Obama, the African Colonial

American Thinker ^ | June 25, 2009 | L.E. Ikenga

[neverdem]

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious. Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories.  AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.  

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress".  (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you: 

1. Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity". British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated" Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
2. Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.  
3. Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?   
4. Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse.  One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer "progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's. What will a post-Obama America look like?
5. Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons.  This speaks for itself.

America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.

L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

[thouworm]

Warith Deen Mohammed was born Wallace D. Muhammad. He was the seventh child of Elijah and Clara Muhammad.

W. Deen Mohammed, 74, Top U.S. Imam, Dies
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: September 9, 2008

Imam W. Deen Mohammed, a son of the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, who renounced the black nationalism of his father’s movement to lead a more traditional and racially tolerant form of Islam for black Muslims, died on Tuesday in Chicago. He was 74.

(snip)

[He was] unanimously elected supreme minister of the Nation of Islam after his father’s death in 1975.

Eventually, the Black Muslims splintered, with the fiery Louis Farrakhan leading the faction favoring racial separatism. Imam Mohammed, soft-spoken and scholarly, led what is thought to be a far larger flock that appeals, in general terms, to middle-class blacks, according to Contemporary Black Biography, an online reference book. Over the years, estimates of the group’s size have ranged from 500,000 adherents to more than 2 million.

In 1976, Imam Mohammed dropped the Nation of Islam name in favor of the World Community of al-Islam in the West; that was also the year he adopted the title of imam.

Two years later, he changed the name of his organization to the American Muslim Mission. Later, he encouraged each mosque to be independent under the leadership of the Muslim American Society, or the Ministry of W. Deen Mohammed.

Imam Mohammed moved decisively toward the religious mainstream. In 1992, he became the first Muslim to deliver the invocation for the United States Senate. He led prayers at both inaugurals of President Bill Clinton. He addressed a conference of Muslims and Reform Jews in 1995, and participated in several major interfaith dialogues with Roman Catholic cardinals. He met with the pope in 1996 and 1999.

Imam Mohammed worked to bring American Muslims into the world’s largest Islamic orthodoxy, the Sunni branch. He met privately with Arab leaders like President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt and received a contribution of $16 million from a sultan in the United Arab Emirates.

His leadership position in the American Muslim community was evident two years after he succeeded his father when he led what was then the largest delegation of American Muslims on the pilgrimage to Mecca. It was major news in the African-American press when Imam Mohammed and Mr. Farrakhan appeared together in Chicago in 2000.

“Twenty-five years later, I know that your father wanted this,” Mr. Farrakhan said, Jet magazine reported. “I know it in my heart.”

NY TIMES

See Post #409 for additional info on Warith Deen Mohammed

[thouworm]

Abdullah was the one killed but his “group believes that a separate Islamic state in the U.S. would be controlled by JAMIL ABDULLAH AL-AMIN, formerly known as H. RAP BROWN, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado for shooting two police officers in Georgia in 2000”

Al-Amin (of Post 409 fame) is still in prison. His “accomplishments” bio stops short of the present.

[Fred Nerks]

Duh! I had a feeling I missed something...thanks.

[thouworm]

"...In June 1991, Siraj Wahaj, a black convert to Islam and the recipient of some of the American Muslim community's highest honors, had the privilege of becoming the first Muslim to deliver the daily prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives. On that occasion he recited from the Qur'an and appealed to the Almighty to guide American leaders "and grant them righteousness and wisdom." Post 417

In 1992,Warith Deen Mohammed became the first Muslim to deliver the invocation for the United States Senate. He led prayers at both inaugurals of President Bill Clinton. Post 421

[dennisw]

great work

[thouworm]

Yet the Muslim faith continues to convert many average African-Americans, who say they are attracted by Islam’s emphasis on equality, discipline and family.

“The unique history African-Americans have faced, we’re primed for accepting Islam,” said Jackson, 31, who grew up in a secular home and converted to Islam when he was about 18.

“When someone comes to you with a message that everyone is equal, that the only difference is the deeds that they do, of course people who have been oppressed will embrace that message,” Jackson said. “It’s a message of fairness.”

It was a message of black pride in the face of dehumanizing prejudice that launched Islam in America in the 1930s.

Created by a mysterious man named Wallace Fard, the “Lost-Found Nation of Islam” strayed far from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, but its mixture of self-reliance, black supremacy and white demonization resonated with many blacks. Some 30 years later, Malcolm X began the African-American movement toward traditional Islam when he left the Nation of Islam, went on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and proclaimed that all whites were not evil.

In 1975, the Nation split into two factions: a larger group that embraced orthodox Sunni practices, and another, led by Louis Farrakhan, that maintained the Nation’s separatist ideology.

Today, it is difficult to determine the number of Muslims in America. A 2007 Pew survey estimated 2.35 million, of whom 35 percent were African-American. Lawrence Mamiya, a Vassar College professor of religion and Africana studies and an expert on American Islam, said Muslim organizations count about 6 million members, a third of them black.

Most African-American Muslims are orthodox Sunnis who worship in about 300 mosques across the country, Mamiya said.

The second-largest group follows Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, which has about 100 mosques in America, abroad and U.S. prisons, Mamiya said.

He said the third-largest group is the Ummah, founded by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, the black activist formerly known as H. Rap Brown. The group has about 40 or 50 mosques. The Detroit mosque raided Wednesday was part of the Ummah, the FBI said.

“The vast majority of African-American Muslims are using the religion to strengthen their spirituality,” said Mamiya, who has interviewed many black Muslim leaders and congregants. He said the number of black Muslims is growing, but not as fast as before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Few white Americans convert to Islam “because the tendency is to view Islam as foreign,” he said. “For African-Americans, it’s part of their African heritage. There’s a long tradition (in Africa). ... It moves them away from the Christianity they saw as a slave religion, as the religion that legitimized their slavery.”

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BLI6203&show_article=1&catnum=0

THREADS on this article here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374723/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2374734/posts

[Fred Nerks]

“For African-Americans, it’s part of their African heritage. There’s a long tradition (in Africa). ... It moves them away from the Christianity they saw as a slave religion, as the religion that legitimized their slavery.”

MANKING IN AMNESIA. Immanuel Velikovsky. page 154

A characteristic social and psychological phenomenon is taking place in the process of the black reawakening in the United States. The fourth- to tenth-generation descendants of slaves (in the case of of the West Indies only the third generation) feel a resurgence of the longing for Africa that accompanied the fettered slaves on their forced voyage to this country and and haunted the thoughts of the first generation of those working on plantations or in mines. But together with this Back-to-Africa sentiment, a strange, even pathological phenomenon takes place: the most militant among the Amercian blacks look to the Arabs as their allies and mentors.

The descendants of the slaves return to those who preyed on them, took them captives, chained them, drove them mercilessly across deserts, let them die from thirst exhausted at oars on galleys. The urge to return to the tormentor or to his descendants, to adopt their religion, and hail them as saviors is a reaction for which psychology knows the cause: a victim's children remain fascinated by the one who wielded a whip over their father...

[Fred Nerks]

The Zanzibar Arabs on the eastern coast of Africa were the greatest traders of all. Black villages would be put to the torch when their populations were asleep - sometimes with the connivance of the village chiefs - and the fleeing blacks would be captured, thus becoming human mechandise.

Many of those transported in chains on Arab ships, often not seaworthy, died of maltreatment, thirst, and exposure to the sun, and of some cargoes crossing the Atlantic not more than fifty out of a hundred survived the passage.

[thouworm]

That’s about as profound a two short-paragraph summary as I’ve read anywhere on any subject...made more so in relation to this topic by your cited lead-in.

[Fred Nerks]

Have to correct the title:

MANKIND IN AMNESIA

BY Immanuel Velikovsky.

First published in Great Britain by Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd. 1982.

[Fred Nerks]

Barack Obama and Slavery.LINK

Many people seem to the names "Barack" and "Obama" are African names. They are not.

Baraq [Barack] was the name of the winged horse-like creature that took Mohammed to Paradise in the Night Journey. Baraq can also mean God's blessing. Obama is Swahili for Osama, who was one of Mohammed's chief warriors. Osama also means lion. Hussein reminds some Americans of Saddam Hussein, and Obama's supporters get upset if it is used. Hussein was the name of Mohammed's grandson. So Obama's entire name is based upon Islamic mythology and African conquest. Barack Hussein Obama means [Allah's blessing] [Mohammed's grandson] [One of Mohammed's finest warriors].

Obama's name reveals a part of history that is unknown or hidden about America, Africa and slavery. It also reveals a history of the destruction of native African civilization. His name came from his father, a so-called Arab African. The word Arab is the clue to the hidden history.

If you would like to learn about the Arab African slave traders that came from the same area of Africa that Obama's father came from, read Tippu Tip and the East African Slave Trade (Leda Farrant, Northumberland Press, 1975). Tippu Tip looked African, but he was 100% Arab and Muslim. By the way, Arab is not a racial term, but a cultural/language term.

But the slave trade had another effect. Africa slowly became Islamic. Jihad worked in many ways to bring about conversion. Sometimes trade introduced Islam and a hybrid Islam/native African religion evolved. Then jihad was used to purify and remove the African culture to result in a purer Islam. But in the end, half of Africa fell to Islam...

[Fred Nerks]

Tippoo Tib TRAILBLAZER FOR THE GREAT EXPLORERS OF AFRICA (1837-1905)LINK

MARCUS GARVEY.COM

VOLUMES HAVE BEEN WRITTEN about the exploration of Africa by the European; little if anything of the black man's part in it. Yet the greatest of all the African trailblazers was a Negro--Hamid ibn Mohammed, better known as Tippoo Tib.

We are familiar with the adventures of Stanley, Livingstone, Burton, Speke, Cameron; nevertheless, those of Tippoo Tib were much more exciting. In the path that he blazed Stanley followed, did Livingstone and others. " It is thanks to his support," says La Grande Encyclopédie, "that Cameron, in 1874, and Stanley in 1876, and Wissman in 1882, could cross Africa.

Starting from the island of Zanzibar, his birthplace, Tippoo Tib crossed Africa by way of Lake Tanganyika, up through the vast stretch of what is now the Republic of the Congo. The journey took him eleven years, during which he traversed territory no one from the outer world had ever penetrated before. He fought his way through the primeval forest, forced himself into the lands of the tribes, and defeated chief after chief until he was master of a territory as large as Western Europe. He was by far the greatest of those who dominated in Central Africa just before the seizure of that region by the white man. Europeans who came into Africa were forced to reckon with him, among them King Leopold of Belgium, who was glad to come to terms with him. As to wealth, he was one of the richest men in the world of his time.

Tippoo Tib was born in 1837 and was three parts Negro and one part Arab. (And an Arab can often be a Negro, but because he has the slightest trace of Arab ancestry he is considered an Arab.) His father was the son of an Arab merchant from Muscat; his mother and grandmother were both full-blooded Negro women. His father had been a trader in ivory, gold, gum, cattle, and slaves, chiefly the last. But neither he nor any of the Arab merchants had ever penetrated deeply into the African interior. As a boy Tippoo Tib listened to his father's tales of the wealth that was waiting to be gathered there until he was seized by the desire to go himself...

[Fred Nerks]

FOR THE RECORD:

Malcolm after Mecca: East Africa, 1964
Commonweal, Dec 18, 1992 by Margaret Snyder
1 2 Next
I met Malcolm X in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, during his second extended visit to Africa, not long before his brief life ended. In the books I have seen there is only passing mention of his 1964 meetings with African heads of state and ambassadors, and little at all about other meetings.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n22_v119/ai_13250482/

Newspaper: Obama has Tanzanian blood

www.chinaview.cn 2008-11-01 15:07:52 Print

Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008

DAR ES SALAAM, Nov.1 (Xinhua) — A local newspaper on Saturday reported that United States presidential candidate Barack Obama has Tanzanian blood flowing in him as well.

The Weekend African newspaper said in a bylined frontpage story that Obama’s grandmother on his father’s side had hailed from the Kowak Village in Tarime in Tanzania’s Mara Region which borders southwestern Kenya.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/01/content_10291147.htm

“Obama’s love for Tanzania in lieu of Kenya is goof up”
October 29, 2009 by asabagna

By booting Kenya down and preferring Tanzania, the US proved to be as goofy as divorcing a gator to end up in bed with a croc! This is the second time the US has slammed a door on Kenya. It’s sad that even Tanzania imbibed this scornful humiliation as a big deal. But by avoiding Kenya is the world leader helping it to solve its problems?

http://afrospear.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/obamas-love-for-tanzania-in-lieu-of-kenya-is-goof-up-%E2%80%8Fby-nkwazi-n-mhango/

[thouworm]

Eavesdropping on a Sunni Muslim Scholar Upon the Passing of One of Islam's National Leaders (see Post #421 for obit)

Imam Warith Deen Mohammed and The Third Resurrection
by Dr. Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson

Imâm Mohammed’s death has signaled the end of the era of charismatic leadership in which the rank and file can look to a single leader to settle all major questions and chart the Community’s course for the future.

(snip)

In the years leading up to his death, Imam Mohammed strove mightily and with great farsightedness to empower his Community to carve out a dignified existence for themselves, to transition to what I have referred to as the “Third Resurrection,” whereby, individually and collectively, the Community is able to negotiate American reality in light of the Qur’ân and Sunna. For the most part, however, the Imam had to go it alone, with few contributions from Blackamerican Muslim scholars outside his own movement.

Here we come to an embarrassingly sad fact about the state of Blackamerican Islam. For decades, Blackamerican Muslims have been venturing abroad to learn Arabic and the Islamic religious sciences. Yet, this has translated into little benefit and even less interfacing with the Community of Imam W.D. Mohammed — despite that community’s historically unique role in indigenizing Islam among Blackamericans.

When we think across the spectrum of the most noted Blackamerican Muslim scholars – from

(I) myself [Sherman Abd al-Hakim Jackson] to
(II) Zaid Shakir, from
(III) Aminah McCloud to
(IV) Aminah Wadud

– what we see is a veritable brain-drain out of the Blackamerican community into discourses and activities whose primary beneficiaries are not Blackamerican Muslims and or whose primary focus is not Blackamerican Muslim problems or concerns.

Of course, there are exceptions, both in terms of individuals who contradict this description and in terms of some of the activities of the scholars named.

But the fact that these are exceptions points to the reality that I am trying to describe: Blackamerican Muslim scholars have a closer relationship with the immigrant community than they have with the community of Imam W.D. Mohammed. To be fair, there are understandable reasons for this:

1) it is easier (and safer) to direct the Islamic sciences to the realities of the Muslim world and by extension the perspective of Muslim immigrants;

2) Muslim immigrants have more financial wherewithal to support such activities as lecturing, teaching and writing;

3) the immigrant community has a greater ability to validate scholars as scholars; and

4) the media (which plays an enormous role in setting the Muslim agenda in America) tends overwhelmingly to focus on immigrant issues.

Beyond all of this, however, there lurks a far more subtle, sadder and less talked about reality that has for decades plagued the relationship between the followers of Imam W.D. Mohammed and the rest of the Blackamerican Sunni community.

(snip) I remember Philadelphia in the late 70s and early 80s, when Imam Mohammed was in this midst of his history-making transition.

(snip)

We were better than them; for we were real Sunnis, not half-baptist wannabes. For all our ‘knowledge,’ however, we were completely devoid of wisdom and even more ignorant of the Sunna of Muhammad (SAWS). Of course, our high-handed arrogance would produce over time an understandable counter-arrogance.

To the Imam’s community, we were confused, self-hating Negroes, wannabe Arabs, fresh off the back of the bus onto the back of the camel.

If what we displayed was what the so-called Islamic sciences were supposed to be about, they would have little use for them. Ultimately, this would lead to a quiet resentment, mistrust and even hostility, not only towards us but also towards the so-called Islamic tradition that we so dismally (mis)represented.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that Philadelphia was no anomaly in this regard, that this was a fairly widespread phenomenon across the country. The death of Imam Mohammed, however, has now forced us all to take collective responsibility for this toxic state of affairs.

Imam Mohammed may be succeeded by another leader; but he is not likely to be replaced; for who could fill his shoes? The new leadership, therefore – not unlike Blackamerican Muslim leadership in general — will have to find ways to spread greater Islamic literacy among the rank and file, to empower them to engage the religion on their own, in order to enable them to sustain their commitment to it.

As for the rest of the Blackamerican Sunni community – especially the scholars – I pray that Allah will inspire us and show us the way to mend this relationship.

(snip)

In concrete terms, perhaps this year’s MANA conference in Philadelphia could be the starting point of a broad-based dialogue. And if not the MANA conference, perhaps the conference held by Imam Mohammed’s community next year could be the forum.



FACES of ISLAM'S FUTURE?---Four Prominent Scholars


I. Dr. SHERMAN ABD AL-HAKIM JACKSON is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Visiting Professor of Law and Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Michigan.

Bio of Dr Abdul Hakim Sherman Jackson, native of Philadelphia, PA

EDUCATION
1990 Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

1986 Master of Arts, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

1982 Bachelor of Arts, Cum Laude, The University of Pennsylvania, Department of Oriental Studies, Islamic Near East.

From 1987-89, he served as Executive Director for the Center of Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) in Cairo, Egypt.

Dr. Abd al-Hakim Jackson has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Indiana University and Wayne State University.

LANGUAGES
Arabic (Classical); Egyptian, Levantine, Saudi Arabian and Sudanese dialects; French; German; Persian.

ASSOCIATIONS
Dr. Abd al-Hakim Jackson is co-founder of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM), a primary instructor at its programs, and a member of its Board of Trustees.

Jackson is also a former member of the Fiqh Council of North America, past president of the Shari-‘ah Scholars’ Association of North America (SSANA) and a past trustee of the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). He is a sought-after speaker and has lectured throughout the US and in numerous countries abroad.

BOOKS
Islam and the Blackamerican
The Boundaries of Theological Tolerance in Islam
Islamic Law and the State
Islam and the Blackamerican: Looking Towards the Third Resurrection


II. ZAID SHAKIR

Ricky D. Mitchell [Zaid Shakir] was born May 24, 1956 in Berkeley, California and was raised in the Atlanta and Hartford projects alongside six other children. He changed his name to Zaid Shakir when he converted to Islam in 1977. Today, he is one of the foremost Islamic scholars in the west.

It was while serving in the Air Force that he accepted Islam in 1977. He remained in the military for four years and received an accommodation medal for his dedicated service. He earned a BA in International Relations from the American University in Washington, DC in 1983. A summa cum laude graduate, Imam Shakir went on to receive his Masters in Political Science from Rutgers University where he was also a student leader.

While at Rutgers, he led a successful campaign for disinvestment from South Africa, and co-founded a local Islamic center, Masjid al-Huda. After a year of studying Arabic in Cairo, Egypt, he settled in New Haven, Connecticut and continued his community activism, co-founding Masjid al-Islam, the Tri-State Muslim Education Initiative, and the Connecticut Muslim Coordinating Committee.

As Imam of Masjid al-Islam from 1988 to 1994 he spear-headed a community renewal and grassroots anti-drug effort, also accepted the position as Professor and taught political science and Arabic at Southern Connecticut State University. He served as an interfaith council Chaplain at Yale University and developed the Chaplaincy Sensitivity Training for physicians at Yale New Haven Hospital.

Shakir then left for Syria to pursue his studies in the traditional Islamic Sciences. For seven years in Syria, and briefly in Morocco, he immersed himself in an intense study of Arabic, Islamic law, Quranic studies, and spirituality with some of the top Muslim scholars of our age. In 2001, he was the first American graduate from Syria's prestigious Abu Nour University and returned to Connecticut, serving again as the Imam of Masjid al-Islam, and writing and speaking frequently on a host of issues.

In 2003, as a scholar-in-residence at Zaytuna Institute located in California, Shakir began to teach Arabic, Law, and Islamic Spirituality. And, in 2008, he co-founded the Berkeley, California - based Zaytuna College dedicated to the revival of Islamic Sciences and the preservation of traditional teaching methods.

He has continued his spiritual, academic and community work, speaking and writing extensively on religion, socio-political and race issues. Imam Shakir has been invited to lecture at several prominent universities including Stanford, UCLA, Berkeley, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Rutgers, and Temple University.

He is the author of the groundbreaking books Heirs of the Prophets and Scattered Pictures


Discover the Networks

Shakir is known for having expressed his desire to see the United States eventually become -- "not by violent means, but by persuasion" -- a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law. "Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country," he said.

In Shakir's view, Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the existing American order, because it "is against the orders and ordainments of Allah." "[T]he orientation of the Quran," he explains, "pushes us in the exact opposite direction."

Shakir also appears to embrace 9/11 conspiracy theories. In October 2007 he described the September 11th attacks as having "occurred under dubious circumstances that have yet to be thoroughly examined."

According to Shakir, American foreign policy has been hijacked by the military-industrial complex. In May 2009 he admonished the U.S. for its "pattern of demonization, destabilization, and the invasion of hapless Third World nations," saying that such aggression is always carried out under the guise of national interests. Among those he listed as victims of American "demonization" were Hugo Chavez, Manuel Noriega, Muammar Qadhafi, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.



III. AMINAH McCLOUD, Age 60

CV

EDUCATION
1993 Ph.D. Temple University: Islamic Studies
1987 M. A. Temple University: Islamic Studies
1977 B.Sc. Temple University: Pharmacy
1970 B. S. Lincoln University : Physics/Math

CAREER
DePaul University (the largest Catholic University in the U.S.)

2004 Director, Islamic World Studies Program
1993-2003 Professor, Islamic Studies in Religious Studies, DePaul University
1990 Instructor, Religious studies, DePaul University

BOOKS
African American Islam
Questions of Faith
Transnational Muslims in American Society and Silks: The Textures of American Muslim Women's Lives
Currently working on Owning Islam: African American Islam in 21st Century

Also, she is a Fulbright Scholar, consultant on Muslim affairs for the courts, and current editor of The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture.

She is the founder of the Islam in America Conference at DePaul University which houses the Journal of Islamic Law and Culture and the “Islam in America Archives.”


Discover the Networks

In 2004 McCloud was a signatory to a document denouncing the Patriot Act and imploring U.S. authorities to grant Tariq Ramadan permission to teach at Notre Dame University. Ramadan -- the grandson of Hasan al-Banna, who founded the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood -- had been denied a visa because of his connections to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

ASSOCIATIONS
In addition to her teaching career, Professor McCloud has been a consultant to the Ford Foundation's "Civil Rights and Muslims in America" project, and [is one of twenty-two Advisors on] Harvard University's Pluralism Project. McCloud is also a speaker with the Muslim Students Association.


From PBS Frontline, 2002

According to Dr. McCloud, African-American conversion to Islam sometimes results from dissatisfaction with Christianity. "In 2002, Christianity is still about race," she says. "It's still the blond-haired white Jesus with blue eyes. They're saying 'No, I'm not worshipping white men.'"

Other times, African-Americans convert to Islam because they're feel dissatisfied. "For some others who were not inside of a structured religious community, it is 'I want to be inside of a structured religious community,'" Dr. McCloud explains.

Two years ago, controversy erupted in Palos Heights, Ill. when its rapidly growing Muslim community proposed building a new mosque and community center on the site of an empty church. Public hearings were held, during which some residents who objected to the mosque proposed a recreation center in its place. Other residents spoke up against what they called "open racism."

The Muslims ultimately agreed not to buy the church and accepted a monetary settlement, but still they went to court charging discrimination. A federal judge has ordered the two sides to enter into an interfaith dialogue.

Dr. Aminah McCloud is serving as an [interfaith] advisor to the Muslim community in Palos Heights while the case awaits trial.

She converted to Islam in 1966. An expert in Islamic Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Dr. McCloud built her career studying Muslims. "I think that judge, whoever he or she is, just ought to be given a Nobel Prize," she says. "And even though [the judge] ordered it, the people in this community had to think enough of their community to take up the challenge. And they have."


2004 NYT Article

Ms. McCloud was a freshman at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1966 when she first met large numbers of African Muslims and was attracted to their spiritual and political vitality. She became a Muslim, too, coming from a family background of no particular religious affiliation.

"Muslims saw the issues of race in global terms, and they let me know that American racism and separatism were also a kind of apartheid," she recalled. "From my perspective as a young adult, the tactics used by the civil rights movement were wrong. You don't put women and children out to fight white men with dogs. The goal of being a citizen should not be to get people to let you eat in their restaurant."

She moved to Philadelphia and worked as a pharmacist, but after repeated holdups at gunpoint where she worked, her nerves were raw. She was reminded by a Muslim friend of the paucity of Muslim scholars.

Although she was the divorced mother of three young children, she went back to school at Temple University and majored in Islamic studies, finishing her doctorate in 1993. "I did it as a commitment to the community," she said.

She is now married to Frederick Thaufeer al-Deen, a former federal prison chaplain.

(snip)

Ms. McCloud is known for being an energetic activist among American Muslims. She is a fixture at any number of community meetings and a board member of the American Muslim Council and of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations CAIR.

She is also proud of the legal work she has done as a consultant for cases of capital murder, divorce and wrongful death in which Islam is an issue.

(snip)

In Ms. McCloud's view, most Americans don't understand how politically and socially diverse American Muslims are. She said the government estimated that 46 percent of the country's six million Muslims are black. There is often tension between African-Americans and other ethnic groups that practice Islam, she said. And African-American Muslims often experience friction with non-Muslim African-Americans, most of whom are Christian. Ms. McCloud said pointedly: "After 9/11, white Protestant churches invited Muslims in to speak. African-American churches did not."

(snip)

One of her books will focus on the Nation of Islam. Ms. McCloud has spent a great deal of time with Mr. Farrakhan and finds him an intelligent, charismatic man. She believes the public view of him as a social and religious leader is distorted because of the focus on his incendiary statements.

"He has been talking abut inequities and injustices among black Americans for a long time," Ms. McCloud said. "To distill his views down to one sentence to what he utters about Jews is an utter negation of what he has done, in the same way that no one has written off Thomas Jefferson because he raped a slave woman."

One major question, she said, is in what direction the Nation will take its brand of Islam. The Nation has always been evolving, she noted, from its inception during the segregated 1930's to the prominent stage it occupied in the 60's, when Malcolm X dominated, to this new century.

Now, she argues, it has been moving toward traditional Islam while still focusing on using Islamic law to raise the status of blacks in society.

But most black Muslims are not members of Mr. Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, she stressed. She has found at least five groups that call themselves the Nation of Islam, with different leaders and different focuses. Most of the communities seem to be in big cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit and Los Angeles.


IV. AMINAH WADUD

Controversial Islamic feminist and scholar, Mary Teasley [Amina Wadud] was born September 25, 1952 in Bethesda, Maryland. Her father was a Methodist minister and her mother descended from Muslim slaves of Arab, Berber and African ancestry dating back to the 8th Century.

EDUCATION
1975 - B.S, from The University of Pennsylvania
M.A. in Near Eastern Studies
1988 Ph.D. in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan

She studied advanced Arabic in Egypt at the American University in Cairo, she studied Qur'anic studies and tafsir at Cairo University, and took a course in Philosophy at Al-Azhar University.

CAREER
She achieved Full Professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia, in 2007. She retired from there as of 2008.

Prior to joining VCU, she held a three-year contract as Assistant Professor at the International Islamic University Malaysia, between 1989 and 1993.

She is currently a visiting professor at the Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta,Indonesia.

Wadud's research specialities include gender and Qur'anic studies.

EARLY LIFE
She converted to Islam as an undergraduate in the early 1970s....Not long after her conversion, Ms. Wadud wrote her first paper on women and Islam, in which she concluded that "everything was hunky-dory," she recalls. She would later revise that assessment.

By the time she entered graduate school at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor she had become deeply distressed at how the Muslim tradition often depicted women as inferior to men. She remembers, for example, hearing Muslims argue that women in Islam should not be allowed to drive. "Is that right?" she asked herself.

She turned to the Koran for answers. Before she began her research, she made herself a promise: If it was true that the Koran really did view women as inferior, she could no longer be a Muslim. She would abandon the religion. Instead, however, Ms. Wadud came to believe that the Koran "adapts to the modern woman as smoothly as it adapted to the original Muslim community 14 centuries ago." The product of her research was Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text From a Woman's Perspective, a short book, at just over a hundred pages, that continues to be influential and controversial more than a decade after it was published.

In the book, Ms. Wadud argues that verses in the Koran used to justify the subjugation of women have been taken out of context or otherwise misused. She writes that those who believe that men are superior to women have interpreted the Koran "in accordance with those assumptions." In other words, the prejudice can be found not in the Koran itself, but in the Koran's readers.

The book that saved her faith also established her scholarly reputation.



Breaking New Ground (from Wapedia)

Wadud was the subject of much controversy, debate and Muslim juristic discourse after leading a Friday prayer (salat) of over 100 male and female Muslims in the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York on March 18, 2005, breaking with the tradition of having only male imams (prayer leaders). Three mosques had refused to host the service and the museum that had agreed to host it pulled out after a bomb threat.

In August 1994, Wadud delivered a Friday khutbah (sermon) on "Islam as Engaged Surrender" at the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa. At the time, this was largely unheard of in the Muslim world. As a result, there were attempts in Virginia by some Muslims to have her dismissed from her position at Virginia Commonwealth University.


PBS Frontline Interview

NOTE: What Wadud calls "Progressive Islam" may be viewed by others as re-inventing Islam. She is certainly unique, and, I would think, much appreciated by religious pluralists and trans-nationalists. This entire interview is worthy of note, if only from that perspective.

You have talked about "progressive Muslim" -- I forget exactly the term you used. What do you mean by "progressive?"

There is a very strong articulation among a select body of Muslim intellectuals and activists to literally progress Islam from some of the places where its thinking and its vitality have been throttled from the dynamism that I think is inherent in Islam. I think Islam itself is a progression. I think it progresses, in one sense, metaphysically, before the beginning of historical Islam, but certainly, in a radical way, with the first revelation to the prophet Muhammad.

The idea of that progression being arrested by a number of disruptions, like colonialism, has caused what we in the West have sometimes identified as a resurgence. But actually, in a sense, it has just been a reclaiming of our own trajectory. Our trajectory is to continue to move towards the betterment of our own humanity, as representatives or trustees or agents of the divine.

... There are thinkers who will intentionally grapple with the complexity of preserving the integrity of the Islamic tradition ... combining it in a dynamic way with what it means to encounter all of these complexities of modernity or postmodernity. I consider these people to be progressive intellectuals, and I consider that their articulations have many common features and that their goals are very similar, in that they are trying to preserve Islam. But they're not trying to preserve a singular understanding of Islam that came from, say, the Medina time of the prophet.

(snip)

But are there not also statements in the Quran about fighting those who fight you, for example? And that could be taken in a very allegorical way. There are also, there is also the example of the prophet -- who was a warrior, who led armies.

Certainly, the history of Islam includes periods of time where Islam, as a minority community, was up against considerable odds. And the responsibility for actual armed struggle in order to survive and in order to preserve itself was legitimated and it was legitimated in the text. Again, we have the understanding that the text has both a context and a universal objective. So my critical ideas about textual analysis include being aware, when a passage or a concept or an idea is an idea whose time is not eternal, but rather whose time is immediate.

In other words, yes, there were commandments to fight. And these were commandments relative only to an immediate circumstance. That circumstance has to be understood in order to even make an application of that verse. We do not have similar circumstances in a pluralistic world. And so it is not possible to seek guidance from aspects of text which are not universal in their own intent.

So how do you both sustain the integrity but allow for, and in fact promote, dynamism? That's progressive Islamic thought.

[thouworm]

Forgot this important quote from Aminah McCloud:

In her case, says Amina Wadud,... the combination of activism and scholarship complement each other: "She was one of the first people to designate Islamic studies in America as a discipline and to introduce it as a field of study in the academy."

Ms. McCloud said she hoped her work showed that "Islam in America is here to stay." She added, "They can assault the leaders, they can call everyone a terrorist, they can restrict people's movements, but Americans as a whole will not tolerate that."

SOURCE

[Fred Nerks]

Thanks, thouworm.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2278969/posts?page=434#434 & #435

[LucyT]

Thank you, Fred Nerks and thouworm. Fantastic research in this thread. Bookmarked again.

.

[Fred Nerks]

CAIR CHICAGO

DePaul University College of Law Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni is scheduled to deliver the keynote address to a gathering of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations February 26 at the Islamic Foundation of Villa Park, 300 W. Highridge Road.

The Council describes itself as the U.S.’ largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. Bassiouni is the director of DePaul’s International Human Rights Law Institute.

Biography

M. Cherif Bassiouni is a distinguished research professor of law emeritus at DePaul University College of Law and president emeritus of the law school’s International Human Rights Law Institute. He also is president of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, and honorary president of the International Association of Penal Law in Paris, France.

Bassiouni has served the United Nations in a number of capacities, including as co-chair of the Committee of Experts to draft the Convention on the Prevention and Suppression of Torture (1977); member, then chairman, of the Security Council's Commission to Investigate War Crimes..

DePaul University Political Correctness Faces Trial

EXCERPT:

... DePaul University in Chicago is one of the fastest growing universities in the country. It has become the largest Catholic—affiliated university in America. Muslim and Arab students are one of the segments of DePaul's student population that has seen the greatest increase in numbers in recent years. Although no figures are available, these students are an important source of revenue for the University, and many may well pay full tuition, making their attendance particularly lucrative.

Klocek has lost his teaching position and school—paid health insurance benefits, and faces a bleak future due to his chronic health problems. He is guilty of a thought—crime, challenging the pro—Palestinian, anti—Israel mindset which has come to dominate the DePaul campus Klocek's challenge to this new campus orthodoxy occurred in a cafeteria during a student activities fair last September. For 15—20 minutes, Klocek, who is Catholic, not Jewish, confronted a group of 8 students manning two tables for the groups Students for Justice in Palestine, and United Muslims Moving Ahead. Klocek says he argued that the materials the groups were disseminating were one—sided. On this, he is indisputably correct. Neither group pretends to provide balanced information on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. That of course, is perfectly understandable and acceptable. These are advocacy groups.

Klocek says the discussion was heated at times, and he admits to raising his voice. He says he told the students that Palestinians were Arabs who lived in the West Bank and Gaza — that they had no unique national historical identity. He challenged one student's assertion that Israel was behaving like the Nazis. He stated that while most Muslims were not terrorists, pretty much all terrorists these days were Muslim. This statement had originally been made by the manager of an Arab news channel, and had recently been quoted in the Chicago Sun Times. It has the incidental merit of being true.

Clearly, the students were not used to such a challenge. DePaul in fact has gone out of its way in recent years to make the campus dialogue 'safe' for Muslim and Arab students. The University administration warned the campus community after the September 11th attacks that offensive speech hostile to Muslims would not be tolerated...cnt...

[thouworm]

HIZB UT-TAHRIR --- Internationally Banned Menace Makes Their Public Debut In The United States

Currently outlawed as a terrorist group in nearly every country in the world in which it has tried to settle, HIZB UT-TAHRI, a radical international Sunni network dedicated to establishing an international Islamic State, or caliphate, held its first American, public coming-out convocation on July 19, 2009 in the posh Grand Ballroom of the Oak Lawn Hilton Hotel in --- where else?---Chicago, IL.

Operating clandestinely in the U.S. for decades, Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), entitled its first public conference, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam. HT's first effort to openly win recruits gathered an audience of 300 into the packed ballroom " to listen to HT ideologues blame capitalism for World War I and World War II; the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown; the current violence in Iraq and Afghanistan; world poverty and malnutrition and inner-city drug use."



HIZB UT-TAHRI Founded in 1953 by Sheikh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani

The organization was founded in 1953 in Jerusalem by Islamic scholar and appeals court judge Sheikh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, born in 1909 born in the village of Ijzim, within the district of Haifa. His father, Yusuf al-Nabhani, was also a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, and worked as a lecturer in Islamic Law or Shari’ah. His mother mastered the Islamic sciences and was also an Islamic scholar. She had been taught by her father, the famous Ottoman poet, Islamic scholar, and Islamic judge Sheikh Yusuf an-Nabhani, who was appointed as judge at different Shariah courts in Jenin, Constantinople, Mosul, Latakia, Jerusalem and Beirut.

Al-Nabhani studied Islamic Law at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the most important Islamic institution in Egypt and the intellectual bulwark of Islam.

The new party was described as "a political party with Islam as its ideology and the goal of resuming an Islamic way of life by establishing an Islamic state (Caliphate) which will implement Islam (through Sharia law) and propagate it worldwide." "Al-Nabhani was one of the first Arab intellectuals to argue the case for a modern political party using the constructs of Islamic discourse," writes Suha Taji-Farouki in her book "A Fundamental Quest."

Discover the Networks: The Ideology of Hizb-ut-Tahrir

Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Arabic for "The Party of Liberation") ... defines itself as "a political group and not a priestly one," a "political party whose ideology is Islam, so politics is its work and Islam is its ideology." It "works within the Ummah [community of believers] ... so that she adopts Islam as her cause and is led to restore the Khilafah [Caliphate, or Islamic kingdom] and the ruling by what Allah revealed."

Rejecting Western notions of both democracy and capitalism as tools that allegedly have led to the colonization and subjugation of Islamic nations, Hizb-ut-Tahrir's long-term objective is to replace existing governments with theocratic Muslim rule and to bring about a worldwide Islamic government under a single ruler (caliph). In such an ideal Islamic state, says Hizb-ut-Tahrir, "all of life's affairs in society are administered according to the Shari'ah rules," or strict Islamic law.

Hizb-ut-Tahrir states that it accepts "Muslim men and women as its members regardless of whether they are Arab or non-Arab, white or coloured, since it is a party for all Muslims."



[MANIFESTO]

In its self-description, Hizb-ut-Tahrir declares: "Its work is not educational, as it is not a school, nor is its work concerned with giving sermons and preaching. Rather its work is political.... " Moreover, the organization professes a devotion to "the struggle against the disbelieving imperialists, to deliver the Ummah from their domination and to liberate her from their influence by uprooting their intellectual, cultural, political, economic and military roots from all of the Muslim countries."

Hizb-ut-Tahrir asserts that while it "does not use material power to defend itself or as a weapon against the rulers," nevertheless "jihad has to continue till the Day of Judgement." "So whenever the disbelieving enemies attack an Islamic country," says Hizb, "it becomes compulsory on its Muslim citizens to repel the enemy. The members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir in that country are a part of the Muslims and it is obligatory upon them … to fight the enemy and repel them."



EARLY HISTORY OF HIZB UT-TAHRIR

Al-Nabhani was an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood,founded in Egypt in 1928 and the forerunner of modern radical Islamic groups. But he broke with the Brotherhood when it moved towards cooperation with the secular authorities in Cairo. While the Brotherhood became a potent opposition force in Syria and Egypt, HT took a more subversive path.

The Muslim Brotherhood regarded Hizb ut-Tahrir as a new rival. But Al-Nabhani was close to Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, whom he had first met in the 1930s.

Al-Husseini was among those who financially supported Hizb ut-Tahrir in the 1950s. The Jordanian government did not like the close ideological ties between Hizb ut-Tahrir and Haj Amin Al-Husseini, an arch-enemy of the moderate Jordanian Hashemites.

Transjordanian Emir Abdallah firmly sided with Britain during World War II. Al–Husseini, however, sided with Nazi Germany. He met Hitler in November 1941 and the Nazis granted him policial asylum paying him a monthly "salary' of 20,000 Reichsmark for rallying Muslims in the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle behind the Nazi cause."



In 1955 Taqiuddin al-Nabhani left Jordan, where he had been living, to travel to Damascus and Beirut. Banned from returning to Jordan, he lived in Syria and then Lebanon. In 1973, he traveled to Iraq, where he was imprisoned and tortured. He died in Beirut on December 20, 1977.

The group first appeared in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It then proceeded to expand the delivery of the da’wah naturally until it began to function in many Arab countries and also in non-Arab Muslim countries as well. The rulers in Iraq, Syria, Libya and others have killed dozens of its members. The prisons of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia are full of its members.

There is little information on the number of its members. It is active all over the world. Hizb ut-Tahrir now has its main base in Western Europe, but it has large followings in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, as well as in China's traditionally Muslim Xinjiang Province. Most of its members are believed to be ethnic Uzbeks. Its expansion into Central Asia coincided with the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. By one estimate there are more than 10,000 followers in Central Asia. Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami has been active in Central Asia since the breakup of the Soviet Union.



ABD AL-QADIM ZALLUM (no photo available)

Succeeding al-Nabhani was Abd al-Qadim Zallum (Abdul Kaddim Zalloum) a Jordanian national of Palestinian descent. He graduated from Al-Azhar University.

Under Zallum, Hizb Ut Tahrir sent a delegation to Paris to meet Ayatollah Khomeini before his return to Iran. Two further delegations were later sent to Tehran to meet the new Iranian leader there. The last delegation arrived in Tehran in May 1979 and presented Khomeini with Hizb ut-Tahrir's proposed "constitution for an Islamic state." But Khomeini had his own ideas about such a state and showed no interest in the proposals. Subsequently, frustrated Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders denounced the Iranian leader as "a virtual American agent."

In the second half of 1980s and 1990s the movement followed the strategy of taking advantage of the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and Australia. Hizb ut-Tahrir spread to many countries and developed a particular strong base in Uzbekistan where it cooperated with Al-Qaeda.

They also have a strong base in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China's Xinjiang Province, North Africa (Tunesia, Libya, Egypt), Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf States, Turkey, Pakistan and Australia.

(In Turkey, Hizb ut-Tahrir members were accused of "undermining the state" and sentenced to four years in August 2000; in Australia, Hizb ut-Tahrir heightens tensions among Muslims and endangers their integration into society.)

The party or movement is organized like a fascist party, loyalty to the leadership ("Amirs" of "Emirs") is absolute. It is also a kind of totalitarian brotherhood operating through cells.

Members are obliged to give one tenth of their income to the party and swear an oath:

"I swear by God Almighty to be loyal to Islam and to defend it, to embrace Hizb ut-Tahrir's opinions and constitution, to have confidence in its leadership, and to implement its resolutions, even if they are contrary to my own opinion, as long as I remain a member."


ATA ABU RASHTA (no photo available)

When Zallum died in 2003, he was succeeded by the current global leader, Ata Abu Rashta (full name Abu Yasin Ata ibn Khalil Abu Rashta), a scholar who was born in Hebron in 1943.

In 1948, as the result of the first Israeli Arab war, his family fled to a refugee camp near Hebron. Following his attendence in school there, he completed his secondary education at the Ibrahimiya school in East Jerusalem. Rashta then joined the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University in Egypt and graduated in civil engineering in 1966. After graduating, Ata Abu-Rashta worked in a number of Arab countries as a civil engineer and wrote a book concerning the calculation of quantities in relation to the construction of buildings and roads.

Ata Abu-Rashta joined Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the early 60s’ and integrated in the party’s activity all over the Arab World. He worked closely with Taqiuddin al Nabhani, the founder of Hizbu-ut-Tahrir, whom he knew from East Jerusalem, and with Abd al-Qadim Zallum, who became the leader of Hizb-ut-Tahrir following Nabhani's death in 1977. In the 1980s he was a leading member of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Jordan and was appointed as the organization's first official spokesperson.

Very little is known about Rashti, including his current whereabouts. He is believed by some to live in a secret location in the Middle East and by others, in London, where he has a considerable powerbase. Although he has spoken at conferences in Indonesia, Pakistan, Yemen and Britain, no photo of him could be located for this report.

He communicates mainly by internet and has his own website.

In a 1994 interview, Ata Abu-Rashta said, "The establishment of the Caliphate is now a general demand among Muslims, who yearn for this. Before Hizb-ut-Tahrir launched its career the subject of the Caliphate was unheard of.”

Ata Abu-Rashta he was imprisoned in February 1997 for three years for treason for an interview published in 1995 in the journal al-Hiwar (Conversation). He was later imprisoned for a further six months for membership of an 'unlicensed organization'. Ata Abu-Rashta was designated a ‘prisoner of conscience’ by Amnesty International after his detention by the Jordanian authorities in the 1990s’.



THE AMERICAN FACE OF HIZB UT TAHRIR
or, Taking It Home To Chicago

Dr JALEEL ABDUL-ADIL

On August 4, 2007, Hizb UK held a conference at Alexandra Palace in north London. A poorly-made video presentation (available on YouTube) which advertised the conference attempts to show the global unity of Hizb ut-Tahrir. Using snippets of video and pictures from websites, HT activists are shown from the following countries: Pakistan Bangladesh, Switzerland, Jordan, UAE, Palestine, Jordan, Yemen, Turkey, Belgium, Indonesia, Australia and America.

What is striking from the image from America is that it shows only one individual (pictured), rather than a group.... It is Dr Jaleel Abdul-Adil, a convert to Islam, who is now the "new face" of American Hizb ut-Tahrir (HTA). He spoke at the August conference in Britain. Jaleel Abdul-Adil is a professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago. Like Dr Abdul Wahid, the spokesman for the British branch of HT, he is a psychiatrist.

At UIC, he works in the area of juvenile disorders, and is part of the Disruptive Behavior Disorders Clinic. He is also an associate professor at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. According to Abdul-Adil's resume, he specializes in "evidence-based, culturally-sensitive family therapy for urban youth, including conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, gang involvement, and inner-city violence. "

"Dr. Abdul-Adil is the co-founder of Young Warriors, a youth intervention program that uses modern rap music and hip-hop media to promote critical thinking and prosocial skills in urban adolescents. He remains involved in developing other innovative youth interventions such as using movie and television materials and faith-based collaborations with local religious institutions."

Abdul-Adil also dispenses online Islamic psychological advice, on CrescentLife.com. A video of Abdul-Adil giving a lecture on Islam can be found on YouTube.
LINKS here



Dr Jaleel Abdul-Adil also was a conference speaker at the July 19th Hizb ut-Tahrir event at the Hilton Hotel in Oak Lawn, IL. Although a speaker's schedule was not available for the conference, IPT News did obtain his name in order to report the following:

Hizb ut-Tahrir's efforts to rehabilitate its image won't be helped by the menacing tone on display Sunday. One late-afternoon panelist suggested that modern industrial powers could fall to Muslims the way Mecca fell to Mohammed nearly 1,400 years ago.

A speaker identified by conference organizers as Imam Jaleel Abdul Adil said that "if they offer us the sun, or the moon, or a nice raise, or a passport, or a house in the suburbs or even a place to pray at the job, on the condition that we stop calling for Islam as a complete way of life - we should never do that, ever do that - unless and until Islam becomes victorious or we die in the attempt." (To see the clip, click here.)

Later, the following dialogue ensued between the imam and a member of the audience over whether Shariah or the Constitution should be the supreme law of the land in the United States (click here to see the clip):

Audience member: "Would you get rid of the Constitution for Shariah, yes or no?"

Imam: "Over the Muslim world? Yes, it would be gone."

Audience Member: And so if the United States was a Muslim world, the Constitution would be gone?"

Imam: "If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would."

Audience Member: "And the Constitution gone. That's all."

Imam: "Yes, as Muslims they would be long gone."

While Hizb ut-Tahrir's controversial message attracted demonstrators and some media attention, the group at least is open about its ambitions. It not only is determined to destroy capitalism -- it would shred the United States Constitution as well in favor of Shariah law. SOURCE


In related news: Hizb ut-Tahrir, whom Tony Blair promised to ban, calls for jihad and elimination of Israel at London rally. Dr Imran Waheed, told followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir that there could be "no peace" with Israel and urged them to "fight in the way of Allah." A leaflet distributed by the international wing of the organisation also called for Muslim countries to "eliminate the state of the Jews."

The remarks increased pressure on Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. Patrick Mercer, the Tory chairman of the Commons Counter-Terrorism Subcommittee, said Dr Waheed's comments appeared to represent "incitement to violence" and accused the Government of performing a U-turn on an earlier commitment to ban it.

Speaking in Downing Street in August 2005, just a month after the London bombings, Mr Blair announced a wider crackdown on extremism, adding: "We will proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir and the successor organisation of Al Mujahiroun."

JihadWatch


SUMMARY

Hizb-ut Tahrir professes to be non-violent, but its doctrine is virulently anti-western. It openly calls for the elimination of Israel, its adherents "to kill Jews", the "peaceful" overthrow of pro-western "puppet regimes" in the Middle East and the expulsion of all western interests from the region. It envisions achieving these goals through mass action, but eschews involvement in regional politics.

Some former members and sympathisers have been arrested in several countries in recent months on terrorism-related charges. This has raised fears that the party's hardliners have become impatient with what many have perceived as its gradualist approach and long-term strategy. That is a concept that has little appeal for the growing number of young, dispossessed Muslims radicalised by events since 9/11. Some of HT's members have been linked to Al Qaeda, and western governments are becoming increasingly alarmed. Zeyno Baran Zeyno Baran (January 31 1972 - ) is the Director of the Center for Eurasian Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.. has branded the party "a conveyor belt conveyor belt for terrorists. It indoctrinates individuals with radical ideology, priming them for recruitment by more extreme organisations where they can take part in actual operations."

SOURCE



ONE FINAL NOTE

"Dalia Mogahed, a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, joined a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) for a television interview in Great Britain on Sunday [Oct 2009].

The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report (GMBDR) noted that Mogahed was interviewed along with Dr. Nasreen Nawaz, women's representative for HT, on the British Muslim show "Muslimah Dilemma," which airs on the Islam Channel. GMBDR described the program as "a show presented by members of Hizb ut-Tahrir" featuring Nawaz "in her capacity as spokesperson" for the group.

In some ways, Mogahed's performance during the 45-minute program (which has been posted to HT's website and can be viewed here) offers a tutorial on how not to make America's case to the Muslim world. Mogahed, who was interviewed by telephone, did not challenge any of the views expressed by Nawaz or HT - including the group's call for establishing an international caliphate and imposition of Islamic law, or sharia, which includes suppression of women's political rights.

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SOURCES and ADDITIONAL INFO

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[thouworm]

Look at this! What an outrage.

April 10, 2009
Judge throws out Thomas Klocek case against DePaul; appeal planned

Klocek filed a defamation and invasion of privacy suit against DePaul a year later. The first two judges assigned to the case ruled that it should proceed to trial. But last month—four years after Klocek sued—Cook County Circuit Court Judge Charles Winkler dismissed the case.

Andy Norman of Chicago’s Mauck & Baker is Klocek’s attorney—he plans to appeal. Norman stated, “We believe that Winkler is in error and are confident we will have his decision reversed in the appellate court. We still look forward to a public trial where DePaul students and the public can judge for themselves whether certain administrators silenced Tom Klocek because a few Muslim activists wanted his opinions repressed.”

I’ve spoken to Klocek many times about the events of September 15, 2004 and I’m firmly convinced that DePaul trashed his academic career to placate a noisy group of students who view themselves, wrongly, as a protected class.

Winkler is a graduate of DePaul’s College of Law.

http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2009/04/judge-throws-out-thomas-klocek-case-against-depaulappeal-planned-.html