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Pamela Geller: Israeli Secret Agent?
by Dean Walker
Source
Recently, I have come across a number of rightwing blogs and have heard Fox News guests and hosts repeating many of Pamela Geller’s favorite talking points verbatim. For example, here is a quote from a recent article I read opposing the 51Park St. mosque from a citizen journalist website, “The argument among those who oppose the mosque is from a humanitarian stand point. Followers of the cult (of) Islam have a history of attacking then building a mosque on the site of their victory. Look at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as a prime example.” [1]
On Saturday, June 5, 2010 Pamela Geller gave a rousing one hour lecture in Gatlinburg to the Tennessee Tea Party. In the speech, you will find nearly every talking point and the rightwing extremists and Islamophobes have been recently pushing on Americans. Does this sound familiar “I’m Pamela Geller and contraire to popular beliefs, I’m a human rights activist.” She later goes on, “In Islamic history, symbolism is very import, every time they conquer a land they always take the church or the temple or synagogue and they build right over it…Look want they did…to the Jewish holiest site in the world, which is the Temple Mount… and this is what this mosque is…it is the ultimate flag of conquest.”? [2]
Geller goes on in her lecture to make herself out to be a martyr. She cries and whines about how people have called her a bigot and an Islamophobe and tells her audience “Truth is the new hate speech.” All the while Geller claims, “Obama has more Arab blood than black (blood).” She goes on to claim, “It is in the Qur’an that the Jews must be annihilated …any Jew you see hiding behind a tree you must kill them. Everything that has been coming to you visa via from the government or the media has literally been vetted by the Muslim Brotherhood. They have literally infiltrated senior levels of the pentagon, the executive branch … and State Department.” And she continues to spread fear in her audience, “There is an academic Jihad in where they are rewriting history. Anyone with children in grade school go look at the book, go look at the book and see the three chapters on Islam. One is on the prophet Mohammad.” Of course when someone in the audience calls out, “What book?” Geller responds, “They won’t let the books come home. You have to get them out.” And then conveniently moves quickly onto how when she was growing up “there use to be the Brady Bunch and Cheetos.” Ah, someone needs to tell Geller Cheetos is still on the shelves and you can watch Brady Bunch reruns on Hulu.
Geller claims “Free speech is on attack… Go to the Huffington Post…, I’m telling you that is a hate site, an anti-Semitic speech, a leftist, I mean it is so out there, that kind of invective, would have been so far out of the margin twenty five years ago. Something has happened. The left has completely taken over the dialogue, because there is a leftist Islamic alliance … they are mosquing the workplace. They are importing Somalian’s into meatpacking sites which is now imposing Sharia law in the workplace.” Geller claims that throughout America workers and whole industries are now being forced shut down five times a day and everyone regardless of religion must get on their knees and prey to Allah. Of course she doesn’t provide any real proof to most of her wild claims. But they sure seem to do a good job of scaring many in her Tennessee Tea Party audience. And the problem is these wild stories are being spread like wild fire across the rightwing blogosphere.
Geller ends her speech by concluded that “You have to buy my book, you have to get your news from the internet, and you have to support Israel. (To a roaring applause she sticks out her tongue like a snake and continues on.) You have to support Israel for a number of reasons. First between a civilized man and a savage, you always side with the civilized man. The IDF is the most benevolent army in the world.”
Now most people would say that this is all just the rantings of a crazy woman. However, mainstream media and especially Fox News have been giving Geller a platform to preach her conspiracy theory for a number of months now. And as a result, we have now thousands of rightwing bloggers repeating, nearly verbatim, many of the wacky and dangerous lies Geller is spewing.
But is Pamela Geller really an Israeli spy? As Geller says, “At the end of the day it is Israel. It is Israel. And Hamas must be crushed, eradicated… I hope cooler heads prevail and they wipe out that nest of Islamic terror (Hamas.)” Geller claims those living in Palestine today are nothing but Arab invading and occupying Jewish holy land. She states, “What is a Palestinian? A Palestinian is a Jew. Yeah, they stole that word from the Jews. Palestine is Israel. It is the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews… And why would you elect Obama… a man more Arab than black.” The fact that the word Palestine comes from the Biblical city of Philistine which was in the land of Cannon (not Jewish) means nothing to Geller and the Israeli revisionist history tellers. [4]
Read her blog sites Atlas Shrugs or Stop the Islamazation of America and you will find Geller’s obsession with Israel. You will also find her none stop spreading of hatred and fear towards Muslims. Geller claims the civilized world is at “War with Islam.” And she has actively been working to drag Americans into her “War against Islam.”
What Pam Geller doesn’t understand is that the United States is not at war with Islam. The United States was not attacked by Islam. We were criminally attacked by religious extremists. Geller claims, “All Muslims are the same.” That is like saying all Jews or all Christians are the same. It is as ridiculous a claim as saying grade school kids in the U.S. have textbooks with three chapters on Islam and the teachers (nationwide) are keeping the children from bringing home their books.
Geller denies that she is religiously bigoted and Islamophic because she claims Islam in not a religion, rather it is a cult, sound familiar? However, just imagine if some “Leftard” (as she calls us) started a website called Stop the Jewry of America. Just imagine how many people would come out onto the streets in protest if MSNBC or CNN gave a Leftard like that a mainstream microphone. The rightwing blogosphere would go crazy talking about the anti-Semitic given a platform to preach his hate across America. Yet, it has not only been Fox News, MSNBC and CNN that have given Geller a platform to demonize Muslims, she is also a featured columnist for Newsmax Corp. and has had her op-eds published in many newspapers nationwide.
All the while, in her holiday video card to the soldiers, made just before Obama’s presidency, she claims she is grateful to the troops for allowing her to sit on the beach, in her bikini (Geller has done several video blogs wearing bikinis or in bedrooms draped in a robe with her hair tussled and her body somewhat exposed), reading a glamour magazine, in south Florida. She thanks the troops for allowing her to say anything she likes because, “In New York, if I was doing what I was doing, I would be in jail. That’s right those Eurowings would throw me in jail and let the country be run by Islamists, Sunni Islamists.” Then Geller goes off on, amongst other things, how “Obama is a Muslim” and the “Antichrist.” [5]
I have to ask, Who is this woman working for? To tell the troops that their soon to be President of the United States is the Antichrist is not a good message to the troops. But wait a minute, let’s remember Geller has repeated called for people to “Support Israel.” Geller claims, “The IDF is the most benevolent army in the world… (and) It all about the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews.” All the while she calls the President of the United States “the Antichrist.” Geller wants to divide and draw Americans into her war on Islam and gain their unconditional support for Israel. And apparently, some seem to have fallen for her rhetoric and are repeating whole sentences and paragraphs of Pamela Geller’s insanity. Geller claims on websites, videos, and in her lectures that she is a “human rights activist.” Then she goes off on how Hamas and the Palestinians need to be “crushed,” “eradicated”, and “annihilated.” These are not the words of a human rights activist. Rather, these are the words of her so called “benevolent” Israeli Defense Force and Zionist extremists. And so I have to ask once again, Who does Pamela Geller really work for?
[1] http://www.broowaha.com/articles/7755/you-can%E2%80%99t-blame-bush-anymore
[2] http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/06/full-video-pamela-geller-speaks-at-tennessee-tea-party-coalition-despite-demands-by-hamas-linked-uni.html
[3] http://www.broowaha.com/articles/7721/peace-talk-overture-hamas-kills-four-israeli-civilians
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qftK5ROBVH4&feature=related
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0A0aQ3ntAQ&feature=related
Who Is Behind The Islamic School Being Planned For West Edmonton?
Ikhwanophobia Comment
These are the rumors. Read the truths HERE
Edmonton Muslims fight rumours
——————–
The Article
Many citizens living in the Lessard district of West Edmonton have expressed their concerns regarding the opening of an Islamic school in their community by the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), the local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. Itsmotto is: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope”.
Shortly after some citizens expressed concerns in the West End News about the background of the promoters of this K-9 school, CTV and the Edmonton Sun reported that the Edmonton chapter of the MAC threatened the local paper with a civil suit. Instead of trying to defuse the concerns of the citizens by explaining how their goals and objectives were compatible with individual freedom, the MAC’s leaders in Edmonton are trying to silence their critics.
Point de Bascule (Tipping Point) has been set up to expose the subtle ways used by Islamists to promote their agenda. The text that follows focuses on identifying the objectives pursued by the Muslim Brotherhood and it provides many links towards various statements made by its leaders in the past. Another text will follow in the coming days that will deal more specifically with the tactic of legal warfare frequently used by the Islamists to prevent any discussion about their agenda.
The concerns expressed by the citizens of Lessard are not only justified, they should be taken into consideration by the authorities. Up to now, the government has been silent on the issue. The citizens have no other choice but to challenge the Islamists willing to abuse the legal system in order to shut down responsible inquiry.
Issam Saleh
Issam Saleh, the chairman of the Muslim Association of Canada’s Edmonton chapter, told the Edmonton Sun [August 19, 2010] that “a tiny handful of people exhibiting Islamophobia are spreading distortions and outright falsehoods about the organization”. “Our lawyers are compiling a case and we’re considering legal action,” added Saleh.
Saleh holds different positions, including one as an advisor to the City of Edmonton:
City of Edmonton, Community Services Advisory Board – Click [HERE]
Edmonton Islamic Academy, Board of Trustees – Click [HERE]
From teacher to construction entrepreneur – Click [HERE]
Daybreak Painting & Decorating Ltd – Click [HERE]
In his interview with the Edmonton Sun, Issam Saleh admitted that the MAC follows the teachings of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. In this, he conforms to the pledge found on the MAC’s website:
“MAC adopts and strives to implement Islam, as embodied in the Qur’an, and the teachings of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and as understood in its contemporary context by the late Imam, Hassan Albanna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. MAC regards this ideology as the best representation of Islam as delivered by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). “
MAC’s website – Click [HERE]
MAC’s website (Edmonton chapter) – Click [HERE]
MAC’s description of its own ideology – Click [HERE]
What kind of positions has Issam Saleh taken in his five-year stint as an advisor for the City of Edmonton? How does someone implement Hassan al-Banna’s principles while being on the Advisory Board of a major city? Edmonton residents must take a look at this issue.
Hassan al-Banna (1906 – 1949)
A summary of al-Banna’s ideology can be found in a 50 point manifesto that he submitted to several Arab leaders in 1947. The manifesto has been added to al-Banna’s book Towards the Light. The Muslim Brotherhood republished the manifesto in 2007. It is available on its Ikhwanweb.com website. Ikhwan is the Arabic word for brothers and it is commonly used for identifying the Muslim Brotherhood [Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun].
The manifesto promotes among others the abolition of political parties and the establishment of a single party system which is pure totalitarianism. It also favours the modification of the laws so that they conform to shariah and the multiplication of associations dedicated to promoting the spirit of jihad amongst the youth. Faced with the Egyptian authorities’ refusal to implement al-Banna’s program in 1948, his organisation launched many acts of terror in Egypt and even assassinated the Prime Minister (New York Times December 29, 1948).
In his essay On Jihad included in the book Five Tracts, al-Banna explains that “it’s an obligation for us [Muslims] to fight against them [the infidels] after inviting them [to join Islam], even if they do not fight against us”. [Five Tracts, Translated by Charles Wendell, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978, p. 147]
To inspire his troops, Hassan al-Banna recalled in his essay To What Do We Invite Humanity? that in history many leaders experienced modest beginnings before finally achieving “success and fortune”. He mentioned several Muslim warlords who inspired him. Only one of his sources of inspiration was non-Muslim. It was Adolf Hitler.
Beside the terrorist organization Hamas that acknowledges its relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood in the second article of its charter [HERE], the Muslim Association of Canada is more than likely the only other branch of the Brotherhood openly stating its connection with Hassan al-Banna’s organization and ideology. The observation is made by the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report, a website that monitors the activities of the Brotherhood throughout the world.
Youssef al-Qaradawi (1926 – )
Today, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, frequently reminds us through statements made in the Arab media that the Islamist organization is still a fierce enemy of individual freedoms.
In recent years, al-Qaradawi promoted the killing of apostates from Islam [islamonline.net] and the killing of homosexuals [video 5:27], he introduced Hitler as a messenger of Allah who came to punish the Jews [video], he urged Muslims to conquer the West , he favoured female genital mutilations and so forth.
When the Islamist militants behind the Edmonton Islamic school project declare that they will “adopt and strive to implement Islam, … as understood in its contemporary context by Hassan al-Banna”, they are announcing that they will devote their efforts to teach and make these principles triumph.
In his book Auspices of the Ultimate Victory, Youssef al-Qaradawi states that the penetration of the Islamist ideology in the West can be explained by the groundwork brought about by the Muslim Brotherhood and by the contributions in petrodollars made by Gulf state billionaires. Al-Qaradawi also expressed his gratitude to Saudi Arabia for distributing for free all around the world “many millions of copies of the Qur’an … in model English and French translations”.
The Hilali-Khan translation of the Koran
The English translation of the Koran being distributed by Saudi Arabia is referred to as the Hilali-Khan translation [Online copy – click HERE]. It is, by far, the most popular in English speaking countries. The translation approved by the MAC’s mentor is generally being used in the English schools set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
One excerpt from this English translation will suffice to illustrate what is being taught in MAC’s schools.
After the verse 2:190 that discusses jihad, the translators have added a footnote to prevent any misunderstanding regarding the meaning of the word. Click [HERE]:
“Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah’s Cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars (on which it stands). By Jihad Islam is established, Allah’s Word is made superior […] and Islam is propagated. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfill this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite.”
Jamal Badawi
On a 2007 MAC webpage, North American Muslim Brotherhood leader and Canadian national, Jamal Badawi, is listed as a director of the organization. GMBDR reports that Dr. Badawi is a leader in many of the most important organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood including the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Council on American Islamic Relations (Canada), the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), and the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR).
Before being chosen to be part of the MAC leadership, Badawi had justified Muslim suicide bombings as a legitimate tactic of jihad on a 2006 IslamOnline Internet forum. He had also issued in 2004 a fatwa for IslamOnline that was outlining six conditions in which a wife may properly be beaten ” (if she) persists in bad habits”.
During the two trials of the Holy Land Foundation that led to the conviction in 2008 of several members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood network for financing terrorist activities in the Middle East from the United States, the prosecution presented as evidence an internal memorandum of the organization. The original Arabic version of the memorandum and its English translation have been archived by The Investigative Project on Terrorism. Jamal Badawi is identified on page 12 of the English translation as a member of the leadership structure of the Brotherhood in North America.
This internal document also clearly mentions on page 7 the goal pursued by the MAC and all the other organizations affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood in North America:
“The Ikhwan [the Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is kind of a grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. […] It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.”
The original memorandum in Arabic and its English translation are available [HERE]. The highlights of the memorandum are available [HERE].
Ekrima Sabri
Over the years, the Muslim Association of Canada has endorsed many radical Islamists whose views are completely incompatible with the mission that a school should pursue with the children under its responsibility. One of these radicals is Ekrima Sabri (aka Ikrimah Sabri).
IslamOnline.net (in 2002) and Steve Merley of the NEFA Foundation (in 2009) identified Sabri as the khatib (imam, prayer leader) of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and as the mufti of the city. Merley added that Sabri is a member of the Islamic Fiqh Academy in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) that also includes U.S. Muslim Brotherhood leader Taha Al-Alawani, as well as other members associated with the Brotherhood.
In 2009, IRFAN-Canada invited Sabri to give a lecture at the Centre Culturel Laurentien, one of the MAC’s facilities in Montreal.
The poster written in Arabic and produced for the occasion is archived on Point de Bascule. Click [HERE].
IRFAN-Canada is a branch of the American IRFAN (Islamic Relief Fund for the Afflicted and the Needy) also known as the Jerusalem Fund. The Jerusalem Fund was one of many Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that were designated as non indicted co-conspirators in the two trials that were discussed previously. The list of the co-conspirators is available by clicking [HERE].
As for IRFAN-Canada, it was disqualified in April 2010 from issuing donation receipts for income tax purposes after the Canada Revenue Agency had stated that it did not have its books in order and had failed to provide required documents.
Many subtitled videos featuring Ekrima Sabri are available online. Viewing some of them could be helpful to better understand the principles of the MAC who welcomed him in Canada.
Two weeks before the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Sabri implored Allah to destroy Great Britain and the United States on Voice of Palestine Radio. Click [HERE].
In October 2000, the Al-Ahram Al-Arabi periodical from Egypt asked a few questions to Ekrima Sabri on various topics, including suicide bombings. The organization MEMRI has supplied an English translation available [HERE].
Here is the transcription of two Q&As:
Question: “What do you feel when you pray [for the souls of the martyrs]?”
Sabri: “I feel the martyr is lucky because the angels usher him to his wedding in heaven. I feel the earth moves under the occupiers’ feet.”
Question: “Is it different when the martyr is a child?”
Sabri: “Yes, it is. It’s hard to express it in words. There is no doubt that a child [martyr] suggests that the new generation will carry on the mission with determination. The younger the martyr, the greater and the more I respect him.”
When Sabri alludes to a wedding in heaven, he is referring to various verses of the Koran [44:54 52:20] that promise many young virgins (houris) as a reward to those who died while waging jihad.
When an organization like the MAC wants to open a school and sponsors fanatics who dream of sending children to their death, when an organization pledges to follow the teachings of Hassan al-Banna who was openly advocating for the “promot(ion of) the spirit of jihad amongst the youth”, it is the duty of responsible citizens to further their investigation and to do everything they can to stop this cancer from spreading in their vicinity.
Commentary: Is Islam’s Problem A Lack Of Modernity?
Daniel Greenfield, An Israeli bigot, wrote a piece under the title of “Is Islam’s Problem A Lack Of Modernity?“, and as usual, the article -Deliberately- is full of historical mistakes.
Greenfield alleged in his article that;
Modern Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were built by copying ideas from the Nazis. Their terrorist groups copied Marxist terrorist organizations. Osama bin Laden does not write up declarations on parchment, he releases videos which are filled with talking points derived from American popular culture. Al Queda was recruiting over the internet, before most Western armed forces had figured out how to make use of it. Hizbullah has a media analysis department. Hamas has a Twitter account.
Actually, this is hilarious, Gathering resistance movements like Hamas and Hizbullah, with Terrorist movements like Al Qaeda and moderate Islamic movement like Muslim Brotherhood in one phrase, is just hilarious and betrays a profound ignorance of the reality of the Islamic political map.
And his words: “Modern Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were built by copying ideas from the Nazis.“, is clearing that Greenfield is not aware of any kind of political or historical analysis!
One of the main objectives of foundation of Muslim Brotherhood was resisting the colonization, it’s not rational that they will fight the colonization with another one.
On the other hand, there are a lot of documents that shows clearly that there were many Zionists who negotiated with the Nazis to oppress the Jews in Nazi Germany for forcing them to migrate to Palestine!
Hamas and Hezbollah have exploited democratic elections to increase their powers, before of course using heavy doses of violence to suppress the opposition. When Saddam Hussein ruled in Iraq, his Shiite Islamist opposition under Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr developed Wilayat Al Umma, which suddenly decided that the people, not the rulers, have the divine franchise. Democracy is just another useful tool to them, just like their Twitter accounts and blackberries and suits. They are a means to an end. The end is political power under Islamic rule.
In response for these autocratic words, I always like to quote from Condoleezza Rice’s 2005 speech in Cairo:
The US pursuit of stability in the Middle East at the expense of democracy had “achieved neither”, she admitted.
“Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people,” she said.
This is Daniel’s Article
In response to the Islamic terrorist attacks that murdered 76 people in Uganda, Barack Hussein Obama delivered the usual homily about Islam being a great religion, and Islamic terrorism being the work of a small handful of extremists who reject modernity. And while many people have stood up to take issue with the false claim that only a small minority of Muslims view terrorism as legitimate, fewer have tackled the underlying premise behind this liberal critique of Islam, which claims that it is a lack of modernity that is the problem.
The reason why the “Modernity” narrative is so dangerous, is because it has drawn even liberal critics of Islam into a false paradigm, in which Muslim terrorists reject modernity, and therefore Muslims who do not seem to reject modernity cannot be terrorists. That is why Tariq Ramadan can waltz from campus to campus, shielded from accusations of “extremism” by his supposed embrace of modernity. Terrorist groups and terrorist front groups, from the Taliban, which before 9/11 sent an ambassador to Berkeley who delivered lectures explaining that the Buddha statues had been destroyed to protest against global economic injustice, to Hizb ut Tahir, whose spokesmen talk like moral relativists, even as they preach uncompromising Jihad to their followers– have learned to talk like “moderns”, even when their real goals have remained the same since Mohammed and his followers rode down on their enemies.
The inability to recognize terrorism when it is dressed in a suit, totes a blackberry and uses academic language– is one of the greatest blind spots of Western civilization today. And the idea that Islamic terrorists are people who live in caves and are out of touch with the modern world, is a misguided stereotype. Modern Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood were built by copying ideas from the Nazis. Their terrorist groups copied Marxist terrorist organizations. Osama bin Laden does not write up declarations on parchment, he releases videos which are filled with talking points derived from American popular culture. Al Queda was recruiting over the internet, before most Western armed forces had figured out how to make use of it. Hizbullah has a media analysis department. Hamas has a Twitter account.
Contrary to the liberal narrative– Islamist groups do not draw their followers from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed, but from the educated middle and upper classes. Terrorists often have college degrees, sometimes from Western educational institutions. They are not poor. They do not sit around all day looking at a goat and wondering what they will eat tomorrow. Not only do they live a lot like Westerners do, but in many cases they are better off than the people they are trying to kill. Mohammed Atta’s father was a lawyer. His mother was quite wealthy. Ismail Haniyeh has two wives and thirteen children, and was a dean at the Islamic University.
While Obama blathers on about their failure to modernize, Islamic terrorists use the internet and social media to recruit, maintain contact and plan operations– piggybacking on a technology that had been meant to allow the United States to continue functioning in the event of a massive disaster. They produce news programs, magazines, children’s shows, cartoons and DVD’s. Their spokesmen understand how the enemy thinks and how to exploit Western ideas in order to subvert the West. Which is more than our spokesmen understand about them. Islamist groups have incorporated Nazi and Communist tactics that they found useful. They are actually very good at studying us and learning from us. Often they’re studying on our own campuses.
Osama bin Laden may or may not be living in a cave, a calculated image meant to romanticize Al Queda, but his followers and backers are more likely to live in mansions. They are anti-Western, but they are quick to learn about, use and exploit Western tactics and technologies. They can sound like professors when they need to and play on Western moral relativism in order to justify anything that they do to Western liberals. Nor are they necessarily opposed to democracy, so long as the end result is an Islamic state.
Hamas and Hezbollah have exploited democratic elections to increase their powers, before of course using heavy doses of violence to suppress the opposition. When Saddam Hussein ruled in Iraq, his Shiite Islamist opposition under Mohammad Baqir al-Sadr developed Wilayat Al Umma, which suddenly decided that the people, not the rulers, have the divine franchise. Democracy is just another useful tool to them, just like their Twitter accounts and blackberries and suits. They are a means to an end. The end is political power under Islamic rule.
To that end they have changed whatever theology needs changing. They have turned women into suicide bombers, despite opposing even basic education for women. They have mixed with infidels and learned from them. When they need to sell pork and alcohol in order to send money back home to terrorist groups, until they are in a position to start forcing the infidels to go without. They have gained exemptions to whatever laws they needed exempting from, or outright ignored the rest. Their fluidity is downright postmodern.
The problem is not that Islam is not modern, it is that it is not civilized. The unspoken liberal assumption that modernity means tolerance and reason, is a slave to a linear understanding of history, an understanding that the rise of Islam has repeatedly discredited, when it first rose in what had been a relatively tolerant and even cosmopolitan region, and today when it rises in the face of Westernized globalization. Being modern does not necessarily mean being better, it means being more sophisticated. And that is exactly what modern Islamic terrorists, they are more sophisticated, even if it is a sophistication borrowed from the cultures they prey upon.
The variants of Islam that are most dangerous to us are both modern and reformed. But neither of those words means secular, which is what liberal Christians and liberal Jews tend to think modern religion means. Modernized Islam has simply learned from rival societies, religions and ideologies. Just as Mohammed learned from Christians and Jews to create a religion that took elements from both, before massacring and enslaving the people whose beliefs he had despoiled.
As a tool of war, a more sophisticated Islam is a more sophisticated weapon. Which is not what any sane person would desire. It is not more tolerant, because its ends have not changed, only the means have. The Islamists have once again taken what they need from other cultures and religions to strengthen and disguise their campaign, without ever conceding any ground. Westerners who apply the European model to the Muslim world are making an unfortunate mistake. While they see history as progressive, Muslims see history as circular. While in the West they think they are climbing a mountain, in the East they know that they are only turning a wheel. Westerners have thrown away their beliefs and their heritage to lighten their way up the mountain, but in the East they tie their beliefs into a noose for Western necks.
Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a columnist born in Israel and currently living in New York City. He is a contributing editor at Family Security Matters and writes a daily blog column on Islamic Terrorism, Israeli and American politics and Europe’s own clash of civilizations which can be found at Sultanknish.blogspot.com.
Andrew C. McCarthy: More Moderate Muslims!!
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever decides to stop buying his way around New York City’s term-limit law, he’d be a perfect fit at the State Department.
Hizzoner was not content with having embarrassed himself by predicting that the attempted bombing of Times Square — the heart of a city that has been a jihadist target for 17 years — would prove to be the work of a disgruntled right-winger upset over the health-care bill. Bloomberg has now treated us to a cri de coeur in favor of the Ground Zero mosque. Funding sources for this project, originally known as the “Cordoba Initiative” in honor of the caliphate that conquered Spain, remain unknown. What is known is that the gigantic Islamic center would be located near the crater where Islamist terrorists killed more than 2,700 Americans while destroying the World Trade Center.
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly ready for prime time in the State Department’s production division: It was only last year that our foreign service used your tax dollars to broadcast, on its website, a little movie called “Eid in America.” Eid, the occasion for this exercise in cinematic hagiography, is the feast that ends what our government takes pains to call “the holy month of Ramadan” and commemorates with gala dinners around Washington. The star of the video was the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center — and accompanying mosque — in Falls Church, Va.
JUST LIKE THE MARINES
Dar al-Hijrah (which means “Land of Migration”) was presented as the moderate face of Islam in America — exactly what Bloomberg and other government officials assure us the Ground Zero mosque will become. Prominently featured was Johari Abdul-Malik, Dar’s soft-spoken “director of outreach,” who positively glowed as he spoke about his community’s growth.
There were, however, a few lines that Foggy Bottom evidently decided were best left on the cutting room floor. Like imam Abdul-Malik’s call for “sabotage” terrorist attacks against Israel. As he put it in 2001:
I am gonna teach you now. You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work. You can blow up power supplies . . . the water supply, you can do all forms of sabotage and let the world know that we are doing it like this because they have a respect for the lives of innocent people.
Yes, what better way to show respect! Of course, omitting this speech spared State the embarrassment of explaining that it was given at a conference hosted by the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP). IAP was the Muslim Brotherhood–created headquarters of U.S. support for Hamas. Incidentally, a top IAP official, Nihad Awad, has become one of the Ground Zero mosque’s most visible supporters. Awad also happens to be a founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations, another Muslim Brotherhood creation. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator by the Justice Department in the Holy Land Foundation case, in which several defendants were convicted for providing Hamas with millions of dollars in funding.
Imam Feisal Rauf, the force behind the Ground Zero mosque, declines to condemn Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has been formally designated a terrorist organization under our law for many years. According to its charter, Hamas’s purpose is to create an Islamic Palestinian state by eliminating Israel through violent jihad.
In “Eid in America,” the State Department also wisely left out imam Abdul-Malik’s 2004 promise of Islamic supremacy in America. He made it in a Friday sermon of the sort that one typically hears at “moderate” mosques like Dar al-Hijra:
Alhamdullilah [Praise to Allah] and we will live, will see the day when Islam, by the grace of Allah, will become the dominant way of life. . . . I’m telling you don’t take it for granted because Allah is increasing this deen [religion] in your lifetime. Alhamdullilah that soon, soon . . . before Allah closes our eyes for the last time, you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America — that’s where we are now — to being the first religion in America.
“Outreach,” you’ll be pleased to learn, is just Abdul-Malik’s day job. He is also a director of the National Association of Muslim Chaplains (NAMC). As journalist Paul Sperry recounts in his important book, Infiltration, NAMC’s founder, Warith Deen Umar, is best known for his glorification of the 9/11 hijackers: “Even Muslims who say they are against terrorism secretly admire and applaud” them.
For his part, though, Abdul-Malik is more circumspect. When Sperry asked him about other “sermons” at the mosque that praise violent jihad and “martyrdom,” he couldn’t see what the problem might be. In their own way, he explained, Muslims are like United States Marines, a spiritual force in Allah’s cause: “Telling people to give their all for their faith is not an unusual idea. That’s the same thing as telling Marines in this country semper fidelis.”
I doubt our Marines would be flattered by the comparison.
ISLAMIC CENTERS ARE THE “AXIS”
Dar al-Hijra was established in 1991. Not so coincidentally, that is the same year American leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood wrote an internal memorandum to their global headquarters in Egypt, explaining that they saw their work in the United States as a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.” Echoing imam Abdul-Malik, the Brotherhood said its tactic would be “sabotage.” (The memo is here, with the English translation following the original Arabic pages.)
The memorandum elaborates that every city should have an “axis” and “perimeter” from which this jihad-by-sabotage strategy is headquartered. That axis, it adds, will be known as “the Islamic Center.” Islamic centers — just like the one at Dar al-Hijra, just like the one planned for Ground Zero — are to become “the ‘base’ for our rise,” the memo says. They are to be the focal point of education, preparation, and the “supply [of] our battalions.” Battalions are small cells of fighters. In Muslim Brotherhood ideology (i.e., Islamist ideology) it is assumed that, at a certain mature point, when Muslim forces are strong enough, violent jihad will be effective, so Islamists prepare for it.
Quite the opposite of assimilation and toleration, the memo envisions each Islamic center as a “seed for a small Islamic society” and a “House of Dawa.” Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, has proclaimed that dawa, the stealth form of jihad, is the method by which Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” As I noted in a column last week, when it was released for Muslim audiences overseas, imam Rauf’s book (released in this country as What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America) was called A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. In any event, the Brotherhood memorandum also foretold that Islamic centers would be hubs for networking and cooperation between Islamist groups. Dar al-Hijra has certainly fit that bill. Its website, for example, has helped viewers connect to the sites of CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood tentacles.
We know about the Brotherhood’s 1991 memorandum because it was seized from the home of an operative named Ismail Elbarasse. And wouldn’t you know it: Elbarasse is a founder of the Dar al-Hijra Islamic Center so admired by the State Department. He is a close friend and former business partner of Mousa abu Marzook, currently the number-two official in Hamas — and a man who ran that terrorist organization from his home in Virginia until he was finally expelled from the U.S. in the mid-Nineties. It was to Hamas that, according to the FBI and Israeli intelligence, Elbarasse and Marzook jointly transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Elbarasse may also have listened to one too many of imam Abdul-Malik’s speeches about bridge sabotage: In 2004, he was arrested for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bridge, driving along slowly as his wife filmed the span up and down, lowering their camera out of sight when passing police vehicles drove by. It was all a misunderstanding, of course. Just recording “scenery,” Mrs. Elbarasse told the FBI — as her husband urged her to pipe down. But when the FBI reviewed the tape, they found it focused on “the cables and upper supports of the main span of the bridge, and also pan[ned] the east bound span of the bridge, filming the support cables and footings of the main span of the bridge. Portions of the footage zoomed in on the bridge joints of the main support span.” “It’s a crime to videotape a bridge?” the agitated Mrs. Elbarasse blurted. The government, for reasons unknown, decided not to pursue the case.
The Dar al-Hijra board has also featured Elbarasse’s friend and college roommate, Esam Omeish. Dr. Omeish, a surgeon, is one of the stars of “Eid in America.” In it, he coos about his community’s rich diversity (apparently meaning it features all kinds of Muslims). Alas, the film did not cover his college days — when he headed up the Muslim Students Association at Georgetown — or his term as president of the Muslim American Society, which is the Brotherhood’s semi-official presence in the United States. Nor was Omeish’s grim foray in Democratic party politics mentioned. He was forced to resign from a state immigration panel, to which he’d been appointed by Virginia governor Tim Kaine, after the emergence of videos that showed him lauding Palestinians for their resort to “the jihad way” against Israel. He later claimed to have been “smeared” by the publication of his own words, but Virginians weren’t buying it — he was drubbed in a 2009 bid for election to the state house of delegates. Reports of a 2004 speech in which he urged Muslims to integrate but resist assimilating into the “evils” of American society were probably not helpful.
Abdelhaleem Ashqar was also on the Dar al-Hijra board, but he is now serving an eleven-year prison sentence for obstruction and contempt after impeding a federal investigation of Hamas’s American support system. Dar al-Hijrah’s original president was Samir Salah, whose rèsumè includes (a) setting up Bank al-Taqwa in Lugano, known as a money exchange for al-Qaeda, and (b) partnering with Osama bin Laden’s nephew, Abdullah, to establish the Taiba International Aid Association, yet another Islamic “charity” that has been shut down by the government for bankrolling terrorism.
A “WHO’S WHO” OF THE JIHAD
Getting Dar al-Hijra built cost chump change compared with the anticipated $100 million Ground Zero mosque. It ran around $6 million. The Saudis have been underwriting the Brotherhood’s dawa efforts for decades. And thanks to Sperry’s exacting work, we know about Dar al-Hijra what we haven’t been permitted to find out about the Ground Zero mosque: how it was financed. Turns out that it followed the standard Saudi/Brotherhood pattern.
The Falls Church land on which the complex sits was purchased in the 1980s by the North American Islamic Trust. NAIT was established by the Saudis and the Brotherhood in 1973 for just this purpose. In 2003, the Center for Security Policy’s J. Michael Waller told a Senate committee that NAIT owns or controls the physical assets of about three-fourths of American mosques — and its partner organization, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), controls their ideological content. Both ISNA and NAIT were identified as unindicted co-conspirators in the Hamas-financing case. As I mentioned in last week’s column, ISNA was behind the republication of imam Faisal Rauf’s Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble.
Dar al-Hijra has sported imams that make Johari Abdul-Malik look downright tame. Most infamous was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda terrorist now believed to be holed up in Yemen. From there, Awlaki is said to have inspired Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas bomber who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit. But that’s just a footnote. While imam at Dar al-Hijra, Awlaki ministered to at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. And it was at Dar al-Hijra that he met U.S. army officer Nidal Hassan. Though Awlaki beat it out of town ahead of the 9/11 investigation, he kept up his correspondence with Major Hassan, who, at Fort Hood in 2009, murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers while screaming “Allahu Akbar!”
Other Dar al-Hijra imams have included Mohammed al-Hanooti, a former director of the aforementioned Islamic Association of Palestine. He was the mosque’s prayer leader in the troubled mid-Nineties period after Marzook’s deportation. Hanooti prepared for the Dar al-Hijrah gig with a stint running another Muslim community “axis,” the Islamic Center of Jersey City. There he frequently hosted the Blind Sheikh (Omar Abdel Rahman, whose cell bombed the World Trade Center in 1993). According to the FBI, he also raised millions of dollars for Hamas. Yet, Sperry reports, the State Department often asks Hanooti to be one of its messengers to the Muslim world. It sponsors his speeches, which are featured overseas by the Voice of America network.
And then there’s Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, a Sudanese member of the Muslim Brotherhood who served as Dar al-Hijra’s imam from 2003 until mid-2005. In his spare time, he was the Baltimore regional director of the Islamic American Relief Agency . . . until 2004, when the Treasury Department designated IARA a global terrorist group, because it had “provided direct financial support” to Osama bin Laden. El-Sheikh was a founder of the Muslim American Society. Shaker Elsayed, who has served as Dar al-Hijra imam in more recent times, also ran the Muslim American Society for several years.
With so motley a crew of founders, backers, and prayer leaders, it is no wonder that Dar al-Hijrah’s worshippers include a “Who’s Who” of the jihad. Marzook was a fixture, as was Major Hassan for a time. And besides the mosque’s being attended by 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour, the center’s phone number was found in the Hamburg apartment shared by the 9/11 ringleaders Mohamed Atta and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Other congregants have included Abdurrahman Alamoudi, a terrorist financier who is now serving a 23-year prison term. Before his various shenanigans caught up with him, Alamoudi — a public supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah — was a U.S. government Islamic-affairs adviser and vetted chaplains for service in our armed forces. Another notable Dar al-Hijra attendee was Omar Abu Ali, the valedictorian of the Class of 1999 at the Islamic Saudi Academy in northern Virginia. He is now better known for his post-graduate work: joining al-Qaeda, plotting mass-murder attacks against the United States, and conspiring to murder Pres. George W. Bush — for which he is now serving a life sentence.
ONE PIECE AT A TIME
Dar al-Hijrah started out as the only mosque in town, so it attracted hundreds of worshippers. Now, after two decades, it draws thousands, overrunning the once-quiet Washington suburb. On Fridays, and especially during Ramadan, the faithful are known to block streets, driveways, and fire hydrants with their parked cars, trampling across neighborhood yards while approaching the mosque on foot. If the true meaning of jihad is to struggle for personal betterment, as apologists like Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan maintain, one wonders why manners would degrade as Muslim numbers increased.
But wait: If jihad is actually about struggling to implement sharia as the necessary precondition to Islamicizing a society, it all makes perfect sense — and it fits the 1991 memo’s design. The overflow parking situation in Falls Church became intolerable, and to ease it somewhat, neighboring churches offered the Islamic center the use of their lots. Predictably, Abdul-Malik accepted this ecumenical gesture as a concession. “If Islam really catches on in the area,” he smirked to Sperry, “maybe the neighborhood churches will come over lock, stock, and barrel, and we can all share our parking lots.”
The Brotherhood is happy to expand its American enclaves one piece at a time. That may be fine with the State Department and Mayor Bloomberg, but most Americans are not likely to agree.
— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.
Anti-Semitism!! Seriously??
On July 15, Ikhwanophobia republished the article titled: “Muslims need to tackle Jewish Islamophobia“, by Khaled Amayrah
Ikhwanophobia offers a simple explanation to the fabricated allegations, regarding the MB and its views of its position regarding Jews.
The famous report published by Steven Brooke and Robert S. Leiken titled “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood” described the MB’s attitude towards Jews
The Muslim Brotherhood explicitly denies that their organization is anti-Semitic.
The former Egyptian MB Chairman Mr. Mohamed Mahdi Akef argues
that there is no conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the
Jews, however he asserted that there are conflicts between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Zionists who, Akef asserted “are not Jews.”
This is the endorsed attitude of the Muslim Brotherhood, which expresses the MB ideology. In all reality the Muslim Brotherhood enjoys affable relations with the Jewish intellectuals and academics.
To scope.eghost.zoneIn fact when the MB contacted prestigious Jewish intellectuals to support it in the struggle against racism and smear casting. We found them extremely co-operative and helpful. Professor Noam Chomsky simply described the site as an interesting project. Professor Norman Finkelstein, was also supportive of the fresh website; ascertaining that he would certainly want to cooperate with the site whenever it was mutually advantageous and convenient. This attitude from professor Finkelstein is a clear indication that the Muslim Brotherhood does not stand against Jews, on the contrary, the MB encourage affiliation and cooperation with the Jews so long as they do not support the racist Israeli-Zionist agenda
Second, One of the most important issues that should be clarified is the stance of Hamas towards Jews and the Jewish faith. The MB believe that Hamas targets the Zionist occupational project, Hamas and as a liberating movement it does not have any prejudices against Jews, their struggle is against the racist Israeli occupation and their massacres committed against Palestinian people throughout 60 years of occupation.
In all reality the Muslim Brotherhood has no relations with the Islamic Resistance movement (Hamas), and is the compiling of imaginative and manipulative individuals.
In fact in 2008, The Palestinian government led by Hamas, presented the Palestinian citizenship to Daniel Barenboim, world renowned Israeli pianist and conductor.
Rather than discussing the Muslim Brotherhood’s attitude against Judaism which is merely hearsay the MB calls for discussing racism by GMBDR and FSM against Muslims?
The latest article titled: “Islam Must be stopped in America” speaks for itself where it reeks of racism and hatred.!
Ikhwanophobia.com confirms that the MB does not promote any anti-western agendas and calls on all to view both sides of the coin in an effort to bridge the gap and eliminate any racist and hate sites which ultimately anger citizens on all levels.
Religion of peace? Yes, peaceful religion.
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Sinclair Lewis (1885 – 1951)
When Noble Prize laureate Sinclair Lewis stated these words little did he know that his words would ring? In all reality history has proven that his quote was some sort of prophecy!!
Now, after about 60 years after Lewis’s death, we are witnessing a new form of fascism trying to storm the American society, announcing itself as a patriotic warrior for security and homeland!!
The Fascism we are discussing does not use weapons however it depends largely on racism against Muslims and Islam which is practiced widely by many influential individuals affecting the American public opinion. A typically racial website called thereligionofpeace.com does not combat terrorism or extremists as alleged but in fact practices animosity to Muslims and Islam.
Although the website attempts to portray itself as rational rejecting all forms of prejudice it has in fact illustrated the complete opposite. Articles published depict Muslims as the enemies and Islam the religion of terrorism
The website controlled by smear casters, mistakenly uses the Islamic sacred texts of the Quran to promote the wrongful ideas they support, by using texts out of context, ultimately changing its meaning.
ROP website also publishes fabricated statistics on the number of terrorism attacks committed by “Muslims” against other religion followers.
The website laces its articles with sarcasm and insinuations playing on the readers emotions where in one instance it posted on its homepage, an article stating that in 2007 Islam and Judaism’s holy holidays overlapped for 10 days asserting that Muslims racked up 397 dead bodies in 94 terror attacks across 10 countries during this time as opposed to the Jews who worked on their 159th Nobel Prize.”
The website portrays to its readers that Muslims loathe Americans since the Americans combat terrorism which symbolizes Islam and now the Muslims will attack Americans. Hence the American citizen who reads that “all Muslims” considers him as an enemy should be killed, won’t wait for his Muslim neighbor to come and kill him. Clearly there is a missing link with true misunderstandings and misgivings
The disagreeable vibes circulating, truly oppose the most basic human rights of freedom of religion, and will ultimately end with crimes committed against Muslims, who are a minority in western countries such as the United States and Britain.
The website fails to assert that each individual has an international and constitutional right to freedom of religion; in fact the very religion they oppose stipulates that a good Muslim should not judge individuals by religion, and Islam is a religion which endorses and advocates peace.
ROP has not only proven that it is aggressive towards western Muslims, the website is also supportive of crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against Palestinians. The website tends to tilt its scales favoring the Israelis it uses double standards in events such as the Israeli military massacre where commandos descended military helicopters boarded the ship and attacked international peace activists, on the Miva Marmara which resulted in 20 deaths and dozens of injuries.
The ROP website shed light on the dead Israelis with no rebuking to the Israelis’ victims both on board and in the Palestinian lands.
In fact the website has demonstrated that it lacks integrity as it continues to distort the truth and aims at constantly tarnishing the image of Muslims and the religion of Islam by posting photos and stories of provoked Muslims without reporting both sides of the story.
This introductory essay is the first of a series that will handle many causes addressed on the ROP website, related to the Islamic centers in the west, in addition to Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood bloc, and many other issues.
Daniel Pipes’ Witch Hunt at a Public School
In September 2007, the Khalil Gibran International Academy, named for the noted Lebanese Christian poet, became the country’s first public school focused on Arabic language and culture.
According to the New York Department of Education (Brooklyn Eagle, 7/30/07) the school was using “the same curriculum packages as other New York City public schools,” and the chancellor of schools emphasized (Christian Science Monitor, 6/1/07) that its curriculum would be subject to departmental monitoring as with any other public school.
In short, according to New York schools chancellor Joel Klein, it was not so different from the 60-plus other dual language schools already operating in New York.
However, months before it opened its doors in Brooklyn, N.Y. the school came under fire from detractors who preemptively accused it of “imbuing pan-Arabism and anti-Zionism, proselytizing for Islam, and promoting Islamist sympathies” (New York Sun, 4/24/07). Charges were led by the New York Sun and its writer Daniel Pipes, a conservative Mideast historian who runs the Middle East Forum and Campus Watch.
Pipes sits on the advisory board of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition (New York Times, 4/28/08), created, according to the coalition’s blog (4/29/08), to end the “‘soft jihad’…infiltrating our schools.” Although “madrassa” is Arabic for “school,” KGIA opponents used it to mean “a religious school” that would “impose a radical Islamic agenda in its classrooms” (CNN, 9/4/07).
Pipes has long argued that “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” (New York Sun, 4/24/07), and fellow Sun writer Alicia Colon wrote (5/1/07) that this “pandering to multiculturalism” must have “delighted Osama bin Laden.” She then called on her readers to “break out the torches and surround City Hall to stop this monstrosity.”
Special abuse was reserved for Debbie Almontaser, the school’s main founder who was also chosen to be its first principal. A prominent member of New York’s Arab-American community, Almontaser earned praise for her work forging interfaith and interethnic alliances (New York Times, 4/28/08), but that history was omitted when right-wing media painted her as “a classic ‘stealth Islamist'” (Weekly Standard, 4/11/08) with “an Islamist/leftist agenda” (Pipe Line News, 4/19/07).
Almontaser was further characterized by Pipes (New York Sun, 4/28/07) as a September 11 apologist in connection to her statement, “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.” Pipes failed to include Almontaser’s following sentence (New York Times, 8/29/07): “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and stolen my religion.”
Attacks on Almontaser intensified after the New York Post reported (8/6/07) that she had “downplayed the significance” of a T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase “Intifada NYC.” The shirt was produced by the group Arab Women Active in Art and Media, a youth media group that shares office space with an organization on whose advisory board Almontaser sits. When asked by the Post about the T-shirts’ use of the word “intifada,” Almontaser says (New York Times, 4/28/08) she responded that she could not comment because neither she nor the school had anything to do with the shirts. The reporter followed up by asking Almontaser about the word itself, and she explained that it literally means a “shaking off.” In an interview with the New York Times (4/28/08), Almontaser said that although she never spoke to the reporter about the T-shirts, she defended the girls in the organization because she believed that the reporter was set on “vilifying innocent teenagers.”
The Post began its article: “Activists with ties to the principal…are hawking T-shirts that glorify Palestinian terror,” and the following day (8/7/07) concluded that “the hijab-wearing principal…has issued a fatwa against the kids of New York.” “Why would this principal defend T-shirts celebrating a Palestinian uprising that has seen suicide bombers killing hundreds and hundreds of innocent Jews?” asked Rich Lowry, guest host on Hannity & Colmes (Fox News Channel, 8/10/07).
In August 2007, as a result of the media onslaught, Almontaser resigned. She has subsequently said that she was forced to do so and is now suing the city of New York. The case is still pending, but in a ruling that denied her request to prevent the Department of Education from hiring a new principal, Judge Jon O. Newman concluded (New York Times, 4/28/08): “This was a situation where she was subject to sanction not for anything she said, not for anything she did, but because a newspaper reporter twisted what she said, and the result of it was negative press for the city and the Board of Ed.”