Question & Answer Session

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Republicans and some former intelligence professionals expressed anger at the administration for failing to protect Dr. Afridi. Representative Peter King (R-NY) suggested that the White House “put him [Afridi] out there,” but the administration immediately denied the charge, suggesting that it was Pakistan that leaked Afridi’s name.

While the cut may be small, it comes on the heels of a re-examination of aid to Pakistan by Congress. In light of the closing by Pakistan of the primary truck route into Afghanistan last November following a friendly fire incident, the subcommittee on foreign aid voted recently to cut military assistance to Pakistan by 58%. And the anger expressed by senators over the treatment of Dr. Afridi suggests that a sea change may have occurred in congressional opinion regarding support for Pakistan, as members appear tired and frustrated with Islamabad’s double game of supporting terrorists while reluctantly assisting US intelligence in tracking down members of al-Qaeda.

Who is Dr. Shakil Afridi and what was his role in the bin Laden raid? The top medic in the Kyber tribal region, Afridi was recruited by the CIA to run a fake Hepatitis-B vaccination program in Abbottabad in order to acquire a DNA sample from one of bin Laden’s children in the compound where he was hiding. An investigation by the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, concluded that Afridi probably didn’t know he was helping the CIA find bin Laden specifically. Brig. General Shaukat Qadir, who conducted the investigation, wrote in a report obtained by the BBC that, “He was merely paid to follow instructions.”

The mystery is why Afridi, who was arrested less than 3 weeks after bin Laden was killed, stuck around after the raid. It may be that Afridi believed his assistance to the CIA in killing bin Laden would please the Pakistani government. It is even possible that Afridi didn’t know he was working for the CIA. Regardless, the Obama administration apparently did little to persuade the doctor to leave Pakistan.

Former intelligence analyst Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation told Fox News, “You probably wouldn’t want to have tipped him off ahead of time, but maybe the day right afterward you would have wanted to have helped him leave Pakistan — and the same with anybody else who was working with us.”

But former military intelligence officer Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Fox News, “From what I’m hearing, we did pretty much nothing,” he said. “We did nothing diplomatically at all, didn’t raise a finger. … From what my sources tell me, we did nothing to try and help this guy.”

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland disputes that, saying the administration had “regularly taken up” the issue of Dr. Afridi with the Pakistani government. Shaffer suggests that if they did, they did not press the issue due to the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations over re-opening the truck route into Afghanistan.

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This week’s guest was Frank Gaffney, the Founder and President of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), a nonprofit organization for national security research and policy advocacy founded in 1988. Gaffney and his center have recently produced a free, ten-part, online “video briefing” entitled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Video Course,” designed to educate American citizens about “a threat most Americans are even unaware even exists within our country, let alone the peril it represents.” See Mark Tapson’s Frontpage report on this video course here.

To listen to the program, click here.

Or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/05/23/the-jamie-glazov-show

See you next Tuesday evening!

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Question & Answer Session

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Egypt’s long awaited and much anticipated presidential elections—the first of their kind to take place in the nation’s 7,000 year history—are here.  As we await the final results—and as the Western mainstream media fixate on images of purple-stained fingers—it is well to remember that there is much more at stake in Egypt’s elections than the mere “right” to vote.

While some Egyptians are certainly voting according to their convictions, the fundamental divide revolves around religion—how much or how little the candidates in question are in favor of Islamic Sharia law.  In other words, Islamists are voting for Islamists—Abdel Mon‘im Abul Futuh and Muhammad Mursi—whereas non-Islamists (secularists, liberals, and non-Muslims) are voting for non-Islamists, such as Amr Musa and Ahmed Shafiq.

Bear in mind that this is not the same thing as American voters being divided between “liberal” Democrats and “conservative” Republicans; rather, this election is much more existential in nature—possibly cataclysmic for Egyptian society.  For, whereas both American Republicans and Democrats operate under the selfsame U.S. Constitution, in Egypt, an Islamist president will usher in Sharia law, which will fundamentally transform the nation.

One veiled woman interviewed yesterday at the voting polls put it best: “We came to elect the man who implements Sharia (Islamic law).  But I am afraid of liberals, secularists, Christians. I am afraid of their reaction if an Islamist wins. They won’t let it go easily. But God be with us.”

Interestingly, while she sums up the ultimate purpose Islamists like herself are voting—to empower “the man who implements Sharia”—she alsoprojects her own Islamist mentality onto non-Islamists, implying that if a Sharia-friendly president is fairly elected, non-Islamists will rebel.  In fact, it is the Islamists who are on record warning that if a secularist emerges as president, that itself will be proof positive that the elections were rigged, and anarmed jihad will be proclaimed.

None of this is surprising, considering that Islamists have not hid their abhorrence for democracy as an infidel heresy to be exploited as a gateway to a Sharia-enforcing theocracy which will, ironically, eliminate democracy.  Some have gone so far as to insist that cheating in elections to empower Sharia is an obligation.  And, rather than encourage Egyptians to vote for whom they think is best suited for Egypt, days prior to these elections, various authoritative Muslim clerics and institutions decreed that Egypt’s Muslims are “obligated” to vote for Sharia-supporting Islamists, while voters are “forbidden” to vote for non-Islamists—a proclamation with threats of hellfire.

[Editor's note: The picture above is of Cynthia Farahat, who will be one of the honorees at the annual dinner. Below is a picture of Sarah Stern.]

FP: Sarah Stern, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Let’s begin with you sharing with us why you felt it necessary to launch another think tank in Washington. Tell us its purpose and what it does.

Stern: I founded EMET when I had been the Director of Governmental Relations with the American Jewish Congress, and the AJC leadership asked me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal in 2005.  I knew in the pit of my stomach, that this withdrawal was not going to work, and that Gaza was eventually going to become a base on which the Palestinians would launch missiles onto southern Israel. I wish I had been proven wrong, but I knew I was not going to let myself become a party to enabling that to happen.

I became involved in this sort of business, approximately twelve years earlier, shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords. That is when three members of the Israeli embassy, under the reign of Yitzhak Shamir, had called me and told me that they had a sinking suspicion that Arafat was not going to live up to one iota of the Accords he has just signed, and that they were no longer in Washington, and needed someone here, to disseminate the truth about what he would be saying to his own people in his own language, and how it would differ from what he would be saying to the Western world in English. I told them it would be an honor and a privilege, and I did that pro bono for several years.

I then became the National Policy Coordinator or the ZOA, and then the Director of Governmental Affairs of the American Jewish Congress. It was the request from the AJC  for me to lobby for the Gaza withdrawal, as well as a pivotal event in a major think tank in Washington, that people have grown to know of as, the “Jewish” think tank that were turning points in my career, and pushed me over the edge to establish my own shop in Washington.

It was then that this other thank tank  brought in some “Tanzem” terrorists from the disputed territories,  in the fall of 2005, and introduced them as the “pragmatic alternative to Arafat, the young, more practical generation. It was at that time that I publicly challenged these guests from Tanzem with) two questions. Their answers immediately exposed them for who they were, and all the pens in the room dropped. (The person who brought them in was a friend of mine, and he was furious at me for asking those questions).

I knew, at that moment, that no-one was getting out our people’s proud narrative in Washington, without it being obfuscated by moral relativism and political correctness.  I  decided that day that  I had to open up a  think tank and policy shop  that clearly articulates the truth of our people’s proud narrative about our struggle to survive in the Middle East, and I knew immediately that I wanted to I call it “EMET”,  an acronym for the Endowment for Middle East Truth. “EMET” means “truth” in Hebrew.

FP: Do you have a specific mission?

Stern: Yes Jamie, we see it as our mission to simply tell the un-doctored truth about Israel’s proud struggle to survive, and the radical Islamist’s war against Israel and the West. We find the courage to say the words that few in Washington manage to say, because they are so hindered by “political correctness” and moral ambiguity about the rightness of our cause. We write and publish articles and books, and speak on the radio and on television.  We are constantly on Capitol Hill, in one-to-one meetings with members of Congress or their staffers, and we arrange for seminars, at least once a month, sometimes twice, when we bring in our “brain trust” of the brightest and the best experts from Israel and all around the world to share what the Jewish state is up against and how the United States, if possible, may be able to profit from its hard-earned wisdom.

We always place everything within the framework of what is actually good for American security interests, emphasizing how, in the minds of the radical Islamists, Israel is simply “The Minor Satan” and America is “The Great Satan,” and how anything that emboldens the radical Islamist against Israel also emboldens them against the United States. In that way, we can avoid the canard of bring more Catholic than the Pope, or more right wing then the democratically elected government of the state of Israel. We think outside of the box, and we examine if the premises of our foreign policy need to be re-evaluated. For example, goal post for the “land for peace” paradigm is “peace,” we examine whether or not since the signing of the Oslo Accords, we have gotten any closer or further away from that goal post. Or whether or not it is time to re-examine the premises that this paradigm has been predicated upon.

FP: Tell us about your book and what inspired you to write it.

Stern: When I was with the American Jewish Congress, I started to lobby for a piece of legislation to try to correct the deeply entrenched anti-Israeli and anti-American biases in most, if not all, of the Middle Eastern Studies Departments in universities across our nation. These departments are brought to us at the taxpayers’ expense through the National Defense Education Act, which is an earlier moniker for Title VI of the Higher Education Act.  I felt that since the taxpayer was footing the bill for these departments, we might be able to find a legislative corrective, to try to have some sort of balance in the curriculum. It was very difficult because many professors’ groups felt that this would encroach on their” academic freedom”.

A new Cultural Revolution is now taking place in the Middle East, where Islam’s Red Guards are obliterating the non-Muslim heritage. If Mao’s Guards took inspiration from the “red book,” Islamic zealots have the Koran. Their targets are Jewish shrines, Christian churches, ancient monuments and  cultural masterpieces.

A few days ago in Timbuktu, Mali, Islamists destroyed the tomb of a Sufi saint, Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar. Timbuktu is known as “the city of the 333 saints”, classified as Unesco World Heritage Sites. Sufism is a mystical dimension of Islam, but extremists believe Sufi shrines are “sacrilegious.” The UN cultural body didn’t raise its voice against this Islamic iconoclasm.

A few weeks before, Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, the grand mufti of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, issued a religious fatwa, saying it is “necessary to destroy all the churches in the Arabian Peninsula.” The most important Muslim cleric in the land that gave birth to Islam called for the destruction of churches without his rule attracting any global condemnation.

While in Libya Jews have been throw out again after trying to restore Tripoli’s ancient synagogue, Egyptians are planning to block Israelis from making the pilgrimages to the tomb of a Jewish saint, Yaakov Abuhatzeira.

An Islamic mob destroyed the Institute of Egypt in Cairo, founded by Napoleon and containing 192,000 books and documents from as far back as the XIX century. Now, it’s gone. Napoleon’s legendary “Description de l’Egypte” is also lost (in 1822 Jean-François Champollion used this document to unveil the mistery of the hierogliphycs). Unesco, again, stood silent. As it stood silent when Egypt’s former cultural minister, Farouk Hosni, said he “would burn Israeli books in Egyptian libraries”.

Like in Mao’s China, Islamic salafists are trying to ban ancient statues that dot Egypt and suggested that the pagan treasures “could be covered with wax”. The sirens that embellish the fountain of Zeus in Alexandria have already been deemed “inappropriate” by the Salafist party, which decided to “veil” them completely with a sheet. Salafi leaders are also terrifying liberal intellectuals by calling for banning the novels written by Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arab Nobel Prize laureate for Literature who has been called “Egypt’s Balzac”, because his works “encourage drinking alcohol and using drugs”. Mahfouz’s novel “Awlad Haretna” is labelled as “atheistic”. Islamists also want to ban the greatest masterpiece of oriental literature, “One thousand and one arabian nights”, because it’s “depravity” and “offensive to the public good”.

In Israel, Palestinian Muslims are erasing any Jewishh trace on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most holy site. In 2005 thousands of Arabs torched the synagogues in Gaza’s Katif Bloc. It was an orgy of hate, like that of the Red Guards. Twelve years ago, Arabs destroyed Joseph’s tomb, Judaism’s fourth holy site, smashing the stone structure and ripping it apart, brick by brick, as the Red Guards did with Tao’s temples. The arson attack on the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho and the continuing gunfire at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem are two other examples that come to mind in the Israelo-Palestinian conflict.

Islam’s cultural revolution began when the Taliban destroyed the two wonderful Buddhas in Bamyan, Afghanistan. It was a turning point for a proto-Nazi ideology bent on the physical eradication of its enemies and their religious symbols. If Mao’s Red Guards destroyed the imperial Chinese heritage, Islam’s Red Guards want to cancel any non-Muslim trace in the Middle East. It’s a Koranic Inquisition.

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Yusuf al-Qaradawi: One of many Muslims who see democracy as a gateway to Sharia.

The following article was originally published by the Gatestone Institute.

Despite the fact that some in the West portray Islam and democracy as being perfectly compatible, evidence continues to emerge that, for many countries in the Middle East, democracy and elections are various means to one end: the establishment of a decidedly undemocratic form of law—Islamic, or Sharia Law.

Thus, Egyptian cleric Dr. Talat Zahran proclaimed that it is “obligatory to cheat at elections, a beautiful thing,” his logic being that voting is a tool, an instrument, the only value of which is to empower Sharia. Likewise, Hazim Shuman, a cleric who has his own TV program, issued a fatwa likening the voting for Islamist candidates who will implement Sharia as a “jihad,” adding that paradise awaits whoever is “martyred” during the electoral campaign.

Most recently, according to Al Wafd, last Friday, May 18, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of if not the most authoritative clerics in the Islamic world, “called on all Egyptians to vote for one of the Islamist candidates,” specifically naming the three Islamists, Muhammad Mursi (candidate of the Salafist party), Abd al-Mun’im Abu al-Futuh (candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing), and Muhammad al-Salim al-Awwa (who contributed to making Coptic life miserable in Egypt). Qaradawi described them as “best for Egypt” because they will “apply the Islamic Sharia and achieve justice.” Moreover, during his Friday sermon, Qaradawi said that it is “mandatory for every Egyptian to go and vote at the presidential elections,” calling it a form of “obligatory testimony” on behalf of Islam, and quoting Koran 2:283 as proof: “And do not conceal testimony, and whoever conceals it, his heart is surely sinful; and Allah knows what you do.”  In short, Egypt’s Muslims are being threatened with hell fire if they don’t vote for the Sharia-pushing candidates.

This week’s guest was Frank Gaffney, the Founder and President of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), a nonprofit organization for national security research and policy advocacy founded in 1988. Gaffney and his center have recently produced a free, ten-part, online “video briefing” entitled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Video Course,” designed to educate American citizens about “a threat most Americans are even unaware even exists within our country, let alone the peril it represents.” See Mark Tapson’s Frontpage report on this video course here.

To listen to the program, click here.

Or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/05/23/the-jamie-glazov-show

See you next Tuesday evening!

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FP: Professor Maurice Eisenstein, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about your ordeal at Purdue. How did the whole incident start?

Eisenstein: Thanks Jamie.

The entire attack on my free speech began over a post I made to Facebook in November 2011.  I posted a picture with a storyline about an Islamist Muslim group (Boko Haram) killing Christians in Nigeria.  I asked: Where were the moderate Muslims? They must be listening to that idiot Mohammad.

From this, one of my PUC colleagues, a Muslim, told me (on Facebook) that she believed my statement about Mohammad was beyond despicable.  Once she responded to me, then several of her students were able come to my Facebook page to tell me that they also believed that I was out-of-bounds for denigrating Mohammad.  Their essential issue was that I was offending Mohammed and Islam.  In the wake of that incident, the Muslim Student Association became involved and they did a press release saying that no prophet (Jesus, Moses, Mohammad — their argument not mine) should be insulted because offending a religion was not an acceptable use of freedom of speech.

Basically, this whole ordeal started because I insulted Mohammad.  I did insult Mohammad.  I may not have been nice about it, I may have been provocative about it, but quite frankly, I think killing Christians because they are Christian and not Muslim is much more insulting than calling Mohammad an idiot.

From this incident, there emerged an active campaign from the Muslim faculty and students, the Muslim Student Association (acting, as it claimed, on behalf of all Muslims), and their leftist supporters, active collusion to get the University to fire me for offending them.  Because the University could not fire me for Facebook comments, the faculty, students, and the MSA decided that it would then say that I was harassing and discriminating against students in my classroom.  Toward that end, audio tapes of one of my courses from Spring 2011 were then posted on YouTube. It was an Introduction to Judaism course, which I taught from a pro-Jewish and pro-Israel perspective.  Two of the books I used in the course were: Why the Jews? by Praeger and Telushkin as well as The Israel Test by George Gilder.  Anyway, I am very provocative and blunt — I like challenging students, particularly since most of what is taught on campus (irrespective of the discipline) comes from a center left perspective.

Now, there are over 40 to 45 hours of lectures from that class.  Out of those 40 to 45 hours, about 16 minutes were posted on YouTube and, of course, these 16 minutes were selectively edited so that I was portrayed in the worst possible light and without context.  Then, based on these tapes, in conjunction with my Facebook comments, 9 separate harassment and discrimination complaints were filed against me.

FP: What tactic was used by your accusers?

Eisenstein: The tactic was: the University cannot investigate Facebook, but if we tie the problem to his teaching, well, then the University can investigate it.  The problem with these 9 complaints are many.  To try to sum it up:

First: only 1 of the complaints was from a student who was ever in one of my classes.  That student was in a class of mine in Fall 2011 for two class periods. Yes, you read that right, that student was in a class of mine for two whole class periods.  I was teaching how democracy came from the Anglo-Saxon Protestants — the English — as written by DeToqueville and this student was offended because I mentioned that democracy did not derive from any other culture or place.  As a Muslim, this student was offended.

Second: There were no student complaints filed about the class I taught in Spring 2011.  No student ever complained and to this day, the audio tapes posted on You Tube are anonymous.  No one knows where they are from.

Third: 8 complaints involved individuals or organizations that had no basis for filing harassment/discrimination complaints.  Two were from students I had never met let alone ever had in one of my classes.  One was from the MSA — who filed on behalf of all Muslims.  Five were from faculty members and of those five faculty members, 4 of them were not even involved in the Facebook exchange that started the whole ordeal.

In short, there was a concerted effort to get as many people as possible to file harassment/discrimination complaints against me so that the University could have a basis for sanctioning me.  The University then spent the next 3 months investigating my freedom of speech.  They investigated my Facebook postings, they investigated my class from Spring 2011 (based on anonymous tapes) even though the University policy for harassment/discrimination states that no complaints filed after 120 days can be investigated (e.g., the class had ended far longer than 120 days earlier during which time no complaints were filed — nor have any complaints from a student in that class been filed).

They investigated my Fall 2011 classes because of the one student who was in my course for two class periods.  The University hired an outside investigator who interviewed no less than 30 people (some of whom I do not even know) — emphasizing that Facebook was being used as a means of assessing me and my character — covering my entire career at PUC.  It was nothing less than an all-out assault being waged against me.  For example, one of the faculty members who filed a complaint against me alleged that I took down her name plate (off her door, off her desk, I am not sure) in 1991 or 1992 while we were both adjuncts at PUC!  And the University investigated this as well.  It was beyond ridiculous.  It factually shows that Purdue University has accepted the Muslim notion of “being offended” as a legal definition.  It you offend the religion in any way you are liable.

FP: The University cleared you of these 9 harassment/discrimination complaints. How or why do you think that happened?

Eisenstein: My very short answer is: the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, FIRE.  If not for FIRE, I think things could have and would have likely gone very differently.  FIRE sent a letter in January 2012 and that letter was made public about 1 day before the University had to issue a ruling on these 9 complaints.  The University ended up extending its decision time-line in the aftermath of the public relations fallout from the FIRE letter.

I really do think that without the support from a national organization with the credibility that FIRE has, the University would have tried to initiate termination proceedings.  The whole attempt to fire me would be over the issue of “offending” someone.  (For those unfamiliar — firing a tenure professor is a complicated ordeal.)

FP: What about the retaliation claims found against you?

For the objective here is not just to try Breivik for his actions, but to try him for his thoughts as well.  The climax of the trial will come in June, when several writers who have written about Islam – myself included – will be hauled into court as unwilling witnesses for the defense.  As I wrote here last month, “the goal of the defense – and of the defendant, who apparently made up the list of witnesses himself – is utterly identical with the goal of the country’s leftist cultural elite: namely, to implicate all of us writers in Breivik’s actions.  Of course, Breivik wants to do this in order to mitigate his own guilt in the eyes of the court and the country; the cultural elite wants to do it in order to discredit forever the criticism of Islam.”

Among the other writers on the list of defense witnesses is Hanne Nabintu Herland, a historian of religion who’s been an outspoken critic of Western feminism, the social-democratic welfare state, “reverse racism,” Norwegian anti-Semitism, and the Norwegian cult of mediocrity.  She’s also written – and this is why she’s been summoned to testify in the Breivik case – about the importance of integrating immigrants and of preserving traditional European cultural values.  But she’s not having it.  On Monday, she made a major announcement in an op-ed for Aftenposten: she’s informed the authorities that she won’t be obeying her summons.  She simply refuses to be a part of “this twisted murderer’s show….I refuse to be dragged around the circus ring like another clown in the perpetrator’s bizarre delusions.”  She asserts that “the obligation to testify is being abused.  I was not in Norway on July 22.  My testimony has no bearing on the question of guilt or sanity.”

Needless to say, when you’re called to testify in a trial and refuse to do so, you may face serious consequences.  “If this means that I will be put in prison,” Herland writes, “then make me a political martyr.”

Herland doesn’t mince words.  Since the day after Breivik’s murders, she charges, opponents of what she calls “the throne of power, the Labor Party,” have been treated as suspects.  “As things stand now, it’s almost the case that if you’re critical of the Labor Party, you’re automatically put in the same category as a mass murderer….This political witch hunt is now so intense that it’s fair to speak of undemocratic, totalitarian conditions in Norway.  We’re well on the way to becoming the new East Germany….the state is developing in the direction of a totalitarian democracy.”

As readers of my recent e-book about the aftermath of the Breivik killings know, Herland isn’t exaggerating.

Has anyone in Norway been as forthright about the present situation – and as willing to publicly challenge the grim new orthodoxy – as Herland has been?  Well, there have been a few others.  In her op-ed, Herland cites a recent opinion piece by shipowner Dan Odfjell, who tells a story I haven’t yet read or heard.  According to him, when Breivik began shooting on the island of Utøya, Eskil Pedersen, the head of the Labor Party youth group which was Breivik’s target, hopped on a boat and was the first person from the island to make it to shore.  Odfjell doesn’t criticize Pedersen for saving his skin; he criticizes him for allowing the Labor Party, in the days and weeks after July 22, to try to cover up the truth and turn him into a hero – an effort, charges Odfjell, that has been only one part of a carefully orchestrated effort by the party “to deliberately blur the distinction between itself…and the nation of Norway.”

This week’s guest will be Frank Gaffney, the Founder and President of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Security Policy (CSP), a nonprofit organization for national security research and policy advocacy founded in 1988. Gaffney and his center have recently produced a free, ten-part, online “video briefing” entitled “The Muslim Brotherhood in America: A Video Course,” designed to educate American citizens about “a threat most Americans are even unaware even exists within our country, let alone the peril it represents.” See Mark Tapson’s Frontpage report on this video course here.

To listen to the program, click here.

Or go to: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-jihad/2012/05/23/the-jamie-glazov-show

The call-in # is: (347) 857-1380.

See you next Tuesday evening!

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Hollande had said during the campaign that he would uphold the law on the burqa ban, with the caveat that he would apply it in the best ways possible—a statement which leaves plenty of wriggle room for minimizing enforcement. And his appointment of Christiane Taubira as Justice Minister suggests that soon enough Mademoiselle Liberty will don the burqa.

Taubira, a Guyanese radical leftist, who despite being appointed Justice Minister has no law degree, voted against the law banning hijabs in schools– one of only a handful of members of the National Assembly to do so. She did not cast a vote at all on the 2010 burqa ban, but this year she signed on to an MTE petition on behalf of “veiled mothers” which denounced the “endless series of offenses” against Muslims, a list which included the “anti-headscarf law” and “anti-niqab legislation.”

Appointing Taubira is a concession to the rioters and the burqa bandits. She wasn’t chosen for her degree in African-American Ethnology, but as a reward by the new government for those who burn cars and force women into burqas.

While Taubira has exploited the commemoration of the slave trade for political reasons, she has excluded the crimes of Muslim slave traders from discussion, saying that, the slave trade practiced by Arab-Muslims must not be brought up too often so that “young Arabs do not bear on their shoulders all the weight of the heritage of Arab misdeeds.” Naturally there is no similar restraint when it comes to the weight that young Europeans are told to bear on their shoulders.

The new government will have three Muslim members, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Kader Arif and Yamina Benguigui.

The Moroccan-born Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who will serve in the cabinet as Minister of Women’s Rights and spokesperson for the French government, has come out against the Burqa ban, saying that “The Republic cannot spend its time making laws that exclude, prohibit and stigmatize.”

Appointing an opponent of the Burqa ban as Minister of Women’s Rights sends a clear message that the new government has no intention of defending women from Islamic repression. The Burqa ban came out of the work of a women’s rights delegation in the National Assembly. As the leading Muslim figure in the new government, with a portfolio that most directly relates to the subject, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem has been positioned to sabotage any efforts made to protect women from Islam.

And that isn’t the only problem with Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who is a dual citizen of Morocco and France, and a former member of CCME, a council of émigré Moroccans appointed by the King of Morocco, whose goal is to strengthen the Moroccan identity of French Muslims and to advise on their Islamic education. This has led some in France to question her loyalties, especially as CCME has been described as a propaganda tool for the Moroccan government.

For example, there is no situation in Western culture wherein murdering one’s daughter could be a deed that brings honor to the family. In many Arab and some non-Arab Muslim countries, murder is what is expected of the father if his daughter is accused (merely accused) of pre-marital sex.  The Arab family’s honor is restored by what in the West is a heinous crime. Such murders are far more widespread in the Muslim world than many are willing to acknowledge.  They are known as honor-killings[i].

Similarly, martyrdom-via-suicide boggles the Western mind.  Islamic law prohibits suicide; but recent judgments by leading Muslim clerics, although contested by some, state unequivocally that suicide bombings are a legitimate and laudable form of martyrdom in Jihad.  They bring honor to family and community, and are seen as a courageous deed for which the deceased perpetrator will be rewarded with the Muslim jihadist warrior’s seventy-two dark-eyed virgin women when united with Allah.[ii]

Despite these examples of cultural chasms, it is still a surprise to the Western mind that motherly love, at least among some in the Gaza Strip, acquires a valence far different from that in the West.

Umm Nidal (her nom de guerre, lit. “mother of struggle,” her real name is Mariam Farahat), the Gaza mother of six sons, did not lament that three of them had died as suicide bombers.  Rather she publicly rejoiced in their “martyrdom” and fervently prayed that the other three would follow the same path; after all, what greater joy can a Muslim mother know than living to see her sons blow themselves up while in the prime of their lives, taking with them as many Jews and other non-believers as possible?

To acknowledge her roll in raising sons with such a meritorious sense of duty to Allah and Islam, the voters in the Gaza Strip elected Umm Nidal to Hamas’ parliament, even though she has no prerequisites for public service.

To the present writer’s knowledge, there is no other culture in the world, or across all of world history, that so honors suicide and mass murder, and so thoroughly vitiates the most basic human instinct of a mother’s love for her children.

But honoring suicidal mass murderers is not new in Palestinian society.  For decades prior to the creation of the Palestinian Authority (1993), Arafat honored suicide bombers with stirring eulogies and generous bequests to surviving families, as did other Arab countries and Iran.

Once the Palestinian Authority was legislated into existence by the Oslo Accords, Arafat, and after his death Mahmoud Abbas, named public places, schools, soccer fields, and summer camps in memory of suicide bombers in order to enhance the degree to which their “martyrdom” could inspire others to end their lives in a similar fashion.

There have been hundreds of suicide bombings since the Oslo Accords, most perpetrated by Hamas.  Happily the majority have been thwarted by the IDF, but the worst and most infamous include the Dolphinarium massacre, killing dozens of young teens; the Park Hotel massacre with scores killed and hundreds wounded during a Passover Seder; and the Sbarro pizza restaurant massacre.  Each became a source of rejoicing among Palestinians.

Most such attacks have been perpetrated by men, but women have come to play a surprisingly significant role as well. Arafat’s PLO, Hamas, and other terrorist groups lured young women in the prime of their lives into the strangely twisted psyche of the suicide bomber by offering them the opportunity, despite the fact that they are merely women and cannot fight as can men, to strike a blow for their people, their country, their future state, their religion, and for Allah.  Arafat called Palestinian female suicide bombers his “army of roses,” and praised them and their families for their dedication and courage.

Chechen and Sri Lankan women were the first female suicide bombers, but the first Palestinian one was Wafa Idris, a West Bank woman who disguised herself as a doctor and used an ambulance to enter Israel from the West Bank and blow herself up in downtown Jerusalem, killing one and wounding scores. Arafat crowned her a hero and throughout the Arab world she was used as a poster-child to recruit others.

In-depth analyses of the phenomenon of the Palestinian female suicide bomber reveal the cruel and cynical strategies developed by Fatah and Hamas for identifying, approaching, isolating, and brain-washing young, depressed, self-described hopeless Muslim women, so they could be trained to carry out “martyrdom missions.”

Hamas and Fatah recruiters scout towns, villages and mosques, looking for women who show signs of depression.  Such signs include a history of attempted suicide, confidential conversations with friends that reach Hamas or Fatah, a personal religious revival where a previously un-religious woman suddenly begins to frequent her local mosque, or confidential conversations with an imam who passes them on to the recruiter.

Considering that Easter, one of the highest Christian holidays, comes in April, Christian persecution in Muslim nations—from sheer violence to oppressive laws—was rampant last month: In Nigeria, where jihadis seek to expunge all traces of Christianity, a church was bombed during Easter Sunday, killing some 50 worshippers; in Turkey, a pastor was beaten by Muslims immediately following Easter service and threatened with death unless he converts to Islam; and in Iran,Easter Sunday saw 12 Christians stand trial as “apostates.”

The persecution of Christians has come to regions not normally associated with it. As in Nigeria, Muslim militants are running amok in Timbuktu, Mali—beheading a Christian leader and threatening other Christians with similar treatment. Sharia law has been imposed, churches are being destroyed, and Christians are fleeing Timbuktu in mass.

Categorized by theme, the rest of April’s batch of Muslim persecution of Christians around the world includes (but is not limited to) the following accounts, listed in alphabetical order by country, not severity:

 Church Attacks

Azerbaijan: A church in the Muslim-majority nation has “become the first religious community to beliquidated by a court” since the country’s “harsh new Religion Law,” requiring all previously registered religious institutions to re-register, came into force in 2009. Greater Grace Protestant Church in the capital, Baku, “was stripped of its registration at a 15-minute hearing on 25 April. The decision, which was made in the absence of any church representatives, makes any activity by the church illegal and subject to punishment.”

Indonesia: Gunmen opened fire on the GKI Yasmin church, causing much damage in the latest attack on the building, which has been illegally sealed off by authorities since 2088, due to Muslim demands. Another Protestant church unlawfully sealed off by the authorities—despite meeting all requirements for a permit—was met with violent opposition from Muslims for trying to hold a service on the street in front of their sealed-off church building. Muslim residents made death threats, played loud music, and even rode a motorcycle through the congregation. A church spokesman said: “We are constantly having to change our location because our existence appears to be unwanted, and we have to hide so that we are not intimidated by intolerant groups… We had hoped for help from the police, but after many attacks on members of the congregation, we see that the police are also involved in this.”

Kenya: Two separate grenade attacks on churches occurred: 1) Muslims threw grenades into an open-air Christian church gathering, killing a woman and a boy, and wounding some 50 other Christians: Muslims had been holding a meeting near the gathering, and Christians could hear their preachers railing against Christianity right before the attack took place. 2) In a separate incident, a Muslim man pretending to be a worshipper at a church threw three grenades during service, killing a 27-year-old university student and injuring16. The terrorist, who, according to eyewitnesses, appeared to be of Somali origin, “looked uncomfortable and always looked down. He threw three hand grenades and only one exploded. He took off, and he fired in the air three gunshots.”

Nigeria: An early morning attack on a Christian church service left at least 16 people dead: Jihadi gunmen on motorcycles stormed Bayero University in the city of Kano on a Sunday morning during a Catholic mass held in the school’s theater hall, hurling improvised explosive devices, and opening fire as people fled. “The attack follows a string of violent incidents against Christians in the predominantly Muslim north.”

Sudan: A Christian compound in Khartoum was stormed by a throng of Muslims “armed with clubs, iron rods, a bulldozer and fire,” the day after a Muslim leader called on Muslims to destroy “the infidels’ church.”Shouting “Allahu Akbar [God is greater]” and “No more Christianity from today on—no more church from today on,” the jihadis stormed the Bible school bookstore, burning Bibles and threatening to kill anyone resisting them. “What happened could not be imagined—it was terrible,” said an eyewitness. “They burned all furniture of the school and the church as well.” As usual, “Police at the compound stood back and did nothing to prevent the mob from vandalizing the compound.”

Tunisia: The Christian Orthodox Church in Tunis, one of very few churches in the nation, is being “abused” and receiving “threatening messages.” Church members are “living in a state of terror,” so much so that the Russian ambassador in Tunis specifically requested the nation’s Ministry of Interior to “protect the church.” The abuse has gotten to the point where “Salafis covered the cross of the church with garbage bags, telling the church members that they do not wish to see the vision of the Cross anywhere in the Islamic state of Tunisia.” Separately, a Muslim burst into a church to deliver a letter from an Islamist party inviting the archpriest to convert to Islam or to take down the church’s crosses and pay jizya, Islamic subjugation tribute.

Apostasy and Blasphemy: Death and Prison

Algeria: A Christian was sentenced to five years in prison for “shaking the faith” of Muslims. He had discussed his faith with a Muslim man at a food court when the Muslim became angry and accused the Christian of “insulting Muhammad.” Police arrested the man and found a large amount of Christian materials in his apartment. The judge gave him the maximum sentence of five years in prison, even though the prosecutor himself had recommended a lesser sentence.

Bangladesh: A former Muslim prayer leader who converted to Christianity was “welcomed by threats and violence.” Members of his Muslim community “beat him almost to death,” causing him to be hospitalized for almost two months: “the same Muslims who followed him and held him in high esteem when he was their imam now cannot accept his new status.”

Egypt: Two incidents of “blasphemy” convictions occurred: 1) A juvenile court sentenced a Coptic Christian teenager to three years in prison for allegedly “insulting Islam,” due to claims that he posted unflattering cartoons of Muhammad on Facebook. When the incident originally came to light, Muslims rioted, fire-bombing his home and at least five other Christian-owned homes. 2) Another judge upheld a six-year prison sentence for a Christian convicted of “blasphemy”: after a Muslim had told the 49-year old Christian convict that Jesus had illegal sex with at least ten women, the Christian countered “by stating that Muhammad, the founder of the Islamic religion, had more than four wives—a view commonly held by Islamic scholars.” Police subsequently arrested him and, in a 10-minute mock trial with no defense attorney present, the judge sentenced him to six years in prison for “insulting the prophet.”

Iran: A Christian convert from Islam has been sentenced to six years in prison. Originally arrested in December 2010 as part of a major crackdown on the country’s house church movement, “the married father of two has been held in the notorious Evin prison ever since, spending several months in solitary confinement,” where he was likely goaded into returning to Islam. He is accused of “action against the regime’s security, being in contact with foreign organizations and religious propaganda.” In short, according to Iranian Christians, “his ‘crime’ was practicing his Christian faith.”

Pakistan: Two incidents of “blasphemy” charges occurred: 1) A Christian man was arrested and charged with “blasphemy” for rescuing his 8-year-old nephew from a beating at the hands of Muslim boys who sought to force the boy to convert to Islam. “Seeing the attack from a distance, Masih [the man] shouted and rushed to the scene, rescued his nephew and then went to his work as a painter. Soon after the incident, a Muslim mob of about 55 led by the village prayer leader besieged Masih’s house,” insisting that “the blasphemer” be turned over to them. He was eventually released from prison, after being threatened and harassed by Muslim inmates and jail officials. 2) The mother of a newborn baby has been illegally jailed for over a month: authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day period against the 26-year-old Christian woman accused of “blaspheming” the prophet of Islam. The woman was arrested after neighbors accused her of “uttering remarks against Muhammad.”

Philippines: Two pastors were slaughtered by Muslim assailants: 1) A former Muslim who became a Christian pastor was murdered in front of his wife in his home: “My husband staggered into our bedroom and I was shocked because he was full of blood,” she recalled. “I brought him to the hospital right away. He was operated on for eight bullet wounds, but did not survive.” The Philippines is a mostly Christian nation, but in the south, “Muslim fundamentalists are trying to build an Islamic state. Christians there face persecution and even death…. This year, at least four house churches closed down after their pastors and lay leaders were killed by Muslim extremists.” 2) Another pastor was shot in the head five times and killed by two “unknown gunmen” in front of his teenage daughter.

Dhimmitude

[General Abuse, Debasement, and Suppression of non-Muslims as "Tolerated" Citizens]

Egypt: A recent “reconciliation meeting” between members of a sword-wielding Muslim mob that earlier brutalized a Christian school proved to be “nothing less than an attempt at legalized extortion.” In exchange for peace, members of the mob that stormed the school last month without provocation—holding two nuns hostage for several hours—demanded in the meetings that the school sign over land that includes the guesthouse they attacked. “Human rights groups and Coptic rights activists, say the meetings are just a way to pressure powerless groups and people into giving away what little rights they have.” Likewise, the judges appointed to investigate the Maspero massacre, which claimed the lives of 27 Christians and injured 329,closed the case, due to “lack of identification of the culprits.” As one Christian lawyer put it: “We said all along that it was just a show and this is the outcome we got.”

India: Muslims stormed and terrorized a home where a Christian prayer meeting was being held, beating the Christians, including a 65-year-old widow. The Muslims “called them pagans as they kicked, slapped and pushed the Christians…. The Christians were running in all directions for their lives, including the children who were crying in fear,” even as one Muslim, “brandishing a sickle, chased many of them, hurling all kinds of insults and attempting to murder them all…. 500 Muslims had gathered and were watching in amusement as the extremists chased and harassed the Christians for about 90 minutes.”

In early 2012 the historian Emmet Scott published Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy. If you have any interest in the subject of the Greco-Roman legacy and Islam as they relate to medieval Europe, I strongly recommend that you buy this book. For those who are interested, Scott has published some excerpts from this work online at the New English Review.

Many books claim to be groundbreaking, but rather few of them actually are. Emmet Scott’s Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited falls into the latter category.

He shows convincingly that archaeological excavations paint a very clear picture of devastation brought by the Arab conquests throughout the entire Mediterranean region, from Syria to Spain, in the seventh century AD.

The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne in his work Mohammed and Charlemagne, published posthumously in 1937, suggested that Islam and the Arab conquests constituted the real dividing line between the civilization of Greco-Roman Antiquity and that of medieval Europe. Moreover, Islamic raids in the Mediterranean partially cut Europeans off from their Classical roots. Scott supports this hypothesis but goes even further than Pirenne — who focused on Europe — by showing that the Arab conquests and Islamic repression largely destroyed Greco-Roman Classical civilization in North Africa and parts of the Middle East, which were more urbanized than Europe.

In short, rather than preserving the Classical heritage, as their apologists like to claim, Arabs and Muslims did more than anybody else to wipe out Greco-Roman civilization. The modest contributions they made by preserving certain Greek texts through Arabic translations cannot in any way make up for this massive wave of destruction.

Scott demonstrates that by cutting off the normal trade of Egyptian papyrus to Europe, leaving Europeans only with expensive parchment made from animal skins as a viable alternative, the Arabs essentially doomed much of the Classical literature to oblivion due to a chronic shortage of good writing materials. Sadly, the heroic efforts made by medieval Christian monks in Europe for centuries could only partly make up for this loss.

The author also describes how certain ideas such as an early version of the Inquisition, the concept of Holy War and other often negative innovations were spread due to Islam. The first massacres of Jews in Europe were carried out in Spain by Muslim mobs early in the eleventh century; in 1011 (in Cordoba) and 1066 (in Granada).

My first experience with Israel Apartheid week came back in 2000 at UCLA, when I was greeted on campus with pamphlets openly fundraising for Hamas and Hezbollah.

It was a spectacle I’d see repeated year after year. Just before September 11, the Muslim student newspaper Al-Talib ran a story joking about changing the name of the magazine to Al-Taliban and making Osama Bin Laden editor-in chief.

Every year, I’d ask the editorial team at the UCLA Daily Bruin to run a column on the association between the Muslim Student Association and terror groups; each year, they’d turn me down. Finally, after they decided to run a piece I’d written on the subject, they submitted it to the MSA directly for vetting. The piece never ran.

That was over ten years ago. But nothing has changed.

The University of California system is dominated by Israel Apartheid Week at least once per year per campus; in a not-coincidental correlation, anti-Semitic incidents on campuses seem to be rising.

On March 8, UC president Mark Yudof wrote an open letter decrying the hate. “Attempting to shout down speakers is not protected speech,” he wrote. “It is an action meant to deny others the right to free speech … What is not acceptable are hate-driven physical and … verbal attacks on any group or individual that are meant to silence or intimidate those who would express differing opinions.”

This week, congressional candidate Mark Reed called on Representatives Brad Sherman and Howard Berman to investigate anti-Semitism at University of California and California State University campuses. As Tammi Rossman Benjamin, Hebrew lecturer at UC Santa Cruz recently wrote in a complaint, “The harassing and intimidating environment for Jewish students has been worsened by the fact that NO other racial or national origin group on campus has been subjected by faculty or administrators to such hostile and demonizing criticism.”

Columnist Marsha Sutton of the Del Mar Times recalled one incident from June 2011, in which the UCSD libraries were shut down due to budget cuts. Palestinian activists immediately took over the buildings and hung Palestinian flags on them. When a Jewish student hung up an Israel flag, however, it was quickly torn down. “These actions,” writes Sutton, “would never be tolerated at a county or city library, so why are they permitted at a state-supported university library?”