one percent of the American population and would have no ability to impose Shariah even if they did have a desire to do so.

Shariah is a set of rules that govern personal conduct, family relationship and religious practices for Muslims.

But this has not stopped State Rep. Dave Agema, R-Michigan, who has just proposed such anti-Shariah legislation which Muslim leaders there say is an attack on Islam.

In June, Agema proposed legislation that would ban the implementation of foreign laws. While the language of the proposal does not say it directly, it would ban Shariah or Islamic law. Agema told the Detroit News that the law is intended to preserve American laws.

“No foreign law shall supersede federal laws or constitution or state laws or constitution,” Agema said. “Our law is our law. I don’t like foreign entities telling us what to do.”

Under Agema’s proposed legislation, Shariah law would not be recognized in Michigan courts.

Many in the Muslim community believe he is directly attacking their religious beliefs and lifestyle.

“Agema … is a reflection of a segment of the Republican Party that is openly xenophobic and Islamophobic,” Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter, told reporters.

State Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, told journalists she plans to speak out about the bill and Victor Begg, a prominent Republican and co-founder of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan, called the bill “appalling.”

“Some in our party find it politically opportune to target my faith by sponsoring an innocuous sounding bill, knowing well that their intent is so-called ‘creeping Sharia,’” Begg told reporters.

Agema rejected the criticism: “If anybody has a problem with this that means they don’t agree with US laws,” he said. “If they don’t want it passed then they have an ulterior agenda. It shows the people accusing me of that (bigotry) are guilty of it themselves.”

A surprise critic of the anti-Shariah rhetoric has become one of the most eloquent:

“The threat of the infiltration of Shariah, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years. The notion that Islam is insidiously making inroads in the United States through the application of religious law is seeping into the mainstream, with even some presidential candidates voicing fears about the supposed threat of Shariah to our way of life…”

Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the (Jewish) Anti-Defamation League, wrote last week in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Foxman, who understands the dangers when people exploit a religion for their own racist intent, noted that the bills were based “on model legislation issued by the American Public Policy Alliance, an unabashedly anti-Muslim advocacy group that defends the legislation as seeking to ‘protect American citizens’ constitutional rights against the infiltration and incursion of foreign laws and foreign legal doctrines, especially Islamic Shariah Law.’”

“These measures are, at their core, predicated on prejudice and ignorance,” wrote Foxman, who has taken his own rounds of criticism for this editorial in the JTA. “They constitute a form of camouflaged bigotry that enables their proponents to advance an idea that finds fault with the Muslim faith and paints all Muslim Americans as foreigners and anti-American crusaders.

“Let us…reject those who seek to divide us for political gain, or those who wish to stereotype and scapegoat an entire people because of their religious faith,” Foxman said.

Yet many Americans remain confused about Islam and Shariah. Acknowledging this, the White House released a report last week outlining a new strategy to reach out to local communities, and to educate community leaders about the religion.

The document is entitled: “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.”

“It seems obvious that these are individuals who are blinded by hatred and who have a personal agenda, writes Sheila Musaji in The American Muslim.

But acknowledges that leaders must stop using ignorance of a religion as a basis to promote themselves through fear: “Unless the hateful statements made about Islam and Muslims by government officials and elected representatives are publically challenged by other officials and representatives, and unless Islamophobes stop being considered as the go to experts on Islam and Muslims, then this report will have little or no effect on improving relationships with the American Muslim community.”