Islam, Science and Christianity

(Note: I'm cross-posting this from WorldMagBlog)

Popular mythology holds that while Christian Europe was in the so-called "Dark Ages", where intellectual inquiry and human progress was allegedly weighted down under Christian dogma, the Islamic world was flourishing with advancement and learning. But bestselling author Robert Spencer challenges the assumptions underlying this "Golden Age of Islam" narrative, primarily constructed by 19th Century European historical revisionists, in his new book, Religion of Peace?, and in a recent blog post where he notes that virtually all of the scientific and technological achievements following the initial Islamic wars of conquest relied on the Christian and Jewish intellectual capital of the areas they subdued. Spencer concludes:

In sum, there was a time when it was indeed true that Islamic culture was more advanced than that of Europeans, but that superiority corresponds exactly to the period when Muslims were able to draw on and advance the achievements of Byzantine and other civilizations. But when the Muslim overlords had taken what they could from their subject peoples, and the Jewish and Christian communities had been stripped of their material and intellectual wealth and thoroughly subdued, Islam went into a period of intellectual decline from which it has not yet recovered.

Bestselling author Dr. Andrew Bostom also recently addressed another component of the "Golden Age of Islam" myth, that Islamic Spain was a model of religious ecumenism while Christian Europe was simultaneously wracked with inquisitions and intolerance, by examining the writings of the "Second Moses", Jewish medieval philosopher Maimonides, who fled Muslim Spain because of religious persecution there directed against Jews and Christians alike.

Both the Spencer and Bostom articles are well worth reading. I would also note my previous June 2006 post, "The 'Golden Age of Islam' Myth", which covers additional ground on this topic.

An unofficial Fred Thompson campaign ad

Fred Thompson on the GWOT

Yes, I'm now writing for Pajamas Media (watch for my article next Monday), but I'm only posting this because it is a rare look at one of the viable presidential candidates in an extended, unedited setting. No 60 Minutes edits to twist things out of context. Nothing here but unvarnished opinion. Fred's views on the Global War on Terror. Entirely worth 15 minutes of your time.

Welcome back, Columbus Dispatch!

Well, Mike Curtin's crew is back on the prowl and digging for dirt. Someone from the Dispatch appeared this morning from a Google search looking for "Patrick Poole and Curtin". Seriously Mike, don't your people have anything better to do than to do your ego surfing for you?

Ahmadinejad's Apocalyptic Faith

In light of the present visit to the US by Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I would direct readers to an article I wrote more than a year ago at FrontPage, "Ahmadinejad's Apocalyptic Faith". There I wrote about the Hojjatieh brand of Shi'ism that Ahmadinejad follows, which I described as follows:

Most Shiites await the return of the 12th Shiite Imam, Muhammad ibn Hasan, the last direct male descendent of the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, who disappeared in 874AD and is believed to be in an invisible, deathless state of existence, or “occultation”, awaiting his return. Though it is discounted even by the most extremist clerics, a popular belief in Iran holds that the 12th Imam, also called the Mahdi or the sahib-e zaman (“the Ruler of Time”), lives at the bottom of a well in Jamkaran, just outside of Qom. Devotees drop written requests into the well to communicate with the Mahdi. His reappearance will usher in a new era of peace as Islam vanquishes all of its enemies. The Sunnis, who reject the successors of Ali, believe that the Mahdi has yet to be born.

But rooted in the Shiite ideology of martyrdom and violence, the Hojjatieh sect adds messianic and apocalyptic elements to an already volatile theology. They believe that chaos and bloodshed must precede the return of the 12th Imam, called the Mahdi. But unlike the biblical apocalypse, where the return of Jesus is preceded by waves of divinely decreed natural disasters, the summoning of the Mahdi through chaos and violence is wholly in the realm of human action. The Hojjatieh faith puts inordinate stress on the human ability to direct divinely appointed events. By creating the apocalyptic chaos, the Hojjatiehs believe it is entirely in the power of believers to affect the Mahdi’s reappearance, the institution of Islamic government worldwide, and the destruction of all competing faiths.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has clearly indicated that he is a true believer in this faith. It has been reported that he has told confidants that he anticipates the immanent return of the Mahdi. When he previously served as Mayor of Tehran, he advocated for widening the roads to accommodate the Mahdi’s triumphal entry into the city. One of his first acts of office as President was to dedicate approximately $20 million to the restoration and improvement of the mosque at Jamkaran, where the Mahdi is claimed to dwell.

This personal belief directs his official policies as President. He has publicly said, “Our revolution’s main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi. We should define our economic, cultural and political policies on the policy of the Imam Mahdi’s return.”

However, Ahmadinejad’s messianism doesn’t stop with the Mahdi. In fact, he has made it clear that he believes he has personally received a divine appointment to herald the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, tacitly acknowledging his own role in setting aright the problems of the world.

The Hojjatieh sect is so extreme, it was banned by Ayatollah Khomeini (which is saying something). Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor is Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, known affectionately (or not so) by his moniker, "Professor Crocodile". Mesbah-Yazdi has been pushing to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as I noted in another article, "The War Ayatollah".

Understanding the worldview of our enemies (Iranian-made IEDs and EFPs are killing dozens of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan each month) is essential for understanding their intentions. You might also want to visit my friend Timothy Furnish's website, MahdiWatch.org, and read his History News Network article, "What's worse than violent jihadists?" for additional background on the virulent brand of Shi'ism practiced by Ahmadinejad.

Hello Columbus Dispatch visitors!

Over the past few days we've received a number of visits from the good folks at the Columbus Dispatch, who have spent some time riffling through our past blog posts. This was true yet again today. Perhaps their doing opposition research for their good friends at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), so Ahmad Al-Akhras doesn't have to anymore while sitting at his cushy government MORPC job?

If so, they are no doubt looking for the smoking gun that will prove once and for all that I'm some crypto-bigot, because I say such unkind things about their friends at CAIR, who have assured Mike Curtin that they are peaceful and moderate and really don't support Islamic terrorism (except, of course, when they get caught red-handed speculating on the activity of the "Jewish lobby" in town or saying that Palestinian terrorists are "guerrilla groups").

Or maybe it's just that the Dispatch just holds a grudge against me and they want to do another hit piece for their pain. After all, they cleared Hilliard-based terror cleric Salah Sultan in May 2006, only to have him flee the country following my series of FrontPage Magazine reports over the past year that revealed his appearances at overseas rallies praising HAMAS and doing political analysis for the Muslim Brotherhood. My FrontPage report led to Sultan's US citizenship application getting tossed. Ouch! That had to hurt, especially for Dispatch reporter Felix Hoover who "cleared" Sultan. And then there was the LA Times article back in July which disclosed that Sultan was "glorifying holy war" and stirring up Sunni-Shi'a strife in Bahrain. Double ouch! I know what Felix Hoover is thinking: "But he told me he signed a fatwa condeming terrorism?" And then to have me publish pictures of Sultan cavorting with global terror cleric Yousef Al-Qaradawi at a conference in Qatar just a few weeks ago (wait until they see the video!). You wonder how they gather the courage to go to work every morning to do Mike Curtin's bidding.

So here's an open-ended question for the Dispatch: what exactly is it that you want to know? You know how to get ahold of me. Don't be afraid to ask. I won't bite. Promise.

UPDATE (09/06/07): It seems the Dispatch's curiousity for yours truly is growing, as we had visitors from there again today. Do you people have anything better to do? I don't update this blog nearly enough for it to be that interesting.

UPDATE #2 (09/10/07): OK, this is getting a little weird, guys. I really don't update this blog enough to warrant this much attention from the folks at the Dispatch. Haven't you all downloaded all the previous posts already?

Meet my cyber-stalker: Ahmad Al-Akhras

"Stop speaking the truth to power, infidel!"
Our friend, CAIR's Ahmad Al-Akhras, has been busy at his government job at MORPC downloading dozens of our articles from this blog this morning (UPDATE: from ~10am-12n, he apparently went through at least 40 different posts):


He might be upset at my FrontPage article this morning, "Ohio State Profs go 'Truther'," discussing the hate panel he moderated with John Mueller and John Quigley not long ago, co-sponsored by Columbus 9/11 Truth, a 9/11-denial organization which claims that the World Trade Centers were not brought down by two terrorist-controlled planes, but through a secret US government conspiracy. Oh, and his fellow hate-monger and terror apologist, Abukar Arman, was also on the panel.

Or he might be seething that his organization, CAIR, had to file an amicus curiae brief in federal court yesterday complaining that they had been named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation HAMAS terror financing trial. On page 10 of their brief, they specifically cite my FrontPage article, "CAIR Fingered by Feds", as proof of the damage caused by being named unindicted co-conspirator in the case.

Here's a tip, Ahmad: stop supporting terrorist organizations! And get back to work, slacker!

Politically correct curiosities

Isn't it a testament to the toxic social and cultural atmosphere today that at the very moment that CAIR, other Islamist extremists, and their media establishment allies are publicly attacking me for "Islamophobia" (a definition of which only they are allowed to determine and apply, much like Nazis could label someone a "Jew") and for questioning their claims to speak on behalf of the Muslim community in America, I am simultaneously hailed as one of the chief public defenders of the rights of Albanian Muslims in Kosova against the genocidal "Christian" Serbian government? That at the very same time I am denounced for supposedly being an anti-Muslim bigot, I am accused by fringe elements of the conservative movement for being in league with "jihadist murderers" because of my repeated statements in support of the Albanians? Can anyone explain this to me?

Do a quick word search for "Albania" and "Kosovo" on the CAIR website, and see how concerned they are about the pressing issue of Kosovar independence. The truth is that since Albanian Muslims are non-Arabs, CAIR and their Wahhabi masters could care less about Albania or Kosova.

Exactly who are the racists?

UPDATE #1: I guess I have really made the big time now that convicted felon, mail order "reverend", and pathological liar Jim Sutter has now attacked me. Of course, last week he was a credible source for CAIR, because he was attacking Robert Spencer of JihadWatch. No enemies in dhimmitude, CAIR must reason. Sutter even has a website exposing his serial lies.

Update #2: Sutter leaves this threat in the comments section of this post:

Be advised, Mr. Poole, that linking to the forgeries of my cyberstalker leaves you just as liable as her.

Bring it on, felon-man...

What the Columbus Dispatch doesn't want you to hear

Update #1: A review of the Abukar Arman kerfuffle and the Franklin County Commission's pseudo-investigation into his extremist statements can be found at FrontPage today: "Terrorist Sympathizer Tossed from Homeland Security Panel".

If you are looking for additional information on the Abukar Arman kerfuffle reported yesterday by the Columbus Dispatch and the Franklin County Commission's pseudo-investigation into the terror apologist sitting on the Criminal Justice Planning Board that oversees Central Ohio Homeland Security, be sure to visit the Central Ohioans Against Terrorism blog. Plenty of breaking developments there, including reports on the County Commission's stonewalling a Open Records Act request into the Abukar Arman matter while passing the same info to the Dispatch.

CAIR's Catastrophe

What if CAIR launched a jihad and nobody came? That seems to be the case this month, as CAIR's finances continue to plummet. Two weeks ago at the end of June, I observed ("A Bad June for CAIR") that CAIR raised less than one-fourth of their monthly budgeted goal of $250,000 for that month.

This month, however, things appear to have gotten worse. Half-way through July, CAIR has raised less than 1/100th of what they need to make budget (0.969%), bringing in less than $2,500. If last month fundraising had come to a trickle, they have now come to a very, very slow drip. I'm sure being named unindicted co-conspirator in a terror finance trial didn't help last month. Almost makes you sorry for the poor soul responisble for their fundraising. Almost.

A Bad June for CAIR

Update #1: Welcome RoP readers!

As I reported here earlier in the month, "CAIR's Finances Take Hit from Legal Woes", and in a subsequent FrontPage article, "CAIR's Financial Peril", June wasn't looking too good for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on the financial front. The Islamist group began June with anemic fundraising, as indicated by a running tally on the main page of their website, and it just kept getting worse.

Now that we are into July, we can see that CAIR had a disastrous month, in terms of both finances and public relations. With a budgetary goal of $250,000, according to CAIR's own statistics, they raised only $59,666 for the entire month - less than one-quarter (23.8%) of what they needed to make budget. In the period between June 20th and the end of the month, CAIR only raised $5,880 ($53,786 raised by 6/20) and $2,929 in the last week of the month - barely one percent (1.17%) of its monthly goal.

This has been a bad time for CAIR's finances to bottom out:

• Earlier this month, NY Sun reporter Josh Gerstein broke the news ("Islamic Groups Names in HAMAS Funding Case", 06/04/07) that CAIR has been named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in an upcoming HAMAS terrorism financing trial in Texas. (See my follow-up article, "CAIR Fingered by Feds")
• Then the organization received even more bad news following the Washington Times story that CAIR membership had dropped 90% since 9/11 to a staggering membership low of 1,700 for 2006, a story I had previously reported in February ("Numbers Don't Lie") and May ("CAIR by the Numbers") at FrontPage, and in a blog post ("Honey, I've Shrunk the HAMAS Front Group!").

CAIR hasn't taken this double gut-shot lying down, however. Immediately after the Washington Times story broke, CAIR put out a press release accusing the Times of "agenda-driven reporting". Perhaps one of the most comical aspects of this story was that in addition to slamming the Times, CAIR also issued an action alert asking its supporters to become members in response to the article - thereby proving the point made by the Times!

CAIR is also responding to the news of its being named as an unindicted co-conspirator, not by answering the charges, but by attacking their critics. This lash-back is taking the form of a "nationwide Islamophobia discussion", which according to another CAIR press release begins this weekend with a forum at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, FL; continues next week in Dallas, TX; leading up to an event at the National Press Club on Tuesday, July 17th in Washington DC (if I were the Press Club, I would get payment in advance).

According to CAIR, at the Dallas function next weekend, "Panelists will also discuss the government's actions in the case against officials of the closed Texas-based Holy Land Foundation Muslim charity." Hopefully, that will be an event attended by a more skeptical media than CAIR is used to. They have plenty to answer for.

What does all this mean? Will CAIR be able to weather they financial, legal and public relations perfect storm that they are experiencing? Will CAIR's Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood masters bail the group out once again, or will they leave them high and dry now that the Feds are finally on their trail (much as they did the American Muslim Council when it encountered similar travails)? Only time will tell, but CAIR's dismal June doesn't bode well for hopes of a bountiful July. We can only hope.

Hello from Ohiostan!

I will probably need to have someone else start my car in the morning now after my FrontPage article this morning, "Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built", about our local Islamic school, Sunrise Academy, hosting Siraj Wahhaj to keynote two separate school fundraisers. More details at the Central Ohioans Against Terrorism blog, "Sunrise Academy's Fundraising Friends", including a picture of the facility.

Also, a quick shout-out to my friends from the Nixon Center visiting today for the first time in a few weeks! Welcome back! For more information, see this prior post, "Does the Nixon Center Have Anything Better to do?" or my FrontPage article, "Nixon Center's Plumbers Unit".

Putting My Political Science Education to Good Use

As I mentioned in a recent article at The American Thinker, "Lies, Damned Lies, and CAIR's Statistics", one of the benefits (or drawbacks, depending on how you look at it) of getting a degree in Political Science at Ohio State is that as the top quantitative analysis PoliSci program in the country, all PoliSci students were required to take several polling research and data analysis classes.

Well, I put that education to good use once again in another article this morning at The American Thinker, "New Study: Political Islam Correlated to Support for Terrorism", which analyzes attitudes and opinions regarding support for terrorism in fourteen different countries in the Muslim world.

The study in question is "Correlates of Public Support for Terrorism in the Muslim World" by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita of Washington University in St. Louis. Analyzing data from the Pew Research Center, he finds that greater support for the role of Islam in politics (political Islam or Islamism) is correlated directly to the increased support for terrorism:

People who support a strong role for Islam in politics are more likely to also support terrorism. Perhaps more surprisingly, people who perceive Islam to play a large role in the politics of their home country are also more likely to support terrorism. (p. 7)

This study also puts to rest the tired line about how the lack of education, poverty, or political oppression in the Muslim world causes terrorism. Looking at the data, there is virtually no relationship at all with respect to any of these factors and support for terrorism, especially education, where no relationship exists at all.

I suppose I'm starting to see some dividends from all those polling research and political science statistics classes. I would have rather been in political theory, quite honestly.

Welcome Columbus Dispatch readers!

Welcome to everybody visiting who read my letter to the editor today in the Columbus Dispatch, "Letter writer distorted results of terrorism surveys"! The letter I'm responding to by Ahmad Al-Akhras, national vice chairman of the Council on American Islamic Relations and Columbus resident, is here. I have more fully critiqued Al-Akhras in an article earlier this week in The American Thinker, "Lies, Damned Lies, and CAIR's Statistics".

Thanks for stopping by. Feel free to look around. And if you are looking for the Central Ohioans against Terrorism (COAT) blog, go here.

AP Writer Manufactures Lie in Story on Pew Muslim Study

UPDATE: Welcome JihadWatch readers. Thanks to Robert Spencer for the plug.

Earlier this week I had an article published, "Lies, Damned Lies and CAIR's Statistics", in response to a letter to the editor published by Ahmad Al-Akhras, national vice chairman of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), in last Saturday's Columbus Dispatch. My article notes that Al-Akhras substantially misrepresented the findings of a December 2006 survey in order to claim that Americans generally are more prone to endorse attacks against civilians than what was found in the American Muslim population in a recent Pew Research Center study which found that 26 percent of American Muslims age 18-29 would justify suicide bombings.

This evening I was reading an entry by Robert Spencer at JihadWatch responding to an article by Associated Press Religion reporter Eric Gorski, "Young U.S. Muslims Face Mistrust". Spencer notes a number of problems in Gorski's article, which I won't recount here, but the AP article mentions the same study cited by Al-Akhras. Gorski says:

A December 2006 survey by the University of Maryland's Program on International Attitudes found 24 percent of Americans believe "bombings and other attacks intentionally aimed at civilians" are often or sometimes justified. The poll found no significant variance based on age.

His statement on this poll is only two sentences long, but there are several misrepresentations here in addition to one outright lie.

The first problem is that they December 2006 wasn't done by the "University of Maryland's Program on International Attitudes", but the Program on International Policy Attitudes (does the AP have any factcheckers?), which is not part of the U of Maryland at all, but is a joint project between the Center on Policy Attitudes (COPA) and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), University of Maryland. It is an independently-funded organization with loose ties to UofM, but both Al-Akhras and Gorski have stretched PIPA's relationship with the university to try to give it more clout. The poll was not conducted by the university, however, as they claim.

As I noted in my previous article, the question they refer to in the PIPA study (survey questionnaire) does not ask about intentional attacks. The specific question (found on page 17, Q-I23 of the questionnaire) was:

"Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified?"

There is no mention of intentionality in the question itself, but both Al-Akhras and Gorski go out of their way to stress that point.

But the absolutely categorical lie Gorski engages in is when he says, "The poll found no significant variance based on age." But when you look at the PIPA study, the responses are not broken down by age - Gorski conjures this fact completely out of thin air! In fact, the American respondents aren't even broken down by age anywhere in the study or the questionnaire. He has to manufacture it himself.

It's nothing new, of course, for an AP writer to start "making it up", but this manufactured lie is apparently acceptable, because it's victim is the American public. If Gorski had made up some lie about the Pew Study findings on Muslims, he would be without a job today; but when he libels the public at large and that libel passes through the whole AP editorial and factchecking process without a single concern apparently raised, this should raise concerns about the credibility and reliability of the entire Associated Press organization.

Like a dog returning to its vomit, there is a reason why the Islamists and their media establishment apologists keep returning to this PIPA study: they have been successful thus far at twisting and manipulating the poll results to try to divert attention from the shocking findings of the Pew study. And as I stated in my previous article, they have to engage in an equivalence between conventional and internationally recognized warfare (the subject of the PIPA poll) with terrorism (the Pew study asked specifically about suicide bombings) to even try to bring the PIPA study into play. This equivalence between conventional warfare and terrorism is precisely the same that Islamists constantly tell us that they don't make (equating the bombing of factories in Germany during WWII and the HAMAS suicide bombing of Israeli pizza parlors filled with Jewish teenagers).

But not even the Islamists are reading from the same script when it comes to this PIPA study. While Ahmad Al-Akhras of CAIR cites "24 percent of Americans, reported in the Maryland study, who believe these attacks are "often or sometimes justified", Ingrid Mattson, President of the Islamic Society of North America, cites this exact same PIPA study and says:

"And what am I to make of the fact that according to the University of Maryland, 51% of Americans believe that “bombings and other types of attacks against civilians are sometimes justified?"

Citing the exact same poll, CAIR and ISNA come up with two entirely different results for this same question - 24 percent and 51 percent! Can't these clowns get it right? You would think the Islamists would at least collaborate a little more closely so they can tell the same lies. But maybe Mattson thinks it's OK to lie about Americans, because she is Canadian.

Whether it's CAIR, ISNA or the Associated Press, it's all taqiyya to me...

CAIR's Finances Take Hit from Legal Woes

UPDATE (06/10/07): Welcome RoP readers and Lizardoids! Things are getting worse for CAIR. Today the amount received by CAIR reads $17,001. They have raised just 0.068% of their monthly goal, even though they are one-third of the way through the month.
(06/11/07) CAIR reports just $100 in receipts today. Current total - $17,101.

This graphic, which appears on the website of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) today, is a testament to the ongoing financial woes of the propaganda arm of radical Islam in America. One-fifth of the way through the month of June, CAIR is just 0.046% of the way towards their financial monthly goal, which is presumably their monthly budget. Earlier today that amount was just $5,837, which means they received $5,690 in today's mail. Even if CAIR collects $5,700 everyday this month (24 days left), that means they will still end up $101,673 short of their goal by month's end. There are possibly several reasons for CAIR's precipitous financial shortfall.

First, the announcement this week by NY Sun reporter Josh Gerstein ("Islamic Groups Names in HAMAS Funding Case", 06/04/07) that CAIR has been named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in an upcoming HAMAS terrorism financing trial in Texas is certain to hurt the organization's fundraising efforts. CAIR supporters will now be much more reluctant to contribute to an organization that they know will be under greater law enforcement scrutiny for fear of being investigated themselves. This is a rational response (though you shouldn't be supporting a HAMAS front group to begin with).

Secondly, as I've discussed in a FrontPage article just a few weeks ago ("CAIR by the Numbers") and a previous blog entry ("Honey, I've Shrunk the HAMAS Front Group!"), CAIR has been hemorrhaging members for several years. Despite the fact that they still claim to be “the largest Islamic civil rights organization in America”, I estimated based on their 2004 and 2005 IRS Form 990s (the latest information they have made public) that membership had falled from a meager 4,761 in 2004 to a startling 2,615 in 2005 - a one-year drop in membership of 45 percent.

This drop in CAIR membership has been correlated in their actual annual financial receipts. In the FrontPage article I noted:

Also seen in the 2004 and 2005 IRS Form 990s is that direct contributions to the organization (line 1) also saw a sharp decline, dropping from $2,166,270 in 2004 to $1,667,057 in 2005, losing almost one-quarter (23 percent) of their contributions from the previous year.

This 23 percent drop in contributions to CAIR was despite the fact that they had more than doubled their fundraising expenses from $262,914 in 2004 to $535,555 in 2005 (a $272,641 increase). What's the saying about throwing good money after bad?

CAIR's role as spokesman for extremist Islam is no suprise, of course, but we're glad that the Feds have finally caught up with the rest of us who already knew that. But it certainly doesn't bode well for CAIR that their own supporters have caught on as well and are abandoning them in en masse.

Maybe in no short time we will be able to spot CAIR spokesman Ibrahim "Douggie" Hooper walking down K Street in Washington DC with a sign that says, "Will shill for Islamic terrorism for food"? Might be hard to fit on a sandwich board, though.

Honey, I've Shrunk the HAMAS Front Group!

UPDATE: Thanks to American Thinker and LGF for the plugs today!

Welcome to everybody joining us today from my article at FrontPage this morning, "CAIR by the Numbers", which also could have been titled, "The Incredible Shrinking CAIR". If you're here for the first time, be sure to check out the blog for Central Ohioans Against Terrorism (COAT).

The article today has a number of tasty statistical tid-bits about our favorite Islamist organization, but here's the jist:

But their new 2006 Annual Report and their recently posted 2005 IRS Form 990 shows that CAIR continues to hemorrhage members. Whereas my estimates for 2004 showed that based on their membership receipts in that period they had approximately 4,761 dues-paying members, in 2005 their membership plummeted dramatically to an estimated 2,615. This puts CAIR on the same comparative membership level as the American Indian Kaw Nation in Kansas, the Cleveland Section of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, the Society for News Design, the University of Texas Longhorn Alumni Band, and the South Dakota chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), none of whom are consulted near as frequently by Beltway politicians or sought after for comment by the media establishment as CAIR.

The steep decline in CAIR membership is directly correlated in membership receipts (line 3 of the Form 990), which dropped off from $119,029 in 2004 to $65,377 – a decrease of $53,652, or almost half (45 percent) of the previous year’s membership revenues. If this trend continues at the same pace, their 2006 Form 990 numbers will show $29,419 in membership revenues, representing only 1,177 members, roughly comparable to the membership of the Genealogical Society of Rockingham County, Virginia and the Garden Club of Tacoma, Washington – neither of which has a Washington DC lobbying office.

In a previous post, "CAIR and all that", I linked to some of my previous articles on CAIR, but here's an updated list of CAIR-related pieces:

CAIR’s Grievance Theater, the Flying Imams and 9/11 (04/18/07) Did a previous CAIR lawsuit indirectly aid the 9/11 terrorists?

CAIR’s Blood Money (03/13/07) CAIR-OH hosts an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 WTC Bombing as its annual fundraiser banquest keynote speaker.

Numbers Don’t Lie (02/12/07) Reality doesn't quite measure up to CAIR's propaganda.

CAIR Betting on Democrats (10/27/06) Islamists put their money where their ideology is.

Agence France Presse Pushes CAIR's Fake Hate Crime Numbers (09/04/06)

CAIR, Assault and Videotape? (08/08/06) CAIR's version of "free speech".

Kafir-phobia: Americans as Violent Anti-Muslim Bigots (08/31/06) CAIR indulges in the very bigotry they attribute to others.

Thanks for stopping by!

Going Global on the Muslim Brotherhood

Last week, my ongoing debate with Nixon Center "scholars" Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke on the Muslim Brotherhood was noticed by the Italian daily, Il Foglio, in reporter Guilio Meotti's 3-part series examining in detail Leiken and Brooke's claims of a "Moderate Muslim Brotherhood".

My translation of the Il Foglio series appears today at FrontPage, "Going Global on the Muslim Brotherhood". I am cited in the third article, where Meotti refers to my extensive critique of Leiken and Brooke's thesis, "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 1" [Part 2] [Part 3]:

The American analyst Patrick Poole remembers that "in 2004, when the Kuwaiti authorities attacked the radicals, the government discovered that the source of the jihadist preaching were the imams associated with the Brotherhood".

The series is well worth the read, notwithstanding my rather lumpy translation.

Albanians and Anti-Jihad Bigotry

UPDATE (05/10/07): Welcome to everyone visiting today from Our Man in Tirana blog! And thanks to Our Man for the plug. New details have emerged that at least three of the four Albanians have been in the US for 23 years (courtesy Fox News) and were not part of the refugee community that came to Fort Dix in 1999. That notwithstanding, the bigotry continues.

A few weeks ago when I had my article published at The American Thinker, "Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century," one letter to the editor that AT received likened me to a Nazi sympathizer for having a kind word to say about the Albanian people. That article raised the issue of Albania's struggles with radical Islam, which you would think the anti-jihad crowd would have appreciated.

But my article today, "Kosova and Anti-Jihad Bigotry", has absolutely brought out the worst. An email I just received called me "an angry apologist for jihadist murderers". This was from a well-known anti-Jihad writer, who had previously agreed with the sentiments expressed that I was a Nazi sympathizer. The jist of his position would be: "Albanian Muslims bad, Serbian Christians good; Albanians jihadist murderers, Serbians innocent victims." But as with all things in the Balkans, things just aren't that simple. If anything, at least I'm not an apologist for Serbian genocide.

EXHIBIT A for the thinly-veiled racism that bubbles to the surface whenever the issue of the Albanians arises is Julia Gorin's leading article today at FrontPage Magazine (yes, a publication I regularly write for), "Balkan Muslim Gratitude". Her point is to condemn the entire Kosova Albanian refugee community for the arrest yesterday of six men, four of whom are Albanian, for plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. EXHIBIT B would be the reader comments. EXHIBIT C would be Srdja Trifkovic at Chronicles, "Kosova Blowback Reaches America", where he compares Kosovar refugees to Al-Qaeda.

Gorin charges that this is "Balkan blowback" for NATO having intervened in the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosova that drove hundreds of thousands of Albanian out of their own country. Notwithstanding that we have had thousands of US troops stationed in Kosova for almost a decade, not a single combat-related fatality has been recorded. In fact, the Albanians are perhaps the most pro-US group in Europe, and Albanian troops have fought alongside US troops in Afghanistan. The NATO mission in Kosova very well may be the most successful international peacekeeping operation in modern history. Does this sound like the Albanians are all raging jihadists, bloodthirsty to kill American soldiers?

Even while writing this post I have received emails that I would not dare post for their vulgarity, openly racist, and religiously bigoted sentiments. As I say in my article, if these individuals would just substitute the word "Jew" for "Albanian", I believe many of them would be ashamed at the malignant spirit that is driving them. Unfortunately, some of them still wouldn't be ashamed. It seems I have struck a wound deeply into the heart of the anti-jihad movment. Those, like me, who are concerned about the opposition to global jihad would do well to take note.

Debunking Muslim Brotherhood Myths

In an article today at The American Thinker, "The US and the Muslim Brotherhood", I take aim at one of the cardinal myths invoked by the Brotherhood's Western apologists in defense of their claims of a "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood. Here's a quick summary:

In the current debate on the Muslim Brotherhood, the group's Western apologists claim that the jihadist ideology of their leading thinker, Sayyid Qutb, was discarded in the late 1960s and 1970s with the publication of Hassan al-Hudaybi's "Preachers, Not Judges". But recent scholarship demonstrates Hudaybi didn't write the book, promote it, or even agree with it.

That's right. The main piece of evidence used the Muslim Brotherhood's defenders (the Nixon Center, James Traub's recent piece in the New York Times Magazine, etc.) is fabricated whole-cloth.

Perhaps the top scholar on this subject is Barbara Zollner, Director of Islamic Studies at Birbeck College, University of London. Not only is the book the topic of her PhD dissertation, but she has a volume on the subject, The Muslim Brotherhood: Hasan al-Hudaybi and Ideology, which is due to be published by Rutledge early next year.

At a conference held at Georgetown University in March on the theme of "Islamist Politics: Contemporary Trajectories in the Arab World," Zollner delivered a brief synopsis of her extensive research on the subject, "Du'at la Qudat: Notes on the Authorship, Purpose, and Relevance of a Text Purporting a Moderate Theology". During her lecture (available in audio here) she challenged the popular myth still advanced by the Muslim Brotherhood's Western apologists:

There are a number of writers who argue that Du'at la Qudat, when it was published in the 1970s, to be exact in 1977, that it is an evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood's turn away from radical thinking, and that it evidences a shift of the Muslim Brotherhood's stance towards a centrist Islamist ideology...What I want to say today are two things. Overall my argument that Preachers, Not Judges was not written by Hassan al-Hudaybi, and secondly, it is not written as a response to Sayyid Qutb.

Utilizing my recent research on the topic, journalist and terrorism finance expert Doug Farah blogged yesterday on "The Amazing Deception in the Muslim Brotherhood's Charm Offensive". In the comments section of Farah's post, however, appeared Ibrahim El Houdaiby, the great-granson of Hassan al-Hudaybi, invoking family folklore to rebut the overwhelming consensus of scholars on this subject, but not providing any substantive evidence in support of his claims. The strange thing is that since the revelations first appeared in 1995 about the true origins of "Preachers, Not Judges", and the testimony of others inside and outside the Brotherhood, this new information (that Hudaybi had no role in the creation of the book) has gone unchallenged until now.

This raises a lot of questions in the ongoing debate over the Muslim Brotherhood. Here's my conclusion:

These evidences raise some important questions in the current debate in the West over the Muslim Brotherhood: is it the case that the journalists and Beltway wonks appealing to Preachers, Not Judges as proof of a "reformed" Brotherhood are simply ignorant of most of the scholarship over the past decade on this topic, or have they determined to bury this evidence with their silence in the hope that it will be ignored? If the former, we have cause to question their credibility as self-appointed experts on the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, and we also have to acknowledge their gullibility in accepting unquestioned the propaganda put out by the group; if the latter, their pretended objectivity is little more than the component of the official duplicity that characterizes the Muslim Brotherhood's long-standing operational methodology. Only they can tell us which it is.

I'm not holding my breath for a response.

Does the Nixon Center Have Anything Better To Do?

UPDATE (05/03/07): For more, see my article in today's edition of FrontPage Magazine, "Nixon Center's Plumbers Unit". If you're visiting from the link in that article, be sure to read this post from earlier this week.

Earlier this week I observed that someone from the Nixon Center had paid me a visit to download virtually all of the blog posts here at Existential Space. Well, this afternoon we had several different people from the Nixon Center riffling through my blog archives (opposition research interns?), this time downloading even more blog entries - apparently the ones they missed earlier in the week:

I notice that they all were visiting at the same time and are coming through Google searches targeting my name. Yet even more evidence that they're attempting to dig up dirt to attack me with rather than face the prospect of having to respond to the massive amount of evidence I cited against their preposterous "Moderate Muslim Brotherhood" thesis.

A note to the folks at the Nixon Center:

First, do you guys have anything better to do, like lobbying to get al-Qaeda taken off the Specially Designated Global Terrorist list?

Secondly, if you're so eager to find my skeletons, just email me! I'll be glad to tell you where they are! But that doesn't change the fact that your rehabilitation of the Muslim Brotherhood is factually bankrupt.

Nixon Center's Plumber's Unit?

I noted with great interest when looking at my blog stats this evening that someone from the Nixon Center showed up today to download most of my blog posts here at Existential Space (they downloaded ~120 of my 145 posts):


You might recall that over the past few weeks I've been having a bit of a debate with Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center following the publication of their article in the last issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood", where they claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood, which has spawned virtually every single terrorist organization in the world, had "rejected jihad" and "embraced democracy".

Startled by those outrageous claims, I responded at FrontPage with a critique, "Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood", (blogged on it here) where I remarked:

As the worldwide jihad has grown in intensity in recent years, the Brotherhood’s supporters in the US are trying to capitalize on the upward trend of Islamic radicalization to paint the organization as “moderate” on this shifting scale. This is precisely the methodology employed by Leiken and Brooke, who attempt the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables of the Muslim Brotherhood’s long involvement in terrorist activity through misrepresentation and outright fabrication.

A few weeks later, Leiken and Brooke attempted to respond to my critique, "A Response to Patrick Poole's 'Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood'", engaging in a shameless attempt at doublespeak by claiming that there was some kind of distinction to be made between the Brotherhood's support for terrorism in the name of "defensive jihad" against innocent Israeli civilians and American troops serving in the Middle East and the "global jihad" against "Jews and Crusaders" proclaimed by al-Qaeda.

The Muslim Brotherhood so enthusiatically welcomes Leiken and Brooke's reponse to me that they reprinted it on their English-language website.

What they didn't expect, however, was less than a week later I would begin a devastating 3-part rejoinder to their demogoguery, "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 1" [Part 2] [Part 3] (see my blog entry, "A Rejoinder to the Muslim Brotherhood Lackeys")

Once again, Leiken and Brooke rely on evasion, duplicity and outright lies (I’ll discuss one glaring example of this latter tactic in relation to statements they made regarding the Brotherhood’s Jordanian affiliate) – methods not dissimilar to those used by the Muslim Brotherhood itself – to avoid answering the hard questions posed not just by myself, but by analysts from all across the political spectrum, about the organization’s deep and long-time connections to terrorism, their supposed disavowal of violence, and the genuineness of their claims to be favorably inclined towards democratic activity.

Since that time, I've been receiving regular visits from the Nixon Center to this blog, but they either haven't found the courage or the time to respond.

So what do I make of their new-found interest in my writings? It seems rather than respond to the substance of my arguments (my rejoinder came out to a full 54 pages and cited 50+ scholarly papers, government reports and journalistic works contradicting their claims) they are planning a full-frontal ad hominem attack - the last refuge of scoundrels left without any substance to their arguments.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the Nixon Center intern that they are probably forcing to go through all of these blog posts searching for something they can twist out of context and attack me with. but I hope they don't forget to include in their literature review some of my previous work (most of which I link to in the sidebar), such as my translation of Sixteenth Century Reformation-era political works, my previous public policy reports, the articles I've done for other publications (WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, etc.), or my worldview essay series for Christianity & Society.

Who knows? While they are already on ideological lockdown on the issue of the Muslim Brotherhood, they might nonetheless (or at least the Nixon Center intern) might learn a few things.

UPDATE (05/02/07): Welcome again to everyone joining us today from the Nixon Center!

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

While it is easy to get me to speak endlessly on any topic, if there's one topic that's near and dear to my heart it is anything having to do with my travels to Albania. I get teary just thinking about it. I should qualify at the outset that I'm not Albanian; in fact, I would be reminded of that fact anytime I walked down the streets of Tirana, at 6'3" towering over virtually every Albanian male. But in my travels there, I was the grateful recipient of the overwhelming hospitality of the Albanian people, which has made me a friend of the country ever since.

So I was pleased earlier this week when I submitted an article to The American Thinker reflecting on the changes that are occurring, and have occurred, since my first visit there in March 1994 - just a few years after the country emerged from one of the most oppressive Communist regimes ever. During those dark years, Albania was officially atheistic. After Communism, religious struggle was unheard of; today, that is no longer the case, as I discuss in my American Thinker article published this morning, "Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century".

Prompted by a recent Washington Post article by Mary Jordan, "Albanians Discover God, If Not Old-Time Religion", in my article I discuss the growing conflict between Christians and Muslims in the country, caused by the exponential growth of Saudi Wahhabi-backed mosques all over the country. As I mention, I witnessed this phenomena first-hand.

Thus, not even two decades after emerging from Communist atheistic darkness, Albania is right in the middle of the current conflict between Islam and the rest of the world. As one of the areas historically straddling the divide between East and West, and a former battleground between Christian Europe and Islamic imperialism, Albania is one of the most important areas to watch to guage how this newest battle in the ancient conflict is going. I conclude:

Once more, Albania faces extraordinary odds. Yet it might be that the country's survival over decades of brutal atheism may be the key to preserving its hard-won freedoms. The developing story of Albania and the perils of the 21st Century is very much our own. Paying attention to their story, their failures and successes, along with their long history in this battle, may be the lessons we must eventually learn to save ourselves in the ideological and religious long-war that lies ahead.

Read the whole article! And here's a picture of me at the tender age of 25 somewhere in middle of nowhere Southern Albania.

Central Ohioans Against Terrorism New Blog!

To keep up on the many terrorism-related news and events in the Columbus area, be sure to add a bookmark to the new blog for Central Ohioans Against Terrorism! Two new posts discuss the Al-Qaeda problem in Columbus and the establishment media's silence on it.

A Rejoinder to the Muslim Brotherhood Lackeys

Over at FrontPage Magazine today is Part 1 of my rejoinder to Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke of the Nixon Center, "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood" [Part 2] [Part 3]. This is in response to their attack last week, "A Response to Patrick Poole's 'Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood'".

There are four areas I address in this segment of my rejoinder:

1) The distinction they attempt to draw between terrorism committed for the sake of "defensive jihad" and "global jihad". According to Leiken and Brooke, the former justifies terrorism against Israel and the US in Iraq by groups like HAMAS and Iraqi insurgents, while the "war against Zionists and Crusaders" is being waged by al-Qaeda, etc. They are forced to make this meaningless distinction because the Muslim Brotherhood enthusiastically endorses and supports HAMAS, and Brotherhood clerics have issued fatwas permitting attacks against US soldiers. I argue this is a distinction without a difference, as the Brotherhood has not abandoned violence, which directly contradicts their claim of a "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood.

2) They claim that in the late 1960s, the Muslim Brotherhood rejected the jihadist doctrine of Sayyid Qutb, and adopted more peaceful, non-violent ideology. They point to Hasan al-Hudaybi's book, Preachers, Not Judges, as proof of this shift. But as I document, not only did Hudaybi pen that volume while he was in prison, when he first heard of Qutb's book, Signposts, he believed that it represented the "future of our organization". I also note that Hudaybi's book, which Leiken and Brooke claim is the key piece of evidence in the Muslim Brotherhood's ideological shift and critical for understanding the organization's strategy today, has not been reprinted in Egypt for almost 30 years, and has not been reprinted anywhere since 1985, while Qutb's Signposts is perhaps the best-selling Arabic-language book of the past half-century.

3) The pair equate their interpretation of "defensive jihad" with the Christian doctrine of "just war", though the latter has never permitted terrorism against innocents. In the end, whether it is "defensive jihad" or "global jihad", it is all terrorism and violence; and since the Brotherhood preaches both, there is little room to pronounce them "moderate".

4) In their original Foreign Affairs article, and in their response last week, Leiken and Brooke make much ado about alleged differences between the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. They point to a statement last year where Ayman al-Zawahiri denounced the Muslim Brotherhood for participating in Egypt's parliamentary elections, where they won 20 percent of the seats. But we find that Zawahiri's position is unique amongst al-Qaeda, and the two organizations actually drew closer last summer during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. And al-Qaeda actively operates in the Palestinian Authority with the full knowledge and support of HAMAS, the Brotherhood's Palestinian affiliate and terrorist organization. Thus, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are much closer than they would like us to believe.

Thanks to Doug Farah and Alyssa Lappen for their respective posts at Counterterrorism Blog ("The Islamist Charm Offensive") and The American Thinker ("The Fount of Modern Terror").

UPDATE: "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 2" is now online. Here's my summary statement:

"Today I turn my attention to several national affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East – the Palestinian terrorist organization HAMAS, the pro-HAMAS Islamic Action Front (IAF) in Jordan, the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM) in Kuwait, and the genocidal National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Sudan. The activity of these respective Brotherhood affiliates, and their ties to the main Muslim Brotherhood group in Egypt, severely undercuts Leiken and Brooke’s assertion of a “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood."

UPDATE #2: "Showdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, Part 3 (Conclusion)" is now up. Here's a summary:

1) The very un-moderate statements of the so-called “moderates” they identify within the Muslim Brotherhood;

2) I take note that many of the reformists within the Brotherhood, many of whom served in the organization’s leadership, left a long time ago (1996) to form the Al-Wasat (“Center”) Party, frustrated by the radicalization and ideological lockdown within the Brotherhood;

3) I respond to their accusation that US foreign policy is responsible for Islamic radicalization in the Middle East;

4) I document my previous claim that the Brotherhood has engaged in vote rigging and rampant financial fraud in their administration of the professional syndicates in Egypt, as well as observing that the sole piece of evidence they cited in their response on this point was subject to some suspicious editing on their part;

5) I directly challenge their claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has not been implicated in the violent and fatal attacks against the Coptic community in Egypt by citing a report published by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in addition to reports issued by the Coptic community and articles in the Egyptian press;

6) I revisit the events surrounding the military demonstration by Muslim Brotherhood youth cadres at Al-Azhar University this past December, which prompted the current government crackdown on the organization, as evidence that
the intentions of the Brotherhood are not entirely peaceful;

7) I observe that their characterization of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in France, the UOIF, as a “moderate” organization is directly contradicted by recent studies published by their own organization, the Nixon Center, and that most careful researchers have concluded that France’s policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood has been a catastrophic failure and fueled Islamic radicalization – the same policy Leiken and Brooke demand the U.S. implement.

On the basis on the extensive evidence I have provided throughout this report, I conclude that when it comes to anything challenging the carefully manicured image of the Muslim Brotherhood crafted by Leiken and Brooke, they resort to the old maxim: see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil. Other contradicting evidence is steadfastly ignored. In the event that fails, their policy has been: attack the critic. This is hardly the way to determine US foreign policy, but admittedly this is how business is conducted in the think tanks and policy shops of the Beltway intelligentsia.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Lackeys Strike Back!

A few weeks ago I had an article published at FrontPage, "Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood" (blogged on it here), which critiqued an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs by Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood". Well, this morning the pair launch a counter-strike, "A Response to Patrick Poole's 'Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood'".

Having done just a quick read-through, it seems that Leiken and Brooke are determined continue their policy of outrageous falsehoods and outright duplicty to get us to "ignore the man behind the curtain" regarding the MB.

Here are just a few quick thoughts:

• Yet again, any evidence that flatly contradicts their argument about the Muslim Brotherhood's "moderation" is either ignored or immediately discounted and quickly explained away. Anyone within the Brotherhood that has said or done something that betrays something other than "moderation" -- even if it is the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, the top ranking officer of the organization -- is attributed to "hard-line" and "controversial" figures, and out-of-step with the supposed majority "reformist" elements of the MB. And to make sure they cover all their bases, I have "ripped everything out of context".


• They ignore the analysis I gave of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's 2004 Reform Initiative, where the Brotherhood outlined their vision of "democracy" and detailed their plans for an Islamic state governed by shari'a, where non-Muslims will be prohibited from holding public office with any substantive authority. But remember, they're moderate!


• They ignore as well the role that the Muslim Brotherhood's extensive financial networks have played in financing virtually every Islamic terrorist organization in the world, including Al-Qaeda (putting the lie to their repeated claims that the MB rejects Al-Qaeda's "global" jihad). Much like the monster under the bed, if you ignore it, it will go away.


• Once again HAMAS, the terrorist organization that is the Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, is virtually non-existent in their analysis (two paragraphs of their response). And they explain, since HAMAS is only killing Jews in Israel, instead of Americans (even though they do kill Jewish Americans every now and then, which they apparently expect us to forgive and forget), all is well. And they assure us that the relationship between the Palestinian and Egyptian branches are "more strained than Poole believes" (and they make sufficiently clear that they are also experts about what I believe).


• They quibble over the definition of "rejecting jihad" and "rejecting global jihad", which when you're getting your head cut off, or your children are being blown to bits in the market square, makes all the difference in the world.


• They completely fabricate that I believe that the Egyptian government is only cracking down on Muslim extremists, and that I am ignoring the plight of bloggers, journalists, etc. under the Mubarak regime. Where exactly did they get this?


• They accuse me of manufacturing claims that the Brotherhood incites violence against the Coptic community, which I'm sure that the Copts will be glad to hear that it's all just a figment of my imagination!

This "response" by Leiken and Brooke is as flatly dishonest as the response they recently offered to Douglas Farah and other critics of their Foreign Affairs article (Farah offers a detailed response at his blog) two weeks ago.

And I would direct your attention to a must-read entry yesterday at Counterterrorism Blog by Bill West ("Some US Diplomats & Politicians Think MB = “Moderate” Brotherhood - They Should Think Twice") taking note of an Adnkronos International (AKI) report that HAMAS has now opened up operations against the US in Iraq as "Iraqi HAMAS". I'm sure that Leiken and Brooke will remind us next how strained the relations are between the moderates and the new Iraqi HAMAS branch. Needless to say, a more detailed rejoinder to their response will be forthcoming.

Finally, let me also direct you to my headline article today at FrontPage on "Mortgage Fraud Funding Jihad".

UPDATE: Following up on a point I made above, the picture below taken in 2005 shows a crowd of the Muslim Brotherhood faithful demonstrating their friendship to the Copts with rocks, bottles, sticks and machetes. With friends like these...

The Quranic Concept of Power

I've previously written on Pakistani General S.K. Malik's critically important work, The Quranic Concept of War. I've gone so far as to post this very difficult to find work online in its entirety a few months ago. This basic work is essential for understanding the Islamic way of war and its religious justification (the doctrine of jihad).

Now I'm glad to make available online Malik's expanded treatise on military strategy, The Quranic Concept of Power. This hefty volume (444p.) expands on the theme of his previous work (155p.), and is even more scarce than the Concept of War. Only 500 copies were printed by the publisher in Pakistan. Hopefully, we can soon have Malik's study of the Muslim general, Khalid bin Walid, online.

Several inquirers have asked me: why are we making these works available? Apart from the fact that we are presently engaged in a war against Islamic terrorism (you might have heard something about it), the study of the Islamic doctrine of war has long been neglected by our military. One observer recently had this to say:

As late as early 2006, the senior Service colleges of the Department of Defense had not incorporated into their curriculum a systematic study of Mohammad as a military or political leader. As a consequence, we still do not have an in-depth understanding of the war fighting doctrine laid down by Mohammad, how it might be applied today by an increasing number of Islamic groups, or how it might be countered. William Gawthrop, "The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law," The Vanguard: Journal of the Military Intelligence Corps Association 11:4 (Fall 2006), p. 10 (pp. 9-14)

That is not encouraging news. But one reason why this is such a neglected area of study can be attributed to the difficulty in finding many original sources in English. Add to this the difficulty in getting ahold of a copy of either of these volumes by Malik (the Concept of War I purchased from a bookstore in India; the Concept of Power an associate had to obtain through inter-library loan from one of the few US libraries that owns a copy), and anyone looking to engage in serious study of the topic will face significant obstacles. But by making these volumes available online, we hope to provoke further study in this area.

To that end, I have also uploaded some additional resources. The first is a radio interview with my friend and colleague LTC Joe Myers, who spoke on the importance of The Quranic Concept of War on The Right Balance program. That audio file (mp3) can be downloaded here. LTC Myers' review article of that same title was in the previous issue of Parameters, the Army War College Quarterly [html] [pdf], and is essential reading. And for convenience sake, William Gawthrop's excellent article cited above, "The Sources and Patterns of Terrorism in Islamic Law", can be downloaded from our website as well.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Democracy

Earlier this week FrontPage published my article, “Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood,” where I challenged the claims made by Nixon Center policy fellows Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke that characterize the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as “rejecting jihad” and “embracing democracy”. Leiken and Brooke initially made their argument in the current issue of Foreign Affairs in their article, “The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood”. Late last week they lashed out at their critics (without responding to the criticism) in another article, “Strategic Thinking about the Muslim Brotherhood”.

What makes the Leiken/Brooke articles so dangerous, apart from the fact that they were featured in a publication of the influential Council on Foreign Relations and have the endorsement of the Nixon Center, is that they are so fundamentally dishonest. The pair attempts to make their case by intentionally excluding the overwhelming evidence that contradicts their most basic assertions. As I mentioned in my previous article, they contend that the Muslim Brotherhood has “rejected jihad”, and yet their article of 15 pages only once makes mention of the Brotherhood’s Palestinian affiliate, the terrorist group HAMAS. And in that one mention, they never indicate any organizational connection whatsoever between HAMAS and the Brotherhood.

Then there is the Brotherhood’s international financial network of banks, especially the Al-Taqwa Bank led by the Brotherhood’s “foreign minister” Yousef Nada, which have served as the ATM for virtually every Islamic terrorist group in the world – a point made earlier this week by terrorist finance expert Douglas Farah, “The Ongoing Debate over the Muslim Brotherhood”. As recently as October 2000, Al-Taqwa even maintained an open revolving line of credit for Al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations, which prompted US Treasury authorities to designate it as a terrorist financing operation just weeks after 9/11 (among other reasons).

In a separate post, Farah expands on a point I raised in my own article, that we have a real-world working example of the kind of government the Muslim Brotherhood envisions in the genocidal National Islamic Front (NIF) regime of Sudan (Note: in my previous article, I mis-identified the NIF as the Islamic Salvation Front). The NIF came to power in 1989 in a military-backed coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government. The Bashir/Turabi NIF Brotherhood regime is responsible for millions of Christians and animists killed and starved in the South of the country during their tenure. And then there is the present crisis in Darfur, where the Arab Muslims of Khartoum are waging jihad against the non-Arab Muslims in the West, where more than 200,000 have been killed and many more displaced. Thus, the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan is responsible for the greatest acts of genocide seen since the Holocaust. We should also recall that the Brotherhood regime in Khartoum gave Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda shelter after bin Laden’s Saudi Arabian citizenship was revoked.

For the purposes of the current discussion, it’s important to note that none of these facts about the involvement of the Muslim Brotherhood in ideological and financial support of terrorism are really under dispute, nor are the connections of the larger organization to HAMAS and the NIF regime in Sudan.

Then we turn to the issue of the Brotherhood’s “embrace of democracy”. The Brotherhood had an opportunity this week to demonstrate their commitment to democracy in Egypt, where they hold 88 seats in Parliament (about one-fifth of the total), in a constitutional referendum. The Muslim Brotherhood boycotted the vote, however, claiming that the amendments up for consideration were designed to limit their ability to engage in political activity – a claim with merit. One of the 32 amendments up for consideration bans religiously-based political parties, which directly targeted the Brotherhood.

I am certainly no apologist for the Mubarak regime, and I agree that many these amendments increase the powers of an already autocratic government, which is what makes the Brotherhood’s boycott of the referendum so hypocritical. Their non-participation in the referendum betrays their lukewarm (at best) adherence to democracy. The called boycott of the referendum only came after the Brotherhood was unable to defeat the amendments legislatively. Being in favor of democracy hypothetically for Western audiences is useless for establishing peace and stability in the Middle East (the intentions of the West) if the Muslim Brotherhood regularly renounces opportunities to practice democracy in actuality or participates only when it suits their purposes.

The constitutional amendments before the Egyptian electorate this week passed with 76 percent of the vote, and yet voter turnout was a meager 27 percent. If the Muslim Brotherhood believed that these amendments threatened their political existence, it would have been quite easy to defeat these amendments by mobilizing their supporters. Again, only 27 percent of voters showed up, and at least 24 percent of those voted against the amendments. But facing the risk of trying and possibly losing (and thus giving the results legitimacy), the Brotherhood opted out of democracy altogether.

In this instance, the Brotherhood boycotted the referendum and their chance to convince their skeptics at home and abroad that they were serious about democracy. The truth is that the Muslim Brotherhood is only interested in democracy as long as it’s to their benefit. Their commitment to democracy is not principled, but pragmatic; it is one option amongst many that they maintain, including turning to violence, which means they have no commitment to democracy at all. Their theoretical “embrace” of democracy is what they believe they need their supporters in the West to see and hear in order to obtain the international legitimacy they know will be essential to advance their Islamist agenda in Egypt, the Muslim world and beyond.

So I put the question to Robert Leiken, Steven Brooke, and the many promoters of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “moderation”: if their commitment to democracy is sincere, why the boycott on the referendum when a defeat of the amendments they opposed could have easily been had? If they are so committed to “embracing democracy”, as their Western supporters tell us, and the stakes so admittedly high for them in this constitutional referendum, why would they simply take a pass?

If the Brotherhood was really serious about “embracing democracy” they would not make it a policy of picking and choosing when they were going to do so. That they in fact do pick and choose, so clearly demonstrated in their boycott of the referendum this week, should indicate to policymakers in Washington that the Muslim Brotherhood’s “embrace” of democracy is tenuous at best, and duplicitous at worst.

For further reading on the Muslim Brotherhood, see this previous post, "More on the Muslim Brotherhood".

UPDATE: A colleague emailed and made this point:

"Not sure I agree entirely, this may be the wrong example. Even Egyptian judges say this election was a farce and the results should be ignored. As usual Mubarak went too far: he should have had a straight election with a typical 55% turnout, and let the MB's 25% showing reflect their marginal status."

I responded:

"I would agree with your assessment regarding the referendum (and admitted as much in my post), but there's no indication that this election was anymore fraudulent than in the past. There really wasn't much need for excessive vote rigging with such low turnout. The simple fact is that the Mubarak regime is a reality; if the MB wants to play democratic, they are going to have to do so dealing with that reality, much like we have to do here with Democrats stealing elections when they are able (Woody Jenkins, Bob Dornan, Dino Rossi, et al.). If the MB wanted to protest the corruption in this election, they should have walked out of Parliament, not lost the vote legislatively and then called for a boycott on the referendum. It's precisely the picking and choosing when they are going to be democratic that shows their duplicity. I don't immediately see how the behavior of the Mubarak regime changes that.

"From a strictly diplomatic point-of-view, we can't demand that the MB in Egypt act democratically and fault them for not doing so, then turn right around and question if there even is a democracy - this justifies the MB's position and propaganda with reference to the government. And it is precisely the diplomatic recognition of the MB on our end that's presently at issue."

My friend's point is well-taken. He's right from a strategic point of view that Mubarak should have at least pretended that the referendum was more legitimate than it was, and let the MB walk the plank. The point I am raising though is the "he loves me, he loves me not" relationship of the MB to democratic action. Are boycotts ever acceptable democratic behavior? Historically speaking, they are not very successful in effecting regime change. But is it appropriate to lose an issue democratically, as the MB did when these constitutional referendum amendments were approved by the Parliament over the MB's dissent, and then turn around and boycott the referendum claiming corruption after they lost the issue legislatively? Are they allowed to have it both ways?

Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood

Welcome to everybody visiting today from my FrontPage Magazine article, "Mainstreaming the Muslim Brotherhood". The article is in response to Robert Leiken and Steven Brooke's piece in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, "The Moderate Muslim Brotherhood", where they claim that the MB has abandoned violence and embraces democracy. This, of course, is categorical BS, but it is sentiment common enough these days, as seen in a Washington Post op-ed a week ago, another op-ed in the Boston Globe this past weekend, and an article in the Toronto Star. It seems that the Brotherhood is going on the offense to try to get the Bush Administration to begin dialogue with the MB.

Here's my conclusion:

I would contend that when the advocates of engagement with the Muslim Brotherhood make their case, they never do so as honest brokers. As we can see in the current Foreign Affairs piece, any evidence that would immediately contradict their thesis is not only excluded, but intentionally obscured. Their message is clearly directed at an audience unfamiliar with the Brotherhood’s history, message and program, and insults the intelligence of anyone somewhat familiar with such.

In arguing that the Brotherhood is presently “rejecting jihad”, even the limited examples they cite don’t hold up under scrutiny; and in claiming that the organization is “embracing democracy”, they are clearly equivocating in their use of the term.

To make a case for the “Moderate Muslim Brotherhood” requires nothing short of blind faith. No amount of spin offered by the “progressive” policy wonks or media pundits can account for the fact that not only has the Muslim Brotherhood spawned virtually ever single Islamic terrorist organization in the world, but they have used the financial network established by the Brotherhood to conduct their bloody business (an excellent and concise treatment of this subject is available: Douglas Farah, “The Little Explored Offshore Empire of the International Muslim Brotherhood”). This direct support for terrorism is not just past, but present, policy on their part.

Policymakers in Washington should not be fooled by the carefully manicured, but entirely misleading, presentation of the Muslim Brotherhood offered by their US defenders. If any policy change is needed, it isn’t to engage them as a force for moderation and positive change in the Middle East, but to finally designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a Specially Designated Terrorist Organization and make any exceptions from that point.

For some required reading on the Muslim Brotherhood, check out this previous post, "More on the Muslim Brotherhood".

Thanks to Douglas Farah for plugging my article at Counterterrorism Blog and an entry on his personal blog today, and thanks to Charles at Little Green Footballs for the plug as well.

UPDATE: And a special welcome to the folks visiting from the Nixon Center, Leiken and Brooke's place of employment. We're glad to see you were able to stop by earlier today!