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Christian and Muslim Egyptians Protest Obama Policies at White House

by John Rossomando
IPT News
August 23, 2013

Hundreds of Egyptians – Christian and Muslim alike – gathered outside the White House Thursday afternoon to call attention to the plight of Coptic Christians and denounce what they see as the Obama administration's tepid response to a recent spate of church burnings.
"Down, Down with Ikhwan!" they chanted in reference to the Muslim Brotherhood. Since Egypt's army cracked down on Muslim Brotherhood protesters, the Islamist group and its supporters have torched dozens of churches and attacked Christians.
Muslim women in hijabs could be seen mingling among their Christian neighbors and joining in the chants.
Protesters later marched to the headquarters of the Washington Post and CNN to express anger at the lack of coverage given to the attacks on Egyptian Christians. Then they went to the Council on American Islamic Relations' (CAIR) headquarters. Protest organizers consider CAIR to be the Muslim Brotherhood's "embassy" in Washington.
The sight of hundreds of angry protesters outside its building prompted the Washington Post to lock down its lobby.
Protesters defended the Egyptian military's decision to forcefully clear out the Muslim Brotherhood protesters staging sit-ins in Cairo, and they chided the Obama administration for condemning the military's action.

"Egypt right now is dealing with terrorists," said protester Sherif Mina. "I mean, he's talking about peaceful demonstrations in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood. Is it peaceful when you carry machine guns, and artillery weapons – and all these kinds of torture that they've done to the Egyptian people, and the neighborhoods that they were sitting in?"
Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged the popular Egyptian belief that the military intervened at the request of the people. But talk of cutting off U.S. aid in the wake of the army's crackdown – in which hundreds were killed – seems to have reinforced protesters' perceptions that the Obama administration has sided with the Brotherhood.
Many Egyptians now consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization that destroyed the fabric of Egyptian society during its year in power, protesters said. That belief was proven by street protests against President Mohamed Morsi – the Muslim Brotherhood's candidate – which drew an estimated 30 million Egyptians. American foreign policy should back the majority of Egyptians who do not want the Muslim Brotherhood back, protesters said.
They also called for a secular, free and democratic Egypt.
Basic necessities became scarce under Muslim Brotherhood rule, electricity became sporadic, gas lines were common, and poor Egyptians were being hurt by the declining value of the Egyptian Pound by the time 30 million Egyptians took to the streets to say they had enough.
As the army violently clamped down, Islamists turned to Egypt's Christian minority as easy scapegoats or accused the military of promoting "Islamophobia." But that didn't fly with Muslims who joined Thursday's protest in Washington.

"All of the Egyptians they are found the Muslim Brotherhood they are just failures and liars about everything they are told us they will do it in my country," said Nessma Salem, an Egyptian Muslim woman who came from New York to attend the rally. "Unfortunately they make a lot of other things. They don't want to even admit they are liars. So the problem is all the Muslims, and all the Christians, and all of the Egyptian people they are just go to all of the street again after two years. They told us they do not want the Muslim Brotherhood to control the whole country again because they are failures and unfortunately they are support definitely terrorists."
Other protesters shared her angst about the damage done to Egypt's economy under Muslim Brotherhood rule. Given the massive popular outcry, Morsi's removal from office was not a coup.

"[30] million people came out in the street saying we don't want this regime. It's a terror regime – a terrorist regime killing everyone," said protester Fred Soliman. "They tried to rule the country by themselves and not share it with anyone else, so the whole country, the whole country [30] million people all over Egypt. They say no to that regime."
President Obama has not mentioned Coptic Christians by name since the violence began. The closest he came was a brief, veiled reference to churches being attacked by Islamists last week. "We call on those who are protesting to do so peacefully and condemn the attacks that we've seen by protesters, including on churches," he said. The State Department has issued several statements condemning the attacks on the over 60 churches over the past week, but the Copts feel these statements have not been forceful enough.
These tepid statements, together with the perception that the Obama administration was excessively deferential to the Muslim Brotherhood while they were in power, fueled their resentment.

"We as the Coptic Christians of Egypt would like to live in peace, would like the Egyptians to decide their future. We don't want anyone to interfere in our future, would like the American government as well to the media to listen to all of the parties and to decide it by themselves," said Fr. Mikhail E. Mikhail of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in Seven Hills, Ohio. "...We are here to say that what happened in Egypt is a revolution from the people, not a military rebellion."
"The army is not going to rule in Egypt," Mikhail said. "They chose a Supreme Court judge to be in the transition period, and at the same time they have a plan to give it to a civilian government. We want Egypt to be civilian and for Egypt to separate between religion and state like you do here in the United States of America."

Related Topics: John Rossomando

Kuwait Funding Muslim Brotherhood Growth in Western Mosques

by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
September 13, 2013

The completion of a new mosque in Amsterdam is doing more than opening the doors of worship to Dutch Muslims; it is opening new windows into unexpected avenues of terrorist financing and funding for the growth of radical Islam in the West.
For years, Western counterterrorism officials and pundits have expressed concern about the sponsorship of European and American mosques, Islamic schools, and other Muslim organizations by the Saudi government in efforts to expand its own extremist version of Islam, Wahhabism. Wahhabis adhere to strict, literal interpretations of the Quran and defend the use of violence against those who do not – Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Now, however, it seems we've been so focused on the Saudis, we may have missed a potentially even greater source of radicalization, and certainly a fast-growing one: the Muslim Brotherhood. And the government of Kuwait, with ties to al-Qaida groups and Hamas, appears to be among the largest financiers of Brotherhood infiltration into Europe.
This is where the Amsterdam mosque comes in. Located in the largely Muslim neighborhood of Sloterdijk, the Blue Mosque has been the subject of controversy in the Dutch press since its conception. A report that the government of Kuwait was paying salaries to its imam and other officers recently propelled the mosque – and its organization – into the headlines. Those reports have since been challenged, but the gist of them remains true: through a pan-European organization called the Europe Trust, Kuwait is tying Dutch and other European Muslims directly into the Muslim Brotherhood via complex financial, non-profit and religious networks that stretch from Spain to Ireland – and across the Atlantic to New York.
Based in the UK, the Europe Trust is funded largely by Kuwait (with help from the UAE-based Makhtoum Foundation, about which, more later), and, according to the Middle East Quarterly, "channels money from the Persian Gulf to groups sympathetic to the Brotherhood in Europe, primarily to build mosques." Indeed, the Blue Mosque was funded entirely by Kuwait, working through the offices of the Europe Trust Nederland (ETN). Others have tied the Europe Trust to the Brotherhood as well; but particularly notable is the fact that the Trust is led by Ahmed Al-Rawi, a UK-based Muslim Brotherhood leader, and Nooh al Kaddo, a Dublin-based Iraqi who runs the Islamic Cultural Center of Ireland (ICCI), well known as a Brotherhood institution. The ICCI also houses the European Council of Fatwa and Research, whose director, the Egyptian cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, has reportedly "defended suicide bombing and advocated the death sentence for homosexuals, according to the Irish Independent. (Kaddo, for his part, defends Qaradawi, describing his views in the Independent as "representative of Islamic teachings and not assumed to be a violation of same.")
But here's what else: al-Kaddo, who serves as a trustee of the Hamas-linked charity, Human Appeal International, also directs the largest mosque in Western Europe: the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam, a controversial monument whose 50-meter high minarets form the highest point in the city. And like the ICCI, Al Salam (also known as Essalam) was financed entirely by Hamdan ben Rashid Al-Makhtoum, deputy ruler of Dubai and (conveniently) UAE Minister of Finance. Makhtoum, as it happens, also is a generous donor to Hamas-linked CAIR in the U.S. (The Sheik has also provided funds for other European mosques.)
Thirty-five miles away, Amsterdam's Blue Mosque also has al-Kaddo to thank for his efforts to secure the money that built it – an achievement made possible in part through his affiliation with Yahia Bouyafa, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Netherlands and director (among other things) of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in the Netherlands (FION). FION, in turn, is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe (FIOE) – which the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report identifies as a Brotherhood umbrella group that also embraces al-Kaddo's Europe Trust – and thus the Al Salam mosque in Rotterdam.
All in the same web. But there's more.
According to a fact sheet published by the Blue Mosque itself, a partnership developed early in the planning stages placed the ETN and FION – or al-Kaddo and Bouyafa – in charge of raising funds for the building. Bouyafa approached Kuwait's Ministry of Religious Affairs. But when his proposal was rejected, another local imam, Yassin Elforkani – suspected of ties to the Brotherhood – was called in to take over. With a few clever alterations to the construction and financing plan, Elforkani convinced Kuwait to provide the needed €2 million.
But with Kuwait now owning the building, sponsoring the ETN, and with extensive ties to Kaddo and Bouyafa (who has regularly exchanged places with Elforkani as director of FION and of the mosque board), the next step was inevitable: the appointment of Kuwaiti Minister for Religious Affairs (Awaqf) Mutlaq al-Qarawi, as chairman of the European Trust Nederland.
This means that one of the most active Muslim organizations in the Netherlands is now led not by a Dutch citizen, not even by a Dutch-speaking foreign imam, but by the government of Kuwait. More specifically, the Trust now sits in the hands of the Kuwaiti Ministry of Religious Affairs, which takes as its mandate spread of Islam to nonbelievers (dawah).
The Europe Trust has also not limited itself to Northern Europe: the NEFA Foundation has tied the group to properties in France, Greece, Romania, and Germany, where, NEFA notes, "funds for real estate purchased […] on behalf of a German Islamic association also came from the Makhtoum Foundation as well as the Awaqf Ministry [Ministry of Religious Affairs] in Kuwait and the Bayt al-Zakat in Dubai."
If all this sounds remote for Americans, too far across the oceans to matter very much, think again. According to a 2003 statement from former National Security and Counter-terrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, "several Al Qida operatives have allegedly been associated with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood," including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramsi Yousef, a key figure in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
What's more, Clarke testified, "The Kuwaiti government allegedly provides substantial funding to charities controlled by the Kuwait Muslim Brotherhood, such as Lajnat al-Dawa. The U.S. Department of Treasury and the United Nations Security Council designated Lajnat al-Dawa on January 9, 2003 as a supporter of Al Qida. Lajnat al-Dawa and its affiliates had offices in the U.S. in Michigan, Colorado, and Northern Virginia."
If that's not enough, cables published by Wikileaks regarding the problems of policing money flowing to terrorist groups are even more damning. The New York Times summed up a series of these cables, which described Kuwait, the only Gulf country where terrorist funding has not been criminalized, as "a key transit point."
Other ties have been suggested between U.S. mosques and the Brotherhood, most notably the renowned Islamic Cultural Center in New York, founded by Egyptian-born Muhammad Abdul Rauf – father of former Ground Zero Mosque/Park51 imam Faisal Rauf – and funded in large measure by the Kuwaiti government.
Meanwhile, al-Kaddo, with continuing support from the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait, is gathering funds for even more mosques throughout Europe. While the ETN, he insists, does not define the positions of those mosques, it does use its power to hire, appoint, and fire each mosque's officers and imams – all carefully selected from an inside Brotherhood group – and many of whom have ties to Hamas or al-Qaida.
With Europe now becoming one of the richest resources for Islamic jihad, and with the free ability of its citizens to travel visa-free to the United States, the threat a growing, radicalized European Brotherhood network poses is a lot closer than it seems.
Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

Related Topics: Abigail R. Esman

How Do We Know Nobody Helped Plan Columbine, Sandy Hook or Navy Yard?

How Do We Know Nobody Helped Plan Columbine, Sandy Hook or Navy Yard?

Submitted by Oliver Grant, Sep 25, 2013 00:07

Perhaps you are wrong, and the American mass attackers ARE just the point of a spear that was carefully planned and choreographed, and plan on being killed or arrested, they just don't leave any evidence of strings. When one plane crashes, it could be an accident. When two planes hit the towers, you don't need anymore evidence of a terrorist conspiracy. When one or two people get shot in Chicago, that's random crime. What do you call it when over 30 people random victims are shot in the open over two days and nights in two dozen locations? Is it possible somebody could be hiring "random" gangs and thugs to wreak havoc under the cover story of gang crime? The FBI and homeland security need to be asking the 4 just arrested who told them to do the shooting, and that we know the gang story is a lie.
Harvey Lee Oswald the classic lone guman obviously had lots of contacts with Russians and Cubans. We know Nidal Hasan traded e-mails with Al Qaeda fronts Anwar al-Awlaki and Revolution Muslim. The Litttle Rock recruiting station shooter WAS sent on a mission by Al Qaeda and trained in Yemen if his confession is to be believed instead of ignored. In Roseville MN a half-blind crack addict Enrico Darius Taylor just ran over 2 Army recruiters and dragged one for a mile under his jeep, yet no one in law enforcement or the media has a clue to a motive???
Why was the Columbine operation full of dozens of complex bombs and diversions, with walking around shooting people being a fallback plan? Why did the Aurora killer and Breivik craft complex plans in multiple locations using bombs and guns? How does an American black man become fluent in Thai by merely hanging out in a restaurant as a waiter?Who did he meet in Japan and Thailand, both areas where North Koreans and Muslim militants respectively operate? How does he get a job 1.5 miles from the Capitol, and who told him to leave a trail that would make people think he was going crazy before a meticulously pre-planned plot? How can we be sure the Boston bombers were acting alone? How do we know all terrorist acts aren't actually connected? The Nazis, SLA, Vietcong, Taliban, KGB, IRA, PLO, North Koreans, Japanese, Thai, Phillipines, Nigerian militants, mexican gangs, THEY ARE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE

The Only Commonality is Mass Killing

by Anat Berko
Special to IPT News
September 24, 2013

Aaron Alexis murdered 12 people and injured at least eight more at the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard before he was shot and killed by law enforcement professionals. It is tempting to compare Alexis to a suicide bomber, especially now that we have heard rumors he opened a website under the name "Mohammed Salem." However, clear thinking demands that temptation be resisted. Let me explain why.
As an Israeli criminologist who has studied suicide bombers for almost two decades—making extensive observations of and conducting numerous interviews with those who failed, as well as with those who dispatch the bombers, with family members of suicide bombers and decision makers and elites in their society— I can say with confidence that the differences between mass killers in the West such as Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris at Columbine, and yes, Aaron Alexis at the D.C. Navy Yard, and suicide bombers are categorical and insurmountable.
After the Sandy Hook tragedy, Eric Lankford, an American criminal justice professor, sought to show that America's lone shooters have more in common with suicide bombers than is commonly believed. But his op-ed piece, "What Drives Suicidal Mass Killers" (New York Times, 12/19/12), is fundamentally flawed. America has certainly suffered enough with the recent Sandy Hook, Aurora and other tragedies, but clear thinking demands we realize that even if someone is characterized as a "shaheed" (a martyr for the sake of Allah, including suicide bombers), the differences between mass killers in the West and suicide bombers are categorical and insurmountable.
The overriding distinction between the two is their native cultures: the suicide bomber's education and attack preparations are diametrically opposed to that of mass killers, as is their socialization. Suicide bombers are radical Islam's celebrated heroes, its darlings, whose acts are viewed by the larger culture as exemplary and heroic; in contrast, the West's mass killers are aberrant individuals isolated from their resolutely life-affirming culture.
Specifically and most importantly, Western culture in general, and American culture in particular, cherishes life. American children are raised in the belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; they are raised to embrace life and respect the lives of others. Clearly there are a disturbed few who kill others, but those are not the heroes of the American people: their murders and subsequent own deaths do not bring honor to their families or elevate them in their society's collective memory.
But that is exactly what does happen in radical Islamist culture. In Gaza, for example, children collect cards of shaheeds, the same way American children collect baseball cards. It is absurd to think that anyone would propose National Park Stadium be renamed Aaron Alexis Stadium, and the absurdity illustrates and emphasizes the difference between American mass killers and Muslim suicide bombers whose names emblazon schools, sports teams, stadiums and public squares.
The Western mass killer's acts are motivated by individual pathology rather than by collective ethos. The individual's aberrant thoughts trigger the plan for a mass killing. The suicide bomber is not driven by psychological pain, although he is selected because others see him as weak or vulnerable. A culture that celebrates death and declares to the West that "we love death as you love life" is the petri dish in which suicide bombers develop.
Another distinction is that suicide bombers are not lone gunmen, instead, they are merely tools in a comprehensive, well-advertised terrorist production, manipulated to achieve political goals. To understand the significance of the difference, try to imagine Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris as inanimate objects whose owner chooses not only the location of the killings, but also the date, the weapons and even the victims. The suicide bombers' locations are chosen by others to ensure that the greatest possible damage will be inflicted; the bombers usually have little or no advance notice. A suicide bomber, in contrast to Adam Lanza, will never embark on his mission by first killing his own mother—the most significant and beloved person in his life.
The mass killers choose their victims, the locations and the timing of their deeds, usually planning their acts meticulously over a long period of time. For the suicide bomber, his body is the murder weapon. His death is the only way to achieve his true goal: to enter paradise physically, where 72 virgins and the rivers of wine await him, and spiritually, by bringing honor to himself and his family. All this is possible only if his corporeal being merges with the bomb fragments to bring death to others, an ideal far removed from Western moral conceptions of life and afterlife.
A Western mass killer's death is not a precondition for the mass murder; the deaths of those they have selected is what matters. The suicide bomber, however, is on a mission aimed at propelling himself toward a better future in the afterlife, where he will be able to enjoy everything he was unable to enjoy or achieve while living. America's mass killers have no future: they will be vilified and not celebrated, and in contrast to radical Islamic culture, their families will suffer ignominy and isolation. We have already heard the anguish suffered by Aaron Alexis's mother, who, in a public statement, expressed deep sorrow over the pain caused by her son. She also said she was glad her son was in a place now where he can no longer do any harm to anyone.
The West's mass killers have no recruiters, handlers or dispatchers, all of whom are essential in a world where suicide bombers are the logical means to achieve the collective end. In the United States, anywhere and at any time, the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" does not elicit the answer, "A mass killer (or suicide bomber)." However, the Gazan child for example, will not answer "fireman," "policeman," or even "I'm going to work in an office like Daddy." The virtually guaranteed answer is "shaheed," and his mother will likely cheer.
Radical Islam's suicide bomber is the manipulated tool of an aberrant death-glorifying culture, while the West's mass killer is an aberrant member of a robust, life-affirming culture. There are similarities between the two, but it is a mistake to put them on the same level. To blur the distinction is to insult America.
Anat Berko, Ph.D, a Lt. Col. (Res) in the Israel Defense Forces, conducts research for the National Security Council, and is a research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel. She was a visiting professor at George Washington University and has written two books about suicide bombers, "The Path to Paradise," and the recently released, "The Smarter Bomb: Women and Children as Suicide Bombers" (Rowman & Littlefield)

Wolf Demands FBI Punish Agents For CAIR Contact

IPT News
September 19, 2013

On a day when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a report accusing its critics of bigotry, a Justice Department investigation reminds the public why CAIR does not merit the public's trust.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz found a series of incidents in which FBI field offices knowingly engaged in outreach activity with CAIR despite a 2008 policy banning non-investigative cooperation with the Islamist group. Only a summary of the report has been released publicly. The rest is considered classified, but has been made available to Congress.
The ban on interactions with CAIR, first reported by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, resulted from an FBI investigation into a Muslim Brotherhood-created Hamas-support network in the United States.
Internal documents seized by the FBI show that CAIR and its founders, Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, were a part of that network known as the Palestine Committee. Both men appear on a telephone list of Palestine Committee members (Ahmad is listed under a pseudonym "Omar Yehya), and CAIR is listed on a meeting agenda listing the committee's branches.
"[U] ntil we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS," an FBI official wrote in 2009, "the FBI does not view CAIR as an appropriate liaison partner."
But several FBI field office agents-in-charge balked at the policy, the Inspector General's report finds, and the FBI's Office of Public Affairs repeatedly offered field offices conflicting information. Despite a series of electronic communications explaining the CAIR ban – it does not apply to criminal investigations or civil rights complaints – issued from August-December 2008, and despite a mandatory meeting for Special Agents in Charge (SAC) of field offices, the head of the Los Angeles FBI office told his agents to ignore FBI headquarters.
"[W]e will decide how our relationship is operated and maintained with CAIR barring some additional instruction from FBI Headquarters," the Los Angeles SAC wrote. "Please instruct your folks at this time that are not to abide by the … [policy] but that their direction in regards to CAIR will come from the LA Field Office front office."
In a scathing letter to new FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., called the violations "intolerable" and demanded punishment for those responsible, including "separation from the FBI."
Wolf is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee responsible for the FBI's budget. He noted that the investigation only focused on incidents involving three field offices – Chicago, Philadelphia and New Haven, Conn., so the depth of the problem still is not known.
The Los Angeles SAC, Wolf added, exhibited "unacceptable and insubordinate behavior from a senior leader of the FBI."
"Despite repeated efforts to communicate the policy to the field," Wolf wrote, "this was undermined by conflicting guidance being inexplicably offered by the bureau's Office of Public Affairs as well as outright violations from several field offices."
That's what happened in New Haven, the report finds. As the IPT reported in 2011, officials in the field office helped organize a community outreach program knowing that two local CAIR officials were involved. Rather than hold to the FBI policy, they agreed to conceal their role in organizing the event. In addition, the Inspector General found, the Office of Public Affairs advised the field office that the interaction was okay.
In 2010, Attorney General Eric Holder was asked whether there was any "new evidence that exonerates CAIR from the allegations that it provides financial support to designated terrorist organizations."
"No," said a written reply from Holder.
Then-FBI Director Robert Mueller publicly reaffirmed the policy in two separate appearances before Congress a year later, saying "We have no formal relationship with CAIR."
"There should have been no confusion about this policy," Wolf wrote, "given the bureau guidance, Congressional direction and media coverage surrounding this directive." Horowitz seemed to agree. He faults the FBI for failing to provide "effective oversight to ensure compliance with the policy."
In addition to avoiding interaction with a bad actor, the ban on CAIR contact is meant to prevent the group from touting its connections with law enforcement as a way to enhance its image. That's exactly what happened in Philadelphia in 2010, the Inspector General's report found. A local CAIR official was invited to an FBI "Citizen's Academy" program despite the FBI policy's specific reference to the program as off-limits to CAIR representatives.
"A few days later," the report said, "CAIR-Philadelphia posted an article on its website describing its participation in the training program, with a link to the FBI's website."
While it boasted about FBI contact in this case, CAIR officials more often disseminate a message of fear to Muslim Americans, portraying FBI agents as ruthless and corrupt – willing to do anything to set up innocent Muslims. One CAIR chapter urged Muslims to "Build a Wall of Resistance" from the FBI and not cooperate in criminal investigations.
The policy did not come out of the blue. Awad, picked up on FBI recordings of Palestine Committee meetings, remains CAIR's executive director. He has never acknowledged his relationship with the Hamas-support network, and therefore, never disavowed it. In a 2003 deposition, he claimed not to remember whether he attended a weekend-long Palestine Committee meeting in Philadelphia called to discuss ways to "derail" American peacemaking efforts between Israel and the Palestinians. The group also talked at length about how to deceive Americans by hiding their Hamas support.
Those are among the things that make the FBI question "whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS" and bar interaction between its agents and the group. Perhaps the Inspector General's report will prompt field office officials to stop ignoring their own leaders and the information gathered by their fellow agents.