09/11/13 WEA-RLC Research & Analysis Report: Religious Repression Carries on Unabated in Turkmenistan

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Read the entire article on the World Evangelical Alliance site

Turkmenistan has been one of the most repressive countries in the world for over two decades, as key international actors continue to sideline the issue of religious and other freedoms due to their thirst for cheap energy. This Muslim-majority Central Asian nation possesses the world’s fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources

Like some other countries in this region, Turkmenistan is “reminiscent of the old Soviet Union” as it commits serious human rights violations, “particularly through enacting and enforcing laws against freedom of religion or belief,” Katrina Lantos Swett and M. Zuhdi Jasser, Vice Chairs of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), wrote in an op-ed article in The Moscow Times recently.

8/28/13 The West’s Denial at Fort Hood

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Read the article at National Review Online

We ignore Nidal Hasan’s trial — and continue to underrate the Islamist threat — at our peril.

The idea that America has been so successful in its war on terror that we have not been attacked since 9/11 is a lie. If the past few weeks should have taught us anything, it is that. Of course, we cannot blame people for buying into this lie — how much has been reported on the trial and conviction of Army major and psychiatrist Nidal Hasan? Very little, indeed. America’s attention has been elsewhere.

It’s not that the media doesn’t know how to cover what it deems an important trial. Recently, our national media and culture could not get enough of the George Zimmerman or Jodi Arias trials. The Zimmerman case received 96 stories in the New York Times and Jodi Arias received blanket coverage (along with George Zimmerman) on cable, radio, and television news. According to the research service LexisNexis, Jodi Arias was the subject of almost 1,800 stories on cable and network television this year while George Zimmerman rated well over 3,000. The Hasan case? Just about 400 since January. As for Hasan and the New York Times? A grand total of 23 stories up until his conviction.

But while Hasan’s trial may be deemed of less consequence by the media, it should not be. Indeed, the Hasan case, including his entire biography and modus operandi, should be taking up at least the same amount of media attention as the Zimmerman and Arias trials. The Hasan case should also have Americans marching in the streets. Beyond the horrific events of November 5, 2009, Hasan’s case contains within it a microcosm of the entire domestic and global threat we face from jihadism and Islamism.

 

First, the idea that America hasn’t been attacked since 9/11 is, as we stated, a lie. There have been over 45 planned terrorist attacks against the United States that have been thwarted. Second, there have been a handful of successful ones as well, with killings from Arkansas to Boston to Los Angeles and near misses from Times Square to Detroit and Toronto. But the Hasan story is the most egregious, and the least appreciated. If 9/11 did not wake Americans up to the lethal dangers of radical Islam once and for all, Nidal Hasan should have. If Americans cannot be kept safe from a Muslim terrorist inside an Army fort in Texas, they cannot be kept safe anywhere.

In the early morning of November 5, 2009, Hasan left his apartment in Killeen, Texas, to attend morning prayers at his mosque. Several hours later, he walked into the Soldier Readiness Center at Ft. Hood, he sat down, he bowed his head, and then he stood up and shot to death 13 of his fellow Americans and an unborn child (he also wounded 30 others). As he emptied 100 rounds into his fellow Americans, he shouted “Allahu akbar,” Allah is great. There was so much blood on the floor, according to one first responder, that those trying to get to the victims to help them had a hard time doing so without slipping and falling.

But a lot took place before that morning that should have kept Hasan from even being in Texas, or in the military at all. During his time at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, before he was transferred to Ft. Hood, Major Hasan was exceedingly vocal in his opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He openly opposed those wars based on his religious views. But nothing was done.

Two years before the Ft. Hood attack, Major Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation at Walter Reed titled “Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam.” But nothing was done. Some of his fellow officers complained about him to their superiors. But nothing was done.

The PowerPoint contained statements from Hasan such as, “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.” It contained violent excerpts from the Koran. And Hasan’s PowerPoint concluded with a quote from Osama bin Laden: “We love death more than you love life.”

The following year, a group of fellow Army physicians met to ask themselves if they thought Hasan might be “psychotic.” “Everybody felt that if you were deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you would not want Nidal Hasan in your foxhole,” said one. But nothing was done . . . except to transfer Hasan to Ft. Hood.

And just as Hasan didn’t keep quiet at Walter Reed, neither did he hold his tongue at Ft. Hood. Hasan’s record at Ft. Hood includes telling his medical supervisor there that “she was an infidel who would be ‘ripped to shreds’ and ‘burn in hell’ because she was not Muslim.” But nothing was done. Nidal Hasan made personal business cards; they mentioned no affiliation with the United States military but underneath his name on the cards, listed his profession as “SOA,” or “Soldier of Allah.” But nothing was done. And, finally, Hasan was in frequent e-mail contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical Muslim cleric who, even then, had been implicated in at least two other terrorist plots in America and had since fled to Yemen. But nothing was done. Indeed, taking all of this into account, it is difficult to imagine just what more Nidal Hasan could have done to broadcast his lethal views and intentions. According to an L.A. Times report, documents indicate that “months before the Ft. Hood shooting . . . [Hasan’s] military supervisors praised his unique interest in Islam’s impact on soldiers . . . repeatedly recommending him for promotion.”

 

Obama has failed in the Middle East and the fight against Islamist extremism

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Statement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Obama has failed in the Middle East and the fight against Islamist extremism

Congress needs to be focused on real solutions to the Islamist threat

 

 PHOENIX (May 21, 2013) – Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim and author of “A Battle for the Soul of Islam: An American Muslim Patriot’s Fight to Save His Faith” released the following statement on behalf of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) regarding the Obama Administration’s failures in Syria, Benghazi and Boston:

“Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey visited the White House on May 16 to discuss the ever growing genocide that is taking place in Syria.  Erdogan reportedly pressed for greater U.S. intervention in Syria. He presented further evidence of Syrian use of chemical weapons against the rebels and its own people in an effort to push for action from President Obama on his own self-imposed red line.

Erdogan’s visit comes in the middle of a heated political debate about the handling of the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya and following congressional hearings on the administration’s failures in both Benghazi and the Boston Marathon attack.

The White House is under increasing pressure for its failures in the Middle East and its counterterrorism efforts. The President has done little to instill confidence that our Commander-in-Chief has a firm grasp on the threat that we face.

In a May 13 press conference with British Prime Minister Cameron, he seemed annoyed that he had to address the issue of Benghazi at all, stating that ‘there’s no “there” there’.  The reality is that the President isn’t even being asked the most important questions.

While Congress is correct to confront the President’s handling of these attacks, they have yet to truly get to the heart of the President’s failures, which lie in his inability to address the underlying ideology behind them. While we cannot ignore the details of a possible cover up in Benghazi, we also cannot afford to miss the forest for the trees… The real check on this President over Benghazi and Boston should be a confrontation over the administration’s inability to understand and provide a coherent strategy against the ideology which ties all of these incidents together. The American people deserve real answers for what happened, but more importantly, real solutions to the problems.

The global ideology of political Islam is the unifying thread between Boston and Benghazi. This same ideology is the impetus behind why countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are motivated to support the Islamist elements of the opposition in the Syrian Civil War. Without a strategy, Islamists will continue to rise from the dust of the “Arab Awakening” as this administration outsources American interests to our enemies across the Middle East. The President’s failure to grasp the import which the Islamist ideology is having in fueling our enemies and threatening us at home will have a deleterious impact on the region and our security for generations to come.

Syria could have been, and may still be, a very real opportunity to develop a secular free society in the heart of the Middle East rather than a breeding ground for Islamist hegemony in the region. The President himself said that ‘the humanitarian crisis and the slaughter that’s taking place [in Syria] by itself is sufficient to prompt strong international action.’

Mr. President, strong international action needs leadership. It needs determination from the White House to stand on the principles that created our free society and promote a foreign policy that embraces freedom around the world instead of just half-heartedly reacting to flashpoints of militancy. We need a leader that will be steadfast in the development of a doctrine based in liberty against our ideological enemies.

Congress and the White House need to shift their focus to solutions.  The fight over talking points, while important, does nothing to solve the problem of Islamist extremism which killed these brave men.

If we continue to cede the ideological battle to our enemy, they will continue to bring terror to our shores.”

About the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state. For more information on AIFD, please visit our website at http://www.aifdemocracy.org/.

MEDIA CONTACTS:         Gregg Edgar

Gordon C. James Public Relations

gedgar@gcjpr.com

602-690-7977

####

Again, America’s Values Betrayed in Mideast Policy

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Banner in Cairo, Egypt June 2013

“Above all, America must remain a beacon to all who seek freedom during this period of historic change…

In defense of freedom, we will remain the anchor of strong alliances from the Americas to Africa; from Europe to Asia.  In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy.  The process will be messy, and we cannot presume to dictate the course of change in countries like Egypt; but we can – and will – insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people.”

–          President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, February 12, 2013

President Obama’s many statements about the need to protect and preserve freedom, universal human rights, and individual liberty would be welcome expressions of American values – if they bore any weight.

This month, the Obama administration continued its legacy of bolstering those diametrically opposed to individual liberty and human rights by inviting Saudi Arabia’s Abdallah bin Bayyah to the White House.

To those unaware of his insidious views, Sheikh Abdallah bin Bayyah may appear “moderate.” He has signed onto the famed Amman Message, which claims to promote a moderate interpretation of Islam, focused on the promotion of interfaith dialogue and human rights. He is a mentor to several high-profile figures, including Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, who is known internationally as a soft-spoken, “modern” guide for young Muslims. (Hamza Yusuf calls Abdallah bin Bayyah his “teacher in Saudi Arabia.”) One can also find him heavily quoted and cited at the website of Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, which has also published this essay by Abdallah bin Bayyah in praise of Yusuf Qaradawi, as well as this essay in defense of Qaradawi, bin Bayyah’s close associate.

A hallmark of modern Islamism is the employment of doublespeak – the Amman Message, for example – speaks highly of interfaith efforts and global harmony – but several of its signatories, including bin Bayyah himself, call for criminalization of statements considered offensive to Islam and Muslims:

“We ask everyone to ponder the ramifications of provoking the feelings of over one billion people by a small party of people who desires not to seek peace nor fraternity between members of humanity.  This poses a threat to world peace with no tangible benefit realized.  Is it not necessary in today’s world for the United Nations to issue a resolution criminalizing the impingement of religious symbols?  We request all religious and political authorities, as well as people of reason to join us in putting a stop to this futility that benefits no one….

To the world’s Muslims: Expressing outrage in the face of the maligning of God or the Prophet Muhammad is a moral right, as faith cannot be devoid of feelings and immunity from provocation…”

(Abdallah bin Bayyah, “Declaration Regarding the Offensive Video to Muslims”)

Bin Bayyah’s cohorts are similarly well-versed in doublespeak. Hamza Yusuf’s message, for example, may initially sound moderate – he advises men to have mercy on women, to defend and protect them – but one must listen more closely. In his lectures, he says that Muslims are in a state of ma’siyah, or “disobedience of Allah” (sin). He describes the following as signs that Muslims are in a state of sin: they have “left jihad,” and Muslim women “dishonor themselves” by taking off the hijab. He also says that non-Muslim society is a “sick” “society of wolves” and that Muslim women “have a lot more innocence than their [non-Muslim] women,”  even if they do not wear the hijab. So, while he may rightfully object to men’s fixation on women’s dress, he does so whilst inciting disrespect of women considered to be outside of Islam.

Abdallah bin Bayyah’s resume contains many troubling highlights. A native of Mauritania, bin Bayyah served as the head of Sharia Affairs as well as Judge at the High Court of the Islamic republic, which has yet to fully abolish slavery. The Mauritanian government, of which bin Bayyah was a part, continues to deny the existence of slavery in the country. While Muslim anti-slavery activists like Nasser Weddady have sought asylum in the United States only to be maligned by the Islamist establishment in the United States, Abdallah bin Bayyah has been championed by groups like the Islamic Society of North America, who sent its president, Mohamed Magid, to meet with bin Bayyah in Mauritina under the guise of promoting minority rights in the Muslim world.

In further unsettling news, a 2004 fatwa (religious edict) released by the International Union for Muslim Scholars (where bin Bayyah serves as vice president of the board), called on all “able-bodied Muslims” to fight U.S. and allied forces in Iraq; stating that to “aid the occupier is impermissible.” This fatwa encouraged Muslims both in and outside of Iraq to fight U.S. efforts to combat insurgents in the region.

As Muslim-majority societies begin to rise against political Islam (as can be seen in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and most recently in Egypt, which experienced the largest protests in world history as its population surged against the Muslim Brotherhood on June 30), President Obama’s inability – or is it disinterest? – in standing with “citizens who demand their universal rights” – becomes all the more apparent.

Abdallah bin Bayyah was purportedly invited to the White House “to discuss poverty, global health efforts and Bin Bayyah’s own efforts to speak out against Al Qaeda.” Surely there are individuals concerned with poverty, global health and counter-extremism efforts the Obama administration could consult with who aren’t rabid Islamists? As Dr. Jasser explained on Fox and Friends this Sunday, June 30, Abdallah bin Bayyah may publicly speak against Al-Qaeda, but he is not against the promotion of the Islamic state, of blasphemy laws, gender apartheid, or even Hamas.

If the Obama administration were truly interested in advancing what President Obama refers to as the universal values of freedom, self-determination and individual opportunity, he and his administration would eagerly seek out voices of reform and modernity within the Muslim community, not the voices of those who are actively promoting the global Islamist agenda. We call on President Obama to recognize that his administration’s credibility isn’t the only thing on the line – indeed, should our government continue in its failure to stand with anti-Islamist Muslims and our allies, the horrors of Boston and Benghazi are but a mere preview of what the Islamists have in store for all of us who refuse to bend to their will.

America must protect religious freedom abroad

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By M. Zuhdi Jasser, Published January 20, 2013, | FoxNews.com

In the mid-1960s my family fled the oppressive Baath regime of Syria for liberty’s shores in the United States.  Raised in Wisconsin as an American Muslim, I learned that my faith was best served by a nation founded in liberty with a Constitution that guaranteed genuine religious freedom.

As I watched the Arab Awakening unfold in 2011 and 2012, I had high hopes that my co-religionists might finally be lifting the yoke of their oppressive secular dictators for the freedom that I have enjoyed here in the United States.  But now as 2013 opens, we are witnessing the frightening ascension of an even greater oppressive force than the dictators who had a stranglehold on the region for almost five decades — Islamism (political Islam).

Islamism combines the autocracy of the secular Arabist dictators with  unrestrained religious supremacy. The primary battle front, where Islamists suffocate their enemies, is on religious liberty. The plight begins in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the royal family, in a bid to maintain power, essentially gave control of religious life to the radical Wahhabi elements within the country.  The petro dollars of the Kingdom have spread this lethal Islamist ideology around the world.  They are joined by the Qatari through arms like the Al Jazeera Media Group, which, after decades of failure, just recently acquired access to more than 40 million American homes through the purchase of Al Gore’s Current TV.

The recipe is simple: Islamists are government theocrats who promote a particular version of an Islamic doctrine  in order to impose their fascist interpretation upon all citizens. They use elections and so-called “democracy” in order to empower a single version of Shariah – their interpretation of Islam’s legal framework for the “Islamic state.” Islamists exploit their own perceived divine mandate to justify a litany of draconian laws upon their people.  The most obvious permutation of those laws leaves no room for religious tolerance let alone religious liberty.

Make no mistake, the victims of Islamist control are both religious minorities and those with dissident beliefs, whether Muslim or non-Muslim who are against the theocrats.

Throughout the region we are seeing a significant increase of oppression of religious freedoms.  In Pakistan this week, the Ambassador to the United States has been indicted by the Pakistani Supreme Court under blasphemy laws for simply saying that the country needs to rework its blasphemy law.

In Iran, we continue to see case after case of devout Christians, Baha’i, and Islamic apostates who face death penalties for expressing their religious beliefs. It is not a coincidence that this plight coincides with a government that at the same time is pounding its collective Islamist chest in seeking nuclear arms and feeding the genocide against an entire dissident citizenry in Syria.

On Monday, a 32-year-old Christian pastor, former Muslim, and American citizen, Saeed Abedini will stand trial for supposedly “compromising national security.”  His real crime to the Iranian theocrats is his own human expression of religious freedom through the development of an underground network of home churches. He will face the infamous Islamist Judge Abbas Pir-Abassi, known for sending innocent dissident believers to Iran’s dungeons.

In Egypt, with the ink hardly dry on the new Egyptian Islamist Constitution, the Muslim Brotherhood has wasted no time in bringing their Islamist justice to the people of Egypt. Nadia Mohammed Ali was sentenced this week to prison along with her children and the clerks who documented their Christian identity cards. The plight of Christians signals the future of religious freedom for all in Egypt. Ali and her children are now imprisoned simply for their chosen faith of Christianity.

The silence from devout Muslims around the world must end. It is time to rise up as free-thinking Muslims against governments and groups like the Muslim Brotherhood which exploit the faith of Islam for their own supremacist mission. The essential fuel of Islamist political parties and systems is the idea of the “Islamic state.” Nadia and her family are canaries in the coal mine of the Islamic state. The silence from the White House also must end. We must stand with Nadia as human beings. An Obama Doctrine is nowhere to be found and at this point the administration is unlikely to ever lay out a coherent foreign policy strategy with regards to religious liberty in the Middle East. Real global leadership for human rights needs a Liberty Doctrine. Free-thinking Muslims, however, are most directly positioned to repair this rupture within our collective soul.

The stifling of religious freedom is a natural evolution of an Islamist system fueled by an obsession upon one faith and its divine mandate. As a Muslim, I know the Islamist state will never evolve into genuine democracy. I reject the entire notion of the Islamic state and I see no other way to defeat Islamism but through the separation of mosque and state. Mollifying Islamism into some kind of tolerant form is a fool’s endeavor with example after example in Islamic history of failure. That is why my family came to the U.S.

In the U.S., I learned that whether I am in the minority or the majority, the only way to realize religious freedom is to live in a society where its governmental laws are based in reason and government stays out of the business of determining which religious legalisms are righteous. There are sadly hundreds to thousands more cases like these of courageous religious minorities and also dissident Sunni and Shiite Muslims from within the majority in countries like Egypt and Iran who are at the tip of the spear. They are often alone cutting through the battle raging inside the soul of Islam and Muslim communities across the world.

As leaders of the free world, our nation can choose to abandon these canaries in the Islamist coal mine or we can lift up their plights as beacons of freedom that can ultimately defeat Islamism.  It is time to call out the governmental oppressors of innocents like Nadia Mohammed Ali in Egypt or Saeed Abedini in Iran for what they are—ruthless fascist theocrats (Islamists) who use religion as a tool to destroy the spirit of their citizenry.

If the United States stands for anything we need to vigorously and consistently stand for the protection of religious freedom abroad that is not only enshrined in our own founding documents, but in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which we are supposed to protect.

M. Zuhdi Jasser is the author of the recently released book, “A Battle for the Soul of Islam” and is President and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz. He is also a Commissioner on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (the opinions here are his own).

8/6/13 Taliban leader says still willing to start peace negotiations

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Source: Fox News

KABUL, Afghanistan –  The Taliban’s reclusive leader said Tuesday that his group was willing to start peace negotiations, even as he urged more attacks — including insider shootings by government security forces — on foreign troops.

In a wide-ranging emailed message, Mullah Mohammad Omar blamed America and the Afghan government for the derailment of talks two months ago.

He also called Afghans to boycott next year’s presidential elections, describing them as being manipulated by the United States.

In a message issued ahead of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the one-eyed chief of the Afghan insurgency urged the army and police turn their guns on foreign forces, government officials and the Afghan troops who are cooperating with the U.S.-led coalition forces.

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