The Benghazi Sharia Factor

by Nonie Darwish
October 29, 2012 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3420/benghazi-sharia

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According to Sharia law, it is a capital crime for a Muslim to shoot another Muslim to protect a non-Muslim. To jihadists, Obama is just another disbeliever American President who should not be trusted. Not only did the Obama administration never receive even a promise of peace from the Muslim world; the murder of Ambassador Stevens and the three other heroic Americans never even occasioned an apology from any Muslim leader or cleric.

Americans need answers as to why the Obama administration had no response to the eight-hour terror attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and who was involved in the decision not to go to their aid despite their repeated requests for help. And why is the producer of the "Innocence of Muslims" video still in a California jail cell, allegedly for violating his parole, while none of the people who refused to rescue Ambassador Christopher Stevens and these immensely courageous former Navy SEALS has been even been named and charged with negligent homicide, or even reckless endangerment?
From the Muslim world's viewpoint, the Obama administration's behavior makes perfect sense: The Muslim world is used to, and expects, victims of terror not to act. It is an unforgivable violation of Sharia law for non-Muslims to fight back against jihadi assaults. As Muslims interpret such passivity, those who want to appease the Muslim world and its Sharia law are expected to freeze when faced with Islamic terror -- freezing is the only acceptable response.
Ask Coptic Christians why they often leave Islamic terror unpunished, and why their Muslim attackers never go to jail? Why, if a non-Muslim responds to terror, he becomes an enemy of the Islamic State? Ask Israel why defending itself after terror attacks is never understood by the Muslim world? Muslims consider Jews as subhuman apes, pigs, and enemies of Allah, who do not have the right to defend themselves. Ask Middle Eastern non-Muslims why, even though the the Muslim media constantly slanders them, they must stay silent before the slander? Sharia law permits Muslims to slander and lie about their enemies. Ask victims of Islamic terror why they rarely, if ever, responded to it? Or why Christians in Egypt never burn mosques when Muslim attackers burn churches?
The answer to all of the above is simple: under Sharia law, non-Muslims as well as non-Muslim countries, must never dare to respond to jihad [war in the name of Islam] in kind -- even terror. If they do – but if even one Muslim is killed in the process -- they become permanent enemies of the Islamic State, worthy of more and more slander, terror and jihad.
To understand the current administration's stance on Libya, it might help first to understand what seem to be Obama's views on "The Muslim World." U.S. President Barak Obama and his administration have for years been insisting that Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. The President apparently chooses not to see, hear or say anything uncomplimentary about Islamic Sharia and jihad. Members of the current administration even insisted that attacks, such as that of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who had "SOA" [Soldier of Allah"] on his business cards and who shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ["Allah is Greater!"], were "man-caused disasters or "workplace violence," not Islamic terrorism. They instead blamed Islamic anger on previous American foreign policies, Israel, or even a YouTube video – a charge later discredited.
To members of the current administration, jihad seems to have nothing to do with terror; he dismisses statements by Muslims and the prophet Mohammed, such as: ""Paradise lies under the shade of swords" Sahih Bukhari V4B5N73. Instead, President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised to punish the producer of the video -- in violation of the American right of free speech.
Obama, perhaps from his experience among Muslims during his childhood in Indonesia, seems to have believed that during his administration he could usher in a new era of peace with Islam. But as he appears to have narrowed the problem of Islamism down to only Al Qaeda and possibly the Salafists, he thought he could embrace as moderate other Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood -- a tortured revision which has to entail dismissing the long history of terror of the Muslim Brotherhood, which gave birth to Hamas, Al Qaeda and hundreds of other terror groups. In 2004, Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi, for example, made it a religious obligation [fatwa] to abduct and kill US citizens in Iraq; and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who masterminded the 9/11attacks, was raised in the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood. The current leader of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammad Badi', has said, "Palestine will not be liberated by hopes and prayers, but rather by jihad and sacrifice." Not to mention that the Brotherhood's endlessly repeated motto closes with, "Jihad is our way. And dying in the way if Allah is our highest hope." In Obama's world, however, nothing is ever the fault of Islam.
If, however, placing American marines in US consulates in dangerous, terrorist-infested Islamic countries were going to spark a bloody confrontation between American security and Islamists, this uncooperative behavior would discredit Obama's theory of Islam having nothing to do with terrorism, and contradict the State Department's report of July 2012, which stated that, "Al Qaeda is on the run," and reversals looked impossible.
If there were going to be confrontations with militant Muslim jihadists in Islamic countries, his whole fantasy of having brought in a new era of American/Islamic relations would fall apart and he would not be any different from his predecessors.
What seems not to have been taken into account in subcontracting security to local Libyans, Muslms, is that, according to Sharia law, it is a capital crime for a Muslim to shoot another Muslim to protect a non-Muslim; anyone who did this would instantly be considered a violator of Sharia law, and an instant apostate marked for death. When the US State Department in Benghazi subcontracted Libyan security, Muslims, to guard the Consulate, there was, of course, precisely such a probability. The plan was therefore useless from the start: Muslim guards would be required to follow Sharia law to run away and leave the Americans to be killed rather than violate Sharia law and kill other Muslims to save these "disbelievers."
The name of the group which took credit for the Benghazi terror, "Ansar Al Sharia," means in Arabic, "Upholders of Sharia." To them, one is either an enemy of Islam, or unresponsive to Islamic terror. Many cultures around the world possibly even consider their subservience and oppression as being peacemakers with the Muslim world, the "Religion of Peace" – meaning there will be peace over the world after everyone has converted to Islam.
Obama, since his inauguration, seems to have chosen to be this kind of a peacemaker and friend of Sharia, a trap that Muslims always count on: a fantasy that goes something like, I will make the Muslims love and accept me by respecting and accepting their Sharia law, because anything less might make me seem to them a hostile, anti-Islamic enemy, worthy of slander, attacks and more terror. It is possible that Obama did not want to aggravate a war on terror, which he refused to acknowledge existed, by concluding it in Pakistan and Afghanistan by withdrawing troops, and therefore being reluctant to send any military aid to Libya, which he thought he had just liberated. After all, he was probably counting on the end of Osama bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi to secure his legacy as the peacemaker with the Muslim world.
Obama was willing to pay a heavy price in the hope of receiving acceptance from Islamists who never have, and possibly never will, accord acceptance to any non-Muslim. The President may have thought that the best solution to win his upcoming election and appease a war-weary electorate was not to respond to Islamic terror, and cover up his failure to protect American lives by blaming his inaction as a justified response to a mob reaction to some video. Of course, such an evasion only invites an even larger attack later, which will cost even more in lives and treasure. The President may well have been hoping that at least this new assault would take place after he was safely re-elected.
Obama's calculations were wrong. We do not yet know what the American electorate will do, but as for the Muslims whom he is desperately trying to appease, evidently it did not even occur to them to put their 9/11 jihad on hold until after 11/6. To jihadists, Obama, whether appeasing them or not, is just another American disbeliever president who should not be trusted. With the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Islamists and jihadists made it clear that they could not care less about Obama, his appeasement, his apology and even his apparent affection for Islam.
Not only did Obama and his administration never receive even a promise of peace from the Muslim world; the murder of the American ambassador and three other heroic Americans never even received an apology from any Muslim leader or cleric.
Nonie Darwish is the author of "The Devil We Don't Know," and President of Former Muslims United.

Related Topics: Nonie Darwish

Palestinian Elections: Which Fatah Won?

by Khaled Abu Toameh
October 29, 2012 at 4:45 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3419/palestinian-elections-fatah

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Abbas does not have a mandate even from his own Fatah faction, to embark on any significant political move, such as signing a peace treaty with Israel or or applying for membership for a Palestinian State at the UN. Had Hamas participated in the elections, turnout would have been higher, and the Islamist movement would easily have defeated a divided Fatah. Instead of going to New York next month, Abbas should stay in Ramallah and work toward reuniting and reforming Fatah before his political rivals drive him out.

Fatah leaders were quick to declare victory in the October 20 local elections in the West Bank.
But the results of the vote for 93 municipal and village councils show that the vote was anything but a victory.
True, in some cities and villages, Fatah did win a majority of seats.
But this is not the same Fatah that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and the old guard leadership of the faction had backed.
Boycotted by Hamas, this was an election where Abbas's veteran Fatah leadership mainly competed with Fatah candidates who decided to run on an independent ticket.
In the end, the Fatah "rebels" scored major victories in important cities, such as Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah, as well as many villages.
Abbas and the veteran Fatah leadership tried up to the last minute to dissuade the disgruntled members of his faction from running as independents, but to no avail.
The Fatah Central Committee, a body dominated by Abbas loyalists, later decided to expel all the Fatah candidates who insisted on running in the election separately.
The results of the elections show that many of the Fatah candidates who were dismissed scored significant victories. Candidates who were expelled from Fatah defeated those who expelled them: Abbas and old guard Fatah leaders.
Even in places where Abbas's Fatah candidates won, the vote was on the basis of clan affiliation. Many Palestinians voted for Abbas's Fatah candidates not because they were satisfied with the old guard leadership of Fatah, but simply because the candidate happened to belong to their clan.
What is perhaps most worrying for Abbas is the fact that a large number of his policemen and security officers voted for the dissident Fatah candidates who ran against the Palestinian Authority's nominees.
Moreover, low voter turnout in many cities and villages is seen as a sign of indifference on the part of Palestinians in the West Bank. Palestinian analysts are convinced that had Hamas participated in the elections, turnout would have been much higher and the Islamist movement would easily have defeated a divided Fatah.
The low turnout and the success of Fatah rebels in the elections should be seen as a vote of no-confidence in Abbas and the old guard leadership of his ruling faction.
For decades, Abbas and his veteran loyalists in Fatah have blocked the emergence of fresh and younger leaders – something that has seriously affected Fatah's credibility. Failure to reform Fatah and get rid of corrupt officials has also driven many Palestinians away from Abbas and his loyalists.
Abbas's term in office expired in January 2009, but this has not stopped him from continuing to cling to power. In wake of the results of the local elections, it has become obvious that Abbas does not have a mandate -- even from his Fatah faction -- to embark on any significant political move, such as signing a peace treaty with Israel or applying for membership for a Palestinian state in the UN.
Instead of going to New York next month to ask for Palestinian membership, Abbas should stay in Ramallah and work toward reuniting and reforming Fatah before his political rivals drive him and his veteran loyalists out of office.

Related Topics: Khaled Abu Toameh

The Real Islamophobia

by Sam Westrop
October 29, 2012 at 4:30 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3417/real-islamophobia

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"Islamophobia" is not, as claimed by some critics, just a concept invented by Islamist organizations to distract from their own fundamentalism; it is is a form of prejudice, exacerbated by governments, university faculties, the media and even interfaith groups. The greatest threat to moderate Islam and its assimilation with democratic values are those people who, too fearful to make a stand against radical Islamists, ignore the pleas of pro-Western Muslims and instead choose to "engage" with the extremists. Real Islamophobes are those who abandon secular Muslims and turn a blind eye to the human rights violations committed against innocent Muslims by Islamist governments and terror groups.

Many critics of the West's policy in the Middle East and Western attitudes towards the Islamic faith are keen to invoke Edward Said's theory of Orientalism, which posits that our study of the East is unavoidably distorted by the West's inherent ideological biases. It is clear, however, that if such an absolute predisposition exists, through their support for "moderate" Islamists and rejection of secular Muslim liberals, the Europeans who regard themselves as defenders of the East are the true perpetrators of such prejudice.
For example, in claiming Islam and Islamism as one and the same, by painting criticism of Islamism as bigoted, and by defining multi-culturalism as cultural relativism, when innocent Muslims are slaughtered by their co-religionists, Western comment or criticism is condemned as Islamophobic intolerance.
Defining the question of Islamophobia is especially critical in Europe. There, Islamophobia is dishonestly claimed by many to be that to question or comment on virtually any tenets of Islam is a wicked, bigoted act. By accepting discussion of religion as "Islamophobic," we provide a dangerous legitimacy to the claims of extremists within the Islamic community, while we abandon those Muslims who desire a reform or modernization within Islam, and greater assimilation with Western society.
Over the last few decades, a number of people have been charged with inciting religious hatred, or "abusing" free speech. During the Rushdie affair, the violent fury in Britain unleashed against a work of literature and its author was chiefly organized by Islamist factions within British Muslim groups, which later formed the core of the Muslim Council of Britain. Politicians and journalists across the spectrum, and even the British Chief Rabbi, suggested that Rushdie and the Iranian Ayatollah who prescribed the Indian writer's murder were equally guilty of "abusing free speech." Everyone should be concerned at such distortion. It is impossible to abuse free speech: the right to free expression guarantees the act of abuse itself – that is, the right to criticize anything and everything.
In America, unrestrained scorn of religious belief is far better established as the proudly enshrined right of the free citizen. In the US, as long as one does not incite violence against specific persons, it is legal for an individual to speak his mind about anything, whether as a member of a Muslim Brotherhood group or even a neo-Nazi organization.
There are several things Islamophobia is not. The first is ugly, straightforward anti-Muslim bigotry, such as the violent attacks by the incensed mob in the street or the shopkeeper who refuses to serve a particular customer. Such bigotry is not born out of fear; it is just thuggery. Additionally, those who claim criticism of religious ideals as "Islamophobic" are guilty of dangerously trivializing genuine anti-Muslim violence.
Further, the term cannot be applied to those Muslims who oppose religious extremism. This may seem odd, but Jonathan Steele, writing in the Guardian last October, did just that when he suggested that Muslim Tunisians who did not vote for Ennahda, the Islamist party, were themselves guilty of Islamophobia.
Real Islamophobia does apply, however, to those who legitimize extremists and "hate-preachers" as persons representative of the Islamic faith. When, for example, the British politician Ken Livingstone embraced the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf Al-Qaradawi and proclaimed him to be the "voice of Islam," he insulted Muslims all around the World. Those who adhere to the Islamic faith suddenly found that a non-Muslim politician was forcing upon them the responsibility of a hate-preacher who believes Jews and homosexuals should be purged from society. What could be more detrimental to Muslims than such an imposed obstacle to real reformation and enlightenment within their faith?
In 2011, the British Government's review of the PREVENT program, the state-funded counter-extremism initiative, declared that providing taxpayers' money to moderate Islamists in order to calm the "extreme" Islamists had not worked all that well. The Government's report noted that "there have been cases where groups whom we would now consider to support an extremist ideology have received funding." This came as no surprise to leading counter-extremism activists, who have long-warned about Islamist organizations taking advantage of Government funding for "interfaith" schemes – money and moral legitimacy to which extremists quickly sign-up in order to shroud their more nefarious activities.
In 2008, the Conservative MP Paul Goodman questioned the British government's support for the Lokahi Foundation, which runs a University interfaith project named Campusalam. Several hundred thousand pounds of taxpayers' money was given to the Foundation, which has previously associated itself with Muslim Brotherhood groups such as the Cordoba Foundation and IslamExpo. The Islamist academic Tariq Ramadan, whom the US has previously refused a visa, is on Lokahi's advisory board. The journalist Lee Smith has described Mr Ramadan – who has referred to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Bali and Madrid as nothing more than "interventions" -- as a cold-blooded Islamist whose "cry of death to the West is a quieter and gentler jihad, but it's still jihad."
It is not just Government that is susceptible to exploitation. Rabbi Wittenberg, a prominent Jewish leader in Britain, recently defended his interfaith work with the East London Mosque and an interfaith group called London Citizens. The deputy chair of London Citizens is Junaid Ahmed, who has referred to senior Hamas terrorist Ismail Haniyeh as "our leader".
As for the East London Mosque, it is considered by many critics to be one of the most extreme religious institutions in Europe: one does not have to look far back through its events to find speakers who denounce women, Jews and homosexuals. Featured guests have included Sheikh Saad al-Beraik, who once stated:
"Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don't you wage jihad? Why don't you pillage them?"
Wittenberg responded to criticism of his collaboration with these groups by opining, "We have to take risks to engage with each other. The Jewish community will be far weaker if we all shelter within a comfort zone labeled 'They all hate us out there'."
By choosing to "engage," Wittenberg legitimizes the extremists as the warranted representatives of London's Muslim population. The original task of these Jewish groups was interfaith dialogue, but conversely, by embracing the extremists within British Islam, Wittenberg has only succeeded in isolating all those Muslims who would have otherwise been delighted to enjoy authentically close relations with the British Jewish Community.
In 2010, Gita Sahgal, a human rights activist and writer, was forced to leave Amnesty International because of the organization's continuing support for the jihadist Moazzam Begg and his Islamist organization, Cage Prisoners. Sahgal accurately described Begg as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban."
Meanwhile, Muslim activists dedicated to promoting an Islam that is compatible with liberal democratic ideals are shunned. It would appear that this is because government, non-profit groups and much of the media consider truly liberal Muslims to be an anomaly; and that by embracing the enlightened Muslim voice, opinion-makers fear alienating vast sections of the general Muslim population. This is nothing more than the racism of low expectations.
After extremists organized a backlash against the Danish cartoonists, the Muslim MP Naser Khader formed, with the support of leading liberal Danish Muslims, an organization called "Democratic Muslims." This new group declared its support for liberal democracy and a secular Denmark, in which Islam could flourish as the private faith of the free individual. Yet when James Cain, the US ambassador to Denmark, invited Muslim community leaders to celebrate the an Iftar meal during the Muslim month of Ramadan, he refused to include the liberal members of Democratic Muslims. Instead, he chose photo opportunities with many of the same anti-Western Muslim leaders who preached hatred and, in response to the cartoon crisis, encouraged violence.
Almost immediately after Democratic Muslims was founded, a leading Danish researcher accused the group of "monopolizing democracy" - a criticism that was never leveled at the extremists who, during the cartoon crisis, promoted themselves as the unelected and unaccountable leaders of the Danish Muslim community. The real Islamophobia thinks that advocates of liberty and democracy cannot be 'real Muslims'.
In fact, Toger Seidenfaden, editor of Politiken, a Danish newspaper that condemned the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, has used this very term. When Naser Khader told Seidenfaden that he did not find the cartoons insulting, Seidenfaden replied: "But you are not a real Muslim". Anti-Muslim activists have also claimed that those Muslims who fight extremism and support secularism are somehow not "real" Muslims – the implication being they are not cruel enough.
Whether these denials, from both the Left and Right, stem from the 'racism of low expectations' or genuine sympathy for religious supremacism, for the moderate Muslim population such marginalization is frightening It seems to render them powerless, with attention given only to the extremists, presumably in an effort to persuade them to be otherwise.
This is the real Islamophobia: the fear of directly addressing and challenging the extremism manifest within the Islamic community -- to the point where we will even ignore the pleas of moderate Muslims who have dedicated themselves to the ideals of reason, self-criticism and pluralism.
The fight against Islamic extremism, including the dispute over the limits of free expression, can only become a more pressing problem in the future. Most recently, the protests in the Middle East over the anti-Islam YouTube film The Innocence of Muslims and the cartoons published by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo seem both to be harbingers of further anguished debate over the conflict between truly free expression and the limits self-imposed by many Europeans' misguided perception of others' cultural, religious and racial sensitivities.
The conflict is confused, and each side uses the terms of debate interchangeably. In response to concern over the anti-homosexual, anti-Jewish and misogynist lectures given by Islamist hate preachers at British universities, the faculty increasingly invokes the right to free speech in defense of such rhetoric, but not in opposition to it. However, this skewed appeal to the ideas of Locke and Stuart Mill is not so much a rediscovery of Enlightenment values, but rather just another act of submission to only one side. Instead of challenging extremism and hatred on their own university campuses, the faculties, by their inaction, are complicit with it -- they enable it and embolden it.
When the hate-preacher Yusuf Chambers recently spoke at the University of York, for instance, the faculty, in response to uproar from gay rights and women's rights activists, insisted that the event should go ahead but that a faculty member should be present. The University cited the importance of allowing students to challenge Chambers' views -- including his support for the stoning of adulterous women and the execution of homosexuals -- through a calm and rational platform. This would have worked perfectly, if the University had not, at the event itself, attempted to ban any questions challenging Chambers' bigoted views.
Additionally, the Student Union suggested that Chambers' right to free speech somehow precluded others' right to freely criticize or protest. In a rather depressing illustration of the real Islamophobia, Leon Morris, a student union officer, declared: "I wish for the society to cancel the event, but in openly protesting, we endanger those students who may feel vulnerable as a minority student."
Government, universities, interfaith groups, and community organizations must rethink their approach. Pro-Western Muslims are waiting for people to reach out to them, not censor them. It would help to defend liberal values, not selectively invoke them. It would help to forge strong links with those who seek to bring about greater enlightenment within the Islamic faith, and counter all those who work to threaten the liberties of Muslims, Christians, Jews and everyone else.
Sam Westrop is Associate Director at the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy, and blogs at the Jerusalem Post on the symbiotic relationship between far-Left, far-Right and Islamist extremism. He can contacted at samwestrop@instmed.org

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