Posted on 09/14/2001 7:01:23 AM PDT by RedBloodedAmerican
When Abdurahman Alamoudi, friend and sometime adviser on Islamic affairs to Hillary Rodham Clinton, stood before a Muslim crowd in Lafayette Park across from the White House this week and passionately declared his support for the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, he was revealing the true face of "moderate" Islam. He was also revealing the blindness, or rather the willful complicity, of America's political elites, particularly the Clintons, who have welcomed these Islamic "moderates" into our midst and helped raise them to important positions of influence in American life.
As revealed in last Friday's New York Daily News, Alamoudi, shortly before he began to work for the Clinton State Department in 1997 as a "goodwill ambassador" to Muslim countries, told the Islamic Association of Palestine in Chicago on December 29, 1996:
"I think if we are outside this country, we can say oh, Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."
In other words, whether by violent means from outside our borders or by nonviolent means from within our borders, the aim of Muslims is to destroy America. This message, which presumably Alamoudi delivered to Muslims in other countries as well as here, did not prevent a State Department official from saying this week that Alamoudi has had "overwhelmingly positive evaluations from our missions abroad."
Looking beyond the current flap over Hillary Clinton's return of a $1,000 campaign donation to Alamoudi and of $50,000 to a related Muslim group, the full extent of Alamoudi's relationship with the Clintons, going back several years, has not been widely reported.
As recounted by Steven Emerson in the March 13, 1996, Wall Street Journal, Alamoudi, then the executive director of the American Muslim Council, had repeated high-level contacts with the Clinton White House in late 1995 and early 1996, which happened to be the period immediately preceding the suicide bombings in Israel in early 1996. On November 9, 1995 he met with President Clinton and Vice President Gore at a meeting with 23 Muslim leaders at the White House. On December 8, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake met at the White House with Alamoudi and several board members of the American Muslim Council. On February 8, 1996, Mrs. Clinton wrote a newspaper column based on talking points provided by Alamoudi. And on February 20, 1996 (only a few days before the first Hamas bombing of the Number 18 bus in Jerusalem), Mrs. Clinton had Alamoudi's group draw up the Muslim guest list for a White House reception marking the end of the Muslim holy period of Ramadan, the first time such an event had ever been held at the White House.
Then, after the suicide bombings in Israel by Hamas (which, according to John Kifner in the March 15, 1996, New York Times, received crucial support from the Muslim community in the U.S. whose financial aid included assistance to the families of suicide bombers), President Clinton organized an "anti-terrorism" conference with Middle East Arab leaders, among them the same "moderate" leaders who supported the terrorist groups.
The American Muslim Council's ties with terrorists predated its intensive contacts with the Clinton White House in 1995 and 1996. The AMC had co-sponsored several conferences in the U.S. with a Hamas organization started by Musa Abu Marzuq, the Hamas leader who took responsibility for organizing suicide attacks against Israelis. The AMC had also arranged visits to the U.S. by Middle East militant groups such as the Egyptian Muslim brotherhood, and it also had a "special relationship" with the government of Sudan, which the U.S. had declared a terrorist regime.
Tolerant, "right-thinking" Americans are not supposed to notice any of this. We're not supposed to let the thought enter our heads that this tells us anything about the integrity of the Clintons, or about Israel's prospects for survival, or even about the fate of Western society as a whole, which has admitted millions of Muslim immigrants over the last several decades.
The politically correct line today is that Islamic radicals are only a "tiny minority" among American and other Western Muslims, the overwhelming majority of whom, we are assured over and over, are not extremists.
But even as the so-called moderate Muslims deny that they have any connection with extremists, they always seem to defend those same extremists.
In Steven Emerson's 1995 documentary "Jihad in America," a spokesman for the Islamic Committee for Palestine in Tampa, Florida, told an interviewer that his group had no alliance with terrorists. But when asked about Sheik Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric who organized the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and who also had spoken at a conference sponsored by this same Tampa group, the spokesman replied that Sheik Rahman was not a terrorist, but a "conservative."
The "moderate" Alamoudi has used a similar logic. When Musa Abu Marzuq was arrested by the FBI in July 1995, Alamoudi said Marzuq had never been involved in terrorism, adding that Marzuq's arrest was an "insult to the Muslim community."
Even Marzuq used the same defense. When "Sixty Minutes" reporter Steve Croft asked the jailed terrorist, "If a man straps a bomb on his body, gets on a bus and blows himself up along with 30 Israelis, is that terrorism?" Marzuq insisted that such an act was not terrorism.
This mind-set, so incomprehensible to Westerners, was on full display on a special segment of the "Charlie Rose" program immediately following the PBS airing of "Jihad in America" in 1995. The documentary included shocking footage of Islamic radical groups in America. Abdul Zindani of Hamas in Brooklyn was seen calling for "killing and finishing off" the "idol worshippers." Muslim radicals were shown meeting in Kansas City, Missouri, and a dozen other Middle American cities, spewing hatred of America and praising murder and terrorist acts.
One videotape of a meeting in New Jersey in 1993 showed Muslims chanting "we want the blood of Jews." In videos of Muslim summer camps in the U.S., young kids were saying "butcher the Jews." A man named Abdulla Azzam was shown speaking in Oklahoma City, Brooklyn, Atlanta, and Lawrence, Kansas, urging holy war against the West.
Instead of denouncing these barbaric calls to violence by American Muslims, the respectable "moderates" on the Charlie Rose panel – Clinton ally Abdurahman Alamoudi among them – all denounced the documentary for provoking anti-Muslim feeling. Alamoudi insisted that Hamas is not a terrorist group. Most amazingly, he and his fellow "moderates" said that Americans should not feel threatened by extremist leaders addressing large Muslim audiences in this country calling for "Jihad of the sword" and chanting "Kill the Jews, kill the Christians."
Attempting to explain away that murderous rhetoric, another well-known "moderate" on the panel, the late Mohammed Mehdi of the American Muslim Committee (a frequent guest on William Buckley's "Firing Line" over the years), said that Muslims habitually use hyperbole, such as "I'll kill your grandfather," but that it doesn't mean anything and people shouldn't take it seriously.
But the ineluctable problem remains: If the members of a certain group routinely engage in or approve of such bloodthirsty threatening language, how can they realistically be expected to be participants in a Western democratic society based on common allegiance to reason and the rule of law?
And how can any Western society survive the inclusion of large numbers of such people in it?
Thanks to the "moderates" themselves, we now understand some basic truths about Muslims, notwithstanding the contemporary notion that it is bigoted and racist to judge the Muslim community as a whole by the "tiny number" of extremists among them.
First, Islamic "moderates" deny that groups like Hamas are terrorists.
Second, Islamic "moderates" deny that preachers and mobs chanting "Kill the Jews, butcher the Christians" should be seen by Americans as a threat.
Third, Islamic "moderates" do not oppose the extremists, but show solidarity with their extremist fellow Muslims; make excuses for them; bitterly denounce American journalists for publicizing the existence of these groups; and, most significantly, describe any attempt by America to defend itself from Islamic terrorism as an expression of "anti-Muslim" bias.
In making this last argument, the "moderates" on the Charlie Rose panel didn't seem to realize what they were revealing about themselves and the community they represent: If opposing Islamic terrorism is anti-Muslim, then Islam is indeed inseparable from terrorism. Alamoudi and his fellow "moderates" thus provided a more profound indictment of Islam than anything in Stephen Emerson's chilling documentary about the extremists.
The "moderate" Muslims' insistence that Americans must see nothing, say nothing and do nothing about Muslim terrorists in our midst should give us an idea of what life will be like in this country when Muslims achieve real political power here. Thanks to the Clintons in particular and the U.S. political establishment in general, and thanks most of all to America's suicidal immigration policy of the last 35 years, America's quickly growing population of Islamic "moderates" have already started to acquire such power.
However, unlike Muslims, a Christian is admonished by scripture not to force conversion.
When a Christian initiates violence, he is a sinner, an evil hypocrite, in violation of the tenets of his religious beliefs. When a Muslim initiates violence, he is a saint, a hero, in complete submission to his religious beliefs.
Teaching a murderous doctrine such as Islam to small children is a form of child abuse. Some will grow up to be terrorists; it's amazing they all don't. And deep down, beneath the psychological conditioning of their childhoods, Muslims know that something is wrong. That's why they utter self-contradicting statements like, "I disagree with what they did, but yeah, they're heroes."
Well, of course, that's ridiculous. Muslim terrorists can't perform an evil act of the magnitude of the World Trade Center tragedy and simultaneously be heroic for having done so. When faced with such a glaring, irreconcilable internal contradiction, the only logical conclusion is that one's belief system is flawed. Flawed belief systems generate moral contradictions. Unflawed belief systems do not.
It was President Reagan who first popularly called Muslim suicide terrorists 'cowards.' And he was exactly right. There are times when it is more cowardly to die than to live (indeed, Christian societies have regarded suicide as a form of murder). Muslim terrorists would rather die than face the conviction of their consciences. Death is a release, compared to decades of a life spent having to justify the murder of thousands of innocents in the high court of one's own accusing, tormenting conscience. And that's a case they'll never win, no matter if they play it over in their minds a thousand times a day, for a thousand years.
For terrorists, death is welcome escape from the unbearable psychological torture of living. They are not looking for paradise so much as oblivion.
Beneath all that screaming and shouting, Muslims do have consciences which tell them the truth about their religion. That's why they have to scream and shout -- to drown out the voices of their consciences.
Islam is a religion of hate, and far from winning their souls, its adherents must deny their minds, hearts, and consciences.
Islam is a religion not of God but of Satan, a religion not of compassion but of hate.
And, as of Tuesday, we have the pictures to prove it.
(17:45) Palestinians rally for bin Laden
Hundreds of Palestinian members of Hamas demonstrated today in Gaza City, in Ramallah, and the Nuseirat refugee camp in Jericho, Israel Radio reported.
At the rallies in Gaza and Ramallah, demonstrators waved pictures of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Palestinian policemen seized videotapes of the event taken by cameramen working for foreign networks and ordered them not to film any further.
By RM Whitsom
What we have is a few raving psychopaths and inherrently evil me who are twisting the religion to their purpose and gaining followers. This is not a practice that is unique to Islam I'm sure you know. This crowd has, obviously, taken it to a new level the likes of which we've never seen in any other perverted religion (note, I'm refering to their perversion OF Islam, by no means do I accuse Islam itself of being perverse).
Also a note on the concept of moderates in Islam. There are plenty, but it's doubtful we'll see any of them touring the world holding speaches. The Koran advices against seeking power or glory, all power and glory come from Allah, if you have been chosen it will simply fall upon you. Those flying across the ocean to have meetings with worlds leaders and hold speaches are clearly seaking power and glory, and are therefore obviously not true adherents.
"I think if we are outside this country, we can say oh, Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it. There is no way for Muslims to be violent in America, no way. We have other means to do it. You can be violent anywhere else but in America."
In other words, whether by violent means from outside our borders or by nonviolent means from within our borders, the aim of Muslims is to destroy America. This message, which presumably Alamoudi delivered to Muslims in other countries as well as here, did not prevent a State Department official from saying this week that Alamoudi has had "overwhelmingly positive evaluations from our missions abroad."
Remember Pan Am 103? That’s the airplane that was brought down by a bomb over Scotland. One Libyan terrorist has been convicted. Was the Libyan government held responsible? There was ample evidence that Kadaffy (there are 341 ways to spell it) was part of the plot. Did we go after him? Hardly. Seth Lipsky, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, tells us that the Clinton Administration even acted on behalf of Libya to prevent families of the victims from pressing claims against the Libyan government. Oh, and that convicted bomber? Guess who’s has joined in handling his appeal --- not in American courts, but in the Scottish courts. None other than our Clintonista pal, Alan Dershowitz.
So --- just why did the Clinton Administration work so hard to keep Libya from paying for the Pan Am 103 bombing? Maybe there’s a good reason … so, what is it?
There’s more:
American citizen Alisa Flatow was killed in an Iranian funded terrorist attack in Israel. Our congress passed a law that allowed American victims of terrorism to sue in court. Soverign immunity for acts of terrorism was removed by that law. Alisa Flatow’s family sued, and won a big judgment. When the Flatow family tried to collect under the law the Clinton Administration stepped in and argued against the Flatow family in court. Clinton wanted the Iranians to be allowed to keep their property and assets.
So – how is this for fighting terrorism? American citizens are victimized by terrorists. They work through the legal processes – even under a law passed by our own congress – to recover damages from the parties responsible. Then along comes Bill Clinton and his gang to protect ---- who? The victims? NO! The terrorists!
Can someone please explain this to me?
It is also highly doubtful that we'll see them doing diddly squat about those "raving psychopaths" you believe are causing all the problems.
That makes them a part of the problem.
Trying to justify murder and destruction, of this type and on this scale, is absurd.
The false religion of liberalism died in Israel with Sharon/clinton one year ago---this week in America---in smoke-blood-dust!
You have to understand the true Islamics are a very humble people, they do not draw attention to their efforts. I didn't even know that this guy ran the Mosque until he was killed and I saw his picture in the paper; since he was usually sweeping or picking up trash I honestly thought the guy was the janitor. They also feel a lot of shame over the radical element and how they have tied themselves to Islam. These people put tons of effort into fighting against the bad guys, but because of their faiths strict rules against violence that isn't directly in self defense, and their rules against seeking power and glory, their efforts and news about their efforts are forcibly limited. These people will not violate their religion to punish others for violating the religion, in their eyes it would make them just as bad. They work in small groups, they donate money to numerous efforts against the terrorists, they instruct all those that will listen in the true meaning of the Koran and how these terrorists pervert Allah's word.
They're not on your radar because they don't want the fame, you either have to know where to look or be lucky enough to stumble on them (the hour or two of conversations I had with this guy, during the same era that our Marine barracks were car bombed, completely changed my understanding of the situation, and I think the fact that he was assassinated shows he wasn't BSing me). But they damn sure are on the radar of the terrorists, and they've been paying the price for a long time. In my book, if their efforts are good enough to get them killed they're plenty good enough for my humble praise.
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