Islamism in the News: 02/16/12 – 03/14/12

Islamist Watch maintains an extensive database of news articles concerning Islamism. The links below are a small sample. For a complete list of articles by date, please click here. Also, please click here for a listing of “creeping dhimmitude” articles by topic (see box at right of page). To receive these updates by email, please join our mailing list here.

Lawful Islamism is a radical and supremacist interpretation of Islam that seeks to destroy Western society from within -- culturally and politically rather than violently. Methodically and patiently. With words not bullets. Activism not bombs.

The goals of Lawful Islamists and Islamic terrorists are the same. Only their methods differ.

Clockwise from top left: Tony West went from representing the American Taliban, to Obama’s 2008 campaign, to the number three position at the Justice Department; Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy held a fundraiser for the radical Islamist Group CAIR; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has an Islamist Problem; and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy spoke out in support of the NYPD.

Government

• “Al-Qaeda Bar Advancing Inside Department of Justice,” by J. Christian Adams. PJ Media, March 5, 2012. (Remember the infamous “American Taliban,” John Walker Lindh? President Obama has appointed his attorney to the number three position at the Department of Justice. Before coming to the Justice Department, Tony West and his San Francisco law firm represented some of the most radical Islamic terrorist causes. What could go wrong?)

Law Enforcement

• “FBI, Muslims Report Progress Over Training Materials,” By Omar Sacirbey. Washington Post, February 16, 2012. (FBI officials say they are willing to consider a proposal from a coalition of Muslim and interfaith groups to establish a committee of experts to review materials used in FBI anti-terrorism training. Among the group is the Islamic Society of North America, named and described in seized Muslim Brotherhood documents as one of their front groups engaged in a “grand jihad to eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within.”)
• Last October, the Obama administration confirmed it was eliminating all references to Islam in law enforcement and national security training materials, which some Islamist groups claimed were offensive to them. “I want to be perfectly clear about this: training materials that portray Islam as a religion of violence or with a tendency towards violence are wrong, they are offensive, and they are contrary to everything that this President, this Attorney General and Department of Justice stand for,” said U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton. “They will not be tolerated.”
• “Chicago Police Head Raises Money for CAIR,” Ryan Mauro. FrontPage Magazine, March 9. 2012. (Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy has agreed to speak at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group that the FBI has officially cut ties with over its links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. McCarthy promised that the Chicago Police Department would not use the surveillance tactics that CAIR has criticized the NYPD for using.)

Co-opting Politicians – Chris Christie’s Continuing Islamist Problem

• “The Roots of the Christie-King Border War,” Jonathan S. Tobin. Commentary Magazine, March 6, 2012. (Christie and King found themselves lining up with two competing Muslim factions: Christie with extremist groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), who oppose all efforts to investigate homegrown Islamist terror, and King with those Muslims like Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, who have taken the position that American Muslims have a responsibility to root out radicals.)

• “Chris Christie is Clueless in Claiming He Didn’t Know About NYPD Anti-Terror Intel,” New York Daily News Editorial, March 7, 2012. (Meanwhile, everyone else in New Jersey state government did.)
• For background on Chris Christie’s disturbing ties to New Jersey’s Islamists, including appointing a terrorist-defending Islamist attorney to a Superior Court judgeship, preventing the deportation of an imam who was a member of both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, refusing to take a stand against the ground zero mosque, and endorsement by CAIR, see:
• “Governor Christie’s Dirty Islamist Ties,” Daniel Greenfield. Sultan Knish, January 16, 2011.
• “Chris Christie Has a Muslim Problem,” Terry A. Hurlbut. Conservative News and Views, June 28, 2011.

Courts: Sharia vs. the First Amendment in Pennsylvania

• “The Sharia Court of Pennsylvania,” by Andrew C. McCarthy. National Review, February 24, 2012. (A state judge in Pennsylvania has dismissed an assault and harrassment case against a Muslim defendant who admitted attacking the victim. Magistrate Judge Mark Martin ruled that Talag Elbayomy’s Sharia defense — what he claimed was his obligation to strike out against any insult against the prophet Mohammed — trumped the First Amendment free speech rights of the victim. Includes an extensive court transcript. Martin has threatened to hold the victim in contempt for recording the proceeding.)
• “Pennsylvania Judge Throws Out Charge For Harassing Atheist While Calling The Victim A Doofus,” by Jonathan Turley. Res Ipsa Loquitur, February 24, 2012. (Includes video of the assault. The First Amendment protects the freedom of speech of all American, even “doofuses.”

American Laws for American Courts

• “Bizarre Verdicts Could Fuel Rep. Larry Metz’s Anti-Sharia Bill,” Kenric Ward. Sunshine State News, February 28, 2012. (Florida’s “anti-Sharia” legislation received some added impetus last week when a Pennsylvania court bowed to Islamic sensibilities and acquitted a Muslim defendant of assault.)
• “The Necessity of Anti-Sharia Laws,” Robert Spencer. American Thinker, March 13, 2012. (“As Thomas Jefferson said, it doesn’t matter whether my neighbor believes in one god or seventeen; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It is only when my neighbor believes that his god commands him to pick my pocket or break my leg that his beliefs become a matter of concern for those who do not share them.”)

Women’s Rights

• “My Mother Wants Me Dead: Catholic Convert Speaks Out After Fleeing Her Muslim Family Following ‘Honor Killing’ Threat,” Rob King. The Daily Mail (UK), March 9, 2012. (A women’s rights campaigner has revealed how she fears for her life after her strict Muslim parents threatened to kill her when she dared to refuse an arranged marriage. Her parents sued her for defamation – and lost.)

Media Bias and Free Speech

• “Will There Always Be an England?” Bruce Bawer. FrontPage Magazine, March 7, 2012. (The Director-General of the BBC admits to double standards and fears when it comes to covering religion. In 2010, the BBC claimed a weekly global audience of 241 million people for its international news services.)

Free Speech

• “Free Speech vs. Islamists: Why the West is Losing. A Steady Retreat Worldwide,” by Adam Turner. PJ Media, March 12, 2012. (Back in 1989, most in the Western world were shocked by the threat against Salman Rushdie, and after some hemming and hawing eventually came out in support of his right to say what he wanted to say about his own, lapsed religion. Today when Islamists threaten free speech, Western intellectual elites actually join in the effort.)
• “Gainsborough [England] Man Jailed Over Anti-Islam Images In His Flat Window,” Gainsborough Target (UK), March 9, 2012. (Sometimes speech is unpopular, but should people be sent to jail over it? In England, as in Europe, people can literally go to jail for what they say if some prosecutor decides that some group finds it offensive. These cases are subjective and selectively prosecuted. In the US, the First Amendment provides absolute protection for the free exercise of expression, unless it’s ethnic intimidation in the context of specific threats against specific individuals. Islamist groups such as CAIR want to bring Europe’s laws against free speech to the US. And they want to be the ones to decide what’s offensive and who goes to jail.)
• “U.K. Thought Police Send Man to Prison,” Bruce Bawer. FrontPage Magazine, March 14, 2012. (Analysis of the Gainsborough case. Notes a “chillingly Orwellian understanding of the concept of freedom, which has its roots not in Magna Carta or the Enlightenment but in Sharia. When [prosecutors] say that it is ‘essential that everyone in our community is free to live without harassment,’ [they] mean nothing more or less than this: that it is the right of Muslims in Britain to live in a society free of criticism of their religion.”

Moderate Muslims Defend NYPD

• “Muslims at Rally: NYPD Surveillance Keeps Us Safe,” Associated Press via Fox News, March 5, 2012. (Rally organizers say the danger is clearly coming from within the Muslim community and that it’s up to other Muslims to help law enforcement stop the threat. They said Muslims do not want to give up civil rights and are behind transparency in police work, but it is wrong to suggest that all Muslims are somehow afraid of the NYPD.)
• “Muslim Journalist Defends Surveillance by NYPD, Says Some Muslims ‘Use Religion as Cover,’” Catherine Herridge. Fox News, March 13, 2012. (“We’re saying that you can’t go into our mosques, you can’t look at our Muslim organizations, you can’t even look at Muslims because that’s to target us,” she told Fox News. “But the truth is, we do have a problem in our Muslim community.” Hat Tip: Innavich.)

Hamas-Linked CAIR

• “Hamas-Linked CAIR Holding Rally for Accused Jihad Synagogue Bomb Plotter,” Robert Spencer. Jihad Watch, March 12, 2012. (Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh were arrested last May for plotting to bomb synagogues and attack Jews. The arrests marked the end of a seven-month sting led by New York police officers.)
• “Former Hamas-Linked CAIR Official Running for President in Egypt, Pledges to ‘Complete the Implementation of Islamic Law in Egypt,’” Robert Spencer. Jihad Watch, March 12, 2012. (The former community affairs director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Bassem Khafagi was arrested in January 2003 on suspicion of aiding terrorists. Khafagi is also the founder of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), a radical, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based organization. He pled guilty in Detroit federal court to two counts of bank fraud and one count of visa fraud.)