Flying Imans, Political Jihad and Rose Colored Anal Looking Glass

A must read article, the intial though I had when I read the title was that it was just a piece about the backgrounds, but as I read the article, a more important theme arose, the deep seeded religious ideology being taught in the US my Muslim Clerics, who are against the US. It sounds like they are trying to establish a separate Islamic Nation Government within the US with the eventual plan to integrate, our government into theirs… They use our Constitution to hide behind when they are discovered, but then they use it to attack as well. The ACLU and CAIR have made sure of that…

This overlooking and using political correctness to absolve liberal demands for the destruction of our country, will lead to the ultimate demise of our freedoms and open the doorway to radical Islamic terrorist attacks within our borders.

Compound this with the stories that the liberal media does not want you to hear about CAIR, the Holy Land Foundation, Dearbornistans Islamic Jihad and Hebzollah ties, and it really illuminates the threat we face from within…

I suggest reading at least twice.

Exposing the “Flying Imams”

by M. Zuhdi Jasser
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2008

On November 20, 2006, airline officials in Minneapolis removed six imams from U.S. Airways flight 300 to Phoenix after their behavior raised the suspicion of fellow travelers.[1] The imams decried the incident as racist and evidence of discrimination. On March 12, 2007, they filed suit against the airline, airport, and fellow passengers. Some of the imams’ claims are exaggerated; many are false. In reality, the incident was a tactical move to support the imams’ claim to leadership over the American Muslim community. Indeed, the “flying imams” case, Ahmed Shqeirat et al. vs. U.S. Airways,[2] appears to mark just the latest front in the war between Islamists and mainstream, pluralistic American Muslims.

Background

The airport episode appeared pre-planned, the American equivalent of the manufactured Danish cartoon controversy, in which Danish Islamists, who hoped to benefit from polarization, exaggerated victimization and sought a pretext for crisis.[3] The six imams, five of whom hailed from the Phoenix area, were returning from a North American Imams Federation conference. Three drew attention to themselves when they conducted prayers at the departure gate rather than in the airport chapel or quietly in their seats. However, they drew no response. On the plane, however, they aroused passenger suspicion with loud Arabic conversations, requests for apparently unnecessary seat-belt extenders—which can be used as weapons—and a post-boarding seating switch. Other passengers expressed their worries to the crew, who had them removed. After this incident, Omar Shahin, president of the North American Imams Federation and a prominent Phoenix imam, told the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR, an Islamist advocacy group) and its attorneys, “Security at the airport isn’t our problem; it’s their problem.”[4]

On March 12, 2007, the imams, CAIR, and attorney Omar Mohammedi, a former president of CAIR’s New York chapter, filed suit not only against the airline and the Minneapolis Metropolitan Airports Commission but also against the anonymous “John Doe” passengers who alerted the crew to the imams’ suspicious behavior.

The involvement of CAIR, an organization that has received significant Saudi financing,[5] injected impressive machinery and resources into the case. Omar Shahin explained, “Since minute one of this incident, I contacted [CAIR communications director] Ibrahim Hooper and [CAIR executive director] Brother Nihad Awad, and we arranged everything … Everything’s being coordinated with CAIR.”[6] The group underwrote the cost of any litigation.[7]

CAIR used its national network of imams and press connections to draw attention to the case. Tactically, though, the decision to litigate against ordinary passengers was a misstep. It drew critical commentary from the mainstream press.[8] The Arizona Republic dubbed it “intimidation by lawsuit,”[9] and many individuals and organizations, including our own American Islamic Forum for Democracy, offered assistance to the passengers forced into court.[10] While Mohammedi amended his suit to target only John Does whom he deemed “racist” or who had made false accusations,[11] the discovery process would still require suspect passengers to retain counsel. Congress stepped in and, in late July, passed legislation protecting passengers from similar future lawsuits.[12] The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty then filed an amicus brief with the court on August 1, 2007, asking the court to remove the John Does from the suit and denouncing the imams’ “attempt to hijack the court as legal terrorism.”[13] Under this barrage of criticism, the imams dropped their lawsuit against the passengers on August 23, 2007,[14] although they are proceeding with the rest of their suit against the airline, its employees, and the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

My Experience with the Phoenix Imams

I have known three of the plaintiffs in the U.S. Airways suit for almost a decade. Soon after settling in Arizona in 1999, I became involved in the local Muslim community. Before moving to Scottsdale, I usually attended Friday congregational prayer services at the Islamic Community Center of Tempe, Arizona. Often, Ahmed Shqeirat, now the primary plaintiff, delivered sermons at the mosque where he has long been imam. I was struck by the political nature of his sermons. He repeatedly criticized both U.S. domestic and foreign policy and often exaggerated Muslim victimization. He advocated political unification of Muslims internationally and blamed the United States, Israel, and the West for perceived slights. He called for the political empowerment of Muslims in American society.

After hearing several sermons, I spoke and wrote to him to express my dismay at his emphasis of political over spiritual topics. He responded that “secularism is Godlessness” and asserted a right to “speak about political injustice.” The concept of purely spiritual Islam and creation of an intellectual environment welcoming to all Muslims regardless of political persuasion was anathema to him.

To give one example of his abuse of pulpit, during a Friday sermon in April 2004, he displayed an image, which CAIR had distributed, of an American soldier in Iraq with two young Iraqi boys. In the photo, the soldier held a sign saying, “Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad, then he knocked up my sister.”[15] Shqeirat neither made any attempt to verify the image’s authenticity nor to determine, if real, whether it was representative. Nor, when he was asked, could he explain how such a display related to Islamic theology or spirituality. The goal of using faith identity to divide society highlights the incompatibility of Islamism with traditions of American culture and society.

I had similar concerns regarding the sermons of Marwan Saadeddin, another plaintiff, whose sermons I heard in the Phoenix Valley. Following the U.S. Air 300 incident, Saadeddin spun the incident to the media[16] and transformed it into a parable of victimization during a Friday sermon at a Phoenix Valley mosque. During the sermon, I heard him say, “I’d rather be dead than removed from an airplane in handcuffs.” Such is the political and fanatical ranting of one of Arizona’s leading imams. As is common among Islamist preachers, he substituted politics for theology and spirituality.

I also know Omar Shahin, another imam plaintiff. He resides in the Phoenix area and has been the head of the Valley Imam Council of Phoenix, the former imam of the Islamic Center of Tucson, a teacher with the Arizona Cultural Academy, and the imam of the Islamic Center of the East Valley. His hyperbole is typical of the Phoenix-area Islamists. He called the day of his eviction from the U.S. Air flight “the worst day of [his] life,”[17] a statement far more forceful than any he issued after the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid, the July 7, 2005 London bus and Underground bombings, or in response to any Al-Qaeda video seeking to justify the murder of Americans and noncombatants in the name of religion. Indeed, he blamed the 9-11 attacks not on Muslim terrorists but on the CIA and FBI.[18]

There should also be concern regarding the involvement of some of the imams with Islamic charities shuttered because of their terror financing. Shahin was the Arizona representative of Kindhearts and the Holy Land Foundation, both of which the U.S. Treasury Department shut down because of their involvement with Hamas.[19] Saadeddin dismissed Hamas connections as any reason for concern, recently stating that, “Hamas has nothing to do with [the] United States. Talk about Al-Qaeda only, because this is where they hit America … [If] America consider[s] it—the foreign policy of America consider[s] Hamas—as a terrorist. That’s their business.”[20]

Rally and Counter-rally

Had the Islamist imams only apologized for terrorism, it would be bad enough. But they have also sought to undercut the efforts of local Muslims to advocate against and condemn publicly terrorism conducted in the name of Islam. On November 9, 2001, I published my first commentary, arguing that the vast core of American Muslims were loyal to the flag and U.S. Constitution and that radical spokesmen did not represent the core community.[21] This article led to the formation of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD).

In Phoenix in 2004, AIFD organized the first Muslim rally against terrorism.[22] We first engaged the Arizona Interfaith Movement, a statewide inclusive interfaith leadership organization, to support Muslims willing to take this stance. We then approached the Valley Imam Council, which represents nearly all of the local Phoenix mosques and their imams. At the time, Shahin chaired the council. We made it clear that the rally would be apolitical and that the only purpose was to make clear, unambiguous statements about Islamic morality and ethics, including unequivocal statements that there is never any justification for suicide, terrorism (the intentional targeting of noncombatants), and homicide bombing.

Rather than support such goals, Shahin, Shqeirat, and Saadeddin directed the Valley Council of Imams to withdraw support. They used their pulpits instead to criticize the rally and its organizers. Citing the Arab-Israeli conflict, they objected to the idea that terrorism is always forbidden. The local CAIR chapter also withdrew. Once the Valley Council of Imams pulled out, the Interfaith Movement also withdrew support for fear that the rally would not advance harmony.

AIFD proceeded alone. The April 25, 2004 “Standing with Muslims against Terrorism” rally was then held without the public support of any local imams or any of the known Islamist organizations. The rally was a success. Four hundred people attended, perhaps half of whom were Muslims.[23] All major local networks covered it. When the media asked local imams about their refusal to participate, they responded by criticizing the rally’s apolitical nature and said they would only attend rallies in which they could argue that U.S. foreign policy was a major cause of terrorism. They also objected to any linkage of Muslims with terrorism in the rally name.

Two weeks later, CAIR-Arizona held a counter “Muslim Americans for Human Rights and Dignity” rally in which they failed to condemn explicitly terrorism and terrorists by name. The rally drew only seventy-five people.[24] The failure of CAIR and the local imams to rally much support shows the falsehood of their claim to represent the mainstream Muslim community. Many Muslims recognize the problem posed by terrorists justifying their actions in Islam. To deny the association of Muslims with terrorism—as Islamist organizations like CAIR do—is counterproductive. The Islamist strategy of picking and choosing whom they identify as a Muslim depending on the situation is disingenuous. To deny that the Fort Dix terrorist attack plotters were not real Muslims, as CAIR-Arizona chairman (and U.S. Airways employee) Mohammed El-Sharkawy did, sidesteps the problem.[25] And to argue that only scholars can determine who is and who is not a true Muslim not only appropriates God’s duty[26] but also diminishes the egalitarian nature of traditional Islam that accepts no intermediaries between the individual and God.[27]

Imposing Leadership

Creating intermediaries in order to claim false mandate remains the root of the imams’ strategy. Organizations such as the National American Imams Federation and the Assembly of American Muslim Jurists exist to impose hierarchy and, from that self-appointed hierarchy, to establish the mandate to speak on behalf of the entire Muslim community. The Islamic Society of North America, an un-indicted coconspirator in the United States of America vs. Holy Land Foundation et al. terrorism financing trial,[28] formed a Leadership Development Center to train and indoctrinate imams.[29] On March 7, 2007, it announced a leadership certifying program for imams in conjunction with the National American Imams Federation.[30]

Establishing false leadership claims is also one reason why both CAIR and various Islamist imams attempt to partner with U.S. law enforcement. On CNN’s Paula Zahn Now, Shahin said, “If you go back to our background, I am personally the chairperson for the police advisory board. I did a presentation for the FBI agent in Phoenix. I did [a] presentation with CAIR-Arizona to Yuma Air Force Base for more than 600 Marines.”[31] For many imams, participation in such programs bestows or recognizes legitimacy. This is wrong on two counts, however. First, it again conflates policy work with religious legitimacy and, second, groups often exaggerate their partnerships. One Homeland Security official said, “It is not uncommon for that particular organization [CAIR] to issue a press release attempting to overstate their interaction with the department.”[32] Within the mosque, however, congregants rarely question self-appointed Islamist spokesmen about the basis of their authority or legitimacy to represent attendees. Their inflated associations outside the mosque feed their own efforts to legitimize control and tribalization. And government and media acceptance of claims of victimization stops many non-Muslims from questioning the ideological motivations behind the religious rhetoric that many of these groups employ.

For moderate, traditional Islam to reassert itself against well-funded Islamist organizations, though, it is necessary to examine how political ideology pollutes spirituality. CAIR’s involvement in the flying imam suit is problematic. Many Muslims have seen the call by Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR’s national office, for Muslims to report their victimization to CAIR. “Reporting to an organization like CAIR is important, because it is empowering. It is empowering to the Muslims themselves who report; it is empowering to the organization, and it is important to the status of Muslims within the United States,” he told an audience at the All Dulles (Virginia) Area Muslim Society, urging them to inflate the Muslim component of the FBI’s annual hate crime statistics to compare better to figures on anti-Jewish violence.[33] In 2005, for example, the FBI catalogued 848 anti-Semitic hate crimes, 128 anti-Islamic hate crimes, and 115 anti-Christian hate crimes.[34] In essence, therefore, CAIR’s focus on victimization and minority politics is motivated by political Islam. The imams’ victimization routine creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that CAIR can use to bolster its own claims to be a civil rights organization. It would be as if firefighters committed arson in order to bolster their position inside a community. That CAIR seeks to create facts to justify its political and foreign policy positions also shows the rigidity of its top-down approach to the community it claims to represent.

The Struggle for American Islam

While the press may focus on the flying imams case, for American Muslims, the battle is broader. On one side are the imams represented by CAIR, the Islamic Society for North America, and the North American Imams Federation, all of which lean toward an Islamist view supporting greater interplay between religion and politics and the primacy of sectarian identity. On the other side are Muslims embracing Western secular democracy. The two are mutually exclusive in their interpretation of religious hierarchy, the interplay between theology and contemporary politics, individuality, and tolerance.

Responsibility for the victory of traditional, tolerant, and pluralistic interpretations of Islam lies with Muslims and Muslims alone. The intellectual marginalization of Islamists is the duty of Muslims who value the principles upon which the United States was built and now stands. This requires recognizing the primacy of the Constitution in political life, even if Muslims turn to the Qur’an in their spiritual life. Islamists, though, insist that regardless of temporal government, the Qur’an should be the central guiding document for legislation and interpretation. Islamists believe the Qur’an is the only source of law while non-Islamists believe it is just one source.

Perhaps this was the reason why the Prophet Muhammad and his companions sought to avoid creation of the same religious intermediary class that today CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the North American Imams Federation presume to fill.

Within the United States today, most Muslim organizations—CAIR, the North American Imams’ Federation, the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, the Muslim Students’ Association, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Muslim American Society, the Islamic Circle of North America, and the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy—embrace the Islamist approach. Many imams affiliate themselves with these organizations, fundraise on their behalf, and parrot the political agenda of these organizations. The flying imams lawsuit is just one more example of the synergy between the North American Imams Federation and CAIR.

A few small organizations—the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the American Islamic Congress, the Islamic Supreme Council of America, the Center for Eurasian Policy, and the Center for Islamic Pluralism—are moderate and support a separation between spirituality and temporal politics. They are underrepresented in terms of resources and organization. Still, it is this nascent anti-Islamist movement upon which the Muslim fight to embrace American pluralism and freedom depends. It is also essential for interfaith relations. Many Americans are hungry to hear from Muslims who are not apologists for terror, who are ready to lead the fight against militant Islamism, who respect the division between mosque and state, and who do not seek to use their religion as a vehicle to change the American political landscape.

The struggle of these two trends to define Islam in America will last generations. It will require development of a new Islamic ideology, one born from the founding ideology of the United States. This will require not only renewed ijtihad (interpretation) but also the confidence of American Muslims to overcome Islamist and radical Wahhabist attempts to label any effort to separate religion and government as bid‘a (illegitimate invention). While the transnational umma (Muslim community) might engage itself in issues regarding theology, charity, socialization, and worship, U.S. politics should be blind to faith. For any American citizen or resident, the concept of loyalty to umma should be subordinate to loyalty to state and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.

Shari‘a (Islamic law) might guide Muslim individuals as they choose in their homes, but it should not be invoked in government. Faith will still inspire Muslim behavior and actions, as it does with followers of other religions, but it should not be articulated in government. The embrace and exposure of Islamist agendas will repel most Muslims. It is no surprise that despite its claims to represent American Muslims, CAIR’s membership has plummeted 90 percent since 9-11,[35] a claim it first refuted as a “hit piece” before confirming it in an amicus brief to the Dallas federal court hearing in the Holy Land Foundation case.[36] A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that a plurality of Muslims believes mosques should remain apolitical,[37] a finding which suggests the majority may oppose theocracy and Islamism. The finding is also significant when put in the context of the fact that many Muslims came to the United States from autocratic societies where the mosque was often the only haven for political speech. That so many now desire apolitical sermons suggests that they have come to understand and appreciate the freedoms of U.S. society.

A Manifesto to Defeat Islamism

In 1964, Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s leading theoretician, published Ma‘alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones) in which he laid out steps to achieve an Islamic state and defeat the West. He described a generational process to ensure the victory of Islamism over Western liberal society. Liberal and traditional Muslims have yet to wage an effective counter-jihad against their Islamist brethren. There does not yet exist a liberal Muslim intellectual work equivalent to Milestones to lay the groundwork to defeat Islamism and ensure the creation of integrationist, tolerant American Muslim institutions.

A starting point to counter the Qutb construct would be for Muslim leaders to acknowledge ten points:

1. An Islamic narrative should not constrain universal human principles.
2. Mosques should support the separation of church and state, even as they take stands on social or political issues.
3. The affirmation of an egalitarian approach to faith beyond the constraints of simple tolerance. Tolerance implies superiority while pluralism implies equality.
4. Recognition that if government enacts the literal laws of God rather than natural or human law, then government becomes God and abrogates religion and the personal nature of the relationship with God.
5. Separation of mosque and state to include the abrogation of all blasphemy and apostasy laws.
6. Empowerment of women’s liberation and advocacy for equality as is currently absent in many Muslim-majority, misogynistic cultures.
7. Ijtihad negating the need for Muslims active in politics today to bring theology into the political debate. Nowhere in the Qur’an does God tell Muslims to mix politics and religion or instruct by what document governments should be guided.
8. Creation of movements and organizations that are specifically opposed to such radical or terrorism-supporting groups as Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat al-Islamiya, and Al-Muhajiroun, to name a few, rather than simply being against undefined, generic notions of terrorism.
9. Public identification without apologetics of leaders and governments of Muslim majority countries who are dictators and despots and are, as such, anti-liberty and anti-pluralism. Muslims enjoying freedom in the West have yet to create mass movements to liberate their motherlands from dictatorship and theocracy and to move these toward secular democracies founded on individual liberties for all based in natural law.
10. Establishment of classical liberal Muslim institutions and think-tanks to articulate, disseminate, and educate concerning the above principles. The idea that individual liberty and freedom need not be mutually exclusive with Muslim theology must be taught to Muslim youth.

Countering Islamism and combating Islamist terrorism should be a greater public responsibility for the organized American Muslim community than the obsession with civil rights and victimization in which current Islamist organizations engage. Americans living in fear for their security are looking to moderate, traditional Muslims to lead this fight. The credibility of the Muslim community suffers because groups such as CAIR, ISNA, and the North American Imams Federation deny the interplay between Islamism and terrorism.

Non-Muslims also have a role. Both the U.S. government and mainstream media often give Islamists and their organizations exclusive voice to speak on behalf of American Muslims, which creates a cycle of apparent, if not real, empowerment. Seldom do they turn to non-Islamists and anti-Islamists who may represent far more American Muslims. The recent refusal of PBS to air the ABG Films, Inc. documentary Islam v. Islamists is a prime example of the manner in which media producers and executives shield Islamists from criticism.[38]

Conclusion

The imams and clerics who push for Islamist societies are none other than politicians who cloak themselves in religious jargon. It is naïve to treat these clerics as simple activists or consider their civil rights discourse at face value. Until moderate Muslims challenge their actions, terror networks and their ideologies will flourish. Freedom and liberty are prerequisites to bring an individual close to God through religious practice free from coercion. If some imams fear that individuals will lose faith without coercive direction, then they misunderstand both Islam and liberty.

As lawyers argue the merits of the flying imams’ case in a Minneapolis courtroom, a silver lining is apparent: Excessive litigation on their part has eroded support for Islamist organizations such as CAIR, ISNA, and the National American Imams Federation, both nationally and also within the Muslim community.[39] Their loss could be the moderates’ and liberals’ opportunity to create a new American Muslim narrative.

M. Zuhdi Jasser, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, is chairman of the board of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (www.aifdemocracy.org).

Hajib Removal During Arrest Violates Civil Rights

Another landmark case of stupidity and political correctness aids the Islamification of the US as the ACLU filed a suit on behalf of Jameelah Medina. Medina was arrested and during the booking she was forced to remove her hajib, more than likely for her mug shot, so now she claims this was a violation of her right to practice her religion.
What a crock of BS. Thanks ACLU for making this world safer from police officers.

A 29-year-old Muslim woman sued San Bernardino County and its sheriff Wednesday, alleging that deputies violated her rights by forcing her to remove the head scarf she wears because of her religious beliefs.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California filed the complaint on behalf of Jameelah Medina in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana — accusing the county and the Sheriff’s Department of breaching Medina’s right to practice her religion as well as a 2000 federal law enhancing protections of prisoners’ religious liberty. She was arrested in 2005 for carrying an invalid Metrolink pass.

Cindy Beavers, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, said she could not comment.

“I can tell you that anybody who comes in wearing any type of head covering — they would have to remove it at the time of booking and that would be for security purposes,” Beavers said.

As Medina was being booked and searched at West Valley, Medina told a female sheriff’s deputy she could not remove the head scarf, known as a hijab, for religious reasons. The deputy threatened to delay Medina’s release if she did not follow orders, the complaint says.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

ACLU Calls The Pot Black

In a nonsensical lawsuit, ACLU official King Downing, in charge of Racial Profiling, claims Black Police Officers in Logan International Airport profiled him four years ago.

He bases his claim on the fact that one white officer arrived as backup and the initiating officer, a black officer, asked him for ID because Downing was looking at him suspiciously.

As I have said before, profiling is a useful tool, it is a necessary tool. As for this asshat, there was no profiling, there was suspicious activity on his part. I guess suspicous activity cannot be investigated as that is racial profiling…

Until we get a handle on all this PC BS, there will be no safety in this country. It is not Downing’s rights that are being violated, it is every American’s rights that are being violated by this frivelous lawsuit…

Stupid, reckless lawsuit of the day award goes to King Downing, an anti-profiling crusader and ACLU official who is suing the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates the Boston Logan airport, and Massachusetts State Police, because he was asked for identification in 2003:

The top official in charge of fighting racial profiling for the American Civil Liberties Union says he was the victim of profiling at the Boston airport, and he has gone to federal court to challenge a screening technique that relies on suspicious behavior to identify potential terrorists.

King Downing said he was stopped and questioned by state police in October 2003 after arriving on a flight to attend a meeting on racial profiling.

Downing sued the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates the airport, and Massachusetts State Police, alleging they violated his constitutional right against unreasonable search. A trial in the case began Monday in U.S. District Court. Downing, who is black and wears a short beard, said in his lawsuit that he was stopped by a state trooper and asked to show identification after he left the gate area and made a phone call in the terminal.

Who were the supposed jackbooted bigots who stopped him? Well, take a closer look:

Logan officials say race played no role in the decision to question Downing. The first trooper to ask Downing for identification was black, and three of the four officers who arrived later were also black, according to court documents. The first trooper said he became suspicious when he saw Downing watching him.

(Here’s the complaint.)

The do-nothing ACLU won’t be satisfied until every last homeland defense is dismantled. They argue that national security profiling should be based on behavior, not race/ethnicity/nationality/national origin/religion–and then they turn around and sue to stop behavior profiling.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism.

Islamification Infiltrates Houston Schools

Atlas Shrugs brings to us a poingant smelling piece from Texas, hey isn’t that the same place the Holyland Foundation Trials are being held? Islamification has reared it’s nasty head in the public school system. Now what I find amazing is that political correctness has taken a back seat this time, why because it is Islam (Religion) being taught in a Public School. Now that this been Christianity or Judism, then there would be law suites, riots and possibly even the excommunication of those that allowed such religion to be mixed with the state.

Remember those liberals who insist that there be a separation fo church from state, and that includes schools and prayers.

Those that feel creationism is not a viable study at school, somehow find teaching of Mohammad is relevant to middle school education. Wait maybe this is the diversity side of it…

Well surprise surpise, they have name even made a sigh at this one… Now this goes beyond just religious teaching, it is teaching Jihad. Yes that is right folks, your good ol school taxes are funding Jihad teachings in US Public Schools…

This borders on child abuse as far as I am concerned, yes child abuse does include mental assults… What’s next, HTV – Hamas TV coming to a school near you…

Where is the ACLU when you need them, oh yeah defending some non American’s rights…

“Houston, We Have a Problem”

Tainted teachings.  A deadly trend.

Too much time on teachings of Islam? Amanda Dyer, LODI News hat tip Bud
Parents say seventh-grade textbook at Houston Elementary inappropriate

The parents of children at Houston Elementary School plan to complain to the school board about concerns they have with a seventh-grade history textbook, which they feel pays an undue amount of attention to the teachings of Islam.

When Jim Self asked his son last week what he was learning in school, he was surprised to hear his 12-year-old boy say that he was learning about the Prophet Muhammad.

And his favorite 6 year old wife Aisha? Or the Pro Moe’s happy thoughts for the day like,“I have ordered you to kill them” 

That night Jim Self and his wife, Korina, flipped through their son’s textbook, “History Alive!: The Medieval World and Beyond,” and found at least three chapters dedicated to the Islamic faith, including an entire chapter dedicated to the Prophet Muhammad.

A chapter on the pro moe, propeller beanie be upon him?

Since then, the couple has started a campaign to remove the textbook from their child’s classroom. The book is used in classrooms throughout the district.

“I don’t think we would have an issue about it if (it wasn’t so) in-depth,” said Jim Self, who fought in Iraq as a Marine from 2003 to 2004.

Among the Selfs’ concerns about the textbook is its definition of the word “jihad,” which is described in the book as “the human struggle to overcome difficulties and do things that would be pleasing to God.”

I smell Sauduction. Saudi money is everywhere.

The Selfs said the textbook mentioned Jesus only twice, and other major religions were only given a paragraph of explanation.

One of the Selfs’ biggest concerns, though, is that such detailed explanation of Islam is a violation of the separation of church and state.

“If he was in college and he was studying world religions, fine,” Jim Self said.

The Selfs, who are Christians, worry that their reaction to the textbook will cause people to label them as religious “wackos.”

“We’re just regular people,” Jim Self said.

I’ll say. You are heros Jim.

Parents in Arizona requested that the same textbook, which was being used on a trial basis, be pulled from classrooms in Scottsdale Unified School District because they felt the book contained Islamic propaganda, according to an article in the East Valley Tribune newspaper.

Read this and weep. Betrayed by the left.  Again.

Posted by Pamela Geller on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 at 10:09 PM

Flag Folding Recital Banned – More Islamification? – Updated

The actual complaint has not been released, however it stinks of the ACLU, CAIR and Islamification. I urge all Americans to protest this and contact your Senators, Representatives and local/state officials…

Flag-folding recitations for vets banned because of religious content

RIVERSIDE,California – Complaints about religious content have led to a ban on flag-folding recitations by Veterans Administration employees and volunteers at all 125 national cemeteries. It all started because of one complaint about the ceremony at Riverside National Cemetery in California.

During thousands of military burials, the volunteers have folded the American flag 13 times and recited the significance of every fold to survivors. For example, the 12th fold glorifies “God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.”

The complaint revolved around the narration in the 11th fold, which celebrates Jewish war veterans and “glorifies the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

The National Cemetery Administration decided to ban the entire recital at all national cemeteries. Details of the complaint weren’t disclosed.

Administration spokesman Mike Nacincik said the new policy outlined in a Sept. 27 memorandum is aimed at creating uniform services throughout the military graveyard system. He said the 13-fold recital is not part of the U.S. Flag Code and is not government-approved.

Veterans and honor detail volunteers, including Bobby Castillo, 85, and Rees Lloyd, 59, are furious. “That the actions of one disgruntled, whining, narcissistic and intolerant individual is preventing veterans from getting the honors they deserve is truly an outrage,” Lloyd said. “This is another attempt by secularist fanatics to cleanse any reference to God.”

World War II Navy veteran Castillo said it’s “a slap in the face to every veteran.”

“When we got back from the war, we didn’t ask for a whole lot,” Castillo said. “We just want to give our veterans the respect they deserve. No one has ever complained to us about it. I just don’t understand.”

Lloyd and Castillo are part of a 16-member detail that has performed military honors at more than 1,400 services. They were preparing to read the flag-folding remarks at the Riverside cemetery when graveyard staff members stopped them.

Charlie Waters, parliamentarian for the American Legion of California, said he’s advising memorial honor details to ignore the edict. “This is nuts,” Waters told the Riverside Press-Enterprise by telephone from Fresno. “There are 26 million veterans in this country, and they’re not going to take us all to prison.”

Nacincik said that though the flag-folding narrative includes references to God that the government does not endorse, the main reason for the new rules is uniformity. “We are looking at consistency,” Nacincik said. “We think that’s important.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Miller of Temple Beth El said he understands the ban. “It is a perfect example of government choosing to ignore religion in order to avoid offending some religions,” Miller said. “To me, ignoring religion in general is just as problematic as endorsing any one religion.”

A small group of lawmakers are trying to fight this disgraceful ban…

A group of congressmen has asked the Department of Veterans Affairs to reconsider its ban on the flag-folding ceremony at military funerals after the agency decided last month to streamline burials at federal cemeteries.

“The flag folding recitation is a longstanding tradition which brings comfort to the living and honor to the deceased,” Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., writes in his letter Tuesday signed by 11 other congressmen. “The recitations accompanying each fold pay tribute to the service and sacrifice of our veterans and their families, the nation they proudly serve, and the beliefs that they hold dear.”

Veterans Affairs made the new policy decision last month, after a complaint was filed about a service at Riverside National Cemetery in California.

At issue are secondary meanings attached to the folding of the flag. As the Memorial Honor Guard makes the 13 folds — traditionally representing the original colonies — they recite “the first fold of our flag is a symbol of life, the second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life, etc.”

A complaint about the recitation for the 11th fold — “in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” — garnered a complaint at the California cemetery, and according to reports, prompted the ban. /**/

In a Sept. 27 memo, the National Cemetery Administration halted the ceremony. It was an effort to create uniform services throughout the military graveyard system, spokesman Mike Nacincik said.

But it’s caused a furor among veterans. Members of the American Legion have been flooding national headquarters since the decision, according to Ramona Joyce, an organization spokeswoman.

“We definitely think is a matter left up to the families,” she said. “It’s a nice ceremony; we’ve been doing it for years. Our honor guards have been doing it.

“It’s respectful and it’s something the family should be able to choose to have done if they so wish for their veteran,” Joyce said.

Nacincik said the 13-fold recital is not part of the U.S. Flag Code and is not government-approved.

“That the actions of one disgruntled, whining, narcissistic and intolerant individual is preventing veterans from getting the honors they deserve is truly an outrage,” Rees Lloyd, 59, said. “This is another attempt by secularist fanatics to cleanse any reference to God.”

The 12th fold recitation is geared to Christians, saying the fold “represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.”

In the Legion’s burning ceremony for the dignified disposal of unserviceable flags, a chaplain invokes the name of God with lines like “as they yield their substance to the fire, may your holy light spread over us and bring our hearts renewed devotion to God and country,” Joyce said.

World War II Navy veteran Bobby Castillo, 85, said it’s “a slap in the face to every veteran.”

“When we got back from the war, we didn’t ask for a whole lot,” Castillo said. “We just want to give our veterans the respect they deserve. No one has ever complained to us about it. I just don’t understand.”

Lloyd and Castillo are part of a 16-member detail that have performed military honors at more than 1,400 services. They were preparing to read the flag-folding remarks at the Riverside cemetery when graveyard staff stopped them.

Charlie Waters, parliamentarian for the American Legion of California, said he’s advising memorial honor details to ignore the edict.

“This is nuts,” Waters told the Press-Enterprise by telephone from Fresno. “There are 26 million veterans in this country and they’re not going to take us all to prison.”

Nacincik said that while the flag-folding narrative includes references to God that the government does not endorse, the main reason for the new rules is uniformity.

“We are looking at consistency,” Nacincik said. “We think that’s important.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Miller of Temple Beth El said he understands the ban.

“It is a perfect example of government choosing to ignore religion in order to avoid offending some religions,” Miller said. “To me, ignoring religion in general is just as problematic as endorsing any one religion.”

Shuler’s letter urged Veterans Affairs to change its mind.

“Please reconsider the policy and allow the Memorial Honor Detail volunteers to perform the traditional flag-folding recitation if requested by the family of the deceased,” he wrote.

FOXNews.com’s Sara Bonisteel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

From Obama’s Lips to G”d’s Ears

Obama gave a speech the other day to a large congregation, about 4,500 people, his speech focused on how his faith in G”d, his religion are intricately part of what makes him and ultimately, why they should vote for him. He says his religion is his guiding force when things are good as well as when they are bad.

Not a bad speech in itself, he is trying to play the field to get votes, this time it looks like he has put on  a Bush mask and is attempting to pull in those religious people that are on the fence…

One problem, his spiritual adviser is a racist POS.  It turns out that he feels that only the poor and Blacks are capable of knowing G”d…

Based on the beliefs that this man shares with Obama, it would make it very worrisome to have him as our next President. Especially considering how his he relates himself to the Jews of ancient times, yet part of this advisers speech is aimed directly against Israel…

Knowning the backlash, once exposed, Obama dumped the speech by Wright… Hmmm guess his religious faith is out weighed by his electoral faith and money raising thumping…

He was to keep the masses divided and he makes it clear in his speeches, some of which have made it to the Internet…

 Barack Obama has put his religion back into the headlines, trumpeting the power and salvation of faith and asking a church audience in South Carolina to help him become “an instrument of God” and join him in creating “a Kingdom right here on Earth.”But the Democratic contender’s talk on Sunday of breaking down religious and political differences has some critics questioning the Illinois senator’s own beliefs — and those of the man identified as his spiritual adviser — and whether his messages of spiritual inclusion and tolerance have remained consistent.Obama has written and spoken about being inspired by the preaching of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., and his calls to “spur social change.” The title of Obama’s second book, “The Audacity of Hope,” which essentially launched his presidential bid, was taken from a sermon by Wright.Baptized in Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama has been an active member for two decades, regularly attending services with his family under Wright’s spiritual mentorship.Some of Wright’s sermons, which often address themes of white supremacy and black repression, have come under scrutiny by those who interpret them as racially divisive. Such preaching, they believe, polarizes Americans rather than unites them.

“Wright’s preaching does promote a sort of racial exclusivity,” said Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.

“Statements that suggest you cannot truly understand God unless you are black or poor are exclusive.”

Remarks attributed to Wright that were posted on audio files on the Internet and cited in press accounts earlier this year may have prompted the criticism.

“Fact number one: We’ve got more black men in prison than there are in college.

“Fact number two: Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run.

“We are deeply involved in the importing of drugs, the exporting of guns and the training of professional killers. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God. … We conducted radiation experiments on our own people. … We care nothing about human life if the ends justify the means.

“And … And … And! God! Has got! To be sick! Of this s***!”

Wright had been scheduled to speak at Obama’s Feb. 10 presidential announcement. But after news of the remarks were published, the senator apparently changed his mind the night before and chose the Rev. Otis Moss III, Wright’s successor at Trinity United Church of Christ. Moss declined the invitation.

A request for an interview with Wright was not granted. All requests for an interview were referred to the Obama campaign.

An Obama spokesman referred to Wright as “media shy,” although Wright has routinely posted live webcasts of his sermons on Trinity United’s Web site.

Obama met Wright after college while working with local churches in Chicago to tackle problems of drug abuse and unemployment in inner-city neighborhoods. Wright preached an Afrocentric theology that interpreted the Bible through shared suffering of African Americans.

For Obama, this experience was a spiritual turning point. He had been exposed to various faiths during his life but never formally adopted one until after meeting Wright.

“Inside the thousands of churches across the city, I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones,” he wrote in his memoir, “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.”

“Those stories — of survival, and freedom, and hope — became our story, my story.”

Wright’s defenders say his theology has been misunderstood and taken out of context. They say Wright seeks only to give blacks a sense of dignity and identity, and that his philosphy and sermons are not racist.

“The idea that this preaching is divisive is absolutely ridiculous,” said the Rev. Dr. Michael Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina Church in Chicago, who has known Obama for more than 20 years.

“The job of pastor is to shepherd his or her congregation, and that requires speaking to your congregants in the language and context they understand.”

For his part, Obama has said he does not agree with Wright on every issue, religious or political. But that doesn’t sit well with some.

“If Barack Obama has really submitted himself to his church like he’s claimed, why does he have a different expression of faith from his own pastor?” asks Anthony Bradley, theologian and research fellow at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Meanwhile, in a statement on his church’s Web site, Wright defends the principles of his theology:

“To have a church whose theological perspective starts from the vantage point of Black liberation theology being its center, is not to say that African or African American people are superior to any one else. …There is more than one center from which to view the world. In the words of Dr. Janice Hale, ‘Difference does not mean deficience’ [sic]. It is from this vantage point that Black liberation theology speaks.”

ACLU – Protecting the Terrorists Again

The ACLU has filed motions to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court release information pertaining to warrant-less wiretapping. In an unprecedented move the Court has requested the White House to respond before August 31.

Another shot by the ACLU to undermine National Security and protect Terrorists over seas.

In a surprising move, a secret spying court ordered the Bush Administration to respond to the ACLU’s request for the court to reveal the legal pinnings behind its decisions that gave legal blessing to the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered (.pdf) the government to respond by August 31 to the ACLU’s request to see the court’s orders, which the court described as an “unprecedented request that warrants further briefing.” The court’s own unprecedented response writes the latest strange chapter in the ongoing secret spying saga.

Those orders reportedly include a still-secret decision curtailing the government’s spying that led the Administration to successfully press Congress to hurriedly expand the government’s spying authority before the summer recess.

The Administration said the nation was at risk because of a “surveillance gap,” and a Republican Congressman let slip on Fox News that the secret spying court had made a secret ruling against the Administration.  The nature of the so-called “surveillance gap” remains a mystery to the public and even the large majority of Congress.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer says this knowledge gap is exactly why the ACLU decided, on August 8, to petition the secret court (.pdf):

“Congress has just granted the president sweeping new surveillance authorities, yet no one knows why or whether that was needed,” Jaffer said. “The point of this motion is to make the orders public.”

The FISC normally decides whether the government can eavesdrop on Americans and foreigners inside the country if the government suspects they are spies or terrorists.  But in October 2001, the administration began a warrantless wiretapping program that consisted in part of listening into to international conversations between someone inside the United States and someone outside it, when the government suspected one of the parties had some connection to a terrorist group. 

The Administration admitted in December 2005 the program existed, but said that the President’s wartime powers allowed him to bypass the court, which it said was too slow and cumbersome.  That court almost never turns down wiretap requests and its orders in wiretapping cases are secret.

That makes sense given the court issues orders about surveillance of possible foreign spies, according to Jaffer.

“There’s a very good national security argument for keeping those court orders secret,” Jaffer said. But “these are orders that include legal reasoning about the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and could include broad rulings that implicate Constitutional rights.”

After the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales unexpectedly announced that the warrantless spying program would now be overseen by the very court it originally avoided. Gonzales said the court had come up with inventive orders to approve the program, a description that confused many legal experts.

Publishing the orders, if they deal with broad legal issues– rather than a specific case, would not be unprecedented.  In 2002, the court ruled against the government on limits on cooperation between intelligence gathering and criminal investigations (known as the wall). That opinion was later published, as was the subsequent decision of the FISC Court of Review to overrule the lower court. The court also released documents in the 1990s related to its power to authorize physical searches, Jaffer said.

When asked how the ACLU even found the secret court, Jaffer says the court’s rules are now public, and they had the clerk’s address.

The court also ordered the government to file at least some of their response unredacted and gives the ACLU two weeks to file a rebuttal.

The Justice Department is reviewing the order, according to spokesman Charles Miller, who was unable to comment further.