MUSLIM CORNER: The Muslims have a goal upon which they can unite

It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

Syria in 2009 scrapped a law limiting the length of sentences for honor killings, but “the new law says a man can still benefit from extenuating circumstances in crimes of passion or honour ‘provided he serves a prison term of no less than two years in the case of killing.’” And in 2003 the Jordanian Parliament voted down on Islamic grounds a provision designed to stiffen penalties for honor killings. Al-Jazeera reported that “Islamists and conservatives said the laws violated religious traditions and would destroy families and values.”

Nonetheless, the media drumbeat is constant: honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. And as long as that continues, we will see more and more murders like this one.

This one also manifests the contempt and hatred Muslims have for the “People of the Book” their Western spokesmen profess to respect: the girl had supposedly besmirched the family honor by dallying with a…Christian.

“Girl strangled to death in name of honour,” from the Daily Times, September 15 (thanks to Block Ness):

LAHORE: A 15-year-old girl was allegedly strangled to death by her uncle in the name of honour in Shera Kot Police limits on Wednesday.The deceased was identified as Anam, daughter of Ramzan, resident of Ghousia Park. Police said that the deceased’s uncle, Talib Hussain, who was residing at his brother-in-law’s house, suspected that Anam had illicit relations with a Christian youth of the same area.

On the day of incident, Talib entered the house and strangled Anam to death and managed to escape from the crime scene. She was taken to a local hospital where the doctors pronounced her dead. Police, after being informed, reached the spot and shifted the dead body to a city morgue. Police registered a case against the accused on the complaint of deceased’s father, Ramzan….

Columbia Invites Iran’s Ahmadinejad To Be Feted at Banquet

by Roger L Simon

Jewish civil rights group warns Columbia University about entertaining the Iranian president…again.

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Muslims are forbidden under Sharia to convert to another religion, on pain of death. Members of other religions are forbidden under Sharia to proselytize among Muslims. So there is nothing surprising or unusual about the mob’s behavior in this instance. What is surprising and unusual is the continued Western indifference to and denial of the manifest fact of the death penalty for apostasy and attendant human rights abuses in Muslim countries. Islamic Tolerance Alert from modern, moderate Indonesia: “Accused or proselytising, American family attacked by Indonesian extremists,” by Mathias Hariyadi for Asia News, September 15 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Jakarta (AsiaNews) – Only the intervention of police saved the lives of an American family that was attacked by an enraged mob spurred by a local religious leader. Muslim fundamentalists were incensed by charges that the head of the family was engaged in proselytising in the predominantly Muslim area. The latest of its kind (a few days ago clashes between Christians and Muslims left people dead and wounded in Maluku, this incident is further proof of Indonesia’s steady slide towards extremism, a situation that threatens the country’s constitutional foundation, namely its pluralism.The attack came at night on 5 September in an area west of Palu, provincial capital of South Sulawesi. An American family, David Ray Graeff, 41, his wife Georgia, also 41, and their two sons Benjamin and Daniel, had been staying at Bukit Kabonena Permai housing compound for the previous two weeks. Mr Graeff had been hire to teach English language and literature at a local Protestant divinity school in the village of Uwera, Sigi District.

On that night, an extremist mob, spurred by a local Muslim leader, Muhammad Saleh bin Abubakar Alaydrus, from the local Nurul Khairaat praying group, attacked the family, accusing them of proselytising in the mostly Muslim area. For them, the presence of Americans was itself a “serious threat”.

In the course of their attack, the mob set fire to the family’s property, including a minivan.

Police, who had already been deployed in the area to pre-empt acts of violence, was able to intervene and prevent the worse.

However, the family had to be moved to avoid possible deaths and injuries, Southeast Sulawesi Deputy Police Chief Senior Superintendent Ari Dono Sukmanto said….

REVIEW OF
PAUL B. FENTON and DAVID G. LITTMAN
L’EXIL AU MAGHREB. LA CONDITION JUIVE SOUS L’ISLAM 1148-1912.
PUPS [PRESSES DE L’UNIVERSITÉ PARIS-SORBONNE] PARIS, 2010.
792pp. Illustrated [Black and White Photos and Color Plates]. Maps. List of Illustrations. Bibliography. Glossary [of Hebrew and Arabic Terms], Index of Names, Index of Places, Analytical Table of Contents. [In French]
by Ibn Warraq

Abraham Ibn Ezra, Hebrew scholar and polymath, left Andalusia in 1140 C.E., just before the invasion of the Almohads, a particularly violent and bigoted Islamic dynasty of North Africa and Spain [reigned 1130-1269], which destroyed so many Jewish communities and towns. He wrote a lament on this destruction of North African and Hispanic settlements:

“I weep like an ostrich for Lucena [cf. Lam.4:3 and Mic. 1:8].
Her remnant dwelt innocent and secure…
Alas, the city of Cordoba is forsaken, her ruin as vast as the sea!
Her sages and learned men perished from hunger and thirst.
Not a single Jew was left in Jaen or Almeria;
Majorca and Málaga struggle to survive…
I cry out like a woman in labor for the congregation of Sjilmasa—
A city where genius and wisdom flourished; their brilliance obscured the darkness….
Woe, the congregation of Fez is no more; this day they are given to the plunderer;
Where is the protection for the congregation of Tlemsan?
Its glory is melted away.
A bitter voice I raise over the fate of Ceuta and Meknes;
I rend my garments for Dar‘ī already vanquished…”[1]

Ibn Ezra’s elegy serves as a sad but fitting motto to Paul Fenton and David Littman’s scholarly and indispensable survey of the plight of Jews in North West Africa [Maghreb] under Islam between 1148-1912. No two scholars could be better qualified than Fenton and Littman for such an immense task. Paul Fenton is Assistant Director of the Department of Arabic and Hebrew Studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, where he is also Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature. He is a world authority on Jewish Civilization under Islam, and author of Moïse ibn Ezra, philosophe et poète andalou du XIIeme siècle (1997); and Juda ibn Malka. La Consolation de l’expatrié spirituel.

David Littman, with a B.A. and an M.A. degree in Modern History and Political Science from Trinity College, Dublin, began his research on this subject in 1970, first in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministère des Affaires Étrangères Français), more informally known as le Quai d’Orsay, and secondly, in the extraordinary archives of The Alliance Israélite Universelle [AIU]; a Paris-based international Jewish organization created in 1860 by the French statesman Adolphe Crémieux to defend the human rights of Jews around the world; it promotes the ideals of Jewish self-defense and self-sufficiency. The motto of the organization is Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh — “All Jews bear responsibility for one another.” The AIU wished to advance the Jews of the Middle East through education and culture, and to that end established schools, so that by 1900 it was running 100 schools with a combined student population of 26,000. The bulk of the schools were in Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. [2]

Nor did David Littman forget the archives of the Foreign Office in London, U.K. Littman has published numerous articles on the Jews of North West Africa and the Orient. Of particular relevance is Littman’s pioneering monograph on Sir Moses Montefiore’s mission to Morocco between 1863-1864, which appeared in 1985 in a volume commemorating the centenary of Sir Moses. Since 1986, he has dedicated himself to defending Human Rights at the United Nations in Geneva in his capacity as representative of several non-governmental organisations.

The book is dedicated to the memory of Hayyim Zeev Hirschberg [1903-1976], the eminent historian of North West African Judaism. Littman began a collaboration with Hirschberg in the 1970s which was unfortunately cut short by the latter’s premature death in 1976. Nonetheless, Hirschberg instilled in Littman the importance of the archives of the AIU which were to provide irrefutable proof of the abject condition of the Jews in the Maghreb in the Nineteenth Century, destroying along the way a number of myths that were current up to that time.

This work will surely become the definitive source book on its subject — supplemented perhaps with some details, but unlikely ever to be completely superseded. All further research on North African Jewry surely must begin here. It is organized along principles established by such scholars as Jacob Landau in his Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt [1969], and Bat Ye’or in her Le Dhimmi: Profil de l’opprimé en Orient et en Afrique du Nord [1980]; that is to say, each work begins with an historical introduction that summarises and surveys the entire period in question. It is then followed by the original documents from the various archives. While Jacob Landau is content to provide the documents in their original languages (Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, and French), Fenton and Littman (and for that matter Bat Ye’or) have translated all the documents into French, have carefully noted and annotated each source. In a series of scholarly footnotes each contributor – traveller, historian, diplomat, poet — is identified, and his biographical details, which are quite substantial in some cases, are given. Obscure terms, and characters that flit through the extracts are explained, and brought to light. The book is a pleasure to handle physically — a feast for the intellect as well as the eyes, and other senses since it is printed on glossy paper (accounting for the book’s weight of over three pounds). It is illustrated with ten colour plates of paintings by Delacroix, Alfred Dehodencq, Du Nouÿ, and others, and sixty three black and white pictures of places, events, and copies of documents.

The source material is divided geographically, (North West Africa generally, then Algeria and Morocco) and into two parts. First, we have the historical and literary sources [part A,of which there are 135 extracts], and then the truly archival material [Part B, of which there are 185 extracts]. The greatest amount of material comes from the nineteenth century, though we have startling eyewitness accounts from the twelfth century onwards. Unlike Algeria, we possess many contemporary Jewish accounts of their situation under Islam in Morocco, particularly from the 1850s onwards. It is unfortunately a story of pillage, the torching of synagogues, the burning of Hebrew sacred texts, the rape and abduction of Jewish women and murders.

To give an example, I shall quote from the original eighteenth century English source that is translated into French in Fenton and Littman’s book:

“It has been observed in squabbles among them, or when a poor Man falls out with his ass, that the first name is carran (i.e.) cuckold, then he calls him son of a Jew….” [p.45]

“In the middle of the City live the Jews, having a Place to themselves, the Gates of which are locked at Night, which Privilege they also have in most of the Cities of this Emperor’s Dominions. They have an Alcayde to guard their Gates, and protect them against the Common-People, who otherwise would plunder them; for they live in great Subjection, it being Death for them to curse, or lift up a Hand against the meanest Moor, so that the Boys kick them about at their Pleasure, against which they have no other Remedy but to run away, away, they are obliged to pull off their Shoes whenever they pass by a Mosque, and to wear black Cloaths and Caps; nor are they allowed the use of Horses; for Ben Hattar himself (tho’ he had Power over Life and Death) was always forced to ride a Mule…” [p.185]

The source is John H. Windus, A Journey to Mequinez, the Residence of the Present Emperor of Fez and Morocco, On the Occasion of Commodore Stewart’s Embassy thither for the Redemption of the British Captives in the Year 1721. London, Jacob Tonson, 1725. Fenton and Littman’s footnote explains that Ben Hattar [died 1724] was a Jewish merchant from Meknès, often employed by the Emperor Mawlay Isma‘il as financial advisor in his diplomatic negotiations. In 1721, he negotiated, notably, a commercial treaty with the British Commodore Stewart.

A further footnote tells us all that we would wish to know about John H.Windus. The latter [fl. 1725] was a historian who accompanied Commodore Charles Stewart, who had been sent to negotiate the release of three hundred English captives. Windus gathered much material on the country in the four months he spent there. Windus’ account was the second ever published in English on Morocco (after that of Addison). His book went through several editions and generated a great deal of interest, particularly Windus’s recitation of the daily life in the Moroccan countryside.

Even a cursory glance at the analytical table of contents gives a grim picture of the situation of Jews in the Maghreb. Confining ourselves to Nineteenth Century Morocco, here is a rapid tour d’horizon:

SUFFERANCE IN ISOLATION (1800-1860)

A 70: The inequality of Jews in front of the Law (Fez, c.1800)
A 71: The Jews of Morocco live in a state of slavery of the most horrible kind. (1803)
A.72: The Sultan exempts a Jewish interpreter from wearing distinctive clothing. (Marrakech. c.1806)
A.73: Jews cannot leave Morocco without imperial authorisation. (1808)
A.74: The payment of Jizya described by an American navigator. (Mogador, 1815)
A.75: Constraint imposed on Jews (c.1820)
A.76: The sack of the Jewish Quarter of Fez as seen by a Muslim chronicler (1820)

Now some examples from the archives:

THE RISE IN PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS OF THE MAGHREB, AND THE HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION OF EUROPEAN JEWS (1863-1864).

B.3 Persecutions at Chechaouan (1864)
B.4 Persecutions of Jews of Demnate (1864)
B.5 The persecutions continue despite the protection of France (1864)
B.6. Disastrous consequences of the events of Safi (1864)
B.7 In the footsteps of Moses Montefiore.

I hope I have been able to give an idea of the riches of material gathered in this remarkable collection. I trust that eventually an English translation will appear, since the contents deserve the widest possible dissemination.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Abraham Ibn Ezra : Twilight of a Golden Age: Selected Poems of Abraham Ibn Ezra, edited and translated by Leon J. Weinberger. Tuscaloosa (Alabama): University of Alabama Press, 1997, pp.3-.4

[2] Notes from the excellent article from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_Israélite_Universelle

The New York Times continues recklessly to careen down a dangerous slippery slope, shilling for the most radical and extreme ideology on the planet, and advances the slow-motion coup of the Muslim Brotherhood in America. You can almost feel their orgiastic glee at having replaced their beloved Walter Duranty’s cause of traitorous stalinism with this year’s model, traitorous stealth jihad.

The Leftist media has taken sides in this war against America, and now the New York Times, with its typical anti-American bent, is rubbing its hooves in glee at the prospect of hog-tying American law enforcement in the war on jihad.

I have spent years studying the evidence demonstrating that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) is a terrorist organization operating as a front group for Hamas and its affiliated organizations. I have consulted with FBI agents, CIA agents, local law enforcement officers, and attorneys who specialize in national security law. All of these consultations confirm that CAIR was begun as a Hamas front group to carry out the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-American agenda.

Much, but not all of this evidence, was documented in United States v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development  et al., 3:04-cr-00240-P (N.D. Texas) (“HLF”).  I have personally invested hundreds of hours reading written documented evidence and listening to audio-taped evidence that had been introduced at the trial.

The evidence shows that CAIR is a criminal terrorist organization. This conclusion is shared by the United States government. The Department of Justice named CAIR in the federalcriminal trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, [1] which concluded with multiple guilty verdicts, as an unindicted co-conspirator in a massive conspiracy to fundraise for, and otherwise pursue, the terrorist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestine Committee, a public relations and fund raising arm of Hamas in the United States.[2] See generally HLF.[3] Specifically, CAIR was named as one of the organizations formed by the defendants and co-conspirators to create the appearance of legality in the effort to raise funds and public support for Hamas and its jihad abroad.  As the evidence in the HLF trial demonstrated, these plans were part of the 1993 Philadelphia planning meeting carried out by Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives, a meeting which the FBI secretly recorded pursuant to a lawful court order, the entire transcript of which was introduced into the record at the HLF trial.[4] Two of the key participants at this Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas planning meeting were Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad.[5] Ahmad co-founded CAIR, along with CAIR’s executive director Awad, in 1994 soon after this meeting. Ahmad served as CAIR’s chairman of the board until 2005 and Awad still serves as CAIR’s executive director.

Further, the federal prosecutors successfully resisted every effort by CAIR to have the public designation of CAIR as an “unindicted co-conspirator” removed from the court record and concluded as follows in its brief to the court:

Indeed, CAIR’s request to strike its name from the government’s co-conspirator’s list is moot, since its conspiratorial relationship with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) was confirmed by testimony and documentary evidence admitted at trial prior to the date CAIR even filed its brief.[6]

1. After the convictions, CAIR and another co-conspirator filed motions to have their names stricken from the co-conspirator list.  The trial judge refused based on the fact that the evidence fully supported this co-conspirator designation.  (Filed as Doc. No. 1356 in HLF; see also Ex. B to the Declaration of John Stemberger filed in support of Defendant’s opposition to Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment.)
2. A key piece of evidence introduced at the HLF trial and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood-Palestine Committee-Hamas conspiracy was a “planning memo” which describes the purpose of the “legal” organizations, such as CAIR, that the Muslim Brotherhood sought to establish in the United States:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means.  The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.[7]

1. In addition, the FBI has publicly stated that it will have no formal or official contacts with CAIR precisely because of the evidence that linked CAIR and its senior management to Hamas and its purposes.[8] Finally, in response to a letter from Congresswoman Sue Myrick, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the U.S. Department of Justice recently wrote in relevant part: (above)

New York Times takes up Hamas-linked CAIR’s cause of trying to force the FBI to stop telling the truth about Islam Jihadwatch

This morning the New York Times has picked up on the effort by the hard Left and Islamic supremacist groups to intimidate the FBI into abandoning all attempts to teach the truth about Islam and jihad, which I wrote about at length yesterday here. The agenda of Hamas-linked CAIR is obvious in their outrage over FBI training materials: they want the Feds to stop teaching the truth about Islam, and to supply agents only with a whitewashed, misleading picture that will leave them woefully ill-equipped to understand or deal adequately with jihad terror plotting in the U.S. The Leftist media, including now the New York Times, with its usual suicidal short-sightedness and fashionable anti-anti-terror stance, has eagerly signed on to this campaign.

Here is one section from the Times’ piece on this today: “F.B.I. Chided for Training That Was Critical of Islam,” by Erica Goode in the New York Times, September 16:

The agency was also criticized last year for inviting Robert Spencer, an anti-Muslim blogger, to speak to a joint terrorism task force.“This isn’t a revelation to us,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group in Washington. “We’ve been dealing with this issue for quite some time now.”

He added, “There’s a problem with the use of anti-Islamic trainers and Islamophobic materials.”

I wrote this to Erica Goode:

I am not “anti-Muslim,” as I have stated many times. It is not “anti-Muslim” to stand for human rights for all people, including Muslims, and to defend the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women, all of which are denied under traditional forms of Sharia. Nor am I merely a blogger, but the author of 10 books, two of which were New York Times bestsellers. Nor is CAIR simply a neutral Muslim advocacy group, but a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood-linked group with many former officials convicted of terror plotting. I hope next time you write about this you will attempt at least some semblance of objective journalism, but I have no high hopes.Robert Spencer

Like Spencer Ackerman, Erica Goode makes no attempt to determine whether or not the material in the FBI training is true or accurate. She just takes for granted that it must be false (I show that it is true here), and assumes also that Hamas-linked CAIR and the ADC are the honest brokers in this controversy. It is typical, but no less excusable for that.