Tag Archive for: Muslim Reform Movement

Obama Addresses Terror Linked Baltimore Mosque which Practices ‘Gender Apartheid’

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President  Obama went to Baltimore for a friendly gathering at the Islamic Center of Baltimore Mosque in Catonsville, Maryland. He was there  to convey a message that Muslims are as American as apple pie. Problem is that he chose a Mosque deep into political Islam, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, the Islamic Society of North America , supporting suicide bombers  and professing  hate  for U.S. ally Israel.  All despite the FBI file sent to the White House confirming this information. No matter. It was a photo op moment to show support for embattled American Muslims  given statements from Republican  hopeful, Donald Trump that he would stop immigration of Muslims.

The scene was replete with introduction by a hijab swathed college student on track for a medical career. The President in his remarks pointed out another  hijab wearing  fencing marvel that may be carrying the U.S. flag at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janiero this summer. The President spoke of the kind comments of  founding Fathers John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who purportedly included Mohammedans in the ambit of freedom of worship in America guaranteed by our First Amendment.

Problem is that he forgot to mention the real reason Thomas Jefferson had a copy of a Qur’an in his library at Monticello. A Qur’an, upon which , the first elected U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) swore a private oath of office on January 4, 2007. I know I passed by his office with a clutch of TV cameramen recording this for posterity. Ellison was at the ISB gathering,  as was the second elected Muslim Congressmen, Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN).  Doubtless, as this was the President’s alleged first visit to an American Mosque, there may have been notables at the Mosque in Catonsville from CAIR and ISNA.  But not too worry this was kumbaya day at the ISB.

Watch the You Tube video of the President’s expansive, yet, cautionary message of support for American Muslims:

American Muslims  that he pointed out  in his remarks  assembled Ford automobiles in Michigan, built the first  continuous Mosque in  Cedar Rapids,, Iowa, served  honorably in the US military and some were buried in the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery. Yes, there were those small pockets of extremists in the Muslim Ummah like ISIS or ISIL as he likes to call it with its self-declared Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Barbarically beheading Christians, enslaving minority Yazidi women and children, destroying ancient cultures in the name of Allah, their God.  Then there are the extremist Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan killing women, homosexuals and Christian infidels. Oh, we forgot the Mahdist Shia in Tehran who the President makes deals with to prevent a nuclear war, he thinks. Last year, they only executed 1,000 for crimes of gender, homosexuality and heterodox beliefs.

As to the reason why Jefferson had a Qur’an in his library, just recall their encounter in London with the Tripolitanian Ambassador in their roles as US Commissioners trying to understand why the Bey of Tripoli enslaved American sailors he seized along with their ships in the Mediterranean. Note this  Notable and Quotable in the Wall Street Journal:

From a March 28, 1786, letter written by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who were American diplomats at the time, to U.S. Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay reporting on their conversation in London with the ambassador from Tripoli regarding piracy by the Barbary States:

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

Clearly, Adams and Jefferson knew something that President Obama doesn’t choose to admit in public.  That Islam is not the religion of peace and tolerance that its religious theocrats make it out to be.  Subsequently, as the Third President of the US, Jefferson would conduct a covert war that freed American hostages with a few Marines at the fabled ‘walls of Tripoli’ from the likes of the Sharia-mad Bey.

Leo Hohmann at WND, cited an Investigative Project Report by Steve Emerson giving details on why the FBI thought the ISB was a poor choice for the President for this encounter, “Obama.” Hohman cites Emerson  saying:

IPT founder and executive director  Steve Emerson told WND his organization was told by FBI sources that Obama was presented the evidence against the Islamic Society of Baltimore.

According to Emerson’s investigation, federal law enforcement officials told him they were asked about whether the Baltimore mosque had engaged in radical politics or was connected in any way to terrorism in the past.

“They prepared memos for the president’s aides that specifically laid out the sordid history and nexus to terrorism of the Islamic Society of Baltimore,” Emerson told WND.

So what did the president do?

“As he has done so many times in the past, he decided to ignore this evidence and still continue his plans to confer legitimacy on a mosque that has a history of having officials connected to Islamic terrorism and to this day still has officials making outrageously pro-terrorist statements that would seem to conflict with the president’s policies,” Emerson said.

The mosque is affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America or ISNA, which has its own sordid history.

ISNA was started by members of the international Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s. The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is banned in many countries as an extremist organization.

“One can only conclude that the selection of this mosque by the president was made as part of his consistent policy to not even utter the term ‘radical Islam’ and the simultaneous policy of inviting only radical Islamist groups and leaders to the White House that FBI documents clearly show were derived from the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas,” Emerson told WND.

But there was another problem with the  choice of the ISB, the occurrence of gender apartheid prior to this auspicious occasion.

The media was  atwitter about the President’s  presentation at the Islamic Society of Baltimore. All of those media pundits should read this New York Times op ed by a leader of the Muslim Reform Movement (MRM), Asra Nomani and Ify Okoye, a disaffected member of the Mosque, about the gender apartheid practiced at the ISB, “Obama’s mosque visit demonstrates tacit acceptance of a form of gender apartheid.”

We have interviewed colleagues of Asra Nomani, Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser and Canadian leader of MRM, Raheel Raza who recently returned from a successful trip to Israel on The Lisa Benson Show. We hope to bring back Raza and introduce Ms. Nomani to discuss what the MRM is advocating and doing. Note what Nomani and Okoye wrote:

At the Islamic Society of Baltimore this past Sunday, the air was filled with the scent of Sherwin-Williams paint that workers were rolling onto the walls of the run-down balcony section where women and girls are usually segregated, unable to see the imam unless they peek over the balcony’s edge. A sign outside the door to the balcony said, “STOP Please. No Shoes. No Strollers. No Diaper Change. Beyond this point.”

Asra slipped into the mosque’s main hall to join the “halaqa,” or study circle. There, the study circle leader, teaching a half dozen men gathered around him, talked about the virtues of the first Muslim community in Medina, saying that a society isn’t “civilized” just because it’s technological.

Then, a young man, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “Who Do You Love?” piped up, “So that means the West isn’t civilized.”

“That’s right,” the study circle leader said.

Another man railed against the West and its “atheists.”

Asra took a deep breath, listening to the sound of the crew white-washing the mosque for the president’s visit. “That’s a very unfair conclusion,” she said. “You are sitting in the West and railing against the West as not being civilized? It is not fair to make the assumption that the West ‘isn’t civilized.’”

The men tried to backtrack. They spoke with more nuance, before the study leader digressed again into the idea that those who aren’t Muslim act out of “self-interest,” while Muslims act out of an “order from God to do righteousness,” a point that Asra also politely refuted as motivated by “self-interest” and as an unfair representation of the many good people who aren’t Muslim.

As women and girls, we should be supported by policies that allow us to be part of such conversations. The president can support this urgent cause by speaking out against gender segregation in American mosques. In the spirit of the civil rights moment when whites stood with blacks, we hope men and women will refuse the privilege that “interfaith” events give them, and, in act of solidarity, stand outside with us on Johnnycake Road and the other pathways leading to the mosques in our world, advocating for equal rights for all.

So,  the President did what he wanted to do  with the ISB visit; show solidarity with the plight of American Muslims, sidelined by GOP hopeful Donald Trump.  He chose to avoid the advice of the FBI busily tracking down and arresting ISIS inspired lone wolves out to kill Americans on the streets here in the US that he Mosque leaders consorted with terrorist networks. That would upset  the President’s  alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood seeking their active participation in countering violent extremism and conducted a less than strenuous war against the Islamic State inspiring  tens of thousands from across the Ummah to join and practice the pure Islam in the self declared Caliphate.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of President Obama at the Islamic Center of Baltimore in Catonsville, Maryland, February 3, 2016 – Source: Reuters.

PODCAST: Pakistani Terrorist Camps in the United States

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Listen to this podcast of the January 3, 2016 Lisa Benson Show on KKNT 960 AM Radio – The Patriot. Lisa Benson and New English Review Senior Editor Jerry Gordon co-hosted this show with the assistance of Board of Advisers member, Richard Cutting.

Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Foundation of Islam and Democracy and the U.S. Commission for international religious discussed the recently launched Freedom Muslim Reform Movement, the deteriorating situation inside Syria and U.S. failure to contend with NATO ally Turkey under Islamist President Erdogan in the war against ISIS.

Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Washington, D.C.-based Jewish Policy Center, addressed allegations in a recent Wall Street Journal expose of NSA spying on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, U.S. Congressional Members and American Jewish leaders, Israeli preparedness against ISIS threats in Syria and the Sinai and the tacit cooperation with Egypt and the fascinating understanding struck with Putin’s Russia to contain Hezbollah. We will be posting Bryen’s written responses to these and other questions, separately.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra fbi

FBI agents embracing members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a Pakistani based terrorist group in the United States.

Ryan Mauro, National Security Analyst at The Clarion Project addressed the terrorist training camps established in both Canada and America by radical Pakistani Sufi Sheik Mubarak ali Gilani, who has not been investigated by the FBI despite his founding a network of Jamaat ul-Fuqra/Muslim of America (MOA) paramilitary camps in both Canada and the U.S. that conveyed extremist Islamist ideology and provided weapons training for prison converts to Islam. These MOA camps fostered a three decade record of attempted assassinations, criminal activities supporting terrorism akin to that of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino massacres. Yet, as Mauro pointed out, Sheik Gilani does not support ISIS.

Our usually astute European listener had these comments on the January 3, 2016 Lisa Benson Show:

To hear Dr. Jasser state the plan to reform the religion of Islam was very interesting. The Sharia Islamic law actually promoted by Sunni Islam is both political and religious. For these extremists their ideology requires them to conquer the world and forcefully ask all the non-Muslims to convert to Islam or become third class citizens of their caliphate.

What Dr. Jasser is proposing is to separate religion state from religion in Islam. A modernized religious law will take a lot of time.  However, this is the only way to advance eliminating extremist Islam from all around the world. Dr. Jasser should not call this reform a new Sharia law, but the New Moslem Religious law. The word Sharia has another meaning for all Moslems. It will be interesting to watch how many mosques and Imams would adopt Dr. Jasser’s propositions because many are still funded by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Moslem Brotherhood. Let us not forget that Muslim Brotherhood/CAIR members have been engaged by the Administration in such policy considerations.

Dr. Jasser has to be congratulated for the dangerous and wonderful work he is doing.

Wonderful to hear Shoshana Bryen giving her opinion and analysis. The Israelis know that they are being tapped and they know quite well what encryption services they can use for their communications which are Top Secret. Shoshana knows all about what is going on and she writes about it explicitly.

The details that Ryan Mauro provided are diagnostic of the chronic illness of these Islamist Muslim of America camps.  It is unbelievable that the FBI, even with limited resources, has not taken the necessary steps to indict all those who are embedded in these groups. I sincerely hope that there will not be a major terror attack in the US perpetrated by members of these Islamist camps.

I think the radio show is really getting better and better. The American public needs to hear these comments to wake up and contact their law makers in order to have a safe America.

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

Declaration of Muslim Reform nailed to door of Islamic Center in Washington, D.C.

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In the midst of the swirl of events following the Jihad massacre in San Bernardino, a “Summit for 20 Western Muslim Voices for Reform against the Islamic State and Islamism,” was organized in Washington, D.C. At the conclusion a news conference was held at the National Press Club. The press conference capped a two day conference the purpose of which was to publish Declaration of Muslim Reform principles. At the rostrum was an international contingent of reformers from Canada, the U.S., Europe and Pakistan. Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Forum for Islam and Democracy was the organizer and moderator of the event. A list of the organizations  and participants can be found here. The principles of  the reform declaration,  as published in a Gatestone Institute article, co-authored by  Dr. Jasser and Raheel  Raza are:

  • We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam. We invite our fellow Muslims and neighbors to join us.
  • We reject bigotry, oppression and violence against all people based on any prejudice, including ethnicity, gender, language, belief, religion, sexual orientation and gender expression.
  • We are for secular governance, democracy and liberty.
  • Every individual has the right to publicly express criticism of Islam. Ideas do not have rights. Human beings have rights.
  • We stand for peace, human rights and secular governance. Please stand with us!

Watch this You Tube video of the Muslim Reform Summit press conference:

muslim reform declaration

Washington Islamic Center custodian removing Muslim Reform Movement Declaration December 4, 2015. Source: Muslim Reform Movement.

Following the conclusion of the National Press Club event, two women from the group headed  over to Massachusetts Avenue, the location  of the Saudi financed and controlled Washington Islamic Center. They nailed a signed copy of the Muslim reform declaration to its door. That was modeled on the 95 Theses that Martin Luther nailed to the door of the All Saints Church on October 31, 1517 that purportedly sparked  the Protestant reformation. However, within seconds a caretaker came out and tore it off the Center’s door.

The daunting problem that the Muslim reformers face is that normative Islam believes that there is no need for reform since any distortion of the uncreated words of Allah, would be deemed idolatrous. However, given the declarations by  Egyptian President  El-Sisi  in a meeting with leading  Sunni clerics at  Al Azhar University in Cairo on New Year’s 2015, at least one Muslim country leader believes that  Islam is in dire need of reform. He says that is required to combat the apocalyptic pure Islamic terrorism  espoused by the self-declared Caliphate  of the Islamic State.

One of the women who participated in the Washington Islamic Center  event  was former Wall Street Journalist and author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam, Asra Nomani.  Normani was a colleague of the late Dan Pearl in Pakistan.  She saw him off in October 2002, never to return, kidnapped and slaughtered by 9/11 Al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM).  She was also involved in the 2011 investigations that led to KSM being identified as Pearl’s  killer. Nomani is U.S. born, the daughter of Indian Muslims from Mumbai who settled in Huntington, West Virginia. She is a graduate of both the University of West Virginia and American University.

Asra Q. Nomani

Asra Q. Nomani

Nomani  is in league with  other Muslim  and former Muslim women  like Raheel Raza,  Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji and other like minded reformers who believe the effort to reform should be started.  Nonetheless, she is doubtlessly viewed as an apostate, heterodox in the standards of normative Sunni Islam. Having said that she is a fearless defender of personal freedoms for Muslim women reflected in her proposed Muslim women bill of rights. Further she recognizes the problems that both she and the others at the Reform Summit  see as persisting in Political Islam. Sharia that follows of way of Allah demanding devotion to Jihad against unbelievers.

This morning Nomani was paired off against Dalia Mogahed, a former Gallup pollster on Islam ,now director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. Mogahed is what the Obama White House considers as an exemplary American Muslim woman, resplendent in her Hijab.

Back in  July 2010, we wrote  about Mogahed’s  appointment by President Obama to the White House Advisory Council on Faith Based  and Neighborhood Partnerships. She is coauthor of the book and film Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think. She worked  Dr. John L. Esposito, a Georgetown University colleague at the Prince Alaweed bin Talal Center for Muslim Christian Understanding.   At the Jasser contended in a report by The Investigative Project  that Ms. Mogahed’s outreach to radical Muslim groups did not help.

Dalia Mogahed

Dalia Mogahed

The damage is immeasurable to Muslims seeking non-radical alternatives. They are going to say, why bother? The government has chosen sides in the conflict.

Note this exchange among Rich Lowry of the National Review, Dalia Mogahed and Asra Nomani from today’s  NBC Meet the Press transcript:

RICH LOWRY:

Well, it seems to me that this debate, whether Islam is a religion of peace or not, really, it’s irrelevant for outsiders. It’s for Muslims to decide whether it’s a religion of peace or not. And if enough of them do, then you cut off the oxygen to the radicals. But at the moment, the extremists have significant financial popular and theological backing in the Middle East. And that is an enduring phenomenon. And it’s one that is going to require a long, ideological war to win.

DALIA MOGAHED:

I’m sorry, I’m going to have to disagree with you. They simply do not have ideological, theological, or popular support. And this is a criminal organization that is funding their criminality with things like drug trade and selling oil. They do not have the ideological support that you’re describing at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. They’ve had a number of voices from across the spectrum say that what they’re doing is completely un-Islamic. They have no support popularly, in terms of the general public. So–

RICH LOWRY:

But yet they’re still there.

DALIA MOGAHED:

But so are many other terrorist organizations. And their primary victims are Muslims. I think that’s very important.

ASRA NOMANI:

And to that point, I think what speaks loudest and what speaks to your point is the blood that’s spilling from Australia, to now California. I mean, how much blood has to be spilled until we recognize inside of a Muslim community that we do have an ideological problem? And that we do have support? I mean, there are–

DALIA MOGAHED:

I think the blood is spilling in Syria and it’s mostly Muslims–

ASRA NOMANI:

Excuse me. There are hundreds and hundreds of followers of Islamic State around Europe and the U.S. The Saudis are showing this. And all you have to do is look at the conversation inside of our mosques and inside of our communities. And you will hear it. And I hear it. And I have to say that I saw it in 2002, went to Islamabad, Pakistan, and met women who were supporting this ideology. I call them the Taliban Ladies Auxiliary back then. This young woman in California would’ve been a star member of it.

Watch the Meet the Press segment with  Asra Nomani dueling Dalia Mogahed:

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