Cruz files bill to ban U.S.-based Islamic State jihadis from returning to the U.S.

This is simple common sense. By going to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State’s jihad, these Muslims have joined an entity that has declared war against the United States. They have committed treason. They have forfeited the rights and privileges of citizenship. But it will be interesting to see who opposes this, and on what grounds.

“Cruz Files Bill to Ban American Islamic State Fighters from Returning to U.S.,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, January 23, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) will file legislation on Friday to ban American citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) and other terror groups from returning to the United States, where they pose a significant terror threat, according to sources in the senator’s office.

Cruz, who first proposed the legislation last year, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) of their U.S. citizenship rights and stop them from coming back stateside.

The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.), tightens and updates existing regulations by which a U.S. citizen effectively renounces his or her citizenship.

Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama’s Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as “detached from reality” on the foreign policy front.

“President Obama’s approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security—it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place,” said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.

Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country’s image.

“We’ve seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen,” Cruz said. “These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies.”

“That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States,” he said. “I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America’s leadership in the world.”…

RELATED ARTICLES:

Hours after stabbings, “moderate” Fatah calls for more jihad

Iran: Tens of thousands protest against Charlie Hebdo and the freedom of speech

Australia: 1,000 Muslims rally against Charlie Hebdo and the freedom of speech

Video: Robert Spencer at AFDI Free Speech Rally, Garland, Texas, January 17, 2015

Slander in Islam!

On this show we take a look at the concept of Islamic slander from the Muslim rule book, Reliance of the Traveler.

To help with some explanations is none other than, Imam Abdullah, our own Pakistani Taliban shariah expert. His articulate, insightful and often hilarious comments are NOT TO BE MISSED.

So, start your weekend with a smile on your face and some serious facts for your brain. This is EDUTAINMENT! In addition, we have a live report from Jerusalem Jane. Don’t miss that!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Colorado Muslima gets four years for plot to join Islamic State

Kerry warns against “Islamophobia”

Dearborn Muslima sues police department for forced hijab removal

Dearborn Muslima sues police department for forced hijab removal

Australia: 1,000 Muslims rally against Charlie Hebdo and the freedom of speech

Iran: Tens of thousands protest against Charlie Hebdo and the freedom of speech

Saudi King Abdullah Dies at Age 91: Succession Crisis Looms

Saudi King Abdullah passed away today in hospital  from a terminal bout of pneumonia today at the age of 91. He was born in 1924, the  son of the Kingdom’s founder in 1932, King Abdulaziz Al-Saud. Abdullah became King in 2006.  While purportedly a reformer especially in educational development, he did not address socio cultural initiatives and the reining in the medieval code of punishment under the Wahhabist extremist doctrine.  He endeavored to bring about a draconian peace settlement of the Israel Palestinian dispute that never came to reality during his reign. The mounting Sunni extremism from the Muslim Brotherhood  offshoot  Al Qaeda and especially Salafist Jihadism of the Islamic State now threatens the Kingdom’s security internally and on its frontiers. With the fall of neighboring Yemen to Houthi Shiite  rebels who control the capital Sa’ana and many provinces, that raises the prospects of contending with being surrounded by an ally of Iran battling Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The alliance with the US under President Obama contending with  the civil war in Syria and conquest by the Islamic State of a large swath of territory in both Syria and Iraq, the Kingdom faces daunting security issues. Both The Kingdom and  Emirates members of the Gulf Cooperation Council  have problemtic relations with Qatar, a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and affiliate Hamas in Gaza.  Saudi dominance of OPEC has been eroded through the vaulting of US oil production, although it has tried to use the oil weapon in maintain  production and market share  in the  face of a global drop in demand  which has caused a major drop in revenues for some major oil producers, Iran, Russia and Venezuela.

As noted in a  December 31, 2014 Washington Institute for Near East Policy article  by Simon Henderson, succession to the late King Abdullah is very problematic and likely to engender some turmoil domestically impacting international relations.  His overall assessment  was, “The death  of King Abdullah will exacerbate tensions within the royal family over who should replace him.”  He wrote:

His successor would be his half brother Crown Prince Salman, who is seventy-eight. Despite the appearance of robustness given by a heavy public schedule of meetings, Salman’s brain is evidently ravaged by dementia. Visitors report that after a few minutes of conversation, he becomes incoherent. The fact that Salman appears in public at all is attributed to his determination to become king — or, more likely, the ambition of his closest relatives that he should do so.

Such are the rivalries in the House of Saud that King Abdullah has been unable to displace Salman, although last March he appointed another half brother, Muqrin — the youngest surviving son of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, also known as Ibn Saud — to the new position of deputy crown prince. Controversially, this meant passing over the claims of other half brothers and maneuvering in the Allegiance Council to secure an advance baya, or oath of allegiance, to try to cement Muqrin’s new status. Significantly, Muqrin’s confirmation was officially reported as not unanimous.

A power vacuum in Riyadh following the death or extended hospitalization of the Saudi monarch will prompt concern in international capitals because of Saudi Arabia’s importance as the world’s largest oil exporter. Despite its dominant market position, the kingdom has seemed powerless to stop the recent price fall, instead trying to preserve market share and perhaps undermine U.S. shale exploration. Other areas of concern would include the impact on the Saudi leadership’s position in Arab and Muslim-majority states, particularly in coping with the threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), against which Riyadh is a key member of the U.S.-led coalition. Also, simmering trouble among Iran-influenced Saudi Shiite activists is a perpetual worry.

Washington has traditionally tried to avoid influencing succession in Saudi Arabia because of lack of leverage and possible adverse consequences. But with the prospect of a messy transition, the United States will need to emphasize the importance of competent leadership emerging quickly, not relying on the mere hope that the House of Saud can sort this out itself. Although probably best done discreetly, there is also a danger that quiet diplomacy will be mistaken more widely for indifference.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

You’ll Never Guess Who’s Trying to Hack Your iPhone, Hint: It rhymes with Eff Bee Eye by Nichole Kardell

The FBI wants to search through your electronic life. You may think it’s a given that the government is in the business of collecting everyone’s personal data — Big Brother run amok in defiance of the Constitution. But under the limits of the Fourth Amendment, nothing it finds can be used to prosecute its targets. Now the FBI is taking steps to carry out broad searches and data collection under the color of authority, making all of us more vulnerable to “fishing expeditions.”

The investigative arm of the Department of Justice is attempting to short-circuit the legal checks of the Fourth Amendment by requesting a change in the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These procedural rules dictate how law enforcement agencies must conduct criminal prosecutions, from investigation to trial. Any deviations from the rules can have serious consequences, including dismissal of a case. The specific rule the FBI is targeting outlines the terms for obtaining a search warrant.

It’s called Federal Rule 41(b), and the requested change would allow law enforcement to obtain a warrant to search electronic data without providing any specific details as long as the target computer location has been hidden through a technical tool like Tor or a virtual private network. It would also allow nonspecific search warrants where computers have been intentionally damaged (such as through botnets, but also through common malware and viruses) and are in five or more separate federal judicial districts. Furthermore, the provision would allow investigators to seize electronically stored information regardless of whether that information is stored inside or outside the court’s jurisdiction.

The change may sound like a technical tweak, but it is a big leap from current procedure. As it stands, Rule 41(b) only allows (with few exceptions) a court to issue a warrant for people or property within that court’s district. The federal rules impose this location limitation — along with requirements that the agentspecifically identify the person and place to be searched, find probable cause, and meet other limiting factors — to reduce the impact an investigation could have on people’s right to privacy. Now the FBI is asking for the authority to hack into and search devices without identifying any of the essential whos, whats, wheres, or whys — giving the FBI the authority to search your computer, tablet, or smartphone even if you are in no way suspected of a crime.

All you have to do is cross the FBI’s virtual path. For instance, the proposed amendment would mean that agents could use tactics like creating online “watering holes” to attract their targets. Anyone who clicked on law enforcement’s false-front website would download the government malware and expose their electronic device to an agent’s search (and also expose the device to follow-on hackers). One obvious target for this strategy is any forum that attracts government skeptics and dissenters — FEE.org, for example.  Such tactics could inadvertently impact thousands of people who aren’t investigation targets.

This sort of sweeping authority is in obvious conflict with the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment makes it clear that the government cannot legally search your house or your personal effects, including your electronic devices, without (1) probable cause of a suspected crime (2) defined in a legal document (generally, a search warrant issued by a judge) (3) that specifically identifies what is to be searched and what is to be seized.

The FBI is not the first government agency to find itself challenged by the plain language of the Fourth Amendment. Past overreach has required judges and Congress to clarify what constitutes a legal search and seizure in particular contexts. In the 1960s, when electronic eavesdropping (via wiretaps and bugs) came about, Congress established the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (the Wiretap Act). The law addressed concerns about these new surreptitious and invasive investigative tactics and provided several strictures on legal searches via wiretap or bug. Since covert investigative tools can be hard to detect, it was important to institute more rigorous standards to keep agents in line.

The same concerns that Congress addressed in the 1960s are present today, but they take on far greater significance. With our growing reliance on electronic devices to communicate with others, to transact business, to shop, travel, date, and store the details of our private lives, these devices are becoming our most important personal effects. The ability of government actors to enter our digital space and search our electronic data is a major privacy concern that must be checked by Fourth Amendment standards. As the Supreme Court recently pronounced in Riley v. California, the search of a modern electronic device such as a smartphone or computer is more intrusive to privacy than even “the most exhaustive search of a house.”

What seems most troubling, though, is that the FBI is attempting to override the Fourth Amendment, along with the body of law developed over the years to reign in surveillance powers, through a relatively obscure forum. Instead of seeking congressional authority or judicial clarification, it has sought a major power grab through a procedural rule tweak — a tweak that would do away with jurisdictional limitations and specificity requirements, among other important checks on law enforcement. The request seems objectively — and constitutionally — offensive.

ABOUT NICOLE KARDELL

Nicole Kardell is an attorney with Ifrah Law, a Washington DC-based law firm. She represents clients in government enforcement actions and other regulatory compliance matters before federal and state agencies.

American Sniper Chris Kyle: A Man with a Purpose Driven Life

chris kyle with his bookI finally went to see the film American Sniper. There has been much written about Clint Eastwood’s Oscar nominated film based upon Chris Kyle’s auto-biography of the same name. Some have ridiculed Kyle for his lethality calling him a coward, others have praised him as an America hero and battlefield legend.

I read the book well before seeing the film. What stands out in my mind is how Chris Kyle’s life was a purpose driven one. He was blessed with certain skills and used those skills to save lives, but in a way most, particularly those who have never served in combat, would not understand.

In the film one quote stands out for me. Kyle, portrayed by Bradley Cooper, near the end of the film meets with a Veteran’s Administration doctor. The doctor asks Kyle if he has any regrets, to which Kyle replies:

I was just protecting my guys, they were trying to kill… our soldiers and I… I’m willing to meet my Creator and answer for every shot that I took.

To me that is what drove Chris Kyle throughout his short but heroic life. He wanted to protect what he loved most – our soldiers.

Kyle put God first in his life, then his duty to the nation and finally his responsibilities as a husband and father of two children. In the film Taya Renae Kyle, like most military wives, finds it difficult to understand Chris’ reality – his purpose driven life. Taya, portrayed by Sienna Miller, states, “You’re my husband, you’re the father of my children. Even when you’re here, you’re not here. I see you, I feel you, but you’re not here.”

Like most combat veterans, Chris Kyle suffered from what I call “survivors remorse.” Survivors remorse is the feeling of coming home from a combat deployment and grappling with the fact that you survived the ordeal while others of your brothers, and sisters, did not. The question is always: Why did I survive? The compelling desire is to go back into combat and by doing so get another chance at “protecting the guys.”

The worth of a soldier, trained to defend his country, is measured by saving the lives of his brothers-in-arms. Coming home safely with everyone you deployed with is the goal. To achieve that goal you must kill the enemy before he kills you or your brothers-in-arms.

The Congressional Medal of Honor is founded upon the principle of sacrifice above ones self. This purpose driven life, service above oneself, is especially evident, from my experiences, with the U.S. military elite forces such as: U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Army airborne soldiers, U.S. Army Special Forces, Marine Recon and Navy SEALs.

It was this purpose driven life that inextricably led to Chris Kyle’s untimely death. Kyle became personally involved with Operation Iraqi Freedom and  Operation Enduring Freedom wounded warriors. It was one of these soldiers, a U.S. Marine, who fatally shot Kyle on February 2, 2013.

I highly recommend seeing American Sniper. It will change your view of what Chris Kyle was really all about.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

The Hollywood Jihad Against American Sniper

More ‘American Sniper’ fallout: What Kid Rock wants to see happen to Michael Moore and Seth Rogen

‘American Sniper’ Star Gives Wounded Veterans Memories They Won’t Forget

5 Ways Bradley Cooper Got Pumped Up to Play Badass American Hero Chris Kyle

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Chris Kyle on a training course for Craft International, the company he started after leaving the Navy in 2009. Photo: Dallas Morning News.

New Garland, TX Video: Standing With the Prophet Conference

On January 17, 2015 there was a Stand With The Prophet Conference in Garland, TX. Watch this short video and learn the truth about the foundations of Islamic violence towards themselves and the others.

To follow is a brief overview of the organizers of this Stand With The Prophet Conference, SoundVision Foundation located at 2701 W. Devon Avenue in Chicago, IL Phone number: 773-973-4200.

The purpose of this conference and others like it around the country is to launch there new Strategic Communication Center For Muslims. Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid says there purpose is to confront Islamophobia and the vast media network who promote the anti Islam industry – I wish I knew exactly who that is.

Ironically, SoundVision brought in unindicted Co-conspirator Siraj Wahaj, John Esposito, and SoundVision Founder Abdul Malik Mujahid (who said killing is an essential element of Islam) and others to promote their truth challenged message of – peace, tolerance and inclusion.

In reality, SoundVisions and their allied groups like CAIR, ISNA, MAS, ICNA, and others refuse to condemn the fundamental root cause of political Islamic Terrorism.

These groups and the people supporting SoundVision and other Islamist Groups operating in America refuse to condemn the Islamic Blasphemy Laws that dictate followers of Islam to act violently or against the ‘others’ in certain situations.

Those situations are when any person speaks negatively against Islam, Mohammad, or Allah. If you live in countries ruled under Islamic Law the punishment is violent often leading to death.

In the West, anyone who blasphemes Islam, Mohammad, or Allah are singled out for violent retribution as we saw with the Charlie Hebdo assassinations and Jewish market. Or CAIR puts out a hit list of blasphemers they publish without fear and perhaps when the time is right, they or some Jihadi will act on their hit list as we saw Al Qaeda do in France.

In this video we asked a SoundVision designated organizer and several other Muslims if they would denounce Islamic Blasphemy Laws. Not one single follower of Islam would do that on camera.

One Muslim Doctor quoted Qur’an verse 5:32 to show Islam is peaceful yet didn’t know or refused to say what was in Qur’an verse 5:33 which calls for amputations or crucifixions if one violates Islamic Law.

Why do you think that is?

What does that tell you about Islamic Doctrine and the western values of freedom and liberty?

Blasphemy Laws and the 1st Amendment of our Constitution are not compatible under any circumstances.

Which side do you fall on? Freedom and Liberty or Islamic Blasphemy Laws?

RELATED VIDEO: AMERICANS RESPOND TO TEXAS JIHAD – Protest Footage

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of World Net Daily.

Pamela Geller: CNN’s War Against Truth

Any time the mainstream media raises the question of whether there is something violent about Islam, you can be sure that their learned analysts will find it as peaceful as the day is long.

HerePamela Geller skewers yet another example: “CNN’s War Against Truth,” by Pamela Geller,Breitbart, January 21, 2015:

In the wake of daily jihad attacks (thwarted or deadly), CNN clearly is losing control of its narrative that Islam is a religion of peace and Islamic jihad is not Islamic. From the very beginning of its propaganda piece “The War Within Islam,” which aired Monday night, CNN’s agenda was clear.

The show was full of dissembling, dishonesty, and dissimulation from beginning to end. The title itself, “The War Within Islam,” is a lie. Where do we see evidence of a war within Islam? We don’t see millions of Muslims marching against jihad and Sharia. On the contrary, hundreds of thousands of Muslims marched in Chechnya against theCharlie Hebdo cartoons. In Iran, mobs chanted, “Death to France.” In Pakistan, over 10,000 marched and attacked police, and in Niger anti-cartoon mobs torched forty-five churches. They are marching for jihad and for sharia.

The only war is on the truth. “Moderate” Muslims are not arguing with jihadists; instead, they’re arguing with those who oppose jihad, claiming that Islamic jihad is not Islamic. The war is in the Western information battle-space, where CNN and the rest of the mainstream media are busy spinning, twisting, and contorting the narrative. This argument should be taking place in the Muslim world, but it is not — with the notable exception of President el-Sisi in Egypt.

Alisyn Camerota of CNN says, “1.6 billion people around the world practice Islam today, and most Muslims will tell you it’s a peaceful religion. But still, questions persist about whether there is something inherent to Islam that lends itself to extremism.”

CNN described guest Maajid Nawaz as a “former Islamic extremist.” Maajid Nawaz is the founder of the UK’s “counter-extremism think tank,” the Quilliam Foundation, a group that has the ear of the British government and counters “extremism” without ever fully confronting the roots of that extremism in the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example. Nawaz claimed that jihad “comes down to a combination of four factors: a sense of grievance, identity crisis, charismatic recruiters who provide a sense of belonging, an alternative sense of belonging from mainstream society, and the role that ideology plays.” So no Islam here, folks. It is not surprising that Nawaz would focus first on “a sense of grievance”: victimhood is part of jihad. But “identity crisis”? Identity is the one thing that is not in question. The jihadis’ identification with and love for Islam is orgiastic — the more devout, the more Muslim, the more inclined they are to wage jihad.

Where were the critical scholars of Islam and the counter jihad activists on the program? Bobby Ghosh, CNN’s Global Affairs Analyst, was the former TIME magazine World Editor. He was responsible for those two outrageous cover pieces —  “Is America Islamophobic?” and  “Does America Have a Muslim Problem?” — during the Ground Zero mosque controversy. In 2011, Ghosh declared on MSNBC that to a practicing Muslim, burning Koran is much worse than burning the Bible, because the Koran is directly from God, while the Bible isn’t.

CNN devoted a large part of this spectacle of whitewash to what should we should actually call the Islamic jihadists. Bobby Ghosh, CNN’s Global Affairs Analyst, made the salient point that these jihadists are called mujahadeen (holy warriors) in the Muslim world and that there is an acceptance that these people are claiming to fight in the name of Allah. But this was not explored at all despite the fact that a large portion of the special was devoted to what words we should or should not use. It was instructive as it gave viewers an inside peek into how the media twists itself in knots so as not to offend Islam.

Al Jazeera and Huffington Post writers like Ahmed Shihab-Eldin weighed in with their fair share of taqiya (deception to advance Islam), so it can be said that on balance, there was no balance.

One of the featured experts on the Qur’an was Daisy Khan, Executive Director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, who insisted that there was nothing in the Qur’an that justified any of the violence done in the name of Islam today. She also claimed that blasphemy is not punishable by death.

There is no reference in the Qur’an, uh, which prohibits Muslims from drawing a cartoon or an image of the prophet. Uh, this ruling came from the prophet himself, who was actually concerned about people idolizing him, or worshipping idols. He was surrounded by idol worshippers, and so he told people, do not make any images of anything, any, eh, you know. And it’s similar to what’s in the Ten Commandments, which says do not create ingraven images. So, so really the ruling came from that, then the scholars extended it to saying that we should prohibit all images of all prophets and God. 1,400 years, we have not been creating images of prophets or God… It did not start in the Qur’an. It is a prophetic saying.

Cuomo asked Khan, “And is it taught that you’re supposed to kill people who do it?” Khan replied: “No. It’s actually, the Qur’an actually says that if somebody, you know, mocks your religion, you should go, either walk away from them or dialogue with them.”

Khan doesn’t mention that Muhammad said, “Whoever curses a Prophet, kill him,” and the Qur’an says, “He who obeys the Messenger [that is, Muhammad] has obeyed Allah” (4:80). She doesn’t tell CNN viewers that the Qur’an says, “Those who harm Allah and His Messenger, Allah has cursed them in this world and in the Next, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment” (33:57). How will they be cursed in this world? By being killed: “Cursed they will be. Wherever they are found, they are seized and all slain” (33: 61).

And as for “prophetic sayings,” Khan doesn’t mention these, recounted at a Muslim website in Britain:

In a sound hadith the Prophet commanded that Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf be killed. He asked, “Who will deal with Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf? He has harmed Allah and His Messenger.” He sent someone to assassinate him without calling him to Islam, in distinction to other idol-worshippers. The cause of that lay in his causing harm to the Prophet. That indicates that the Prophet had him killed for something other than idol-worship. It was for causing harm. Abu Rafi, who used to harm the Messenger of Allah and work against him, was also killed.

Similarly on the Day of the Conquest, he ordered the killing of Ibn Khatal and his two slavegirls who used to sing his curses on the Prophet.

In another hadith about a man who used to curse the Prophet, the Prophet said, “Who will save me from my enemy?” Khalid said, “I will,” so the Prophet sent him out and he killed him.

Saud Anwar, the mayor of South Windsor, Connecticut, answered a question about violence in the Qur’an by saying, “If you look at the Qur’an in the broader sense, 114 times it’s mentioned in the Qur’an that God is the most gracious and most merciful.” Camerota agreed that jihadis had “bastardized” Qur’anic teaching and gently challenged Anwar’s claim by noting that they justified their actions by citing the Qur’anic passage that directs Muslims to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them, arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them” (9:5).

Khan responded to this not by explaining this passage but by saying, “Nothing justifies killing, because in Islam, Islam is a religion of law and there is due process.” When Cuomo cut in, “But it’s a literal interpretation,” Khan pressed on with more nonsense:

It’s a literal interpretation, but it’s also contextual, so it may have happened in a specific incident where the prophet was, was being attacked, so he was given permission to fight those particular people. However, there are rules of engaging people in combat. And the rule is you do not kill non-combatants, you do not kill innocent people, you do not destroy property, you do not commit rape, you do not terrorize people and you do not declare war, without – you actually declare war, you do not do, you know, clandestine type of operations. So they’re breaking all the rules of warfare. And so even though the Qur’an gives permission for self-defense and fighting your enemies, it does not say that you have to take matters into your own hands. And surely you have to follow the rulings that the scholars have established for the last 1,400 years. Imagine if we didn’t have these rulings, we would have had mayhem all these years.

We have had mayhem all these years, but Khan is counting on CNN viewers not knowing Islam’s 1,400-year history of genocide, land appropriations, cultural annihilation, and enslavement. Her claims in this are false or deceptive: Islam does forbid killing innocent people, but many Muslim scholars say no non-Muslim is innocent. Rape is not forbidden when it comes to infidel women captured in battle: the Qur’an explicitly gives Muslim men permission to have sex with their wives and the “captives your right hands possess” – that is, sex slaves captured in jihad warfare (see Qur’an 4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50). This Islamic State is following the rulings that Islamic scholars have established for 1,400 years. That’s the problem.

But the clueless Camerota tells Daisy: “So interesting to hear what the Qur’an really says and means rather than what the terrorists claim it does.”

Daisy Khan is a perennial favorite of the media — she is perceived as a modern moderate. And yet in a glowing puff piece in MORE magazine in January 2011, Khan’s mask momentarily slipped:

But not every opinion of the Shura Council or its members reflects Khan’s views. At the council’s October meeting at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, she seemed distracted—texting, reading e-mails, taking cell phone calls—as 18 women sat around a table in an oak-paneled room for nearly 10 hours straight, parsing the Koran in excruciating detail. Then the result of a recent poll of WISE’s members on the subject of female genital cutting was announced. The question was, “Is cutting harmful to women?” Khan was standing when she heard that four women had responded no… “Who are those four?” she asked sharply, and then, seeing the discomfort on several women’s faces, she smiled, rolled her eyes and shrugged.

She shrugged at clitoridectomies (female genital cutting)? As soon as she saw the “discomfort” on the faces of women who had approved of this barbaric practice, she shrugged it off?

This is the Muslim “expert” CNN brings in to explain it all for you. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS et al never invite scholars critical of Islam or counter jihad activists to educate or elucidate. But no matter how much of this shameless propaganda CNN and the rest of the media pump out, they won’t be able to obscure the grim reality of Islamic jihad. Americans are waking up.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Islamic supremacist Linda Sarsour says of “Islamophobes”: “Their job is to vilify Islam and Muslims”

Nigeria: Boko Haram top dog says, “We killed the people of Baga. We indeed killed them, as our Lord instructed us in His Book.”

UK media coverup: “White power” supermarket attacker is Muslim, wrote “The wrath of Allah is about to come down upon the kaffir”

Spain: Violent Muslim screaming “Allahu Akbar, all you Christians will die!” gets arrested

“Palestinians” celebrate stabbing of Israelis with #IAmAKnife hashtag

BREAKING NEWS: Saudi King Abdullah is Dead

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is dead. This is not an optimum time for a transition. The Saudis’ massive expenditures to export the jihad doctrine have come back to bite them in the form of the Islamic State, a self-proclaimed caliphate that denies the legitimacy of the House of Saud (and every other government other than its own) and has vowed to conquer it (and every other country, but it is right on the Saudis’ doorstep). The Iranians, meanwhile, are always jockeying to become the leader of the Islamic world, and in that Saudi Arabia is one of their chief rivals. But Iranian-backed Shi’ite Houthi rebels have just won a major victory in Yemen, and Iran has just concluded a military pact with Russia.

Could the death of Abdullah be the Iranians’ moment? Or the Islamic State’s?

RELATED ARTICLES:

France: Muslims plotted jihad terror attack at conference on anti-Semitism

Germany: Catholic priest banned from preaching after speaking at anti-Islamization protest

Nigeria: Boko Haram top dog says, “We killed the people of Baga. We indeed killed them, as our Lord instructed us in His Book.”

Italy: Muslims destroy and urinate on Virgin Mary statue

Ryan Mauro – An Inside Look – National Security

Clarion-Project-400x400Today we kick back a bit and introduce you to the Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project, who you may not know though you see him often on Fox News.

Ryan is one of America’s most effective national security subject-matter experts and well respected in this vitally important community. Enjoy the show as we present Ryan with a few “surprises” and even makes an appeal to the ladies in the audience to drop Ryan a note!

Even through the laughs very serious national security issues are analyzed and discussed.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Mossad, in rare move, denies it contradicted Netanyahu by lobbying against stiffer Iran sanctions

U.S.’s Kerry, like Obama, will not meet with Israel’s Netanyahu during visit

Raymond Ibrahim: Sisi’s Brave New Egypt?

“Palestinians” celebrate stabbing of Israelis with #IAmAKnife hashtag

Italy: Muslims destroy and urinate on Virgin Mary statue

If Abbas is a ‘moderate,’ what’s a ‘radical’?

A revealing irony came to light while writing this article. The West is debating whether it is appropriate to publish (or even show) the post-attack issue of the Charlie Hebdo magazine, which includes a caricature of Muhammad. At the same time, Muslim leaders from several countries have issued explicit warnings about the consequences of publishing such images. In fact, after Friday prayers on Jan. 16, 2015, Muslims across the Middle Eastern marched and protested against the new Charlie Hebdo cartoon, while several countries issued warnings that the drawing could “fuel hatred.” Meanwhile, this is all happening while Fatah observes its 50th anniversary by posting images and/or issuing statements that are orders-of-magnitude more violent than any Charlie Hebdo cartoon, but without any discernible response from the Western media, let alone the Islamic world.

The ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas

In one form or another, Mahmoud Abbas has been the leader of Fatah, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and/or the PLO since 2003, when the U.S. refused to conduct any further peace negotiations with Yasser Arafat. Often described as a “moderate” alternative, Mr. Abbas has frequently renounced violence and terror, but has nonetheless remained complicit as other members of Fatah and/or the PA maintain an intense campaign of provocation and incitement to violence.

Recognition of Israel

On Nov. 29, 2014, Abbas declared that the Palestinians would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, while also accusing Israel of “establishing an apartheid government.” In addition, he threatened to terminate all security cooperation between the PA and Israel in the West Bank, unless the stalled peace negotiations were revived. This was not the first time Abbas has made such statements in public. On Dec. 13, 2013, Abbas attended an Arab League meeting in Cairo, where he presented his terms for accepting a U.S.-backed framework agreement with Israel. Among his conditions, Mr. Abbas insisted there would be “no recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.”

While attending Fatah’s Sixth General Assembly conference on Aug. 4, 2009, Abbas declared that the Palestinians would never recognize Israel as a Jewish state and refused to hold any further peace talks with the Israelis until they 1) halted all settlement building in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and 2) recognized the undeniable right of Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1948 homeland. Abbas also threatened “legitimate armed resistance” if Israel refused to meet these pre-conditions to any future peace talks. On April 27, 2009, Abbas also dismissed a demand by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, stating, “I do not accept it. It is not my job to give a description of the state.”

The Fatah-Hamas unity government

On March 15, 2013, Mr. Abbas was asked the following question on Russia TV Today: “It is said that the EU [European Union] plans to remove Hamas from the list of terror organizations. Do you view this as a step toward complete recognition of the legitimacy of the [Hamas] government?” Abbas replied: “As far as I am concerned, there is no difference between our policies and those of Hamas. So, why are they labeled as terrorists? In my opinion, [they] can remove Hamas … why not?” On Dec. 17, 2014, an EU court in Luxembourg removed Hamas from its list of terror organizations.

As of Jan. 13, 2015, Hamas remains on the U.S. Treasury list of “Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations,” aka the newly-renamed “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.”

On Sep. 25, 2014, Fatah and Hamas reached an agreement in Cairo to allow the PA government to operate in the Gaza Strip, while also announcing that both parties had been holding “reconciliation talks” in efforts to end their differences. The agreement called for the PA government to “immediately” assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. At the same meeting, Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official (and Specially Designated Global Terrorist), announced that the PA government would soon manage all the border crossings in the Gaza Strip. However, less than three months later, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh publicly complained that the PA consensus government had failed “to keep its commitments, by not carrying out reconstruction, nor unifying institutions under the Palestinian Authority, nor organizing elections.”

The U.N. & International Criminal Court

On the same day the EU removed Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations (Dec. 17, 2014), Jordan submitted a resolution to the U.N. Security Council to “end the occupation [of the West Bank and East Jerusalem] by 2017.” As expected, this effort failed to garner enough support. On Dec. 31, 2014, Mr. Abbas met with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, where he made his future intentions clear: “We want to complain. There’s aggression against us, against our land. The Security Council disappointed us.” On Jan. 2, 2015, the Palestinians delivered documents to U.N. headquarters to join the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and on Jan. 7, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon confirmed that the Palestinians will become a formal member of the ICC on April 11, 2015.

Events on the ICC front have already began to unfold. On Thursday, the ICC prosecutor announced that he would launch a preliminary probe that could “clear the way for a full-scale investigation into possible war crimes in Palestinian territories,” thus “plunging the court into the most politically charged conflict it has ever investigated.”

Recent statements and actions by current Fatah leadership

Also Thursday, Fatah posted a PhotoShopped image portraying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a Nazi SS officer. This posting was the latest in Fatah’s long-term program to use provocative imagery from the Holocaust era to defame and delegitimize Israel. On Jan. 4, 2015 (just five days after Abbas signed the Rome Statute of the ICC), Fatah posted a picture of Prime Minister Netanyahu and a noose with a caption that reads “Soon” in both Hebrew and Arabic.

phillips150121a

During a Jan. 2, 2015, interview, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki both condemned and threatened the U.S.: “The whole world should understand that the U.S. is an enemy, pushing Israeli extremists to carry on with their actions, depriving us of our rights, and supporting Israel in everything.” Mr. Zaki also made the following statement on Oct. 2, 2011: “If Israel withdraws from Jerusalem, evacuates the 650,000 settlers, and dismantles the wall, what will become of Israel? It will come to an end. If we say that we want to wipe Israel out …C’mon, it’s too difficult. It’s not [acceptable] policy to say so. Don’t say these things to the world,” he warned. “Keep it to yourself.”

On Aug. 19, 2014, Yahya Rabah, a member of the Fatah Leadership Committee and a columnist for official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, claimed that Israel invented the murders of three Israeli students (also see Part 1) as a “pretext” for “continued Israeli aggression against our people, its unity, its reconciliation and its national project,” i.e., as an excuse to launch Operations Brother’s Keeper and Protective Edge.

On July 12, 2014, Mr. Rabah posted another column in the PA daily, which said: “We have nothing with which to speak to these Israeli murderers, who go too far with their crimes. … We have nothing with which to open a dialogue but these rockets“.

In the shadow of Charlie Hebdo attack

Part 1 included the following observation: “At this point in time, it is also important to consider that 2015 is being celebrated as Fatah’s 50th anniversary. If the first postings on the Fatah and/or PA official websites provide any indication, we will see a steady stream of violent anti-Israel propaganda in 2015.”

Indeed, during the first two weeks of January 2015, Fatah, the PA and/or Mahmoud Abbas have been predictably true to form. Perhaps I should thank them all; by choosing to post their most important commemorative events in the last 50 years, they’ve made my job a lot easier. The following series of pictures (and captions) were posted on Fatah’s official Facebook page during the first two weeks of January 2015:

On Jan. 11, (the same day that Mahmoud Abbas attended the Charlie Hebdo rally in Paris), Fatah posted the left and middle two pictures (notice the Fatah symbol in the middle picture). The picture on the left was taken at the Paris rally, while the middle picture commemorates an event that occurred in Lebanon in 1982, perhaps during the “Beqaa Valley War,” aka “Operation Mole Cricket 19,” when members of Fatah dragged the body of a downed Israeli pilot through the streets of Sidon.

On the very next day, Fatah posted the right-hand picture (again, notice the Fatah symbol), with the following caption: “Here Dalal [Mughrabi] raised the Palestinian flag at the front of the bus used by the heroes of Shahid (Martyr) Kamal Adwan’s group. They drove with 90 hostages …from Haifa to Tel Aviv, but the Zionist forces refused to negotiate with them. They fought a fierce battle that lasted from afternoon to evening on March 11, 1978.”

What Fatah failed to mention is that the group of 13 Fedayeen (Warriors) had hijacked the bus and killed 38 Israeli civilians (including 13 children) and wounded 71 during the “fierce battle.” The attack became known as the “Coastal Road Massacre” in Israel, while Fatah calls it the “Operation of the Martyr Kamal Adwan.”

phillips150121b

On Dec. 25, 2014, a Palestinian stabbed two Israeli soldiers in the Old City of Jerusalem, causing light injuries. On Jan. 5, 2015, an editorial in Al-Asima, a biweekly supplement to the PA daily (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida), stated: “These kinds of confrontations which frighten the enemy are excellent Palestinian examples of willpower and determination to win. … The [publicly released] video of the Palestinian storming and stabbing of Zionists serves as a school. … Now, every Palestinian raises his hand holding a knife together with this young Palestinian, and stabs the Zionists.:

On the same day, Al-Asima also commemorated Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, two cousins from Jerusalem who attacked worshippers in a synagogue on Nov. 18, 2014, with guns, knives and axes. After killing four ‎people and injuring seven more, both men were ‎killed in a firefight with Israeli Security Forces that had arrived on the scene.‎

What’s next?

If Fatah and Mr. Abbas really are reliable “moderate” partners in the Peace Process, then who among us can hope to define who (or what) is “radical”?

Today, as Abbas finds himself caught between Hamas and a pragmatic Israeli government, he is no closer to defining the borders of a Palestinians state than when he became the PA’s first prime minister more than a decade ago. With no clear successor, Abbas has also been unwilling to fulfill his promise to hold new elections.

As stated in Part 1, it appears that Mr. Abbas is adopting a new tactic, i.e., a calibrated effort to diminish the role America plays in the Peace Process, while appealing to the sympathies of the U.N., EU and ICC to endorse his goals of “Statehood-Through-International-Recognition.”

This “trump card approach,” which Mr. Abbas has tried before, is certain to increase tensions between 1) Israel and the Palestinians, 2) between the Palestinians and the U.S. Congress, and will 3) destabilize the situation for the next few years, at least. All this, while Fatah continues its ongoing campaign of Thawrah Hatteh Al-Naser (Revolution Until Victory).

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on World Net Daily. Read Part 1, “Is Fatah really ‘moderate’?”

World in Chaos – Obama Clueless

After last night’s State of the Union address, it’s official, President Obama and his team of “brilliant” advisers live in a DIFFERENT UNIVERSE!

Are we crazy or does it seem that our President is the Captain of the Titanic polishing the brass as the screaming women and children are sliding past him into the freezing North Atlantic.

Though many soft-headed lefties judge the validity of the President’s remarks by the brightness of his choppers we here at The United West call see past the radiance of his smile, a smile that bespeaks the instability of Mr. Obama, his team and the mess they are creating world-wide.

On today’s show we look at the terrorist attack in Israel, the fall of Yemen and bold face lies of President Obama’s brain, Valerie Jarrett. Helping us navigate these tremendous waters are two experts from Israel, Michael Ganone and Arie Egozi.

RELATED ARTICLES:

“Palestinian” stabs 12 in Tel Aviv bus jihad attack

Valerie Jarrett explains why Obama won’t say “Islamic” terrorism: there are other kinds of terrorism, too

Obama’s SOTU: “We continue to reject offensive stereotypes of Muslims”

Standing up to Islam: The West Redefines Itself to Death

If Ann Coulter were to live in Russia, her writing would probably be similar to that of Yulia Latynina, one of my favorite Russian-language political commentators and critics of Putin’s government.

Latynina’s latest column, I believe, must be shared with all people living in Western countries, or at least with those not yet trapped inside the intellectual maze of their own invention. In this conflict of civilizations, winning requires clarity of vision — something the West no longer has due to its postmodernist obsession with recalibrating and redefining itself.

West redefines itself

Below is my somewhat loose translation of Latynina’s column — “loose” because, as you will see later, precision sometimes is the enemy of clarity.

“I’m all for free speech, but…” proclaims the chorus of Western intellectuals following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, imagining that their role in this tragedy is to make simple things look complicated. They are gravely misguided: there are no “buts” in that script.

In the 1940s, as scientists began to develop the theory of quantum electrodynamics, they discovered a weird problem in their equations: the electron mass seemed to be correct in the first approximation, but all further attempts to define it more precisely resulted in impossibly divergent series. The more they tried to refine the number, the more absurd it became, with the electron mass growing to infinity.

Finally the American physicist Richard Feynman introduced a cut-off point, suggesting to subtract infinity from infinity. In a work that won him the Nobel Prize, Feynman came up with a procedure called “renormalization.” Roughly speaking, it prohibits endless refinements and claims that the first approximate value is the most correct. In other words, don’t kill yourself with infinite refinements and use Occam’s razor.

West redefines itselfIt seems we now need a similar cut-off point in order to understand what is happening in the real world. Whoever brings “renormalization” into public life will also deserve a Nobel Prize because, frankly, we’re killing ourselves with infinite refinements.

The facts are as plain as a road sign: the French journalists were murdered for exercising free speech. They were real live people. The Islamists did it in order to intimidate the free world and take away its freedom of speech.

“But…” we hear from all directions, “but…”

“…But those cartoons were offensive to believers.”

“…But they overstepped all sorts of boundaries.”

“…But this is merely a mutual misunderstanding of each other’s cultural traditions.”

“…And anyway, let’s not confuse terrorism with Islam, which is a peaceful religion.”

“…And are you saying that Islam somehow promotes extremism? Are you really equating Islam with terrorism? That sounds like fascism! Shame on you!”

“…And aren’t you forgetting that different cultures have different values?”

“…And why all the fuss about those dead journalists when more people are getting killed in the Iraqi war?

West redefines itself

And so on and so forth, until after five or six loops of such “divergent series,” the plain fact of a brutal murder transforms into an infinitely complex cultural phenomenon. And with it, anyone speaking against Islamic terrorism transforms into a narrow-minded bigot, ignorant of traditional cultures with their spiritual values, someone who unjustly smears all Muslims and forgets that the West is guilty before the Third World for colonialism.

Allow me another math metaphor. There is a mathematical concept of a “fuzzy set.” It is vital in developing artificial intelligence and recognition technologies because our world, as it were, consists of fuzzy sets.

We call some women “beautiful” and some others we call “ugly.” We say that some countries are “free” and some others are “dictatorships.” But if we begin to refine our arguments, we will often find out that “free” countries lack certain freedoms, or that an “ugly” woman has a shapely chin, an attractive nose, or at least a mysterious color in her eyes. That’s because beauty and freedom are fuzzy sets. And if your goal is infinite precision, you’ll find neither beauty nor freedom.

Some things don’t need to be precise.

As for the mutual misunderstanding of each other’s cultural traditions, let’s make one thing clear: some traditions are better than others.

At one time India had a tradition of self-immolation of widows in the husband’s funeral pyres. The British colonizers could say, as modern intellectuals do, that this was just a different cultural tradition they had to respect. But the British disrespected local traditions and put up gallows next to the funeral pyres. Anyone who tried to throw a widow into the fire was hanged right next to it. That was the end of the burning of widows.

West redefines itselfThe Maori in New Zealand had a cultural tradition of cannibalism. A young warrior would not obtain a proper social status until he’d cut off the head of a man from another tribe. Once again, the British could start talking about the drama of mutually misunderstood cultural values, but they chose to ban cannibalism and head-hunting.

The Aztecs had a tradition of human sacrifice. But the narrow-minded bigot Hernando Cortes, who conquered Tenochtitlan, was not a multiculturalist and so he told the priests, their hair covered in dried human blood, to knock it off. That almost cost him his life, his victory, and Tenochtitlan.

The world has plenty of other spectacular cultural traditions. Some cultures practiced artificial cranial deformation by binding the heads of their infants. Others are still cutting out the clitoris of their young girls. The Etoro people of Papua New Guinea have a remarkable cultural tradition of all-inclusive pedophilia, as they believe young boys must ingest the semen of their elders daily from the age of 7 until they turn 17 to achieve adult male status and to properly mature and grow strong. The procedure is mandatory — “it’s for the children,” don’t you know.

So not all traditions are equal. Some traditions are absolutely evil. Europe, too, has given up on some of its traditions, like the burning of witches. And China has stopped the foot binding of little girls, along with its time-honored tradition of death by a thousand cuts.

Some may be surprised, but Islam at one point has also abandoned a few traditions. For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century Muslims didn’t blow anyone up for free speech. On the contrary, their best leaders, such as Kemal Ataturk, or Mohammed Zahir Shah, or Reza Pahlavi brought their respective countries closer to Western standards.

West redefines itselfIt was only after the West betrayed its own standards by adopting moral relativity and multiculturalism, that former Ataturks and Zakir Shahs were replaced by Bin Ladens and the Kuashi brothers.

In this sense, the problem with the modern world is not the strengthening of Islamism. It is the weakening of the West, which keeps refining, recalibrating, and redefining itself to death.

It’s a fool’s errand, to look for precision in the world of fuzzy sets. As theoretical physicist Feynman once said, “it is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.”

At this point in history, precision is the enemy of clarity. The West needs renormalization.

West redefines itself

 EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The American Thinker.

Is Fatah Really ‘Moderate’?

Why is this question about Fatah even important? We’ve been hearing a lot in the news lately about Fatah and/or Mahmoud Abbas, including 1) the on-again/off-again unification of Fatah and Hamas, 2) the ongoing efforts at the United Nations to create a Palestinian State, and 3) recent announcements that the Palestinians intend to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Moderate or not, the influence of Fatah vis-à-vis Israel will be dramatic in 2015 and beyond. Clearly, this is important not only for the future stability of Israel, the “Two-State Solution” and the entire Middle East, but for American (and the West) as well.

More specifically, why is it so important for America and the West to understand the long- and short-term strategy and tactics of Fatah? Because on March 21, 2013, President Obama stated, “Of course, Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with anyone who is dedicated to its destruction. But while I know you have had differences with the [Fatah-controlled] Palestinian Authority, I believe that you do have a true partner in President Abbas.”

President Obama made a similar statement on March 17, 2014, when he said, “I have to commend President Abbas. He has been somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security; a state that allows for the dignity and sovereignty of the Palestinian people and a state that allows for Israelis to feel secure and at peace with their neighbors.”

So, for the next couple of years, at least, it appears that the U.S. is committed to a partnership with Fatah and/or Mahmoud Abbas, as they continue playing an integral role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and as they continue to exert influence on U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic activity in the Middle East region.

Looking a little further ahead, it appears that Fatah is adopting a new tactic, i.e., a calibrated effort to diminish the role America plays in the peace process, while pushing ahead with the “Statehood-Through-International-Recognition” approach. The fact that at least 135 countries now recognize the state of Palestine makes this a reasonable option for the Palestinians.

It is also important to consider that 2015 is being celebrated as Fatah’s 50th anniversary. If the first postings on the Fatah and/or PA official websites provide any indication, we will see a steady stream of violent anti-Israel propaganda in 2015 (see several examples below, under the heading “Examples of Fatah Posters”).

Why is 2015 being celebrated as Fatah’s 50th anniversary? As described in more detail just below, Fatah was actually founded sometime between 1957 and 1959, but on Jan. 1, 1965, Fatah carried out its first attack inside the borders of Israel. In a failed attempt to bomb the National Water Carrier near the Galilee city of Beit Shean, one Fatah member was killed and a second was arrested.

On the same day as the attack near Beit Shean, Fatah also announced the formation of a new military wing, called the Al-Asifah Forces (The Storm), in Military Communiqué No. 1. As will be seen below, the Al-Asifah Forces are still commemorated in the official Fatah symbol. There is also a group of Palestinian-only fighters operating today in Syria that is called the Liwa Al-Asifah (Storm Brigade).

It is also important to notice that the first Fatah attack inside Israel occurred more than two years before the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel gained control of the West Bank for the first time in modern history.

Depending on which resource you use, Yasser Arafat founded Fatah sometime between 1957 and 1959 to help unite Palestinian Arabs in their efforts to create an independent State of Palestine. After Yasser Arafat founded the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, Fatah remained the largest and best-organized organization within a growing coalition of Palestinian groups specifically designed for military and political insurgency.

During the 1960s and ’70s, Fatah played the most dominant role in efforts to violently liberate Palestine, while offering training to a wide spectrum of terrorist and insurgent groups, and carrying out numerous acts of terrorism in Europe and the Middle.

Although it ostensibly renounced terrorism in 1988 (and again in 19932003 and 2007), Fatah remains the “co-parent” of a kaleidoscope of armed military and intelligence wings that have tentacles reaching into several Middle Eastern countries, and have carried out numerous terrorist attacks. The most important of these groups include 1) Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, 2) Black September, 3) Fatah (aka Hawari or “Support”) Special Operations Group, 4) Force 17 and 5) Tanzim (“Organization”).

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was formally established on May 4, 1994, as a follow-up to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The original purpose of the PA was to govern the Gaza Strip, along with “Area A” and “Area B” of the West Bank. Although Mahmoud Abbas has served as the first-and-only president of the PA since 2005, the legitimacy of his position has been disputed since 2009, when his presidential mandate expired. In addition, Abbas had led Fatah since 2004 (we’ll discuss this in more detail in Part 2).

Meaning of the word ‘Fatah’

The formal name of the Fatah movement is arakat At-Taḥrir Al-Waṭani Al-Filasṭiniحركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني , meaning the “Palestinian National Liberation Movement.” As shown by the highlighted letters above, the name Fatah is derived from a reverse acronym. Perhaps the reverse acronym was used instead of the straight acronym, because “Hataf” means “Death” in Arabic.

The root verb for Fatah (ح ت ف) is found at least 40 times in the Quran and has a three-fold meaning, i.e., “to open,” “to conquer” and/or “victory.” As we shall see immediately below, each of these three meanings carries profound spiritual and historical significance in the Islamic world.

‘To open’

Chapter 1 of the Quran is known as the Surat Al-Fatihah (The Opening). Al-Fatihah is also known as Umm Al-Quran (The Mother of the Quran), and Umm Al-Kitab (The Mother of the Book), because it summarizes the entire substance of the Quran in just seven verses. Thus, it is obligatory for Muslims to recite Al-Fatihah in every prayer, and no prayer is considered valid without it. Also, Al-Fatihah divides mankind into three categories: 1) those who have been favored and follow the Straight Path, 2) those who have earned the Anger of Allah and 3) those who have been misguided.

According to the Tafsir (Commentary) on Al-Fatihah, those who follow the Straight Path will conquer the lands of the misguided (disbelievers) and make them into the lands of Islam. Such victories will provide clear and evident evidence that the “favored ones” really are following the Straight Path.

This, of course, is exactly why Fatah was founded in the first place, i.e., to help liberate (conquer) the land of Palestine. Furthermore, this fundamental concept (i.e., opening and/or conquering the world for Islam), is expressed clearly in Surat Al-Fatihah, and is implicitly understood by every Muslim in the world.

In other words, everyone in the Islamic world knows that, sooner or later, Fatah intends to turn the entire area west of the Jordan River into the land of Islam. As we will see below, this intention is vividly illustrated in the official symbol (icon) of Fatah, as well as in virtually every publication and poster Fatah and/or the PA has ever produced.

‘To conquer’

The word Fatah (and/or Fath), as in Fath Al-Sham (The Conquest of Greater Syria) is a potent reminder of the successful (unprecedented) expansion of Islam into new regions (both East and West) in the early centuries of Islamic history. The Fath Al-Sham, which is also known as the Battle of Yarmuk, followed the conquest of Damascus on Sept. 4, 635. This key battle with the East Roman (aka Byzantium) army, which took place from Aug. 15-20 of 636 (four years after the death of Muhammad in 632), was not only one of the most one-sided and decisive battles in military history, but was also the first victory in a subsequent 100-year wave of Islamic conquests.

Of course, this major historical event from the early “glory days” of Islam is the inspiration for the name chosen by the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant (ISIL), aka Ad-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah Fil Iraq Wa Ash-Sham, or the Islamic State of Iraq & Al-Sham (ISIS). As stated above regarding Al-Fatihah, not only does everyone in the Islamic world understand the profound historical and spiritual significance of the Fath Al-Sham, but they also understand that the plainly stated goals of Fatah are exactly the same as the plainly stated goals of ISIS. Despite the fact that Fatah was founded sometime between 1957-1957 and ISIS emerged in 2014, the two organizations share an identical strategic goal – the final conquest of Israel. The differences between the groups are tactical in nature, but their strategy is the exactly same.

‘Victory’

Chapter 48 of the Quran is called Surat Al-Fath (The Victory) and details a series of events that led to the Treaty of Hudaybiyah. One of the central themes of Surat Al-Fath, which is one of the most explicitly “Jihadic” chapters in the Quran, is that Muslims will first conquer the entire known world (the Middle East) and then will ultimately conquer the entire world.

According to the Tafsir, many people converted to Islam during the two-year period after the Treaty was signed. This greatly increased the size and strength of the Muslim community, which allowed them to conquer Mecca and abrogate the Treaty. This precedent (i.e., abrogation of a treaty for the sake of a military victory) was cited by Yasser Arafat as justification for signing the Oslo Accords with Israel.

As stated in the earlier sections on Al-Fatihah and Fatḥ al-Sham, everyone in the Islamic world understands the profound historical and spiritual significance of Surat Al-Fath. The decision to name a Palestinian organization for the globally recognized aspirations expressed in the word Fatah was neither passive, random nor arbitrary – it was unmistakably deliberate and intentional. We also need to understand that these long-held aspirations are inspired and explicitly endorsed by the Quran.

Examination of the official Fatah symbol

Now we’ll come to the heart of the matter – a detailed analysis of the Fatah symbol. Again, the purpose of this evaluation is to help determine whether Fatah is really moderate (or not).

Note: The official slogan of Fatah, which is Ya Jabal Ma Yhezak Reeh (The Mountain Cannot be Shaken by the Wind), is not included on the official Fatah symbol.

phillips150120b

  1. The large black word across the middle of the symbol says Fatah.
  2. The red words across the top of the symbol say Al-Asifah (The Storm), discussed above.
  3. The borders of the intended State of Palestine are shown in green. As mentioned earlier, the Fatah symbol shows the entire area of modern Israel, as well as Gaza and the West Bank, as part of the final State of Palestine. Since this symbol was designed well before the 1967 Six-Day War, it becomes obvious that Fatah has never given any serious consideration to the concept of a “Two-State Solution.”
  4. Two flags of the intended State of Palestine.
  5. Two hands grasping two assault rifles.
  6. A hand grenade (nothing shouts “Moderate!” like a hand grenade).
  7. The single Arabic word under the grenade also says Fatah.
  8. The words in the black band at the bottom of the symbol say Ḥarakat At-Taḥrir Al-Waṭani Al-Filasṭini (Palestinian National Liberation Movement); in the literal translation, the word order is exactly opposite.
  9. The three words at the bottom of the flag say Thawrah Hatteh Al-Naser (Revolution Until Victory)

Examples of Fatah posters

Before concluding Part 1, I’d like to present a series of official Fatah posters published over the last 40 years that illustrate a point I made earlier, i.e., that Fatah’s intention has never changed and has always been to eliminate Israel from the Middle East.

Virtually every publication or poster Fatah and/or the PA has ever produced reinforces this original founding intention. Three of the four posters below also feature the exact same three-word slogan found at the bottom of the official Fatah symbol, which is Thawrah Hatteh Al-Naser (Revolution Until Victory).

phillips150120c

Translation of left-hand poster (1969): “Palestine – Revolution Until Victory”. Translation of bottom text in purple poster (1979): “Revolution Until Victory”

phillips150120d

Numbers on yellow poster (1981): 1965 on bottom (in red print) and 1981 on top; this poster commemorates the 16th Anniversary of Fatah. Translation of right-hand poster (1983): “Fatah – Revolution Until Victory”

phillips150120h

Translation of poster published on Fatah’s Facebook page Jan. 0, 2015: “Lingering On Your Skulls”.

Conclusion

Since the day it was founded, Fatah has maintained a singular focus on its original purpose – to eliminate the State of Israel from the Middle East. Despite repeated public declarations that it has renounced violence, Fatah has continued promoting the complete destruction of Israel. From the time it was established in the 1950s by Yasser Arafat until the present time, Fatah has consistently pursued a campaign of explicit, malevolent and vindictive incitement and violence.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on World Net Daily. This is the first of a two-part article to examine whether Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority, is really as moderate is we have been led to believe. Part 1 is a straightforward analysis of Fatah’s own official symbols to determine whether Fatah is really moderate (or not). Part 2 will be a chronological review and analysis of recent statements and actions of Mahmoud Abbas and/or the current Fatah leadership to help further answer the question “Is Fatah is really moderate?”

A Historical Perspective on Violence in Islam: Why Mohammed hated the Poet [media]

Sarwait Husain

Sarwait Husain. Photo: San Antonio Express News.

Sarwait Husain’s guest commentary entitled “Blame Islam?” begins the common narrative of Islamic apologists, “Islam is a religion of Peace” with the inevitable peaceful Quranic quotes.

She describes Muhammad’s first 13 years in Mecca suffering “demeaning abuse, mockery and torture”. Mecca in reality was at its pinnacle of multiculturalism, with followers of 360 pagan religions, as well as of Judaism and Christianity.

What changed in those ten years to make Meccans eventually exile Muhammad?

For ten years he reached out and the Meccans were initially tolerant.  What’s another religion when you already have more than 360!  However, Muhammad’s aggressive tendency to denounce, demean and belittle the Jews and Christians and pagans was met with greater resistance.

Imagine a street vendor who starts off quietly but becomes bolder and louder over time.  When the inevitable pushback began and poets began following Muhammad to mock his sermons and dispute   tales of Abrahamic lineage, Muhammad portrayed himself as the “victim” of abuse and intolerance.

Aggressive street-preaching is met with the same reaction today as it was in the 7th century,  that is negatively.   Any mockery or verbal abuse was exactly that, verbal attack only. Muhammad was grazed in one physical attack but it was certainly not “torture” as Ms. Hussain claims.

Why poets?  Poets were the “media” of the day.  Muhammad expressed his hatred toward the power of the pen and on multiple occasions asked his supporters “who will rid me of (the poet)”

In the last ten years of Muhammad’s life Islam had a much more ominous tone.  Retribution began in 624 AD as his followers swelled with “convert or die” followers. Violent revenge became a part of Islamic history.

In the Battle of Badr all but two prisoners were given the option to have their lives spared by the payment of a ransom.  The two who were not spared and beheaded by Muhammad’s followers were poets/critics of Muhammad.

A poetess and pagan mother of five children who mocked Muhammad, Asma bint Marwan, was murdered in her bed while her sleeping child rested on her chest.  Muhammad said, “Who will rid me of this Marwan’s daughter?” A convert to Islam from her tribe thrust a sword through her chest granting Muhammad his wish.

The Quran, the Hadiths and Muhammad’s biography capture many more of these vicious attacks.

Can we agree that if Muhammad encouraged acts of violence in his day it is understandable why Boko Haram and other terrorists groups make the claim today they are following the “will of Allah”?

Is asking one’s followers, “who will rid me” not justification for questioning the peacefulness of Islam and Muhammad?

Were the Muslim terrorists in France not “ridding” critics of Muhammad’s in the same way?

The contrasts between the peaceful narrative given by Ms. Husain and the violence depicted in Islamic texts are easily explained.  The Islamic concept of “abrogation” allows later Quranic revelations to overrule earlier revelations. The result, more violent passages revealed in the later years of Muhammad “abrogated” earlier peaceful verses in the Quran. Ms. Husain fails to include this fact when addressing an unknowing audience. The Islamic terrorists know this but many Muslims and nearly all non-Muslims don’t.

Like the poets in Muhammad’s day, the French cartoonists fell victim to the same fate.  The Islamic terrorists were simply following the “latest” teachings of Muhammad.  We must ask Ms. Husain who is to be held accountable for this if not Muhammad and the Islamic ideology?

Most Muslims reject the violent tenets of Islam but it does not erase Muhammad’s complicity in promoting Islam through violence. Wishing it so doesn’t make it so.

Peace-loving Muslims who know of this “dark-side” (and many don’t) are not going to be encouraged to speak out about this unless “kafirs”, non-believers do.  The social, economic and personal consequences often are too great thereby preventing Muslims from speaking out but non-Muslims can empower Muslims by speaking out.

Ms. Husain may have forgotten that the biggest abuser of Muslims are other Muslims, all in the name of Allah. An honest debate on the connection between Muhammad and violence toward non-Muslims and Muslims is the path to less violence. As General Sisi, President of Egypt said, a reformation needs to occur within Islam. Amen!

RELATED ARTICLES:

Islamic State threatens to kill 2 Japanese hostages unless Tokyo pays $200 million

UK: Muslim leaders demand apology for letter urging them to do more to root out “extremists” and stop “radicalization”

Chechnya: 800,000 Muslims protest Muhammad cartoons; protests also in Iran, Pakistan, Ingushetia, elsewhere

Germany: Soap brand withdrawn for being insulting to Muslims

EDITORS NOTE: In the January 18, 2015 edition the San Antonio Express News, Sarwat Husain, Executive Director of the Council of American Islamic Relations published her defense of why Islam should not be blamed for the violence  of a few. The platform Ms. Husain has been provided by the San Antonio Express News since 2007 to voice her opinion is far greater than any persons who reasonably disagrees with some of her opinions on Islam. For example since 2010, she’s been granted space for 15 guest commentaries on the editorial page and been a part of at least 10 articles where her opinion has been aired on various aspects of Islam. These two numbers combined have allowed her to share 10,000 words of opinions on Islam. In doing a search on the San Antonio Express News website, Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian and founder of ACT! for America has never had one of her editorials printed.

VIDEO: Those Who ‘Stand with the Prophet’ Deny Media Access to Free Speech Conference in Garland, TX

STAND WITH MOHAMMED CONFERENCEThis is a video analysis bringing the viewer with us as we examine why we were denied access to the Stand With The Prophet Conference in Garland, TX.

The SoundVision Foundation along with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) deny Jesse Watters of Fox News, The United West, Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon, Christian Post and ‘certain’ individuals who purchased tickets in advance, access to this open to the public event.

Watch how the Muslim representatives from CAIR lie and mock the media as they try in vain to gain access to the event. The Islamists at this conference showed great insensitivity to free speech and inclusion.

The question that arises is: Why were the Muslims denying access and what were they trying to hide?

We make this comment because the ‘selected’ media allowed entry were escorted out of the conference after only 20 minutes and were forced to sign a consent form they would not audio or video tape the speakers inside.

CAIR if you haven’t heard was recently designated a ‘Terrorist Organization’ by the United Arab Emirates.

Layered on these outrages was the venue itself. The Culwell Center is a taxpayer funded building. As a taxpayer funded building the Muslim group was in clear violation of the Culwell Centers Regulation 1.04 articulating the public can not be denied access to this or any event held there.

The purpose of the event was the Strategic Launch of a Communication Center For Muslims. Perhaps it was details of this Strategic Communication Center For Muslims they wanted to keep secret from American non-Muslims.

RELATED ARTICLES: 

Florida: Muslim terror suspects tried to kill U.S. marshals “while exclaiming ‘Allahu Akbar’”

UK: Muslim leaders demand apology for letter urging them to do more to root out “extremists” and stop “radicalization”

Islamic State plans 24-hour jihad TV channel

A Historical Perspective on Violence in Islam: Why Mohammed hated the Poet [media]

Why Jews suffer under mob rule – Jonah Goldberg

Paris Officials Threaten Lawsuit Against Fox News Over Muslim No-Go Zones