Rep. Darrel Issa (R-C.A.) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-M.E.) are demanding answers following the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s discovery that taxpayer money is going to the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque of Falls Church, Virginia. The revelation is an unsettling reminder of how jihadists are using America’s freedoms and ineptitude of the government to their advantage.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has found that the Census Bureau has been paying Dar al-Hijrah about $23,000 per month since November 2008 to rent space in one of its buildings. The State Department has used the mosque in its videos about America’s Muslim community and sent students from its Foreign Service Institute to Dar al-Hijrah this month.

Dave Gaubatz, a former Special Agent with the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations, and author of Muslim Mafia, described Dar al-Hijrah to FrontPage as “Wahhabi quarter,” in reference to the oppressive form of Islam practiced and promoted by Saudi Arabia. He said that when he investigated the mosque, he found that its library included “very, very violent materials” that advocated physical jihad and sedition, and that extremism was promoted during the week but not during Friday prayers when they are most likely to be caught.

Gaubatz also says that the mosque immediately reaches out to people that have arrived in their area from Iraq and other places. Like in Iraq, he says, “the mosques are being used as safehouses with which to spread violent ideology.” This is dangerous because mosque attendees and leaders are “fond” of extremists like Ali al-Tamimi, a preacher who has been convicted of preparing young Muslims to wage jihad through the use of paintball guns.

Another section of that same building being rented by the government is also used by the Muslim American Society, a front for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood organization. The Brotherhood and its affiliates have proven to be skillful in portraying themselves as “moderates” so as to wage jihad using more effective means than the reckless violence of Al-Qaeda.

The renting of some of its property to the Muslim American Society is just one small part of Dar al-Hijrah’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and extremism in general. Its imam from 1995 to 1999, Mohammed al-Hanooti, defended a senior Hamas official named Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook. Another Dar al-Hijrah founder, Ismail Elbarasse, was an assistant to Marzook and later found to be part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in the U.S.

Al-Hanooti was labeled as a possible unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and supported a Muslim who refused to testify about the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Al-Hanooti argued that Islam “gives him the right to abstain from giving testimony in case it hurts him or it hurts any other Muslim.” He was an open supporter of Hamas.

Another former imam is Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al-Qaeda leader who currently lives in Yemen and has been involved in terrorist plots including the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day underwear bomb plot. Two of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood shooter attended al-Awlaki’s sermons there. Al-Awlaki’s preaching also inspired Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American who recently tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square.

The mosque was also attended by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who was later convicted for his illegal dealings with Libya related to a plot to kill Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Alamoudi was a Muslim Brotherhood member who publicly supported Hamas and Hezbollah, and was integral to the Brotherhood’s efforts to influence the political process.

One of Dar al-Hijrah’s founders, Sheikh Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, became the imam in 2003 and left in 2005. He also helped found the Muslim American Society and was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s branch in Sudan. In 2004, he spoke in support of Palestinian suicide bombers since “they cannot defend themselves, except through these kinds of means.”

One of the mosque’s board of directors is Esam Omeish, who ran for the Virginia House of Delegates and is the former President of the Muslim American Society. He has called the Muslim Brotherhood “moderate” and admits that he and the MAS have been influenced by them. In 2004, he described the founder of Hamas as “our beloved Sheikh Ahmed Yassin” and has praised Palestinians who knew “that the jihad way is the way to liberate your land.”

A trustee of Dar al-Hijrah, Abdulhaleem Al-Ashqar, took part in a secret Hamas meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they discussed the need to use front organizations that appear more moderate. Al-Ashqar was later convicted for refusing to testify about the terrorist group’s efforts to raise money in the U.S. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali,a camp counselor and teacher at the mosque, has been convicted of supporting Al-Qaeda and planning to kill President Bush.

In February, a fundraiser was held at Dar al-Hijrah for the legal costs of Sabri Benkahla, who was convicted for lying to the FBI and in court about his terrorist links. Benkahla traveled to a training camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba and when he returned, helped train Muslims from the mosque using paintball guns.

The mosque’s current imam is Shaker Elsayed, a former secretary-general of the Muslim American Society. He praised Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2004, saying that his teachings as “the closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life.” In 2002, he spoke in support of suicide bombers and said that when Muslims are attacked, they must fight jihad with whatever “they can get in their hand and if they don’t have anything in their hand then they can fight with their hand without weapons.” Sheikh Elsayed gave the opening prayer for the Virginia House of Delegates in March.

Dar al-Hijrah’s Director of Outreach, Johari Abdul-Malik, has gone to great lengths to denounce Anwar al-Awlaki, but he is a radical himself. He has supported attacks on Israelis, and pushes 9/11 conspiracy theories. He also incorrectly denies that al-Awlaki preached extremism while he was the mosque’s imam.

Dave Gaubatz also ties Dar al-Hijrah to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another Muslim Brotherhood affiliate that was labeled by the federal government as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Holy Land Foundation trial. The HLF was found in court to have acted as a front to raise money for Hamas and was part of the Brotherhood apparatus in the U.S.

“CAIR and Dar al-Hijrah are one-in-one,” Gaubatz told FrontPage. “Very little happens with CAIR where they don’t consult with Dar al-Hijrah’s board members and leaders.”

Government documents also support the conclusion that the mosque is a jihadist front. The IPT has one report from 2002 from a Customs and Border Protection database that said that Dar al-Hijrah is “operating as a front for Hamas operatives in the U.S.” Two other reports from December 2007 confirmed that the mosque was under investigation for potential criminal and terrorist activity. One said that people connected to the mosque were involved in financing terrorism and has been “encouraging fraudulent marriages.” WorldNetDaily.com reports that an investigation into credit card fraud has led to the mosque, “following reports of mysterious Dar al-Hijrah line-item charges appearing on the statements of local individuals not even connected to the mosque.”

The mosque’s ties to radical Islam and terrorism are so numerous they hard to keep track of. A basic Internet search would have yielded this information for the government officials that decided to do business with Dar al-Hijrah. The mosque should not be operating, and it is a disgrace that the American people are paying them tens of thousands of dollars without even knowing it.

“No more bailouts, no more greed, how many profits do you need?” That’s been a signature chant of community organizers and Big Labor thugs who have stormed bank offices and financial executives’ private homes decrying corporate welfare over the past several months. But now that the federal government and a coalition of big banking interests are poised to bail out a crony Chicago bank with longtime ties to the Obama administration, Saul Alinsky’s avenging angels are nowhere to be found.

ShoreBank is a Windy City investment bank with all the right (or, rather, left) ties. Its stated progressive mission isn’t merely to make good lending decisions, but to engage in Barack Obama-esque social engineering to “create economic equity and a healthy environment.” The ShoreBank corporate slogan: “Let’s change the world.”

The company website features a video of Obama in Kenya championing ShoreBank microlending projects overseas. ShoreBank has also touted itself as a “green” bank from its founding days — promoting dubious carbon credit programs, subjecting new borrowers to eco-litmus tests (“we look at how you use water, how you recover water and clean it, how you use energy, if you produce clean energy, how you manage CO2, whether you are offsetting CO2 that your product produces, if you are using sustainably produced materials”) and encouraging customers to participate in “EcoDeposits” to “directly support the green agenda.”

Social and environmental justice may make for good Volvo bumper stickers. They do not, however, make for a good bottom line. While the bank was on do-gooder missions around the world, business at home was in trouble. As The Wall Street Journal reported, “Losses racked up during the recession have left the bank facing a demand to raise new capital or face likely closure by regulators.”

Enter the Chicago political friends and family of ShoreBank. The ties are long and deep, as the Central Illinois 9/12 Project has been chronicling for months:

— ShoreBank co-founder Jan Piercy was a Wellesley College roommate of Hillary Clinton’s, who has long supported the bank along with former president Bill Clinton.

— Former ShoreBank Vice Chairman Bob Nash worked for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid as deputy campaign manager. Board of Directors member Howard Stanback is a Hyde Park neighborhood pal of President Obama, who served with Stanback on the board of the radical Woods Fund (where Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers also sat).

— White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett served on the board of Chicago Metropolis 2020 with ShoreBank Director Adele Simmons, former president of the liberal MacArthur Foundation, where she focused on “climate change” and “global governance” issues.

— The bank and its employees donated some $12,000 to the Obama 2008 presidential campaign, and co-founder Mary Houghton reportedly gave advice to Obama’s late mother about small business lending issues.

In other words: ShoreBank is too politically connected to fail.

And now you, the taxpayer, may be on the hook for helping its cronies engineer a special rescue. Fox Business News reported this week that a consortium of large lenders — including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and GE Capital — have partnered with the feds to pitch in a combined $200 million public-private bailout. (In addition, Illinois Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky has been crusading for a state-level bailout of the beleaguered bank.) The buzz on both Wall Street and Capitol Hill is that Goldman and perhaps others in the public-private partnership were pressured to lend a hand.

It wouldn’t be the first time that businesses have felt the Obama squeeze. And it wouldn’t be the first time that Democrats exploited the financial crisis to milk public money for their banking cronies.

The laggardly House Ethics Committee is still investigating Democrat California Rep. Maxine Waters, who had a personal and financial stake in Boston-based OneUnited, a minority bank that received $12 million in TARP bailout money under smelly circumstances. The bank’s executives donated $12,500 to her congressional campaigns. Her husband, Sidney Williams, was an investor in one of the banks that merged into OneUnited. Waters secured meetings between OneUnited execs and Treasury Department officials.

That probe has dragged on for nearly a year, which doesn’t bode well for fresh GOP demands for an investigation into the shady ShoreBank bailout. House Financial Services Committee ranking minority member Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., has demanded that the White House cough up documentation about any possible overt contact with Goldman about the deal.

Team Obama is smarter than that, of course. To quote Obama’s environmental czar Carol Browner, who pressured auto industry execs last year to cooperate on a fuel standards increase, they know “to put nothing in writing, ever.”

The fingerprints may be missing, but the stench of the Chicago Way is impossible to cover up.

Michelle Malkin is the author of “Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies” (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

"Kenya court rules Islamic courts are illegal," from the BBC, May 24 (thanks to Davida):

Kenya's Islamic courts are illegal and discriminatory, a panel of judges has ruled.

The three judges said the Islamic "Kadhi" courts favoured Islam over other faiths, and that this was unconstitutional as Kenya was a secular country.

The issue of Islamic courts has been a contentious point in the country's new proposed constitution.

It is due to go to a referendum in August.

The Kadhi courts - set up under British colonial rule - mainly deal with matters of marriage and inheritance for Kenya's Muslim minority.

The Christian church in Kenya brought the case to court six years ago....

"Al Shabaab ask [sic] Kenya to keep off," by Abdulkadir Khalif for The Daily Nation (Kenya), May 21:

Somali insurgent group al Shabaab has once again warned Kenya to stop interfering in the affairs of Somalia.

The rebel group's spokesman, Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Raghe alias Sheikh Ali Dhere, said Kenya was among Christian (non-Muslim) forces opposing his movement's Jihad (holy war) against the Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu.

"We know that Kenya is supporting few cowards around its border," he said at a passing out parade for rebel fighters in the port city of Kismayu.

"You Jihadists are going to crush those elements and move beyond into Kenya," he added.

Kenya, he said, is in a glass house and should not start throwing stones.

"Kenya should learn from what happened to the mightier Ethiopian forces," said Sheikh Ali Dhere. "Thousands of Ethiopians had to stream to the border in total defeat."

He asked the trainees to remain morally and spiritually equipped to confront any threat against Islam.

The militants, he said, were in Jihad against non-Muslims anywhere around the world.

"The jihad is for the liberation of all Muslims around the world," said Sheikh Ali Dhere. "When we succeed in this part, we will to move to other parts until we ensure only Allah is worshipped in this world," he added amid chants of Allahu Akbar (God is Great)....

Islamic View of non-Muslims

After forbidding terrorist labels (unless describing tea partiers and Christians), Obama’s administration admits the Taliban was involved with the Times Square bomber’s assault, and perhaps Miranda rights should have been withheld.

The problem is Obama denounced the phrases “War on Terror” and “Radical Islam,” favoring leftist rhetoric that endangers America.

Anti-West leftists who worship Che Guevara and extol Bill Ayers never want to insult those trying to blow up the world.  It would be intolerant.

Political correctness has allowed Islamic terror: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, 9/11, LAX, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, murdering American military abroad at Khobar Towers, Kenya, Tanzania, Philippines, Mogadishu, Beirut, U.S.S. Cole, the Shoe Bomber, Arafat’s plane hijackings, Saddam ignoring 17 UN Resolutions, and Nidal Malik Hasan, the Muslim jihadist serving in the U.S. military who murdered 13 Fort Hood soldiers.

In June 2007, Obama declared:

Whatever we [America] once were, we’re no longer a Christian nation … We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

According to Gallup polls, 71% of America is Christian.  Just 3% are Muslim.

Obama dodged facts in his Inaugural Address:

… to the Muslim world, we [America] seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.

America and Islam do not have mutual interests, America is hated by the religion intent on annihilating the world.

What can one expect from a man who needs George Stephanopoulos to tell him which faith he follows?

In 2009, Obama repeated his anti-Christian views to Islamic Turkey:

Although we [America] have a very large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.

History proves otherwise.

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch disproves Obama’s remarks with historical facts:

Were there Muslims along Paul Revere’s ride, or standing next to Patrick Henry when he proclaimed, ‘Give me liberty or give me death’?  Where [sic] there Muslims among the framers or signers of the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men—not just Muslims, as Islamic law would have it—are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?  Were there Muslims among those who drafted the Constitution and vigorously debated its provisions, or among those who enumerated the Bill of Rights, which guarantees—again in contradiction to the tenets of Islamic law—that there should be no established national religion, and that the freedom of speech should not be infringed?

The answer is no.

Robert Spencer illustrates Islamic beliefs and practices in “Islam 101″ by quoting Sura 9:5, the “Verse of the Sword”:

… then kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush …

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Leftists purposely rationalize Islam in order to rid America of Christianity, but Islam is entirely radical, denying free-thinking, even to Muslims. Islam denies liberty to choose anything but Islam and Allah.  That is not freedom, that is death.

Egyptian writers have condemned a call by a group of Islamic lawyers for the classic book Arabian Nights to be banned because it is "obscene".

The group, Lawyers Without Shackles, filed a complaint with Egypt's prosecutor general after the collection of folk tales was republished.

They called for the new edition to be pulped and the stories to be banned.

But the country's writers union has said it will fight the group in the courts if they try to proceed.

'Like the Taliban'

"I was shocked at the offensive phrases it contains," Ayman Abdul Hakim of Lawyers Without Shackles was quoted by the TV station Al Arabiya.

They catalogued several references to sex in the book and said they were "calls to sin".

But Writers' Union spokesman said the lawyers were behaving "like the Taliban".

"Those who want to destroy our heritage are taking the same path as the Taliban when they destroyed Buddha's statues," Mohammed Salmawy told the news agency AFP, referring to the destruction of the giant sculptures of Buddha in Bamiyan.

The books publishers, the state-run General Organisation Cultures Palaces, said the republishing had been very popular and the print run had sold out.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 5 (CDN) -- Islamic militants yesterday killed another leader of the underground church movement in Somalia, sources said.

Before he was fatally shot on Tuesday (May 4) in Xarardheere, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Jowhar, 57-year-old Yusuf Ali Nur had been on a list of people the Islamic extremist al Shabaab suspected of being Christian, sources who spoke on condition of anonymity told Compass. Al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda, has vowed to rid Somalia of Christianity.

The militants fighting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu had been engaged in a two-hour battle with a rival rebel group, the Ahlu Sunna Waljamer, which had taken control of the Xarardheere area, before they came across Nur. Nur had lived in Xarardheere since leaving Jowhar in July 2009.

Eyewitnesses said that after al Shabaab took control of the area, they went from house to house looking for enemy fighters when they arrived at Nur's rented home at about 10:30 a.m. Sources said that upon finding Nur, one of the militants remarked, "Oh! This is Yusuf, whom we have been looking for," before they sprayed him with bullets at close range.

Nur is survived by his wife, whose name was withheld for security reasons, and three children, ages 11, 9 and 7.

This latest death comes after several execution-style murders of Somalis suspected of being members of a suppressed yet resilient underground faith movement in Somalia. A number of Christians have been beheaded by the radical Islamists out to topple the fledgling TFG and introduce a strict version of sharia (Islamic law). [...]

Nur, who had worked on a farm while in Jowhar, had long being monitored by al Shabaab, the sources said. After settling in Xarardheere, he became the head teacher of Ganane Primary School and also taught English. The al Shabaab militants object to the use of English, preferring Arabic, and even after relocating to Xarardheere Nur realized he was in danger of the militants finding him, sources said...

"Kenya investigates Islamic group crackdown on soccer," by Noor Ali for Reuters, April 30:

(Reuters) - Kenya has deployed security agents to its border with Somalia after Islamic clerics announced they had clamped down on the public broadcast of soccer and films, a security official said.

Clerics in the frontier town of Mandera said Monday they had confiscated a number of satellite TV dishes in a football-obsessed nation ahead of the World Cup because public film dens were corrupting youths.

"Two groups, an undercover team from National Security Intelligence Service and (an) anti-terrorist unit, arrived here Tuesday night to investigate," a senior local security source who did not wish to be named told Reuters late Thursday.

The security officer also said another team had been dispatched to Dadaab refugee camp which is home to some 270,000 mostly Somali refugees in the mostly Muslim region.

He said local residents from Mandera, located just a few kilometres from the porous border, claimed al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels in Somalia had made phone calls to congratulate the clerics.

A government spokesman denied the deployment but one leading cleric in Mandera, Sheikh Daud Sheikh Mahmud, said he had been informed of the intelligence officers' arrival.

Mandera district's top civil servant sought to allay fears that hardline Islamist insurgents in southern Somalia might be extending their influence across the frontier and said it was a local security committee that had closed down the video halls.

"The closure of video dens has the government's blessing," said District Commissioner Francis Lenyangume.

Lenyangume said parents backed the move because the dens were frequented by drug pushers and showed pornographic films. Local residents were free to watch the World Cup and satellite TV in their own homes, he said.

Creeping Sharia is creeping Sharia, and the Kenyan government has a vested interest in monitoring and resisting it. For that matter, claims of this kind at combating "pornography" are best taken with a grain of salt, as demonstrated by the threat posed to legitimate cultural and religious expression seen in Indonesia.

Al Shabaab militants control swathes of central and southern Somalia, including much of the area bordering Kenya, enforcing a harsh version of sharia law that includes banning music on radios and amputating the hands of thieves.

Ten percent of Kenya's 39 million people are Muslim and 78 percent are Christian, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Anti-terrorism police units in Kenya are still searching for a Somali-born Australian terror suspect, who escaped earlier this month while in police custody in a town near the Ugandan border. The incident has prompted the Kenyan government to tighten security throughout the country.

Kenyan police spokesman Eric Kiraithe declined to comment on the circumstances that may have led to the escape of the terror suspect Hussein Hashi Farah. But Kiraithe says every effort is being made to find him.

"We are not going to give you that information at this point in time because investigations are going on. We have taken a lot of security measures to re-arrest that man," he said.

Anti-terrorism police units are searching towns in and around the western border town of Busia, and authorities say security in all airports and border points in Kenya has been tightened.

Immigration officials in Busia detained Farah in mid-March, after his name appeared on an international terrorism watch list. According to local media reports, Farah was in police custody for several days and was about to be transferred to Nairobi when he escaped.

The Kenyan police spokesman says the terror suspect may have been released by mistake. He dismissed rumors that Farah had bribed his way out of jail.

The Somali man, who holds an Australian passport, is believed to have been involved in the planning of a suicide attack on an Australian military base last August.

The attack was foiled and Farah evaded capture in Australia. But several other suspects - all Australian citizens of Somali and Lebanese origins - were subsequently arrested and charged. The men are alleged to have ties to the al-Qaida-linked militant group al-Shabab in Somalia, which is listed as a terrorist group by several Western countries, including Australia and the United States.

There has been no official comment from the Australian government about Farah's disappearance. But local media reports say it has privately expressed to the Kenyan government its concern and alarm over the apparent security failure....

NAIROBI, Kenya, March 24 (CDN) -- Islamic militants in Somalia tracked down an underground church leader who had previously escaped a kidnapping attempt and killed him last week, Christian sources said.

Islamic extremist al Shabaab rebels shot Madobe Abdi to death on March 15 at 9:30 a.m. in Mahaday village, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of Johwar. He had escaped an al Shabaab attempt to kidnap him on March 2.

Abdi's death adds to a growing number of Christians murdered by Islamic militants, but his was distinctive in that he was not a convert from Islam. An orphan, Abdi was raised as a Christian.

Sources said the militants prohibited his body from being buried, ordering that it be left to dogs as an example to other Christians. Al shabaab, which is fighting the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of President Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed, has embarked on a campaign to rid the country of all non-Muslims.

"The al Shabaab say, 'Leaving Abdi's body outside is a warning to all that a murtid [infidel] is a disgrace to Muslims,' hence creating fear to whoever would like to choose Christianity," said a source....

Newsweek Magazine is running an article in its March 29th issue entitled “Why I Was Banned in the U.S.A.” by  Tariq Ramadan.  This supporter of terrorist organizations is crowing now because the Obama administration caved to the demands of the ACLU .  It reversed the Bush administration’s decision to deny him  a visa to enter our country, rather than continue to support the ban against a court challenge brought on Ramadan’s behalf by the ACLU.

Tariq Ramadan claimed in his Newsweek article that he was originally banned from entering the U.S. because:

My offense, it seemed, had been to forcefully criticize America’s support for Israel and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The real reason why the Bush administration banned Tariq Ramadan was because, among other things, of his alleged financial contributions to Palestinian groups designated as fundraising agencies for Hamas by the U.S. Treasury Department.  The visa revocation was in accordance with a law which denies entry to foreigners who have used a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”

Here are just a few of the other reasons that were cited for his ban:

Following the usual victim narrative of radical Muslims, Ramadan writes:

In my case, criticizing America’s Middle East policies cast doubt on my loyalty to Western values and cost me a job.

Then he compares himself to the victims of alleged anti-Communist witch-hunters duirng the Cold War:

It’s not the first time America has tried to shield itself from dissenting opinions. During the Cold War, dozens of overseas artists, activists, and intellectuals—including British novelist Doris Lessing, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez—were denied visas because of their left-leaning ideas. Today, though, the American concept of the “other” has taken on a relatively new and specific form: the Muslim.

Next month, Ramadan will be in New York City to participate in a panel discussion about Muslims.  I’m sure that we will hear more about how Muslims just like him are unfairly singled out because of their opinions.

We do not need lectures from radical Islamist terrorist advocates about the First Amendment.   There were more than enough legitimate reasons to bar a foreign radical Islamic supporter of terrorist organizations like Tariq Ramadan from entering our country.  Shame on the Obama administration for giving in to the ACLU once again.  And shame on Newsweek for running Tariq Ramadan’s  propaganda piece without any counterbalancing facts.

MOGADISHU, Somalia, March 11 (UPI) -- The reported takeover of Somalia's al-Shebab Islamists by al-Qaida veteran Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 1988 [sic] U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, could rally the divided jihadists as they brace for a U.S.-backed government offensive.

According to counter-terrorism operatives in Kenya, Somalia's northern neighbor that sides with the beleaguered TFG in Mogadishu, officials believe Fazul took command of the jihadist forces following the assassination of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan by U.S. SEALs on Sept. 14.

Nabhan's convoy was attacked by U.S. Navy helicopters south of Mogadishu near Baraawe in a raid codenamed Operation Celestial Balance in which he was the main target.

The Kenya-born Nabhan, a close associate of Fazul for many years, was wanted for involvement in the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania, in which 241 people were killed.

U.S. authorities also wanted him for twin attacks in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa on Nov. 28, 2002 -- the suicide bombing of the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel and a near-simultaneous two-missile attack on an Israeli airliner that had just taken off from the city's airport. The bombing killed 15 people; the missiles missed the Boeing 757 taking Israeli vacationers home.

Fazul was born in the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mozambique in 1972. He trained as a computer expert and speaks five languages, including English, French and Arabic.

While pursuing Islamic studies in Pakistan, he was recruited by al-Qaida in 1991 and was sent to Somalia to help train Islamist militiamen. He has been closely linked to them since.

He took over leadership of al-Qaida's East Africa cell following the embassy bombings and was heavily involved in the African "blood diamonds" trade to fund al-Qaida....

Sharia Alert from the Horn of Africa: "Somali Islamist rebels ban English, science lessons," by Sahra Abdi for Reuters, March 5 (thanks to Twostellas):

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Somalia's hardline Islamists have banned English and science studies in schools in the southern Afmadow town after the education centers there ignored the rebels' call for fighters, residents and teachers say.

World

Residents of the town near the border with Kenya said three schools had been given one month to comply with the order by al Shabaab rebels and switch the curriculum to accommodate Arabic and Islamic studies.

"They asked us to contribute students to their militia so that they can fight for them, but we rejected their proposal," said one teacher who wanted to remain anonymous.

Al Shabaab, which Washington says is al Qaeda's proxy in the failed Horn of Africa state, wants to topple Somalia's U.N.-backed government and impose its own strict version of sharia, Islamic law.

The heavily armed group controls much of the south and parts of the capital Mogadishu, and courts run by its clerics have ordered executions, floggings and amputations.

It has also banned movies, dancing at wedding ceremonies and playing or watching soccer in the areas under its control.

Elders said the al Shabaab militia shut down Waamo, Dhoobaale and Osman Mohamud schools briefly Sunday, before slapping the ban on English, which they called a "spy language."

"The Islamic administration closed education centers and ordered them to stop teaching English which they said is a western language," Ali Mowlid Mohamud, clan elder in Afmadow, told Reuters by phone.

"They told schools, 'We know everyone who is going to be a spy for western governments learns this language.'"...

"Somalia, Again," by Alex Perry for the March 1 issue of Time:

On the night of Sept. 21 last year, U.S. diplomatic staff in South Africa were telephoned at home and told not to go to work the next day. A State Department official refused to explain the warning, but a Western intelligence officer in Africa told TIME the alarm was raised after a phone call from an al-Qaeda operative to a number in Cape Town was intercepted -- a call in which an attack on U.S. government buildings in South Africa was discussed. No attack took place, and after three days, the embassy in Pretoria and three consulates reopened. But with South Africa expecting half a million fans for the soccer World Cup this June and July, security officials are understandably jittery. Especially because of the origin of the phone call. It came, TIME was told, from Somalia. [...]

If Somalia's extremists are becoming an international threat, that's partly because of their cosmopolitan leadership. One sure result of war is refugees, and decades of fighting in Somalia have seen the rapid growth of a large Somali diaspora in places from Cape Town to Minneapolis. But not all who have been forced to make new lives far away from Africa have done so easily. The past few years have seen the arrival in Somalia of 200 to 300 young ethnic Somali men from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden, migrants' children returning to their ancestral homeland, according to diplomatic and intelligence sources in East Africa. A Western soldier working in Somalia says these foreign-born Somalis now dominate al-Shabab. "All their cells are commanded by a foreigner," he says. "All tactical and strategic decisions are taken by foreigners."

To extend their reach overseas, al-Shabab's leaders in Somalia are thought to circle back to the diaspora, looking for those who can be recruited to extremism. The FBI is tracking more than a dozen Somali Americans who disappeared from their homes and are suspected of joining al-Shabab, and in November, 14 Minnesota men with connections to Somalia were charged with offenses like aiding a terrorist organization; four have pleaded guilty. In August, Australian police arrested five men from the Somali community in Melbourne on suspicion of plotting to attack an army barracks outside Sydney. The September call to Cape Town was picked up because a group of ethnic Somalis in the city were already under surveillance on suspicion of raising funds for al-Shabab, according to the intelligence officer. "If you've been waiting for a moment to declare Somalia a priority threat, what else do you need?" asks the Western soldier in Somalia. "There's no longer a serious risk that southern Somalia could become a jihadi operational deployment facility. It already is."...

An update on this story. "Push for Islamic Courts in Kenya Alarms Christians," from Compass Direct News, February 12:

NAIROBI, Kenya (Compass Direct News) - A constitutional battle to expand the scope of Islamic courts in Kenya threatens to ignite religious tensions at a time when authorities are on high alert against Muslim extremists with ties to Somalia.

Constitutional provisions for Islamic or Kadhis' courts have existed in Kenya since 1963, with the courts serving the country's coastal Muslim population in matters of personal status, marriage, divorce, or inheritance. Kenya's secular High Court has jurisdiction over civil and criminal matters, and even a decision in the Islamic courts can be appealed at the High Court.

The Islamic courts have functioned only in Kenya's Coast Province, but in a hotly debated draft constitution, their jurisdiction would expand across the nation and their scope would increase. The proposed constitution has gathered enough momentum that 23 leaders of churches and Christian organizations released a statement on Feb. 1 asserting their opposition to any inclusion of such religious courts.

"It is clear that the Muslim community is basically carving for itself an Islamic state within a state," the Kenyan church leaders stated. "This is a state with its own sharia [Islamic law]- compliant banking system; its own sharia-compliant insurance; its own Halaal [lawful in Islam] bureau of standards; and it is now pressing for its own judicial system."

Muslim leaders are striving to expand the scope of Islamic courts to include civil and small claims cases. They also want to upgrade the Muslim tribunals to High Court status. These demands have alarmed Christians, who make up 80 percent of the population and defeated a similar proposal in a 2005 referendum. Muslims make up 10 percent of Kenya's 39 million people, 9 percent of the population follows indigenous religions and less than 1 percent are Hindu, Sikh and Baha'i.

The National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) said the Committee of Experts (CoE) responsible for "harmonizing" drafts from various stakeholders ignored their concerns. The committee was responsible for determining what matters would be unduly "contentious" and was charged with keeping them out of the draft.

"We wrote to them, but we have been ignored," said the Rev. Canon Peter Karanja, NCCK general secretary. "Who told the CoE that Kadhis' courts were not contentious?"

Saying the committee ignored the crucial requirement of omitting what is "contentious," Karanja said it did little to build consensus. He said that unless the Islamic courts are stricken from the constitution, Christians might be forced to reject the document in a national referendum later this year.

Muslim leaders, just as stridently, insist that recognition of the Islamic courts does not elevate Islam over other religions, and that if the courts are removed they will shoot down the draft in the referendum.

The 2005 referendum split the country and was followed by a bitterly disputed presidential election in 2007 that sparked rioting, reportedly leaving 1,300 people dead. The election dispute was resolved with one candidate becoming president and the other prime minister, and at the heart of the proposed constitution is an attempt to transfer presidential powers to the prime minister.

Christian leaders point out that the "Harmonized Draft" of the constitution discriminates against non-Muslims and contradicts its own Article 10 (1-3), which states that there shall be no state religion, that the state shall treat all religions equally and that state and religion shall be separate. They see the attempt to expand the scope of the Islamic courts as part of a long-term effort by Muslims to gain political, economic and judicial power....

"Arrested Evangelists in Tanzania Say Muslims Colluded with Police," from Compass Direct News, February 2 (thanks to Twostellas):

NAIROBI, Kenya, February 2 (CDN) -- Two Christian evangelists in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, have been arrested after Muslims invited them to debate religion but instead called in security agents who charged the evangelists with illegal preaching.

Anglican evangelists Eleutery Kobelo and Cecil Simbaulanga, released on bail and facing a hearing on Feb. 11, told Compass that Christian and Muslim groups organized the inter-faith debate that was planned for a neutral venue in October of last year in the Kariakoo area of Dar es Salaam.

Kobelo said no Muslims showed up at the debate until Islamists arrived with government security agents who charged them with "using religious sermons to incite Muslims and Christians into viewing each other with suspicion."

"This continuous intimidation by the Muslims using the police is worrying us," he said....

As well it should.

The Obama administration’s decision to read the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights has rightly come under withering criticism. Instead of a lengthy interrogation by officials with al Qaeda expertise, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was questioned for 50 minutes by local FBI agents and then later advised of his “right to remain silent.”It’s well understood that the focus on gaining evidence for a criminal trial was an intelligence failure of massive proportions. Not well understood is that the most powerful recent argument for aggressively interrogating terrorists, keeping them in military detention, and prosecuting them in military commissions comes to us from the Obama Justice Department itself.On Dec. 18, 2009, days before the Christmas attack, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, made a secret filing in federal district court that was aimed at saving the prosecution of Ahmed Ghailani, another al Qaeda terrorist. Ghailani is facing charges for helping al Qaeda bomb U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Ghailani argues that those charges should be dropped because lengthy CIA interrogations have denied him his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

via David B. Rivkin Jr. and Marc A. Thiessen: A Tale of Two Terrorists – WSJ.com.

In a self-conscious missive to the American People published in Newsweek, George Obama reveals the disparity between his life in a Kenyan slum and his famous brother living in the White House.

If there was a leading light in the Obama clan, he was it; and if there was a shadowed place that no one liked to talk about, then that, I guess, was me.

Obama generously details his own post-childhood rebellion, including a life-altering stint in prison for robbery.  There, enduring punishment unheard of in comparably posh U.S. correctional facilities, he determined to change…and became an American.

Not in the literal sense, of course (although given our lax immigration policies of late, it appears all that is needed is a bit of determination and, um, legs).  He, along with other slum-dwellers, organized an area soccer team for youth, eventually winning the Nairobi Super League. Modestly giving credit to his brother for the media spotlight he has earned, Obama details what humans can do in spite of circumstances and without government aid.  This proves that American, no, human ideals of individual worth and perseverance can achieve success often antagonistic to their surroundings.

All personal achievement aside, George Obama poignantly notes the vast expanse between he and his brother, while indirectly highlighting President Obama’s own political platform:

I still live in one of Africa’s biggest slums, along with some 4.5 million others. We have little or no access to health care, no welfare, and no free schooling. The average income is less than $5 a day—and that’s for those who find work as servants, taxi drivers, or garbage collectors. For the rest, there is nothing. My brother has risen to be the leader of the most powerful country in the world. In Kenya I hope to be a leader among the poorest, most powerless people on earth—the people of the ghetto. (emphasis mine)

It does make one wonder why Barack Obama is so willing to take Americans’ money in exchange for vacuous platitudes, yet, he cannot give more than words to elevate the status of his own immediate family.  As George Obama said, “Here, a little goes a long way.”

Related posts:

1. Obama Policy Advisors Want To Ration Elder Healthcare: Glenn Beck
2. Barack Obama Makes the Case Against Government Health Care
3. Obama's Lies at the "Health-Care Summit"

Eric over at Classical Values had a great response to my recent discussion about Birtherism and it’s crackpot leftist cousin Trig Birtherism (the belief that Sarah Palin’s son Trig is actually her grandson instead of her son.) He also had an important discovery:

In fact, I’m going to scoop Andrew on something. It may shock readers to know this, but Trig Palin was born in Kenya!

No, seriously. The only known, true, government-certified copy of his Kenyan Birth Certificate has come into my possession.

And here it is, for the first time on the Internet!

See this amazing revelation for yourself here.

BTW, while we’re on this inane subject again, I feel it necessary — given all the action in the comments on various other posts — to define the term “birther” as I see it.

I define “birther” as someone who argues that President Obama is not eligible to be President because of the alleged circumstances surrounding his birth. Some birthers say Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be President. Others say that because his father was not a citizen it wouldn’t matter even if he was born in Hawaii. Such people have sought to explain away all available evidence which points toward the circumstances of Obama’s birth being as he says it is. In their behavior they are clearly individuals possessed of the “Crackpot Conspiracist Mentality” as I’ve defined it.

Those who acknowledge that Obama is almost certainly eligible to be President but merely want to see his “long-form birth certificate” and desire to investigate Obama’s school records, dental records, and movie rental records are therefore, not, by definition, birthers. And I have little quarrel with them except I think they’d be much more effective to distance themselves from self-described Birthers. (And, frankly, I think it’s not the highest priority. Obama’s records have been pursued and studied by the finest opposition researchers in America. Anything big would have been found already. Conservatives should be more focused on America’s future than Obama’s past. It’s better to spend one’s time coming up with policies and strategies to make America better than trying to find out if communist poet Frank Marshall Davis was really Obama’s Dad. Let’s focus on beating bad ideas, not destroying the people who promote them.)

What I wish could be my final message to the Birthers: if the evidence was overwhelmingly clear that Obama was not a natural born citizen and was thus ineligible to be President then it would be a different ball game. But there’s no extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim. And because of this Birthers need to acknowledge the reality here: by continuing to push this conspiracy theory the Conservative Movement is being undermined. This stuff destroys credibility. Just as the “Trig Birtherism” theory hurts Andrew Sullivan and every leftist who gets near it, so too does the Obama Birth Certificate theory.

Related posts:

1. Is Sarah Palin a Birther? No, But the Left Wishes She Was
2. Progressive Alaska Lies about NewsReal, Andrew Sullivan Reprints; Surprise Bonus: The Revival of Trig Birtherism to Disgrace the Left
3. CNN: Was Obama Born in U.S.? What's the Difference?

As the United States turns its attention to security threats abroad, the disturbing trend of extremism in America’s Somali communities is a reminder that there are also real and present dangers at home.

A growing body of evidence suggests that Somali communities in the Unites States have become fertile ground for terrorist groups to recruit and implant operatives. On November 23, the federal government announced eight more indictments of Somali-Americans in Minnesota on charges of recruiting members of their community to join the al-Shabaab terrorist organization in Somalia. This brings to 14 the number of Somalis from Minnesota who have been indicted for helping the Al-Qaeda-linked group.

Of the eight indicted, only one has been arrested; the rest are currently outside of the United States. Four of those previously arrested have pled guilty and two have been released while they wait to be tried. The government believes that about 20 Somali-Americans have left the state to join al-Shabaab’s jihad in Somalia, at least three of whom have died since departing. One, Shirwa Ahmed, died when he became the first American suicide bomber.

Several of those indicted attended the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center in St. Paul, as did many of those who were recruited. The mosque released a statement in March saying that “Abubakar Center didn’t recruit, finance, or otherwise facilitate in any way, shape, or form the travel of those youth.”

Somali gangs are also becoming an issue in Minnesota. Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer, said in 2007 that there 400-500 members of his community were involved in gangs. The Associated Press reported in July that

“Despite anger and despair over the killings in Minnesota’s Somali community—the nation’s largest—police and prosecutors have struggled to catch and try the killers. Few witnesses have stepped forward because of a fear of reprisal and deep-rooted distrust of authority.”

The concern over extremist elements in the Somali community is not limited to Minnesota. The FBI is worried about the community of 6,000 living in the Washington D.C. area. The Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, which was attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood shooter, has many Somali attendees. The former imam of the mosque has acted as an Al-Qaeda recruiter and may be part of the group’s efforts to help al-Shabaab. The FBI’s investigation into disappearing Somalis who may have joined the terrorist group includes Seattle, Columbus, Cicinnati, Boston and San Diego.

Brian Moseley, a reporter for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette, won an award for documenting of the inability of Somali immigrants in Shelbyville, Tennessee, to assimilate, causing a culture clash in the town. Moseley described how law enforcement and fire department personnel had described to him how the immigrants were hostile to them, and how police officers were often reluctant to patrol areas where they live when it is dark. I also broke a story in May about how counter-terrorism expert Dave Gaubatz and his researchers had found extremist material at a mostly Somali mosque in Nashville. Gaubatz and his team collected evidence of child abuse and accused the Department of Child Services of failing to act.

A similar clash was caught on tape when on June 27, 2009 a video was uploaded to YouTube showing about 15 Somali youth harassing and throwing rocks at a homosexual man leaving the Gay Pride Festival in Minneapolis.

Terrorism researcher Patrick Poole wrote in November 2007 that an organization tied to radical Islamic militants in Somalia was holding conferences in Falls Church and Minneapolis, where those attending were instructed on how to send money overseas without being detected. Poole wrote:

“…there exists an active recruiting and transportation network in the U.S., including Minneapolis, for Somali-run terrorist training camps, many of which have recently reopened. In many instances, these same Somali leaders purporting ignorance and innocence for the local media are not only aware of these recruiting operations, but have actively participated in them.”

Al-Shabaab’s ranks have been swelled by the addition of non-Somalis. The president of Somalia’s government has said that up to 1,100 foreign terrorists have joined the group, which now is operating training camps in the East African country. The terrorist group has a wide international network and its training of foreign operatives means it has sympathizers willing to act in the West.

One Somali-American from Minneapolis was arrested in November in the Netherlands for financing the transportation of American recruits to Somalia. Up to five Somalis living in Canada disappeared in November as well and are believed to have traveled together to their homeland via Kenya. Previously, a Toronto-based businessman was killed in 2008 after he joined Somali terrorists fighting Ethiopian troops who had invaded the country to stop extremists from coming to power. British intelligence has said that dozens of people have gone to Somalia and received terrorist training and returned to the United Kingdom.

Al-Shabaab has taken large control over large swaths of territory, including parts of Mogadishu, potentially allowed Al-Qaeda to replicate the safe harbor and reverse some of its most major losses since the war in Afghanistan began. Already, Somalia is being used as a base to export terrorism. Saudi Arabia has captured Somalis that were helping the extremist Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and were planning attacks in the Kingdom.

Of course, not all Somalis are sympathizers with extremism. There has been outrage in the Somali community over these developments. On June 11, Somali-Americans in Minneapolis protested the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which they accused of encouraging members of their community not to cooperate with the government’s investigation. The Terror-Free Somalia Foundation, which closely tracks events related to al-Shabaab, is led by Abdurahman Warsame, a Somali-American activist.

The failure to integrate these Somali immigrants into American society is causing strife and has proved to be an asset to al-Shabaab. The majority of the immigrants oppose such extremism. But it doesn’t take many sympathizers to create a network of support for terrorists. The current focus of al-Shabaab is Somalia, but when the day comes that they change their focus to the U.S., they will have American recruits ready for action.