Ford Has a Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah-finances a "blasphemy amendment"

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 12-30-03 | Alyssa A. Lappen

[SJackson]

The leftwing foundation finances a "blasphemy amendment" to prevent Americans from cursing Allah's name

Ford Has a Better Idea: One Nation Under Allah
By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 30, 2003

This is the first in a series of articles FrontPage Magazine will present on the misdeeds of the Ford Foundation. A recent, disturbing editorial in the Wall Street Journal has scratched the surface of this heavily funded, tax-exempt, politically leftist organization. We hope to continue to expose Ford's sponsorship of far-Left causes in the days to come. -- The Editors.

 

To most Americans, it may seem unlikely that the U.S. Constitution could -- or should -- ever be revised to conform to strict Islamic law. But an educational program funded by the Ford Foundation has explored that very possibility, challenging our right to unfettered freedom of speech. The program, administered by the woefully misnamed Constitutional Rights Foundation, asks students to ponder how the Constitution could be amended or otherwise interpreted to prohibit blasphemy against Allah.

 

Just how piddling are the offenses in question? Ask a group of young party-goers in Seattle. They printed a flyer advertizing a "rave" and unknowingly decorated it with a verse from the Koran. Ali-Salaam Mahmoud, head of the Sea Tac, Washington Majid As Salaam mosque demanded the rave promoters recall and destroy their 50,000 brochures. The rave promoters did not comply, but 400 Seattle Muslims organized a taxi work stoppage in protest. Several Jewish and Christian leaders supported the offended Muslims.

 

To take another example: In 1997, Nike recalled 38,000 pairs of sneakers after CAIR and other Muslim groups instigated an international Nike boycott; the word “Air” designed on the sneaks resembled Arabic script for “Allah.” Nike even cut a $50,000 check for the northern Virginia Dar-Al-Hijrah Islamic Center and made educational videos and CDs about Islam.

 

In Islam, cursing Allah or misusing the Koran is equivalent to blasphemy. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the legality of the offending brochure. Even if the rave promoters had knowingly used the Koran script, their right to distribute it would still be protected. No U.S. citizen is required to defer to this or any other religion; indeed, the Constitution confers on Americans the right to ridicule religion if they choose.

 

The fundamentalist Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) disagrees. CAIR avers that in recent years, “Islamic scriptures or the name of Allah have been repeatedly misused—on a scantily clad woman in beer ads, on jeans, on T-shirts and in other media images.” Thus moaned CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper. And the Ford Foundation is underwriting a program to see that these extremist views are foisted upon the U.S. Constitution.

 

The Los Angeles-based Constitutional Rights Foundation was established in 1962 to "instill in our nation's youth a deeper understanding of citizenship" and "values expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights." Its $3 million annual budget creates and distributes teaching materials ostensibly to support the Bill of Rights. However, CRF’s Service Learning Network in 2002 issued online “diversity” teaching units featuring terrorism and Islam sections—plus a whitewashed history of Islamic law and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution. CRF created the Islamic Issues segments for the winter 1998 edition of its quarterly newsletter.

 

Its final Islamic study unit does ask students to consider Islamic views on the Salman Rushdie case—and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating, “The First Amendment shall not be interpreted to protect blasphemous speech. States shall be free to enact anti-blasphemy laws as long as they prohibit offensive speech against all religions.” Students are asked to define blasphemy, explain the “strong” Islamic reaction to Rushdie’s novel, and assume the role of a U.S. Senator considering the amendment. They are not asked to discuss the Sharia punishment for blasphemy, which traditionally has been death. Such condemnations occur to this day.

 

On May 6, 1998, Bishop John Joseph of Faisalbad committed suicide to protest the injustice of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Unfortunately, the Bishop’s final act garnered little attention. The global human rights community did little to condemn Pakistan’s consistent institutional violation of Christian dhimmi human rights. “Nobody has forced Christians to live in Pakistan,” remarked the violent, anti-Shi’a Sipah-e-Sahaba leader, Zia-ul-Qasami, following the Bishop’s death. [1] Now the Ford Foundation would like to bring this to the United States.

 

The same Ford Foundation that funded anti-Semitic NGOs at the UN Conference Against Racism in Durban also finances CRF’s Service Learning Network. The mainstays of CRF’s Islam section are apologetics. The tolerance segment includes a link to the Council on American Islamic Relations, whose communications director Ibrahim Hooper griped to Seattle’s Times on “misuse” of Arabic script—a month after CAIR friends and affiliates attended a terrorist conference in Beirut.[2] The Times missed that news, meetings CAIR had arranged for radical Bassam Alamoush (for whom murdering a Jew is a “good deed” that needs no religious decree)—and CAIR board member Siraj Wahaj’s testimony in favor of convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman. Since 2002, several CAIR officials have been arrested and linked to al-Qaeda.

 

Yet, the Constitutional Rights Foundation opens its Islamic Issues units with Origins of Islamic Law, an article that falsely claims, "classic Sharia provided for due process of law," included the injured party’s notice of claim, the defendant’s "right to remain silent, and a presumption of innocence in a fair and public trial before an impartial judge." It claims that both parties "usually presented their own cases."

In Pakistan, Islamic statutes do not offer a "right to remain silent." There, Sharia enforces evidence laws (Qanoon-e-Shahadat) disallowing non-Muslim testimony, and in certain cases actually prohibiting it. [3] Pakistan’s constitution oppresses the country’s non-Muslim minorities. Religiously inspired murder occurs regularly. CRF’s Islamic law survey does not discuss Sharia’s current effects on non-Muslims. "This is an article about the U.S. Constitution," says William Hayes, senior CRF writer and editor. "The situation in Pakistan really has no bearing on this." [4]

The unit does note, however, that since 1980, fundamentalist Islamic regimes "like Iran have attempted to reverse the trend of westernization and return to the classic Sharia." Next, Constitutional Rights Foundation writers advocate for Sharia. "But most Muslim legal scholars today believe that the Sharia can be adapted to modern conditions without abandoning the spirit of Islamic law or its religious foundations," they fallaciously assert. "Even in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Sharia is creatively adapted to new circumstances." [5]

Obliterating History

Historically, Islamic criminal and civil law prescribed, "the amir may hear the testimonies of people of other religions, if they are numerous, whereas the Qadi [judge] may not," according to the classical Shafi’i jurist al-Mawardi (d. 1058). [6] Individual non-Muslim witnesses could not give testimony, which Islamic law values considerably less than that of Muslims. This stance prevailed throughout Islam in all schools of jurisprudence. The medieval Indian Muslim jurist Marghinani Ali ibn Abi Bakr (d. 1197) observed in his al-Hidayah:

"Malik and Shafi’i have said that their testimony (i.e., the non-Muslim dhimmis) is absolutely inadmissible, because as infidels are unjust, it is requisite to be slow in believing anything they may advance, God having said (in the Koran) ‘When an unjust person tells you anything be slow in believing him’; whence it is that the evidence of an infidel is not admitted concerning a Mussulman; and consequently that an infidel stands (in this particular) in the same hatred he bears to him on account of the superiority of the Musselmans over him…."[7]

The effect of such laws was (and remains) truly staggering. Institutional inferiority imposed on non-Muslim subjects during 11 centuries of Islamic rule was virtually impossible to break. [8] After a crushing military debacle at Nezim, the 19th Century Ottomans allied with Britain to forestall Russian and Austrian expansion and the Islamic Empire’s defeat. [9] A major side-effect was European pressure to reform. This alone prompted the first attempt in Sharia history to establish equality between Muslims and non-Muslims under Islamic rule. The Ottoman sultan Abd al-Majid, on November 3, 1839, proclaimed the tanzimat reforms, abandoning a fundamental Islamic policy—the legal, enforced discrimination against conquered, non-Muslim peoples. [10] 

Nearly 40 years later, the tanzimat reforms (reiterated after the Crimean War, on February 18, 1856) had still not inspired “confidence as to the genuine desire of the government for an independent and incorruptible judicial body,” British consul general and judge Sir P. Francis wrote from Constantinople to the Earl of Derby. The new Firman would “admit the evidence of Christians or non-Moslems before the Tribunals of the country,” a feat accomplished indirectly, not by allowing Christian witnesses before Sharia religious courts, “but by ordaining that suits between Moslem and non-Moslem shall be transferred to the ‘Nizanie’ Tribunals,” where religious objections could not be raised. [11]

 

Bosnia’s Rayah population deeply resented the “present unsatisfactory relations [with Christians]… engendered since the introduction of the ‘Tanzimat’ by the Serdar Ekrem Omer Pasha some five-and-twenty years ago,” acting consul Edward B. Freeman wrote to Derby on December 30, 1876. They sought “to restore the feudal system that existed formerly in these provinces,” and to again reduce local Christian peasants “to their ancient state of serfdom.” [12]

 

The Sharia law’s complete overthrow was achieved only after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. By then the Turks had murdered millions of Armenians in the first of many twentieth century jihad genocides. [13]

 

Islamist Radicals Steer CRF's Curriculum

 

Perhaps the Constitutional Rights Foundation's choice of scholarly editors explains why CRF provides none of this Islamic history or law in its course. UCLA Islamic law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl was academic reviewer for CRF’s 1998 Origins of Islamic Law unit, reissued online in 2002. He read the other units as well, according to Hayes, who adds that he continues to advise CRF on Islamic history together with University of Southern California Middle East “expert” Lori Brand and UCLA associate history professor Michael Morony. Curiously, Hayes says the adviser for the blasphemy unit “did not want to be identified.”

 

In May 2003, El Fadl’s reputed “moderation” earned him a seat on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (CIRF). [14] In November 2002, he reported receiving death threats a year earlier, after writing that the September 11 attacks reflected a crisis at Islam’s core. [15] In April 2003, in a 10,000-word Boston Review essay El Fadl claimed that Sharia “fulfills the criteria of justice and legitimacy,” is “based on the rule of law,” and binds the governed to governor. Sharia “deprives human beings of arbitrary authority over other human beings,” he claimed, and could therefore provide a “normative stance” considering “justice and diversity to be core values” of a democratic constitutional order. [16]

 

Sharia offers no democratic foundation, however. Far from protecting diversity or justice, Sharia historically has provoked and sanctioned oppression and wholesale genocide of non-Muslim minorities. [17] Such policies continue to this day in Islamic countries like Pakistan, Sudan and Indonesia, where Muslims perpetrate genocide against Christian and other minorities with little sanction.

Close examination exposes El Fadl as quite reactionary. During an October 2003 trip to Cairo for the CIRF, he gave an interview in Egypt that the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) subsequently translated and distributed, reportedly criticizing the Bush administration and the liberation of Iraq. [18] In the resultant political storm, El Fadl and CIFR claimed the interview was fabricated. But as Katherine Mangu-Ward showed in the Weekly Standard, parts of El Fadl’s contested interview “actually echo [his] earlier statements.” He is no moderate.[19]

The radical Islamic Center of Southern California for years carried El Fadl’s column in its monthly Minaret. On July 20, 2002, in a lengthy letter to CAIR, he wrote, “I have been following the near evangelical fanaticism of our current administration, which is clearly reflected in its foreign policies and domestic legislation." This was not consistent with his December 1, 2003 claim to “support President Bush and his efforts to build positive relations and democratic systems in the Middle East….” [20]

 

Professor Andrew G. Bostom similarly caught El Fadl in several misrepresentations. El Fadl’s title essay in a 2002 collection on Islamic “tolerance” claims that Islam has no tradition of jihad, or holy war. This contradicts a 1999 essay in Muslim World, which El Fadl aptly entitled “The rules of killing at war: an inquiry into classical sources.” [21] It also defies the body of Islamic jurisprudence and history concerning this mandate. [22]

 

"There is no doubt that Muslim jurists do equate just war with religious war (jihad),” El Fadl wrote in Muslim World in 1999, citing the classical Hanabali jurist Ibn Taymiyya and modern jihad scholars Majid Khadduri and Rudolph Peters. Yet El Fadl now ignores classical Muslim jurists and great non-Muslim medieval and modern scholars who accurately depicted the impact of Sharia rules on non-Muslim populations. [23]

 

El Fadl and the Constitutional Rights Foundation omit one key point in their grammar and high school educational scripts. Notes Professor Bassam Tibi, a more honest contemporary Sunni Muslim scholar: [24]

 

"The Western distinction between just and unjust wars linked to specific grounds for war is unknown in Islam. Any war against unbelievers, whatever its immediate ground, is morally justified. Only in this sense can one distinguish just and unjust wars in Islamic tradition. When Muslims wage war for the dissemination of Islam, it is a just war (futuhat, literally 'opening,' in the sense of opening the world, through the use of force, to the call of Islam); when non-Muslims attack Muslims, it is an unjust war ('idwan)...." [25]

 

Bostom writes, by the time the classical Islamic historian al-Tabari died in 923, “jihad wars had expanded the Muslim empire from Portugal to India. Subsequent Muslim conquests continued in Asia, as well as on Christian eastern European lands. The Christian kingdoms of Armenia, Byzantium, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Albania, in addition to parts of Poland and Hungary, were also conquered and Islamized. When the Muslim armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683, over a millennium of jihad had transpired.” El Fadl ignores Muslim historians like Al-Tabari, Al-Baladhuri and Al-Kufi, who detailed these gruesome campaigns in The History of al-Tabari, The Origins of the Islamic State and The Chachnãmah Part I. He also ignores all of the most important non-Muslim scholars and their primary sources." [26]

 

“This man will negate or distort both Islamic law and Islamic history for a purpose that is now clear,” Bostom observes today. "He is doing so in order to impose the Sharia in all its ugliness, by concealing or obfuscating that ugliness—a 1300-year-old living legacy of sacralized, brutal discrimination against non-Muslims, and women."  [27]

 

El Fadl likewise downplays the significance of the jizya—the poll tax collected from non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Mohammed considered this tax on non-Muslims obligatory every where Islam governs non-Muslims. [28] El Fadl attempts to uphold jizya’s virtuous aspects, Bostom writes, while omitting any reference to its humiliating and oppressive nature, as noted in Sura 9, verse 29 of the Koran:

 

Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Apostle have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment, of superiority and they are in a state of subjection. [29]

 

El Fadl vilifies or deliberately ignores the serious, brilliant scholarship of those he would label "Orientalists," such as the late S.D. Goitein. Professor Goitein analyzed primary source material from subjected non-Muslim communities found in the Cairo Geniza documents. Consistent with the tenets of thoughtful, objective scholarship, Goitein in 1963 candidly observed:

 

There is no subject of Islamic social history on which the present writer had to modify his views so radically while passing from literary to documentary sources, i.e., from the study of Muslim books to that of the records of the Cairo Geniza as the jizya…or the poll tax to be paid by non-Muslims. It was of course, evident that the tax represented a discrimination and was intended, according to the Koran's own words, to emphasize the inferior status of the non-believers. It seemed, however, that from the economic point of view, it did not constitute a heavy imposition, since it was on a sliding scale, approximately one, two, and four dinars, and thus adjusted to the financial capacity of the taxpayer. This impression proved to be entirely fallacious, for it did not take into consideration the immense extent of poverty and privation experienced by the masses, and in particular, their persistent lack of cash, which turned the 'season of the tax' into one of horror, dread, and misery. [30]

 

El Fadl’s disdain for facts also extends to current events. In September 2002, he was the first signatory to an open letter in which Middle Eastern academics falsely accused Israel of planning to exploit a U.S. war against Saddam Hussein to ethnically "cleanse" Palestinians. Another signatory was CRF adviser Laurie Brand. [31]

 

Since the September 11 attacks, CAIR has widely claimed to defend Muslim rights, and has proven one of the most outspoken American Muslim organizations. CAIR’s aggressiveness effectively buries its past: Following Sheik Omar Abdul-Rahman’s conviction for leading the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks and the Lincoln Tunnel, CAIR termed his conviction a “hate crime” against Muslims. [32] Stephen Pomerantz, former FBI assistant director and chief of the FBI’s counter terrorism section, once charged that CAIR’s activities “effectively give aid to international terrorist groups.” [33] El Fadl openly supports CAIR.

 

The media continues to portray CAIR as moderate. One dire consequence is that the fast-growing presence of radical Islam on American soil remains vastly under-reported.

 

Another is the success of radical educational programs that soften American children to Islamic ideas. Khaled Abou El Fadl and Laurie Brand—and anonymous Islamist others—advance educational programs proposing blasphemy laws in the U.S.

 

Radical Islam’s Ultimate Goal

 

Radical Islam’s agenda is embedded in Origins of Islamic Law: “most Muslim legal scholars today believe that the Sharia can be adapted to modern conditions without abandoning the spirit of Islamic law or its religious foundations,” the CRF writes, although this is totally antithetical to the U.S. Bill of Rights. CAIR, and evidently El Fadl, want to see Sharia adopted in the U.S. Otherwise, why would these Muslim advisers draft a school curriculum proposing a Constitutional amendment on blasphemy?

 

They depend on Americans not to take their openly stated goals seriously.

 

Indeed, their curriculum has not raised red flags in any army-strength press corps. Perhaps Pakistan’s story will ring American alarm bells.

 

In 1947, Pakistan-founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah envisioned a secular Muslim state. After Jinnah’s untimely 1948 death, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in 1956 crafted a secular constitution to safeguard citizens’ rights. As Patrick Sookhdeo writes in A People Betrayed, the constitution carefully avoided institutionalizing Sharia in Pakistani law. It referred to the Koran and the Sunna only to promote self-examination, or itijihad, and left parliament and the courts to formulate Pakistani laws. [34]

 

The Constituent Assembly ran Pakistan until 1954. This left minorities unprotected, and the mullahs free to object to democratic ideas. [35] Pakistan achieved partition only after Muslim riots beginning on August 16, 1946 left 6,000 dead in Calcutta alone. [36] Building on the nation’s bloody foundation, Islamization began six months after Jinnah’s death.

 

In Feburary 1949, Indian Jamaat-i-Islami (Muslim party) founder Sayyid Abu Ala Maududi (1903-1979) demanded that four Islamic principles be included in a constitution. On March 12, 1949, the Constituent Assembly adopted an Objectives Resolution nominally affirming democracy, equality, freedom, tolerance and social justice. Alas it also included “compromise” language that rendered these basic human rights contingent “as enunciated by Islam;” Muslims were allowed to “order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam…the Holy Koran and the Sunna.” Since Islamic law varies according to interpretation, this facilitated dispute. [37]

 

In 1998, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali recalled the vague Objectives measure as “a Trojan horse” whose implications Pakistani legislators had failed to comprehend. Non-Muslims correctly anticipated difficulties over a clause granting “sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone, and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust.” [38] This played into Maududi’s vision of global Islamic supremacy (precursor to the Hamas Charter).

 

Although he was godfather of modern radical Islamic ideology, according to Islamic scholar Robert Spencer, Maududi’s political theology was firmly grounded on jihad laws. Maududi considered nations irrelevant. Islam was “a revolutionary ideology” seeking to change and rebuild the world “in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.” Muslims were revolutionaries, Islam their program and Jihad their struggle for ultimate global conquest. Islam sought “to destroy all States and Governments anywhere” opposed to its “ideology and programme …. Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet….” [39] He insisted that the Objectives Resolution required Pakistan to be a religious state with Sharia-shaped laws. Constituent Assembly member B.K. Datta correctly anticipated that principles “as enunciated by Islam” would condemn non-Muslims “forever to an inferior status.” Non-Muslims were to be institutionally oppressed. [40]

 

In the 1960s and 1970s, military and civil courts adjusted Pakistan’s criminal code to the laws of Islam. Although largely superficial, this increased Islamic influence. In 1977, the Pakistan National Alliance and General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq’s military government adopted an anti-secular, slogan, “nizam-e-Mustafa” (order of the Prophet). In 1979, Zia created Sharia superior court benches and in 1980 a Federal Sharia Court. Constitutional amendments in 1982, 1984 and 1986 strengthened Sharia’s power while Hudood ordinances established penalties for drinking alcohol (or taking drugs), theft, adultery and false accusation of adultery.[41] New laws allowed Islamic punishments like whipping, required compulsory payment of Islamic zakat (charity) and ushr (tithes) and enforced the Ramadan fast.

 

In 1984, a new Qanoon-e-Shahadat (Law of Evidence) let judges prohibit non-Muslims from testifying in courts. In certain cases, the laws prohibited non-Muslim testimonies. Finally, in 1985, Zia’s Eighth constitutional amendment ratified earlier Islamization measures. Even fiscal matters now fell under the jurisdiction of the Federal Sharia Court. And in 1988, Zia promulgated an Enforcement of Sharia Ordinance, which formed the basis of the 1991 Enforcement of Sharia Act. [42]

 

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is now trying to roll back radical Islam’s influence, but Pakistani civil law today reflects traditional Islamic Sharia. The nation’s clerics have denied basic human rights and equality to Pakistani citizens, as well as the freedoms of independent thought and expression. [43]

 

Pakistan witnessed only six blasphemy cases from 1947 through 1980. Under Zia that number increased exponentially. By 1998, more than 140 people had been charged and 2,000 others were alleged to have committed related religious crimes. [44] From 1992 to 2002, at least 2,000 Muslims were charged with blasphemy. From 1984 through 2003, an estimated 60 Christians were accused annually. [45] But these figures apparently don’t include apostasy charges, which would substantially raise the totals. Nor do they include the thousands of murders committed by vigilante Muslims who regularly take apostasy and blasphemy charges into their own hands. [46]

 

Defense of Imposition of Death Penalty for Apostasy

 

North American Muslims are serious about imposing the death penalty too. In a Canadian Society of Muslims death penalty defense meant to foster understanding between Islamic and Western cultures, Dr. Muhammed Hamidullah writes,

 

To wage war against apostates is justified on the same principle as that on which the punishment of a solitary apostate is based. The basis of Muslim polity being religious and not ethnological or linguistic, it is not difficult to appreciate the reason for penalizing the act of apostasy, for it constitutes a politico-religious rebellion. The greater the harm of a given rebellion to a polity, the greater is the severity of repression. Every civilization, not the least the modern western one…has provided capital punishment against violating the integrity of what it considers its very raison d’etre; and one cannot deny that right to Islam. (emphasis added) [47]

 

According to Hamidullah, "Apostasy in Muslim law means turning from Islam after being a Muslim." This occurs "when a person declares his conversion to some non-Islamic religion," or when "he refuses to believe in any and every basic article of the Islamic faith."

 

These are the actual Islamic principals underlying the misleading vision of Sharia advanced to American public school teachers and children by the Constitutional Rights Foundation through its diversity, terrorism and Islam teaching units -- and by the Ford Foundation, indirectly, by its funding.

 

The fact that no one questions this agenda should alarm us all. The silence is deafening.

 

ENDNOTES:

 

[1] Sookhdeo, Patrick, A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian community in Pakistan (2002), p. 116..

 

[2] Cameron, Carl, “Terror Groups met Twice to plot new holy war against U.S., Israel,” FoxNews.com, Sept. 16, 2001; Imad ad-Dean Ahmad’s Address to the First Conference on Jerusalem, Beirut, Lebanon, Minaret.org, Jan. 29, 2001; Latham, Niles, “Islamic Terror Groups Form Unholy Alliance,” New York Post, Feb. 12, 2001; Latham, Niles and Morris, Vincent, “Terror, Inc: Forces of Evil Converge in Sinister Summit,” New York Post, May 21, 2002.

 

[3] Sookhdeo, Patrick, A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization on the Christian community in Pakistan (2002), 138-140.

 

[4] Interview with William Hayes, CRF Senior writer/editor, Dec. 23, 2003.

 

[5] “Origins of Islamic law,” Constitutional Rights Foundation, 1998, http://www.crf-usa.org/bria/bria15_1.html#islamic.

 

[6] Al-Mawardi, Abu’l-Hasan, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah: The Laws of Islamic Governance (1996 Ta-ha ed.), p. 311

 

[7] ibn Abi Bakr, Marghinani Ali, al-Hidayah, or Guide- A Commentary on the Mussulman Laws,” translated by Hamilton, Charles, 1791, (1982 New Delhi reissue,) Vol. 2, pp. 362-363.

 

[8] Acting Consul Edward B. Freeman to Herzegovina to the Earl of Derby, Dec. 30, 1876, British Foreign Office 424/40 (No. 24. Political, No. 56, extract).

 

[9] Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), pp. 166-180.

 

[10] Bat Ye’or, ibid.

 

[11] Consul-General and Judge Sir P. Francis to the Earl of Derby, concerning sultan’s contemplated reforms and Firman of Dec. 12, 1875, Constantinople, Jan. 5, 1876, British Foreign Office 424/40 (No. 27, Inclosure, in no. 136, extract).

 

[12] Acting British Consul to Herzegovina Edward B. Freeman, ibid. 

 

[13] Bat Ye’or, ibid; See also, Balakian, Peter, The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (2003).

 

[14] Mangu-Ward, Katherine, "The Muddle of the Moderate Muslim - Khaled Abou El Fadl's Mysterious Egyptian Interview," The Weekly Standard, Dec. 22, 2003.

 

[15] Foer, Franklin, “Moral Hazard,” The New Republic, Nov. 12, 2001.

 

[16] Abou El Fadl, Khaled, “Islam and the Challenge of Democracy,” Boston Review, April/May 2003.

 

[17] Patai, Raphael, The Seed of Abraham: Jews and Arabs in Contact and Conflict (1986), pp. 108-119; Parfitt, Tudor, ed., “Dhimma Versus Protection in Ninteenth Century Morocco,” Israel and Ishmael: Studies in Muslim Jewish Relations (2000), pp. 142-166 and Klein-Franke, Aviva, “Collecting the Djizya (Poll-tax) in the Yemen,” pp. 175-206; Hirschberg, H.Z., History of the Jews in North Africa: Vol. I, From Antiquity to the Sixteenth Century (1974 ed)  and Vol. II, From the Ottoman Conquest to the Present Time (1981 ed); Goitein, S.D., A Mediterranean Society:  The Jewish Community of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genzia Vols. 1-6 (1999 ed).

 

[18] “President Bush’s appointee to Commission on International Religious Freedom, Prof. Khaled Abou Al-Fadl, Warns against reelecting Bush,” Special dispatch # 616, Memri.org, Nov. 26, 2003.

 

[19] Mangu-Ward, ibid.

 

[20] Mangu-Ward, ibid.

 

[21] Boston, Dr. Andrew G., “Khaled Abou El Fadl: Reformer or Revisionist?” The Institute for the Secularlisation of Islamic Society, securalism.org, undated.

 

[22] During the conquest of Iraq, the second “Rightly Guided Caliph” Umar ordered his commander in al-Basrah (636 C.E.) to “Summon the people to God; those who respond to your call, accept it from them, (This is to say, accept their conversion as genuine and refrain from fighting them) but those who refuse must pay the poll tax out of humiliation and lowliness. (Qur’an 9:29) If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency. Fear God with regard to what you have been entrusted.” Al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari (Ta’rikh al rusul wa’l-muluk): The Battle of Qadissiyah and the Conquest of Syria and Palestine, vol. 12, translated by Yohanan Friedman, (State University of New York Press, 1992).

 

[23] Bostom, ibid; Interview with Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., Dec. 22, 2003.

 

[24] Bostom, “Khaled Abou El Fadl: Reformer or Revisionist,” ibid.

 

[25] Tibi, Bassam, “War and Peace in Islam” in Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict, ed. by Hashmi, Sohail, (2002), p. 178.

 

[26] Bostom, “Khaled Abou El Fadl: Reformer or Revisionist,” ibid.

 

[27] Interview with Andrew G. Bostom, M.D., Dec. 22, 2003.

 

[28] Koran, (1999 Tarique Tarsile, 7^th ed), p.172; In a letter of protection to the people of Eilat, Mohammed wrote, “Thou hast to accept Islam, or pay the tax, and obey God and His Messenger and the messengers of His Messenger, … for if you satisfy my envoys you will satisfy me. Surely the tax is known to you. Therefore if you wish to be secure on land and on sea, obey God and His Messenger and you will be free of all payments…, apart from the payment to God [which is] the payment of his Messenger. But be careful lest you do not satisfy them, for then I shall not accept anything from you and take the young as captives and slay the elderly.” Gil, Moshe, A History of Palestine: 634-1099 (1997 ed.), p. 28.

 

[29] Ibid.

 

[30] Goitein, S.D., “Evidence on the Non-Muslim Poll Tax from Non-Muslim Sources,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 6, 1963, pp. 278-79.

 

[31] Kramer, Martin, “Profs Condemn Israel in Advance,” and “The Expulsion that Never Was,” Sandstorm, Dec. 20, 2002 and Apr. 25, 2003.

 

[32] See also, Pipes, Daniel, “CAIR: ‘Moderate’ friends of terror,” New York Post, Apr. 22, 2002.

 

[33] Tapper, Jake, “Islam’s Flawed Spokesmen,” Salon.com, Sept. 26, 2001.

 

[34] Sookhdeo, Patrick, A People Betrayed: The Impact of Islamization of the Christian Community in Pakistan (2002), pp. 85, 135-136.

 

[35] Sookhdeo, Patrick, ibid, 83-88.

 

[36] Ibn Warraq, Why I am not a Muslim (1995), p. 322; LaPierre, Dominique and Collins, Larry, Freedom at Midnight (2002 ed.), pp. 33-35, 296-305.

 

[37] Sookhdeo, ibid, pp. 81-88, 104-106.

 

[38] Sookhdeo, ibid, pp. 86-87.

 

[39] Spencer, Robert, Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (2003), pp. 216, 237-244, 262.

 

[40] Sookhdeo, ibid, p. 87-89.

 

[41] Sookhdeo, ibid, pp. 99, 136-147.

 

[42] Sookhdeo, ibid, pp. 99, 133-136.

 

[43] Ibn Warraq, ibid., pp. 174-176.

 

[44] Sookhdeo, ibid, pp. 239-245.

 

[45] Ibn Warraq, ibid, pp. 174-184; Ahmed, Akbar S., “Pakistan’s blasphemy law: words fail me,” Washington Post, May 19, 2002. At least 2,000 Muslims were charged between 1992 and 2002 and an estimated 60 Christians annually have been charged with blasphemy since 1984; See also Toffolo, Chris E. and Amjad-Ali, Charles, “Christians in Pakistan confront charges of blasphemy,” Christian Century, Jul. 28, 1998; “Baker, Barbara G., “Pakistan Sentences another Christian to death,” ChristianityToday.com, Jul. 8, 2003; Mohaiemen, Naeem, “Merchants of hate: following Pakistan’s deadly example,” Daily Star, Dec. 9, 2003.

 

[46] Ibn Warraq, ibid, 174-184.

 

[47] Hamidullah, Dr. Muhammad, Islam and Blasphemy, The Muslim Conduct of State (Lahore, Pakistan: Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1977).

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[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on or off this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[OXENinFLA]

The Ford Foundation, an NPR funder too I believe.

[kapn kuek]

Here is a blasphemy against islam (POA).

To offend and ridicule this cult is a good thing. After studying islam (POA) this is how I define it.

islam (POA) is an intolerant cult founded by a Jewish and Christian hating, child molesting pedophile, who was also a murdering thief. The followers of the cult bow several times a day to worship a meteorite in the sand and follow teachings from a hate filled screed based on moon worship written by a maniac. The sword and death are used to induct new cult members and remove non-believers. Women of the cult are treated as sub-human slaves whose worth is measured by the pleasure they give men and by the children they produce for the cult. Beheading, stoning, clitoral cutting, limb chopping, and self-mutilation maintain discipline within the cult.

[Happy2BMe]

Well as usual, S.J., you have manged to uncover even more astonishing tricks of the "Religion of Peace."

Corporate America not only funds Islam (with the great help of the Saudis), but they also bow down to it as well.

"To take another example: In 1997, Nike recalled 38,000 pairs of sneakers after CAIR and other Muslim groups instigated an international Nike boycott; the word “Air” designed on the sneaks resembled Arabic script for “Allah.” Nike even cut a $50,000 check for the northern Virginia Dar-Al-Hijrah Islamic Center and made educational videos and CDs about Islam.

[Eris]

Screw Allah, that murderous pedophile.


Blaspheming enough fer ya?

[ZULU]

PERFECT description of the cult of Islam, the creed of the mad prophet (curses be upon him).

[StatesEnemy]

I Hate Islam.

Allah is a false god.

Mohommed was nutcase.

It is the religion of insecure man-boys.

[DonQ]

Their proposed anti-blasphemy amendment reads:

The First Amendment shall not be interpreted to protect blasphemous speech. States shall be free to enact anti-blasphemy laws as long as they prohibit offensive speech against all religions.

Now this opens an ugly can of worms. What constitutes blasphemy? Really?! Unitarians (and some others) might remember that John Calvin had Michael Servetus, founder of Unitarianism, burned at the stake in Geneva, in 1553, for his rejection of trinitarianism and some other doctrines near and dear to Calvin -- Servetus was convicted of "blasphemy", not heresy. Of course, in America, we've had a number of Unitarians in the White House (John & John Quincy Adams, William Howard Taft, et al), so maybe we wouldn't convict them of blasphemy here.

In England, blasphemy was a crime at common law, and Blackstone, in the early 18th century, defined it, rather vaguely, as abusing the basic tenets of Christianity - denying the divinity of Jesus, the existence of the trinity, the final judgment, etc.; abusing Christianity, but not Judaism nor, I suppose, Islam.

In American law the crime of blasphemy has very seldom been explained, but the few instances also seem to focus on abusing the doctrines peculiar to Christianity; in America nobody was ever punished for denouncing Mohammed as a fraud or Buddha as a false god.

Of course, for modern explications of blasphemy we could look to the Moslem countries, which still punishes people for it. In most of the Moslem world it is blasphemous to suggest that Mohammed is not the final and best of the prophets or that the Koran is not the revealed and inerrent word of the Diety .... it is also blasphemous to suggest that Christianity is better or even equal in validity to Islam; however, it is not considered blasphemous to denounce (as is done in govt-issued textbooks, such as those which the Saudi govt require be used even in private Christian schools) Christianity as a false religion and the New Testament as a fabrication. And I am feel confident that the backers of this proposed Amendment have that interpretation in mind.

[FierceDraka]

Just a question regarding the Ford Foundation:

Why are they promoting Islam???

[JudgemAll]

Message to CAIR: Bite me. Allah is a big mthr fckr.

[philosofy123]

Yes put me on the list. Thanks.

It is easy to see how the fanatical American Moslems are using our laws to protect their evil intentions. I have never heard of any organized Moslem Americans who oppose the oppression of Moslem states to their minority Christians and Jews. Yet, they want to have us protect their rights as minorities. I say, if you would like to be respected as minority, first you should push your country of origin to do the same, and second do not attempt to convert the majority to your barbaric desert culture. You leave the barbaric desert life to join the civilized life in the West; either you like it, and become part of it, or stay back where you can beat your wife and consider her a slave!

[First_Salute]

Headlines: President George Bush nominates "Islamic-American" for U.S. Supreme Court.

[Gritty]

I would laugh at this except I learned my lesson when I laughed at the feminists burning bras.

[Happy2BMe]

"Allah is a false god."

"Mohommed was nutcase."

You are aware of course that the men and women in our Armed Forces making that statement could go up on court martial charges for not conforming to DoD "tolerance" regulations, are you not?

The Truth About Islam

Observations by Dr. David R. Reagan

 

Ever since the Attack on America on September 11, 2001, we have heard a never-ending chorus of voices from government, academia, and the media assuring us that the Islamic terrorists who attacked the Trade Towers and the Pentagon are not repre­sentative of “true Islam.” We have been likewise assured by spiritual leaders — even some Christian spokesmen — that Islam is a religion of peace, and that Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews.

“Our war is not against Islam,” we have been told repeatedly. “Our war is against terrorism.”

Central Questions

Well, what about it?

• Are Muslims the spiritual brothers and sisters of Christians and Jews?
  
  
• Do we all worship the same God?
  
  
• Are the Islamic holy scriptures, known as the Koran, inspired by God?
  
  
• Is Islam another path to God by which one can attain eternal life?
  
  
• Are the Islamic fundamentalists representative of true Islam, or are they a terrible aberration of an otherwise peace-loving religion?
  
  
• Is our war really a political one against international terrorists, or is it a spiritual battle against a demonic, intolerant, militant, and imperialistic religion known as Islam?

The Intolerant and Militant Nature of Islam

One of the most controversial issues regarding Islam concerns whether or not it is a militant religion. Muslims in the West argue it is peace-loving. Westerners who have experienced it in the Muslim world argue it is inherently in­tolerant and militant.

The Koran itself preaches intolerance toward other religions. Sura 5 contains the following command: “Take not Jews and Christians for friends . . . He among you who takes them for friends is one of them . . . Choose not for friends such of those who received the Scripture before you [Jews and Christians] . .  But keep your duty to Allah” (verses 51, 55, 57). Extreme intolerance is commanded in Sura 5:33 — “[For those who do not submit to Allah] their punishment is . . . execution or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet, from the opposite sides, or exile from the land.”

The Koran also expresses an intolerant attitude toward any person who decides to reject the Islamic faith or convert to another religion. Such persons are to be executed (Sura 9:12). In the Hadith (the oral tradition of Muhammad’s sayings) it says “Whoever changes his religion, kill him” (Hadith 9:57). These commands are practiced in all Islamic Fundamentalist countries today.

With regard to militancy, the Koran not only condones it, it commands it:

Fighting is prescribed for you, and [some of] you dislike it. But it is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and that you love a thing which is bad for you. But Allah knows, and you know not (Sura 2:16).

Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war (Sura 9:5).

Fight in the way of Allah . . . and slay them [the unbelievers] wherever you find them and drive them out . . . and fight them until . . . religion is for Allah (Sura 2:190-193).

Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as saying, “The sword is the key of heaven and hell. A drop of blood in the cause of Allah — a night spent in arms [war] — is of more avail than two months of fasting and prayer. Whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven, and at the day of judgment, his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.”¹²

The Imperialistic Nature of Islam

From its inception, Islam has been committed to what it calls jihad — a word mean­ing holy war. The duty of Muslims is to subjugate or destroy “infidels” — the term the Koran uses for all non-believers.

In the Muslim viewpoint, the world is divided into two regions — those areas controlled by Islam, called Dar al-Islam (meaning the House of Islam) and those called Dar al-Harb (the House of War). The Koran commands Mus­lims to fight non-Muslims until they exterminate all other religions, leaving Islam as the one and only religion in the world (Suras 2:193 and 8:39). Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as saying, “I have been ordered to fight with the people until they say, none has the right to be worshiped but Allah” (Hadith 4:196).

Regarding terror, Allah orders Muslims to terrorize non-Muslims on his behalf: “Strike terror (into the hearts of ) the enemies of Allah and your enemies” (Sura 8:60). Allah then assures his followers that he will assist them: “I will instill terror into the hearts of unbelievers. Smite them above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them. It is not you who slay them, it is Allah” (Sura 8:12, 17).

Concerning jihad,¹⁴ the Koran guarantees Paradise to those who fight for Allah (Sura 4:74). It promises instant Paradise for those who die in battle (Suras 9:111 and 47:5-6). Dying for Allah is presented as better than living: “And if you are killed or die in the Way of Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all that others may amass [of worldly wealth]” (Sura 3:157).

Martyrs are promised a sensual and luxurious life in Paradise (Sura 52:17-22). According to Al-Ghazzali, one of Islam’s greatest teachers, when a martyr reaches Paradise, he “will marry 500 companions, 4,000 virgins, and 8,000 divorced women.”¹⁵ Commenting on this statement, Randall Price, biblical teacher and Middle East expert, observed that the Islamic Paradise is “just the kind of place that adolescent, unmarried men, isolated through their lives from the opposite sex by rigid cultural standards, would die for.”¹⁶

Fundamentalist Goals

The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran was the modern day Islamic spokesman who revived Muhammad’s vision of world con­quest. He taught that the re-establishment of Israel was a Satanic miracle allowed by Allah because of the lukewarmness of the Muslim masses. He called for a renewal of true Islam to accomplish three purposes:¹⁹

1. To overthrow the “secular” rulers of Islamic countries (like Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt), just as he had done in Iran.
   
   
2. To take back the land of Palestine for Allah, exterminating Israel in the process.
   
   
3. To conquer the rest of the world for Allah.

Notice the first priority was the transformation of secular Islamic countries into religious states ruled by the Koran. Then would come Israel and the world.

In a proclamation made by Osama bin Laden in 1998, he listed the same goals and prioritized them in the same order.²⁰ He then identified the United States as the prime obstacle to the achievement of these goals. Accordingly, he called on Muslims everywhere “to comply with Allah’s order to kill the Americans and plunder their money wherever and whenever they find it.”

It is important to note that the eradication of Israel is not the top priority. Nor is Israel viewed as the major obstacle to world conquest. I emphasize this because many Americans are saying that the key to winning the war against terrorism is to dump Israel. More and more, on radio talk shows, I hear people saying, “Let’s cut Israel loose. Let the Arabs have it. Then they will leave us alone.”

That is utter nonsense. Israel is not the cause of Islamic terrorism toward the West. If Israel were to disappear tomorrow, Fundamentalist Islam would still be determined to destroy America as part of its plan to take the world for Allah. And if we were to abandon Israel, the Muslim world would interpret it as an act of cowardice, proving our word is meaningless and that we truly are, as they say, “a depraved society devoid of values.” Our abandonment of Israel would only whet their appetite. Islamic Fundamentalism cannot be appeased. It must be de­feated.

---

[Happy2BMe]

"Message to CAIR: Bite me."

Message From CAIR to ALL American Infidels . .

---

FROM JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
Radical Islam's 'plan'
to take over America
Arab-American author outlines secret
20-year strategy to undermine country

---

Posted: August 4, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

9. Accelerate Islamic demographic growth via:

• Massive immigration (100,000 annually since 1961).

• Use no birth control whatsoever – every baby of Muslim parents is automatically a Muslim and cannot choose another religion later.

• Muslim men must marry American women and Islamize them (10,000 annually). Then divorce them and remarry every five years – since one can't legally marry four at one time. This is a legal solution in America.

Omar Ahmad

Co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

President & CEO of Silicon Expert Technologies, he is a Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan.  


" Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant...The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth,"
-Omar Ahmad


 Ibrahim Hooper
CAIR spokesperson


"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future...But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that.


"CAIR does not support these groups publicly."
(when asked about CAIR's record of supporting Hamas, Hizbullah and other official terrorist groups)

-Ibrahim Hooper

[Alouette]

FRmail me to be added or removed from this pro-Israel ping list.

[Alouette]

Message to CAIR