Has America evolved to the point where the government no longer needs to know your race? It's an interesting and timely question, given our nation's colorful and, at times, painful history when it comes to matters of race, as well as the importance placed on race in the 2010 Census.

Certainly, we have come a long way since the days of slavery and Jim Crow laws. The election of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president is a sign that America is becoming more color blind. Yet we still have a long way to go before we are able to do away with racial barriers, and it doesn't help when, instead of dispensing with race-identifying questions, the U.S. Census Bureau is requiring citizens to take a colored view of themselves.

The Census Bureau's phrasing of certain race categories on the 2010 Census is also causing offense. For example, despite the negative connotations arising from use of the word "Negro," a word historically associated with slavery and segregation, the Bureau uses the terms "black," "African-American" and "Negro" interchangeably. As 25-year-old Taryn Anthony pointed out in a recent Grio news story, "I find the word 'Negro' to be quite offensive when it comes to the census and separating and differentiating among races because of the history of the use of the word. I've yet to hear someone use it in a respectable manner, so placing it on a census seems as yet another way to set back African-Americans." Indeed, last year, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid's use of the word "Negro" when discussing President Obama's dialect caused quite a stir because of its racial undertones. Nevertheless, the Census Bureau justifies its inclusion of the word on the questionnaire on the pretext that some older African-Americans only identify themselves as Negroes.

It's not just African-Americans who are concerned. Just this week, I received an e-mail from Marc, an American citizen who is outraged that in this day and age, he is being asked by his government to classify himself as belonging to a particular race. As Marc writes:

There's no reason to use race to distinguish people. Most people are mixed race. How, for example, would President Obama answer the [Census Bureau's race] question? Is he black or white? What about Tiger Woods? Is he black or [A]sian? And what race are Tiger's kids?
The time has come to lose racial identity to end racism and start seeing ourselves as fellow humans and not to assume that you can determine anything from the color of someone's skin other than the color of their skin. I don't want to give the government information so that they can make decisions based on race.

Marc hits on two important questions: (1) How does the government define race? and (2) What does the government plan to do with this race information? Thus far, the Census Bureau's responses to these questions have been inadequate.

For example, the Census Bureau claims that the question of a person's race has been asked since the very first census in 1790. However, like many of its later counterparts, the 1790 census did not ask for the race of any specific individual. Instead, it asked for the total number of free whites and slaves within the household. In 1790, persons were also counted differently for the purpose of determining representation based on their skin color (blacks were counted as three-fifths of a person). Thankfully, that changed with the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As for how the government defines race, it considers race to be "a self-identification data item in which respondents choose the race or races with which they most closely identify." In other words, according to the government, you are the race you choose to belong to. Such a subjective determination surely renders the race question useless until you get to what may be the Bureau's primary reason for keeping it in the questionnaire: "State governments use the data to determine congressional, state and local voting districts."

As if gerrymandering was not already bad enough, will 2010 Census data be used to carve out future congressional districts? Will African-American communities be matched with sitting African-American congressmen? Will nearby Hispanic neighborhoods not currently in the same district be lumped together in hopes of increasing Hispanic representation in Congress? If the information is being used toward drawing district boundaries, then obviously some race-related parameter or objective must be in play when drawing those district lines.

Lastly, other concerns have been raised about how the information collected by the government could be used. Specifically, concerns that Census answers might be used for racial profiling should not be lightly dismissed. Current law prohibits the release of Census Bureau data on individuals. However, that could easily change.

We have already witnessed a drastic erosion in protections for personal and private information as foreign and domestic security threats have grown over the past decade. Thus, what is to say that five years from now, the government won't present an equally compelling (in their eyes) argument for obtaining an individual's answers to the Census? Furthermore, even if other agencies of the government never gain access to an individual's specific answers, the data released by the Census Bureau can easily be used for community-based racial profiling, resulting in both programs and law enforcement efforts being targeted at certain racial populations. For those who suggest that this could not happen in America, one has only to study the history books. In 1943, the Census Bureau released the names and other information on Japanese-Americans to the War Department, which helped the government round up these Americans citizens and place them in internment camps. Many were imprisoned for the duration of World War II.

For a nation trying to step away from any lasting remnants of racism, asking people to classify themselves in terms of race and then using those answers to define boundaries for representation is a very strange way to go about reaching that goal. In fact, at a time when the nation is split along so many different lines--from politics to race to economics, should the government really continue to sow seeds of discord and segregation? As Martin Luther King Jr. urged more than 40 years ago, isn't it time to stop judging us by the color of our skin?

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His latest book The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks) is now available.

.

For years, liberals have imposed their revisionist history on our nation's public school students, expunging important facts and historic figures while loading the textbooks with liberal propaganda, distortions and cliches. It's easy to get a quick lesson in the virulent leftwing bias by checking the index and noting how textbooks treat President Ronald Reagan and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

When parents object to leftwing inclusions and omissions, claiming they should have something to say about what their own children are being taught and how their taxpayers' money is spent, they are usually vilified as "book burners" and belittled as uneducated primitives who should allow the "experts" to decide. The self-identified "experts" are alumni of liberal teachers colleges and/or members of a leftwing teachers union.

In most states, the liberal education establishment enjoys total control over the state's board of education, department of education, and curriculum committees. Texas is different; the Texas State Board of Education is elected, and the people (even including parents!) have a voice.

Texas is uniquely important in textbook content because the state of Texas is the largest single purchaser of textbooks. Publishers can hardly afford to print different versions for other states, so Texas curriculum standards have nationwide influence.

The review of social studies curriculum (covering U.S. Government, American History, World History and Economics) comes up every ten years, and 2010 is one of those years. The unelected education "experts" proposed their history revisions such as eliminating Independence Day, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Edison, Daniel Boone and Neil Armstrong, and replacing Christmas with Diwali.

After a public outcry, the SBOE responded with common-sense improvements. Thomas Edison, the world's greatest inventor, will be again included in the narrative of American History.

Schoolchildren will no longer be misled into believing that capitalism and the free market are dirty words and that America has an unjust economic system. Instead, they will learn how the free-enterprise system gave our nation and the world so much that is good for so many people.

Liberals don't like the concept of American Exceptionalism. The liberals want to teach what's wrong with America (masquerading under the code word "social justice") instead of what's right and successful. The SBOE voted to include describing how American Exceptionalism is based on values that are unique and different from those of other nations.

The SBOE specified that teaching about the Bill of Rights should include a reference to the right to keep and bear arms. Some school curricula pretend the Second Amendment doesn't exist.

Texas curriculum standards will henceforth accurately describe the U.S. government as a "constitutional republic" rather than as a democracy. The secularists tried to remove reference to the religious basis for the founding of America, but that was voted down.

The Texas Board rejected the anti-Christian crowd's proposal to eliminate the use of B.C. and A.D. for historic dates, as in Before Christ and Anno Domini, and replace them with B.C.E., as in Before the Common Era, and C.E.

The deceptive claim that the United States was founded on a "separation of church and state" gets the ax, and rightfully so. In fact, most of the original thirteen colonies were founded as Christian communities with much overlap between church and state.

History textbooks that deal with Joseph McCarthy will now be required to explain "how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of Communist infiltration in U.S. government." The Venona papers are authentic transcripts of some 3,000 messages between the Soviet Union and its secret agents in the United States.

Discussions of economics will not be limited to the theories of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Adam Smith. Textbooks must also include Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market theory.

History textbooks will now be required to cover the "unintended consequences" of Great Society legislation, affirmative action, and Title IX legislation. Textbooks should also include "the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s."

Texas textbooks will now have to mention "the importance of personal responsibility for life choices" instead of blaming society for everything and expecting government to provide remedies for all social ills.

It's no secret that the people who control public schools are at war with our nation's history, culture and achievements. Since taxpayers foot the bill, it is long overdue for a state board of education to correct many textbooks myths and lies about our magnificent national heritage and achievements.

After a public comment period, a final vote on the Texas standards is expected in May.

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Its Philadelphia chapter is holding a press conference on March 17 at which it plans "to announce the launch of a nationwide campaign to challenge anti-Islam bias in a series of children's books that the Washington-based Muslim civil rights group says promote 'hostility toward Islam and suspicion of Muslims'."

The reference is to a ten-volume series for middle-schools and high schools titled the "World of Islam" produced by the Foreign Policy Research Institute. and published by Mason Crest Publishers. (For the record, in 1986-93, I served as director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute; I had no role in the "World of Islam" series.)

In advance of the press conference, it may be helpful to review an incriminating e-mail exchange among the CAIR staff about the series. It took place on December 9, 2009, when Moein M. Khawaja, "civil rights director" for CAIR's Philadelphia office, sent a memo to the CAIR staff. Khawaja reported that he had gone through some of the Mason Crest volumes and flagged materials he disapproved of (such as, "The burqa is a visible symbol of European Muslims resistance to assimilation in society").

Relying on an informant at Mason Crest, Khawaja then wrote:

I've been given the entire order list for this series (orders that came in up until yesterday). This list shows which school districts and libraries have purchased the individual books or entire series - It is a nationwide campaign. This is valuable information because we can contact each of them and explain that they really got propaganda. I'm not sure what legal issues there are here - but there has to be some sort of thing about masked propaganda in schools and libraries?

Karen Dabdoub of CAIR's Cincinnati chapter replied later that day that she shared Khawaja's concerns.

Many of these authors have names that at the very least sound Jewish and none that sound like Muslim names. While I know we can't judge a book by its cover it still gives me reason to doubt the balance of the information in these books. I also noticed another book [published by Mason Crest - DP] on Islamic Fundamentalism and the glowing review they quote is from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Still on December 9, Babak Darvish of CAIR's Columbus office replied:

Good call Sr. Karen, the names do sound like that...one of them sounds almost Serbian/Romanian. It sounds like everybody that has a beef with Islam is producing books to brainwash the youth with for the next generation. This is really hateful and would be like Neo-Nazis writing books to teach about Judaism in Public schools.

Presumably the "almost Serbian/Romanian" name is that of the late Michael Radu, my onetime co-author and author of the recently published book, Europe's Ghost: Tolerance, Jihadism, and the Crisis of the West (Encounter).

Comments: (1) This episode raises unsettling questions: What is CAIR doing with an "informant" inside Mason Crest Publishers? How many other publishing houses has it penetrated? And which other cultural institutions have staff more loyal to CAIR than to their employers?

(2) Remarks about authors' names "that at the very least sound Jewish" and one that "sound almost Serbian/Romanian" give a sense of how CAIR staff think and write when they think they are not being watched, with biased and even racist attitudes toward Jews and Balkan peoples very much at odds with their usual public face. (That public face too sometimes lapses, as I documented at "Look Now Who's Profiling - CAIR's Staff Is.")

(3) Even more alarming is the conclusion from the authors' names that the Mason Crest series "is really hateful" and a comparison of it to "Neo-Nazis writing books to teach about Judaism in Public schools." Implicit to this reasoning is the false and demeaning assumption that Jews and Balkan peoples may not write about Islam.

(4) I challenge Mason Crest Publishers to investigate which employee smuggled its proprietary information to CAIR and then inform the public of his or her identity.

(5) And I challenge CAIR to disown and disavow its staff's anti-Semitic and racist statements.

--------------------------------

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University

Consider the experiences of Shiria Khatun, a secular Muslim who serves as a Labour Party councilor in Tower Hamlets, a borough of London and an Islamist stronghold. Police are investigating claims of harassment by locals objecting to her style of dress. She explains:

They're really disgusting. They would talk about my Western clothes, my tight jeans, and my body parts.

One man said - and it sounds much nastier in [the Bangladeshi dialect] Sylheti - "I know where you live and I'm going to come and show you and your kids." I just hung up.

I really thought it was a pervert, but then it started to get more intense. My parents died when I was young and the callers must know that because they said they would dig up their graves and bury me inside. I think they're sick.

Moroccan-born Fatima Ghailan, who works for the government of Cunit, Spain, has had her own run-ins with hijab bullies. Local imam Mohamed Benbrahim and Islamic Association head Abderraman el-Osri now face criminal charges of harassing, slandering, and threatening Ghailan, whose duties as a "cultural mediator" include encouraging "cloistered" Muslim females to participate in the life of the town. As the Washington Post reports, her influence over the community "was something the traditionalists could not accept - particularly because it involved a woman who refused to cover her hair." The Telegraph elaborates:

In a statement to the court in the nearby town of Vendrells, Mrs. Ghailan, 31, said Benbrahim had harassed her and campaigned to have her removed from her job in the town hall's cultural department purely because she had a job, dressed in a Western style, drove a car, and associated with non-Muslims.

Finally, self-appointed "morality police" have been patrolling the Muslim-heavy Grønland district of Oslo. According to Aftenposten, women passing through in Western attire can consider themselves lucky if they suffer only "aggressive looks of rebuke, scorn, and contempt." The unlucky ones are abused by men who "touch their breasts and pinch their bottom, claiming that it's the girls' own fault for not covering themselves." The vigilantes also have taken to tormenting gays and anybody caught snacking on the streets during Ramadan.

Grønland illuminates a vital truth: Islamists may start out as hijab bullies, seeking to enforce dress codes among Muslims. But they do not stop with dress codes - or with Muslims.

Late last week, the Texas Board of Education, meeting in Austin, the state capitol, made some preliminary decisions about what the next generation of students will learn about subjects like history, economics, and sociology, when they take courses in those subjects in any of the Lone Star State's public schools. The board decided, for example, to make a fairly significant change in the existing official description of what a successful Texas student should know about the influence of 17th- and 18th-century ideas after completing a required course in world history in a Texas public school.

The existing description stated that a student who completed that course would be able to "explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present." The newly amended description states that a student completing the world-history course should be able to "explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone."

It may be difficult to understand at first why the members of the Texas Board of Education consider Aquinas, Calvin, and Blackstone more worthy of study than Thomas Jefferson, until one recalls that, as the New York Times's James McKinley succinctly put it, "Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term 'separation between church and state.'"

What is the significance of the board's vote in favor of this change and others like it? Why are votes about teaching standards in Texas public schools making national news, anyway? Why should this be of concern to anybody outside of Texas? Should it be of concern to anybody outside Texas?

Well, yes. Anyone at the mercy of the public school system in any state, as well as anyone who wants to understand how the public schools work and why, should find these developments of interest. You see, Texas's importance is directly connected with its size - its population. It's the 2nd most populous state, right after California. It has roughly 25 million residents. Combine that with California's 37 million and you get the following, somewhat unsettling statistic: one in every five Americans lives in either California or Texas; gather a hundred Americans into a big room and you'll find that twenty of them live in either California or Texas. Both states set statewide standards for every course offered in their public school systems, then provide copies of these standards to textbook publishers. Who can really blame the publishers if they react by, first, producing textbooks that meet the standards in Texas and California and, then, providing those same textbooks to everybody else in the country, too, whether they like it or not? Chalk it up to the unintended consequences - or were they unintended? - of turning schooling into a public utility instead of leaving it in the hands of the market, which is to say, in the hands of individuals.

So, then, exactly what is wrong with having textbooks that consider Thomas Jefferson an unimportant figure in a discussion of the impact of 17th- and 18th-century ideas on later generations? Well, to put it baldly, the history textbook he or she encounters in high school and/or college will very likely be the only thing the average product of our public education system ever reads on the subject of history - if he or she actually reads it. It does seem to be the case that these textbooks constitute 100 percent of the information that most high-school and college graduates in this country will ever encounter on the subject of American history. And is it not the case that what Americans know and understand about the history of the society in which they live will determine the degree of their willingness to honor and preserve that society's ideals and traditions? More than that: it will determine what they regard as the ideals and traditions of their society. It will determine nothing less than the kind of society they will seek to strengthen and perpetuate.

Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser note in a recent report in The Journal of American History that "most teachers of United States history survey courses assign a textbook as core reading, and many assign only a textbook. ... American history textbooks shape how American college students encounter their nation's history and their society's cultural heritage."[1] Things have been this way for a long time - and not only for college students. According to Frances FitzGerald,

[i]n the nineteenth century, a heavy reliance on textbooks was the distinguishing mark of American education; it was called "the American system" by Europeans. The texts were substitutes for well-trained teachers; in some parts of the country, they constituted the whole of a school's library and the only books a child would ever read on the subject of, say, American history.[2]

More than a hundred years later, the story is little changed. As of 2003, according to Diane Ravitch,

[t]extbooks are very important in American schools, especially in history. In most history classes, they are the curriculum. Many teachers are dependent on their textbook because they have not studied history. Today, most teachers of history in grades 7-12 have neither a major nor a minor in history. Instead they have a degree in social studies education, some other branch of pedagogy, a social science, or a completely unrelated field.[3]

Early in 2005, the late Sam Wineburg, a Stanford University education professor, reported in the Los Angeles Times that "[n]early a third of the students who apply to Stanford's master's in teaching program to become history teachers have never taken a single college course in history." Nor is this at all out of the ordinary, for, again in Wineburg's words, "[a]mong high school history teachers across the country, only 18% have majored (or even minored) in the subject they now teach."[4]

For most students of history in public secondary schools in this country, then, the implications seem straightforward: "what they are taught will be the material in the textbook."[5] This is why special interest groups of all sorts have been struggling over the past hundred years or so to get a chance to influence what appears in that textbook.

For it was just a little over a hundred years ago that public secondary schools first became an important force in American education. Before the 1890s, according to Frances FitzGerald, "American history was not very widely taught. The public grade schools had very little history of any kind in their curricula, and the private academies that prepared students for colleges and universities concentrated on classical studies and European history." But as the 1890s dawned, the "public high schools" for the first time actually "had more students than the private academies."[6] And the question of what was written in the history textbooks used by those public high schools therefore began to interest a great many people who had previously invested little or no thought in such matters.

By 1897, the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' organization for soldiers who had fought in the Union Army during the US Civil War, had formed a "school history committee" and had begun issuing calls "for a unified schoolbook that would bind [all sections of the country] together." At around the same time, the history committee of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) made a similar demand. By the 1920s, such groups had begun filing lawsuits or enlisting sympathetic public officials to go after textbooks in court. Thus, in 1927, Chicago Mayor William "Big Bill" Thompson convened "a dismissal hearing for Superintendent William McAndrew, whom Thompson accused of imposing 'treasonous' and 'un-American' texts on the schools." Thompson made these history textbooks - including especially The Rise of American Civilization by Charles and Mary Beard - the centerpiece of his public case against McAndrew. Nor was Chicago the only venue in which protests against the Beards' text were mounted during the '20s. They raged nationwide, "from Boston and Baltimore to Seattle and San Francisco."[7]

What the protesters found so objectionable about the Beards' text was its unduly "pro-English" character. The movement against this book "drew most of its support from Irish and German immigrants," neither of whom would have been too keen on any book that portrayed the English too favorably.[8]

The Beards wrote, for example, that the "high doctrines" of the Founding Fathers

were essentially English, being derived ... from the writings of John Locke, the philosopher who supplied the rhetorical defense mechanism for the Whig revolution of 1688 which ended in the expulsion of James II. In Locke's hands, the catechism of politics was short indeed: the aim of government is to protect property and when any government invades the privileges of property, the people have a right to alter or abolish the government and establish a new one. The idea was almost a century old when Jefferson artfully applied it in a modified form to the exigencies of the American Revolution.[9]

The Veterans of Foreign Wars was particularly indignant about this passage. "The inspired men," they complained, "who startled the world with their new conception of human rights are charged with having plagiarized it all from England."[10]

The protests and official inquiries into the unduly pro-British textbooks of the 1920s did have impact here and there. The historian Andrew C. McLaughlin, for example, was forced to change a sentence in his account of the battle of Bunker Hill. His original, unduly pro-British sentence had read: "Three times the British returned courageously to the attack." His new sentence read: "Three times the cowardly British returned to the attack."[11] But by and large, the efforts of the reformers were not repaid with significant success.

The reformers kept trying, however, and eventually they began to enjoy significant success. In 1962, for example, the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) petitioned the Detroit Board of Education, asking that a "history text, published by Laidlaw Brothers, [which] depicted slavery in a favorable light" be withdrawn "from the city school system."[12] The NAACP had been protesting textbooks for thirty years at this point, ever since 1932, the year in which it established its first textbook committee and "called on local branches to examine their history, literature, and civics textbooks - and to protest the most offensive texts."[13] But though "[t]he N.A.A.C.P. and other civil-rights organizations had denounced racial prejudice in the textbooks a number of times in prior years," they had had "no real effect."[14]

In 1962, however, the NAACP finally prevailed. Frances FitzGerald writes that

[T]he Detroit board withdrew the text, and subsequently began to examine for racial bias all the history texts used in the school system. The Newark Textbook Council soon followed suit. The movement then spread to other big-city school systems and was taken up by organizations representing other racial and ethnic minority groups - Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, American Indians, Asian-Americans, Armenian-Americans, and so on - all of whom claimed, with justice, to have been ignored or abused by the textbooks.

Then the new "movement," as FitzGerald styles it, mushroomed.

Within a few years, a dozen organizations from the B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League to a new Council on Interracial Books, were studying texts for racial, ethnic, and religious bias and making recommendations for a new generation of texts. What began as a series of discrete protests against individual books became a general proposition: all texts had treated the United States as a white, middle-class society when it was in fact multiracial and multicultural.

The Detroit NAACP's modest protest of 1962 had made what seemed like massive changes in the nation's history textbooks, and it had wasted little time in doing so - "by the late sixties," FitzGerald writes, the "general proposition" that "all texts" had shortchanged minorities had "come to be a truism for the educational establishment."[15]

And so was born the world we see around us today, a world in which political pressure wielded by aggrieved interest groups, whether African-American or Hispanic or Republican, imposes textbooks designed to promote particular interest-group fantasies on everyone else in the geographical area.

$15 $12

What is needed here, of course, is some revisionist history. The basic reason libertarianism needs revisionist history is that the state pays "court historians" to prepare an officially sanctioned version of the public record that is designed to promote the idea that the state holds our society together and protects it, and that our society would be utterly lost were it not for the noble efforts of the state. Anyone who seeks to become educated, anyone who seeks to promote an alternative to the state, needs to know the truth - needs a sustained look at the country's history without the tacit assumption of the state's benevolence and central importance. But it isn't only the state itself that promotes historical misinformation and historical ignorance. In a democratic state, it is also members of aggrieved minorities who use the political process to force their particular delusions onto everyone else's children.

If you liked my brief discussion of the history of attempts to influence textbooks in public schools, you might like to know that it was adapted from chapter 6 of my book Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction to Revisionism. You can get a copy of it right here on this website, either as a free PDF download or as a paperback book. There's also a Kindle edition available at Amazon.com.

Jeff Riggenbach is a journalist, author, editor, broadcaster, and educator. A member of the Organization of American Historians, he has written for such newspapers as The New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle; such magazines as Reason, Inquiry, and Liberty; and such websites as LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com, and RationalReview.com. Drawing on vocal skills he honed in classical and all-news radio in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston, Riggenbach has also narrated the audiobook versions of numerous libertarian works, many of them available in Mises Media. Send him mail. See Jeff Riggenbach's article archives.

This article is transcribed from the Libertarian Tradition podcast episode "Standards and Textbooks."

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Notes

[1] Gary J. Kornblith and Carol Lasser, "'The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth': Writing, Producing, and Using College-Level American History Textbooks." Journal of American History, vol. 91, no. 4, March 2005, p. 1380.

[2] Frances FitzGerald, America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1980 [1979]), p. 19.

[3] Diane Ravitch, The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 140.

[4] Sam Wineburg, "Shouldn't Teachers of History Have Majored in History?" Los Angeles Times. February 24, 2005. [emphasis added]

[5] Ravitch, op.cit., p. 140.

[6] FitzGerald, op.cit., pp. 48, 50.

[7] Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 18, 1.

[8] Ibid., p. 58.

[9] Charles and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, vol. 1, p. 240.

[10] Zimmerman, op.cit., p. 58.

[11] FitzGerald, op.cit., p. 35.

[12] Ibid., p. 38.

[13] Zimmerman, op.cit., p. 47.

[14] FitzGerald, op.cit., p. 38.

[15] Ibid., p. 39.

Like any religious and ethnic group, American Muslims hold a wide range of viewpoints about their faith, the role it should play in secular society, and ways to strike a comfortable balance. Nearly all the witnesses share a history of interaction with national Islamist groups - those that seek to infuse a religious ideology into the political debate - while contrary points of view are not given a seat at the table.

Even the law enforcement and research oriented witnesses have a history of working closely with groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America, each of which have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

A diversity of voices is not difficult to find. A Saudi dissident group is organizing its own panel discussion on extremism March 25. Journalist Irshad Manji, a director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University, has triggered a global, online conversation of reform among young Muslims through her book, The Trouble With Islam Today and on her website.

Two Muslim voices with contrasting ideas from the hearing witnesses had varied reactions to the hearing. Hudson Institute scholar Zeyno Baran, editor of a new book featuring 10 articles by moderate Muslims, saw the hearing as an attempt to show the public the government is doing something to address terrorism and radicalization, even if it does so with a limited perspective.

For emerging Muslim voices, there is a "chicken and egg problem," she said. "When the government works with organizations like CAIR, it has the effect of strengthening them at the expense of non-Islamists. But unless more non-Islamist Muslims come forward, officials will feel they have to talk to someone in the Muslim community - even if they represent organizations with questionable backgrounds."

Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, was more critical, especially of the two Muslim witnesses slated to appear. Neither addresses the challenges posed by Islamism, or political Islam, which envisions a greater influence of religious law over society.

The witness list is set, however, so committee members would do well to offer some probing questions. Do they believe U.S. policy at home and abroad is hostile toward Muslims? Do they believe U.S. laws banning contributions to charities controlled by terrorist groups are unjust?

How do the panelists define extremism? Is it a desire to wage violence in response to any perceived grievance or solely those who seek to harm the United States? Or, is it something else entirely? The committee should determine its own definition and ask the witnesses for theirs.

Here's a rundown of most of the hearing witnesses and their histories:

1. Mohamed Elibiary co-founded the Texas-based Freedom and Justice Foundation and enjoys a growing national reputation as a Muslim voice against radicalization. CNN featured him in December for a story on "deradicalizers." He likened the allure of radicalism among American Muslim teens to "at-risk gangbangers, who want to stand up for their community, to address grievances of the global Muslim community more effectively than they've seen the elder generation."

Elibiary "is able to make himself seem moderate by talking about reform, Jasser said. "He does not acknowledge that theological Islam is incompatible with Western society."

As an example, Elibiary has defended the Islamist ideologue credited with inspiring the Muslim Brotherhood and terrorist groups including Al Qaeda. He recommends the writing of Sayyid Qutb as offering "the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that's truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more."

"Anybody who knows the slightest thing about Qutb knows that this [Elibiary's view] is crackpot," said Rod Dreher, a former Dallas Morning News columnist who had several online debates with Elibiary.

The 9/11 Commission wrote that "no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslims - as he defined them - therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction."

In addition, Elibiary criticized the indictment and subsequent conviction of the Holy Land Foundation and five former officials for illegally routing millions of dollars to Hamas. The case showed that American Muslims have been subjected to unfair scrutiny, he said. In a column for the Dallas Morning News, he cast the verdict as the latest in a series of losses in America's fight against terror.

2. Witness Omar Alomari is the Ohio Department of Public Safety's Department of Homeland Security multicultural relations officer. Since taking the job in 2006, he wrote a 40-page Culture Guide related to Arabic and Islamic Culture. In this document, Alomari defined jihad as the benign pursuit of personal betterment. It may be applied to physical conflict for Muslims, but only in the arena of Muslims defending themselves when attacked or when attempting to overthrow oppression and occupation.

Jihad as a holy war is a European invention, spread in the West, he wrote.

Alomari also authored a two-page brochure called "Agents of Radicalization" for the Ohio Department of Homeland Security. In it, he lists several grievances driving terrorism in the Muslim world, including Israel's occupation and oppression of the Palestinians, U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Muslim lands and support for repressive regimes. Alomari goes on to explain that such terrorism also stems from the expected societal reaction of the once proud and thriving Arab/Muslim culture, now in decline and conflict because of the stronger and aggressive West.

Jasser describes the two publications as "full of factual inaccuracies" including the assertion that 66 percent of American Arabs are Muslim (close to three-fourths are Christian). Alomari also "misses the core problem: political Islam." Instead, he indulges in "bizarre revisionist history" which "seeks to portray Muslims as victims."

The United States is engaged in "a war of ideas" with radical Islam. Regarding jihadists, "you would hope that [Alomari] would say that these are corrupt thugs who have hijacked our faith," Jasser told the Investigative Project on Terrorism. But instead he "describes [terrorism] as a response to what the West has done."

The material Alomari's agency is putting out is "classic Islamist propaganda" which suggests that "these thugs who kill people in restaurants and shopping malls will stop if we solve the Arab-Israeli conflict," Jasser said. "In fact, they'll find another grievance in a year or two."

Alomari acknowledges that some Muslim communities do, in fact, provide support for the radical jihadists, who he labels "the opposition." He also describes Islam as a "politicized religion" in terms of terrorism and how "it's easier for extremists in Islam to convince youngsters to join in their extremist organizations."

But the brochure ends with a list of seven Muslim organizations the Ohio agency works with. All the groups have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood or have their own history of extremist rhetoric. Click on the links for each group for examples:

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)

Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)

Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA)

Muslim American Society (MAS)

Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)

Muslim Student Association (MSA)

3. Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has almost become a fixture at events sponsored by MPAC and CAIR. In November, for example, he spoke at a fundraiser which helped raise $432,000 for CAIR's Los Angeles chapter.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department website's "Muslim Community Affairs" page features a link urging, "Read 500 Most Influential Muslims." It connects readers to a book by John Esposito, an apologist for CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Professor Ibrahim Kalim, an advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The book includes remarkably positive portraits of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader.

Although Baca voiced support for Israel during Operation Cast Lead, the military campaign against the Hamas terror network in Gaza that ended in January 2009, he has not distanced himself from CAIR, which has roots in a Hamas-support network and which faces a criminal probe today.

4. Northeastern University School of Law Professor Deborah Ramirez. She has long focused her research in the area of racial profiling. In 2003, she received funding from the Soros Foundation to write, The Partnering for Prevention and Community Safety Initiative, Promising Practice Guide ("PfP"), "for developing partnerships between the Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities and law enforcement..."

Under the program proposed by Ramirez and her co-authors, the partnerships will be used to advance the interests of those who have openly declared they do not believe there is a national security threat that warrants a war on terrorism and its underlying ideology.

The groups that are identified as the optimal community representatives - CAIR, MPAC, ISNA et al. -- are either Muslim Brotherhood groups themselves, or groups that subscribe to the same extremist ideology spread by the Brotherhood. They are the groups most responsible for increasing the rhetoric to create fear and mistrust within Muslim communities in the West. With each arrest, prosecution, deportation and guilty verdict since 9-11, these groups have publicly criticized nearly every action by law enforcement, rather than endorse these actions as legitimate and necessary, or at the very least, urge calm and ask individuals to pass judgment after the judicial process has been completed.

Further, in seeking to legitimize and empower these Islamist groups, the Ramirez program may be unwittingly assisting the radicalization process itself. According to Canadian intelligence services, "[t]he most important factor for radicalization is the perception that Islam is under attack from the West." The groups touted in Ramirez's studies continue to reinforce Islamist conspiratorial paranoia that Muslims have been selectively and falsely targeted for terrorist prosecution.

The Islamist groups in the Ramirez program strongly oppose any personal direct contact with FBI and federal law enforcement, whether initiated by the FBI or a member of the Muslim community. They seek to control all discussions about how law enforcement should do its job. For example, at a 2005 ISNA conference, MPAC Executive Director Salam Al Marayati, one of the leaders singled out in this report, publicly proclaimed his intent to change the U.S. policy and to withhold any information of possible value to the government. Capitalizing on his ongoing relationship with the FBI, he asserted that:

"Counter-terrorism and counter-violence should be defined by us. We should define how an effective counter-terrorism policy should be pursued in this country. So, number one, we reject any efforts, notions, suggestion that Muslims should start spying on one another. In fact if you look at the Lodi case, the disaster of Lodi is that Muslims were reporting each other to the authorities saying, 'Oh, this person is an extremist' and the other camp saying the same things so both of them got in trouble. So, this is the model not to follow."

Ideas from Ramirez, Elibiary and the other panelists should get a fair hearing. But if the committee wants to do more than simply say it addressed the problem - if it wants a real debate on what extremism is and how to combat it - it should open the floor to the diverse viewpoints that need only the chance to be heard.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. It is recognized as the world's most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups. For more than a decade, the IPT has investigated the operations, funding, activities and front groups of Islamic terrorist and extremist groups in the United States and around the world. It has become a principal source of critical evidence to a wide variety of government offices and law enforcement agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress and numerous public policy forums. Research carried out by the IPT team has formed the basis for thousands of articles and television specials on the subject of radical Islamic involvement in terrorism, and has even led to successful government action against terrorists and financiers based in the United States.

Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/about.php  

More to the point did Israeli TV air calls for a Jihad against America, as Palestinian Arab TV did? Did Israel name a square after the murderer of an American photographer, as the Palestinian Authority did? Did an Israeli Anchorman do a skit in blackface during Obama's visit, as a Turkish anchorman did during Obama's visit to Turkey? Are Israeli religious institutions issuing Fatwahs against America, as Al Azhar University, which Obama visited and spoke at, has done? Are Israeli leaders funding terrorism against America, as the Saudi King, before whom Obama bowed, does?

No, none of those incidents were described as insults. Nothing that Muslim countries did to mock, humiliate and murder Americans were even noticed at all. None of them produced furious condemnations from the White House or two hours of Hillary Clinton screeching on the phone at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So what did Israel do that was so awful, so horrible and terrible? It built houses. Yes, civilian houses. Not army bases or nuclear missiles or walls. Houses.

Israel approved a construction project to build housing for its own people, in its own capitol city, Jerusalem. Some of the housing will be built in the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, situated around the grave of Shimon the Righteous, a Jewish religious figure famed for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. A neighborhood where Jews have lived for over a century. As well as Ramat Shlomo, a thriving neighborhood with thousands of Jewish families living in it.

The Obama Administration's objections to Jews living in Jerusalem are purely racial and religious. If Israel were approving a construction project to build housing for Arab Muslim citizens of Israel, Biden, Hillary and their media troupe wouldn't be screeching about it to the high heavens. It is only because Jews are to live there, that they have a problem with it. Their objections therefore are purely based on race and religion-- and completely racist.

But this is hardly the first time that Muslims and their Western appeasers have tried to drive the Jews out of Jerusalem, or the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in particular.

In 1876 the land was purchased by the Jewish community in order to build homes for poor Jews. In 1936, after the death of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (one of the inspirations for Hamas) and the Mufti of Jerusalem (who would go on to collaborate on the Holocaust with Adolf Hitler), Arab rioters drove the Jews out of the neighborhood with cries of Ibtach Al Yahood (kill the Jews). Over 500 Jews were murdered during this time. Many more fled their homes ahead of the enraged Islamic mobs.

The following was a sample of some of the Arab Muslim brutality toward the Jews at the time.

Alex Morrison, a British truck driver sympathetic to the Arab cause wrote, "They left behind them one of the worst sights I ever saw in my life... The naked bodies of the women exposed the evidence that the knives had been used in the most ghastly fashion." The bodies of children, apparently set alight with gasoline in a nursery, were still smoldering."

The Arab Muslim atrocities were successful not at intimidating the Jews, who slowly began to return, but at intimidating the British who enacted the White Paper, and closed the doors to Jewish immigration resulting in countless numbers of Jews dead during the Holocaust. A Holocaust which involved the participation of the same Mufti of Jerusalem who organized the riots. Which in turn had been partially funded by Nazi Germany.

In 1947 the Arab Muslim forces again came for the Jews. The Jewish residents of the Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood, accompanied by militia, fought them back with the few weapons they had. And then came the British colonial authorities and disarmed the Jews. And when the Arab forces came again, they had no weapons to fight with. And they fled.

The fall of the area cut off Hadassah Hospital from the rest of Jerusalem. A convoy of 79 doctors, nurses and patients to the hospital were massacred by Arab forces. They included a world renowned ophthalmologist, Chaim Yassky and his wife Fanny. Esther Fassman, the American director of social services at the hospital's Cancer Institute, carrying candy and magazines for her patients. And a man who had been riding along to reach his wife who had just given a birth. He never reached her.

The Jordanian Legion seized all of East Jerusalem, and drove out the remaining Jews living there. Synagogues were destroyed, others were turned into latrines. The tombstones from Jewish cemeteries were used as paving stones for the Arab Muslim occupation forces. The Shimon HaTzadik neighborhood though held the tragic distinction of being the first part of Jerusalem to have its Jewish population driven out.

The houses that the Jews had been driven out of were occupied by Arab Settlers in an East Jerusalem rendered empty of Jews. The great dream of the Mufti of Jerusalem, and every Islamic cleric and terrorist, who had urged the murder of Jews in order to build a pure Islamic Arab Palestine was fulfilled. The Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood was seemingly no more. Only the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood remained. Half of the historic Jewish capital was Judenrein.

In 1967, Jerusalem was liberated and reunited once again. But the victorious Jewish army did not drive out the Arab squatters. Instead in 1972 it restored the land in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood to the communal organizations which had owned it allowed them to remain on the condition that they paid rent. Those who refused, were evicted. Slowly Jews began to return to their old neighborhood again. A school opened and a normal semblance of life with it. However the US State Department and European government have continued fighting the Jewish presence in Jerusalem, demanding that it be restored to its former Judenrein status.

Over and over again, the diplomats have taken the side of the Arab squatters who stole the homes of the Jewish families living there, until Arab mobs and armies drove them out. Even when Jewish residents bought the land from those squatters, insuring the absolute legality of their ownership from any and every angle, their rights to live there have been denied. And those demanding an Apartheid Jerusalem, reserved for Arabs alone, have continued spewing lies and distorting the truth by claiming that Jews never lived in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood. That the only reason Jews live there now is out of spite (this in a city where spiraling real estate prices and crowded conditions have made apartments incredibly difficult to find.) And finally that the only reason that a housing project that has been in the works for over a decade was approved-- was in order to insult Joseph Robinette Biden... and through him America.

And then there was the Ramat Shlomo construction project. Supposedly the straw that broke the "camel's" back. Ramat Shlomo is and has been a Jewish neighborhood for some time now. There are thousands of families living in it. The 1600 additional units are not being built on inhabited land. Nor was the land ever supposed to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority in any conceivable settlement. In fact during the previous round of negotiations, even the PA had conceded Ramat Shlomo.

Let me be very clear then. The building of houses for Jewish families in a neighborhood where Jews have lived for 134 years is not an insult. A housing project that has been in the works for over a decade was not a secret conspiracy to humiliate the idiot Vice President on his visit there. It is of course an insult, but not to America. Only to Islam.

American diplomats have not usually described Israeli policies they dislike as an "insult"-- that is a term much more commonly used by Muslims, who are obsessed with perceived slights to their honor. Complaints over an "insult" is a common feature of Honor-Shame societies. America is not an honor-shame society. However the White House is currently occupied by a man bred in an honor-shame society. It is Obama that feels "insulted" by Israel, both out of the sensitivity of his Muslim heritage and his own egotism, which regularly motivates him to humiliate Republicans, while triumphantly celebrating his own greatness.

It is natural enough for Barack Hussein Obama to rely on such cheap honor-shame gambits. They are what he grew up with. And it is natural enough for him to keenly feel the loss of face of Muslims. After all his father's family was Muslim. And Muslims are keenly "insulted" when they conquer territory and then cannot hold it. Whether that territory is in Jerusalem, Israel or Spain or India. They cannot stand to suffer the loss of face. And neither can Obama.

Had there been a Jewish or part-Jewish President in the White House, the media would be raising the question of whether he is showing favoritism toward Israel. A question that has been repeatedly raised regarding Joseph Lieberman. A question that was raised regarding Goldwater, who was a practicing Christian. But the media refuses to allow the question to be raised of whether Obama is favoring Muslims because of his own Muslim background and family ties. Instead the media brands any such questions as racist, and instead spearheads the administration's campaign against Israel.

So directed out of the White House, a media firestorm howls enraged at Israel for presuming to allow Jews to live in a neighborhood where they had lived for a 134 years. The outrage. The offense. Heads must roll for this. Panicked, Netanyahu has already rushed to appease Der Fuhrer, suspending all home development anywhere in Jerusalem. Netanyahu has already apologized for building homes for his own citizens in his own country, but that of course is not enough. It's never enough.

David Axelrod huffed, "This was an affront, it was an insult." Hillary Clinton, Suha Arafat's former kissyface partner, called Netanyahu to berate him. And then did it again in the round of interviews, proclaiming, "It was insulting. And-- it was insulting not just to the vice president, who-- certainly didn't deserve that-- But it was an insult to the United States." Biden added his own voice. So did a bevy of underlines. Israel's ambassador was summoned to be yelled at by the Deputy Secretary of State.

In his visit Biden had repeatedly insulted his Israeli hosts. First he brought along Chris Matthews who accused Israelis of disliking Obama because they're racists. He arrived an hour and a half late to a ceremonial dinner. In other words he acted like every bit of the predictable buffoon that he is. Which is also not surprising given his history of hostility to Israel going back decades.

But none of that really matters. The bottom line is that the Obama Administration has been wanting to pick a fight with Israel for some time now... while pretending to be the victims. Much like the way Germany faked a Polish attack as a pretext for invading Poland, Barack Hussein Obama needed a pretext for waging his own political Jihad against Israel. All the while whining about how badly the Israelis have insulted him.

If it hadn't been Shimon HaTzaddik or Ramat Shlomo, some other pretext would have been found. Sooner or later, some visiting dignitary would have been offended by Israelis going on with their lives. Resulting in just this kind of cynical tantrum designed to win over Muslims and further degrade Israel's abilities to defend itself. The entire incident staged in keeping with the Honor-Shame background of the man in the White House.

Meanwhile in Jerusalem, Jews were celebrating the rebuilding of the Hurva Synagogue. Built in the 1700's, the synagogue had been demolished twice by Arab Muslims. The second time in 1948 by the Jordanian Legion, in order to insure that Jews would never return to East Jerusalem. They were wrong then, as Obama is wrong now. The plans of Muslims to banish Jews from their historic capitol are both immoral and racist.

Meanwhile the PA's Jerusalem minister, Khatem Abd el-Kader, condemned the renovation of the Hurva Synagogue, warning Israel that it was "playing with fire" and urged Muslim Arabs to "protect" the Al Aqsa Mosque. Naturally of course the riots are of course already on the way. An echo of the riots that drove Jews out of Jerusalem in the 1930's. Then the rioters had shouted, "Itbach-al Yahud" and "Addowlah ma'anah". Kill the Jews, and The Government is With Us. Except the government they mean now is not the British colonial authorities, but the administration of Barack Hussein Obama.

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From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

"Truth is not racist, hateful, bigoted or intolerant.  Neither are those who speak the truth.  However, one has usually only to look to see who is shouting the accusation of such to see the truth of who is."  Kelly Wolf

Original article by Richard Cravatts on Front Page Magazine]

As yet more evidence that American campuses have become, in Abigail Thernstrom's apt description, "islands of repression in a sea of freedom," St. Louis University has demonstrated that that free speech on campuses begins and ends according to how well that speech conforms to existing political orthodoxies. The University's College Republicans and Young America's Foundation had invited conservative author David Horowitz  to deliver a speech entitled, "An Evening with David Horowitz: Islamo-Fascism Awareness and Civil Rights," and university administrators, once again choosing to avoid a close examination of radical Islam, cancelled Horowitz's planned appearance.

What St. Louis University's administration has done here is essentially to exercise the "heckler's veto," shutting down speech with which it does not agree, or which is feels is too controversial for certain protected minorities on campus; but ominously, and in seeming contradiction to the school's own stated policy "to promote the free and open exchange of ideas and viewpoints, even if that exchange proves to be offensive, distasteful, disturbing or denigrating to some," this particular speech was suppressed in advance of the event, based on a belief that the speaker's words would possibly insult Muslim students and inflame their sensibilities.

Their decision seems to belie the University's own feckless contention, in its "Policy Statement on Demonstrations & Disruption," that it "encourages students, faculty and staff to be bold, independent, and creative thinkers," and that "fundamental to this process is the creation of an environment that respects the rights of all members of the University community to explore and to discuss questions which interest them, to express opinions and debate issues energetically and publicly, and to demonstrate their concern by orderly means."

There are troubling issues here, putting aside the basic question of fairness of denying certain students, with certain political beliefs, the opportunity to invite speakers to campus to share their views. Horowitz's speech was cancelled (and he has appeared, by his own account, on more than 400 campuses in the past), not because it might contain speech that was demonstrably false or even incendiary, but because some individuals might be 'offended' or 'intimidated' by speech that they were perfectly free never to hear. Students have a right to be offended by the speech-even hate speech-of their fellow students or invited speakers and speak back to that speech with speech of their own, but their fellow students and invited guests also have a Constitutionally-protected right to be offensive, contentious, even controversial, provided their speech and conduct is within the bounds of the law.

"For me, it was ... the content," explained the university's dean of students, Scott Smith, in rationalizing the decision to rescind Horowitz's invitation to speak, "particularly, the blanketed use of the term Islamo-Fascism." The school was also concerned that the speech would be seen as "attacking another faith and seeking to cause derision on campus." But where does a college administration, whose own institution claims to value speech that is even "offensive, distasteful, disturbing or denigrating to some," decide that this particular topic-radical Islam-cannot and should not be spoken about? Is this not a relevant discussion in a world where, since 9/11, over 12,000 acts of terror have been committed by murderous radicals in Islam's name? Does not an ideology which has as its aim the subjugation of other faiths and a world-wide caliphate under sharia law, and is fueled by billions in petro dollars, deserve, and, in fact, require, some critique and evaluation? And Mr. Horowitz's context for delivering his speech is also relevant; his view is that the current jihad against Israel on campuses in America and Canada is a symptom of the West's accommodation to radical Islam, and part of a wider problem caused by the Left's excuses for, and embrace of, totalitarian movements.

Horowitz always emphasizes in his speeches that when he is critiquing Islamo-fascism, he is not indicting all of Islam, or all Muslims, only those who use the religion as a justification for jihad. That is clearly the point of his message, and any honest listener to his speeches would think that it was. So St. Louis University's notion that it had to preemptively protect the sensibilities of its Muslim students is at best condescending and at worst another way that unwritten speech codes are constructed, according to attorney and free speech expert Harvey Silverglate, to "protect ideologically or politically favored groups, and, what is more important, insulate these groups' self-appointed spokesmen and spokeswomen from criticism and even from the need to participate in debate."

This obscurantism where radical Islam is being discussed - or not discussed, as the case may be - has much wider implications outside the relatively protected campus community, as Anne Bayefsky, from Eye on the UN.com, for instance, recently observed. Led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the morally-incoherent UN Human Rights Council has passed a new resolution, Bayefsky says, apparently embraced by the Obama administration, that "emphasizes that 'the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities . . .' which include taking action against anything meeting the description of 'negative racial and religious stereotyping.'"  Tellingly, and ominously, the resolution was passed to protect one religion and only one - Islam - and had as its main intention to criminalize blasphemy and essentially exculpate radical Islam by inoculating an entire religion from inspection, criticism, or condemnation.

Most disingenuous is how institutions of higher education like St. Louis University, while horrified by the prospect of a David Horowitz visit, use their claims of academic free speech as a cover for regularly bringing outrageous, anti-American, anti-Israel, out-of-the-mainstream views to campuses-either in student-run organizations, in course materials and teaching philosophies, in the sponsorship of festivals and cultural events, or in the person of controversial speakers and artists. For example, the concern over offending certain student groups suddenly did not have the same sense of urgency when speakers, with views certainly as controversial as Horowitz's, were enthusiastically invited to the Washington University campus, notable among them Norman Finkelstein, who spoke in 2007 as part of "Palestine Awareness Week," sponsored by Saint Louis University Solidarity with Palestine.

Finkelstein has loudly and notoriously pronounced his extreme views on the Middle East for years, not to mention his loathing of what he has called the Holocaust "industry," something he has called an "outright extortion racket;" in fact, he blames Jews themselves for anti-Semitism.  Writing in Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, his off-handed, sardonic response to Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz's own book, Chutzpah, Finkelstein accuses Jewish leadership, a group he defines as a "repellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters," of creating a "combination of economic and political power," from which "has sprung, unsurprisingly, a mindset of Jewish superiority." What is more, he continues, "from this lethal brew of formidable power, chauvinistic arrogance, feigned (or imagined) victimhood, and Holocaust-immunity to criticism has sprung a terrifying recklessness and ruthlessness on the part of American Jewish elites. Alongside Israel, they are the main fomenters of anti-Semitism in the world today."

Finkelstein's best known work, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections On The Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, cruelly minimizes the magnitude of the Holocaust while simultaneously making the perverse accusation that it is used by Zionists to extract sympathy from the world community and to justify the oppression and subjugation of the Palestinians by Israelis. Despite its popularity with anti-Semites, Islamists, and neo-Nazis worldwide, one critic, Brown University genocide expert Omer Bartov, described the book in a New York Times review as "a novel variation on the anti-Semitic forgery, 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' . . . brimming with indifference to historical facts, inner contradictions, strident politics . . . indecent . . . juvenile, self-righteous, arrogant and stupid." Historian David Greenberg was similarly critical of the level of scholarship in The Holocaust Industry, calling it "a hate-filled screed" filled with "pseudo-scholarship, extreme anti-Israel ideology and-there is no way around it-anti-Semitism. And it stinks."

Finkelstein, who was recently denied tenure at DePaul and then fired (his fourth such experience at a university), has now also adopted the position that this professional set-back is the direct result for being bold enough to speak up against Zionism and Israel, and he has been punished into silence accordingly, even while he regularly visits college campuses nationwide, usually at the invitation of the Muslim Students Association, where, as he is demonizing Israel and America, he coddles homicidal Palestinians and defends the terror of Hezbollah with such admissions as: "I did make a point of publicly honoring the heroic resistance of Hezbollah to foreign occupation . . . Their historic contributions are . . . undeniable."

So it is telling that when this academic charlatan, this morally-imbecilic Holocaust denier, appeared on the St. Louis campus as part of a multi-day hate-fest against Israel and Jews, no one on the administration thought that the content of Finkelstein's speech might offend or defame any of its students. Might not Jewish students feel intimidated, offended, or otherwise uncomfortable on their campuses when they witness speakers cheering for terrorist groups whose oft-stated goal is the murder of Jews everywhere? When they see the Star of David painted as equivalent to a swastika? When the Jewish state is regularly described as an apartheid regime, a brutal occupier committing 'genocide' against the Palestinians, and the main obstacle to world peace? When academics claim that that Israel is not morally worthy of U.S. support and only enjoys it as a result of a pernicious, cabal-like "Israel lobby" working against America's best interests? Of course Jewish students are damaged by this prevalent and unrelenting activity on their campuses; but mendacious administrators apparently feel that Jews - like Christians, white people, and capitalists - do not require, or do not deserve, protection from being offended or insulted by speech.

Liberal-leaning academics at St. Louis University and on other American campuses seemingly hold the notion that free speech is only good when it articulates politically correct, ideologically-acceptable views of protected victim or minority groups. But true intellectual diversity - the ideal that is often bandied about but rarely achieved - must be dedicated to the protection of unfettered speech, representing opposing viewpoints, where the best ideas become clear through the utterance of weaker ones.

For Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, for instance, the protection of free expression for all views was essential, not only to allow discourse of popular topics, but, even more importantly, in instances where unpopular or currently-controversial speech is deemed offensive and unworthy of being heard.

"If there is any principal of the Constitution," he observed, "that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principal of free thought - not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate."

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So said Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher. Think of North Korea, Stalinist Russia, the Red Guards of China, Hitler's Germany, etc.

Now consider this: Wherever Mohammed is most admired, there is the lowest regard for human rights, civil liberties and political freedoms, such as Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Tunisia.

The reason for this lack of human rights is something that Muslims deny and block out of consciousness. Plainly, Mohammed was a dictator and an abuser of human rights. But Mohammed is said by Muslims to be perfect. It isn't abuse if Mohammed did it.

Mohammed took away the human rights of peaceful, pluralistic, cultured people. He insulted, robbed, assassinated, enslaved, and then expelled the rest of them from their properties and ancestral homeland in Arabia. Since the hero Mohammed committed these crimes, they are justifiable and good. Today, we call Mohammed's political program ethnic cleansing or 'genocide.' Aggressive ethnic cleansing is occurring today in Iran and Sudan. It is 'good', because the hero Mohammed did it.

Muslims imitate Mohammed, so Islam naturally creates a despotic form of government that represses women and minorities. It's Islam's DNA.

Islam, in theory, is a single imperial state. The constitution of Islam is the biography of Mohammed. The Koran calls Mohammed's life 'a beautiful example'. Muslims know this is true because Mohammed wrote it in the Koran.

Mohammed struggled (jihad) to create a monocultural society based on the model of the anthill. The queen ant rules; the soldier ants all think the same way, do their dance and attack the same external enemies. Alien animals (such as aphids) are either parasitized by ants or killed or expelled. Ants go out regularly to destroy other anthills.

In the ideology of Mohammed, this is the perfect model for Islamic society. There is even a chapter in the Koran called 'The Ants' and another called 'The Bee'. It is easy to see why Mohammed felt these animals ran ideal societies.

Mohammed didn't rule by popular vote. Mohammed's god told Muslims repeatedly to obey him. Whatever Mohammed decided, Gabriel always confirmed it shortly thereafter with a message from Allah himself. Thus Mohammed was never wrong. He ruled by divine decree. Allah constantly confirmed Mohammed's hero status in the Koran that was written by Mohammed! Mohammed further claimed he was the owner of the earth and that Allah Almighty had created the universe for the benefit of Mohammed alone! This is a universal political claim. Mohammed said so. Mohammed is a hero, so it must be true. A true hero would not call himself a hero.

Muslims are lost in hero-worship.

Hero-worship of Mohammed is defended by law in all Islamic countries. Only hero-worship of Mohammed is ever expressed in the public domain. Dissent about Mohammed's hero status is never heard in Islamic countries, because ordinary Muslims, like the ants in their hill, immediately and instinctively rush to neutralize aliens, sting and eliminate them. Think of the cartoon riots! Think of the Teddy Bear crisis. Think of the pursuit of critics and apostates from Islam, how they are murdered by their own families or hunted by ordinary Muslims acting as vigilantes. The greatest crime in the world is to express scepticism about the hero status of Mohammed.

If an alien animal enters the anthill, perfect harmony and unity is quickly restored. The alien is surrounded by ordinary ants and cut to pieces. In Islamic countries, there is no real pluralism or the chaotic differences of opinion found in full democracies. Alien animals (such as aphids) are only allowed into an anthill so they may be parasitized for the benefit of the ants. In Islamic countries, the anthill or the beehive is the model for the organization of society. In Islamic countries, kafirs may work for Muslims, but not lead or rule over them. That is Mohammed's method and thus it is the Islamic ideal.

Hero-worship of Mohammed is everywhere in the Islamic state. So, for decisions to be perfectly acceptable, leaders must constantly appeal to his heroic example. If Mohammed did it, it must be 'good'. Logic has nothing to do with it.

Mohammed never defended the human rights of kafirs. In Mohammed's Medina, jihad occurred on the average of every six weeks. Medieval Islamic jurisprudence demanded a minimum of attacks. Unprovoked jihad expeditions against kafirs should be made a minimum of once yearly . The human rights of kafirs are unimportant, since jihad against them must take place so frequently and the very purpose of jihad is to remove the human rights of kafirs. This cannot take place in a democracy.

Ordinary Muslims assume Islam is benign, so they never concern themselves with the human rights of kafirs. Besides, kafirs have misfortunes coming to them, because they did not submit to Islam. Either way, no empathy is ever wasted on kafirs. Supremacists never apologize.

Only the politics of Islam are of concern to the kafirs. The only thing that kafirs care about are the things that affect our rights and our pluralistic free societies. Mohammed's method invades and destroys kafirs and their culture, just as anthills expand to annihilate neighboring anthills. This is the traditional jihad method: Invade, colonize, and then annihilate.

Mohammed is a hero, the perfect man, and so 'good' Muslims use Mohammed's monocultural model. This is why Muslims always strive (jihad) to create a monoculture of hero-worshipping wherever they go.
-----------------------------------
Kenneth Roberts is interested in global affairs, military history and the music of Mozart.

   .

For the last several days I have received calls from all over the country by Americans desperate to know what more they can do, and offering their support for STAND. I have been following Presidential politics since Jimmy Carter, but I have never seen people more angry and frightened about what a President is trying to do.

This is it! We are engaged in the most critical domestic policy battle in the last one-half century! Never before have I seen a President arrogantly say to the American people that he is going to force through the very thing that we have said loudly, persistently and overwhelmingly that we do not want. We have voiced our opinion in the polls. We have said it in telephone calls and faxes. We have expressed it in town hall meetings. We have said it at Tea Party rallies and bus tours. President Obama has completely ignored us and continues to press ahead. It has not just been the Republican Party saying, "No." It has been the people saying "NO."

This defiance of the will of the American people on an issue that will change our lives dramatically is unprecedented. It is a violation of the spirit of democracy and the letter of the Constitution. THIS WILL BE A MANDATE. EVERYONE WILL BE FORCED TO COME UNDER OBAMA'S PLAN. Either join the plan or pay the price. At first, it will be fines, but what if you fail to pay the fine. Then what? Prison?

I am also an Attorney, and not given to legal hyperbole. The American legal system and our U. S. Constitution give us certain protections that make it hard to deny us our rights. That's why if - GOD FORBID - Obamacare becomes law, it will face an immediate Constitutional challenge. Nonetheless, what is disturbing is that it is a giant step in the direction of government exercising an extraordinary level of intrusion and control over our lives!

Have you noticed that Barack Obama never speaks of freedom? In his radical view, "freedom" is not what the "masses" need. We need to be controlled by superior beings like Barack Hussein Obama. Beware, my friends! Please beware! The links of bondage are joined one by one - quietly and benignly - until we wake up one day in chains, slaves of a government which no longer serves the people, but serves its own hunger for power.

That is where Obama is taking us. He has said that our U. S. Constitution is flawed because it does not give the government positive rights as to what it may do, only negative rights restricting what it may do. That was the brilliance of our Founders' vision, but Obama completely fails to appreciate it because his agenda requires unrestrained government power.

He once said that the civil rights movement failed to address redistribution of wealth. Again he fails to understand that the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WAS NOT ABOUT EQUALITY OF RESULTS BUT EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY.

THE ONLY WAY TO ACHIEVE EQUALITY OF RESULTS IS TO HAVE IT MANDATED BY OPPRESSIVE GOVERNMENT FORCE. HEALTHCARE IS THE HONEY-COATED BATTERING RAM OF OBAMA'S DARK VISION FOR OUR COUNTRY!!

He is pulling out all the stops, engaging in some of the most corrupt and despicable arm twisting, intimidation and political bribery in the history of our Republic. Congressman Eric Massa of New York has accused the administration of attacking him because he did not vote for the healthcare bill. He has now resigned. Rep. Eric Massa stated, "This administration and this House leadership have said they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill. Now they've gotten rid of me, and it will pass. You connect the dots."

I am not saying that Massa is innocent, but I have no doubt that Obama and the Democrats facilitated the political demise of Massa. Anyone else in Congress who is vulnerable on ethics matters had better fall in line or come face-to-face with Chicago thug politics. Dick Morris said the White House is engaged in "hand-to-hand" combat. A friend of mine who is a retired Congressman told me that the pressure Nancy Pelosi and the White House will exert on the Representatives is unbelievable. He also told me that in his view U. S. Representative Bart Stupak and the pro-life Democrats will crumble. We are already seeing the signs.

Representative Stupak (D-MI) said on Thursday's ABC's GOOD MORNING AMERICA, "I want to see healthcare pass. We must have healthcare but, boy, there are some principles and beliefs that some of us are not going to pass. We're not going to bypass some principles and beliefs that we feel strongly about."Now he is saying that they may be able to make a deal. Read between the lines. It is probably already a done deal.

In addition to wielding the stick, they are also giving out "carrots" and monetary inducements. For example, after three years of investigation by the Justice Department, the ethics charges against Congressman Allen Mollahan of West Virginia have suddenly been dropped. Mollahan voted with Pelosi and they can't afford to lose his vote because of his legal troubles. He was being probed for giving Congressional favors in return for sweetheart real estate deals. By coincidence, the FBI has just dropped the probe. Utah Congressman Scott Matheson's brother has been appointed to a federal judgeship. Scott Mattheson originally voted against Obamacare, but after his brother's appointment to the federal bench, he surprisingly began to reconsider.

We are fighting deep corruption at the highest levels of our government - AND IT IS OUR GOVERNMENT, NOT THEIRS. We have our work cut out for us, but this is a battle we cannot afford to lose. Please help me to get the message to the people in these districts that NOW IS THE TIME to rise up like a tsunami. We are peaceful, but we are in all out revolt. We will not bow to the OBAMACARE government power grab!

Presidential Spokesman Robert Gibbs says that they are "on track" to finish this OBAMACARE debate before the President leaves for his Indonesian trip on March 18th! My friend, that is only a few days away! The time to ACT IS NOW!

There is only one way to win this battle. The men and women in Congress need to feel more pressure from the American people than they feel from Pelosi, Obama and Reid. We are counting down to March 18th - the date the President has given for a final vote. Take a look at your calendar. If they stick to their timetable, you will either wake up on March 19th knowing that our freedom has been snatched away in an unprecedented power grab OR that we have driven the wolves from the gate. It is up to YOU!

I have talked to doctors I know and have heard a consistent message: STAY OUT OF MY PRACTICE AND MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY PATIENTS. Anyone who has taken an honest look at this issue knows that Obama's trillion dollar plan is not going to reduce costs and certainly not going to improve the quality of care. They want us to be like Europe, but Europeans who can afford the very best care come to the United Sates when they are sick. The Canadian Premier Danny Williams came to the America for his surgery. If Obama ruins our healthcare system, to what country will Americans go for quality care? Will bright and talented students be willing to spend 12 to 14 years preparing to serve the government as opposed to serving their patients?

WHAT WILL YOUR DOCTOR DO?

WE DON'T CARE THAT HE'S BLACK. WE JUST WANT OUR PRESIDENT TO BE RED, WHITE AND BLUE! MR. OBAMA'S HEATHCARE PROGRAM DOES NOT PASS MUSTER AS A PATRIOTIC POLICY THAT IS GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE.

The President has also once again reverted to the class warfare argument of vilifying the insurance companies. They are, in Obama's view, the repository of all that is evil. We are NOT mouth pieces for the insurance companies, nor are we against healthcare reform. We are against the leftist's vision of what that "reform" should look like. They want a government takeover. We want a real and effective reform that uses free market principles, competition across state lines, tort reform, individual choice and responsibility, transportability, coverage of people with pre-existing conditions and protection against insurance abuses. What we don't want are massive spending, class warfare against the rich, demonizing insurance companies and replacing them with a government bureaucracy which will only be worse. If insurance companies are so bad, why are 85% of Americans satisfied with their healthcare? Nobody is satisfied with government healthcare. Insurance companies may leave much to be desired, but our government can't even effectively distribute drivers' licenses. Now it wants to manage our healthcare? No thank you!

Time is very short for defeating this destructive bill once and for all. Please make the most generous contribution you can. HELP ME DEFEAT OBAMACARE ONCE AND FOR ALL. DON'T TRY TO DO THIS ALONE. STAND WITH ME!

We have to let them know that we are UNIFIED in our commitment to stopping them! I am constantly in touch with other national organizations, coordinating our efforts! Please STAND with me in this crucial hour!

HELP ME TO FAX OUR CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVES AND STIR UP THE VOTERS IN THEIR DISTRICTS AS WELL. They MUST hear from the people in a loud, clear, unmistakable way! They can ignore a phone call. They can delete an email. But a FAX IS A TANGIBLE OBJECT WHICH THE STAFF CAN PUT IN THE HAND OF THAT REPRESENTATIVE. THE CLOCK IS TICKING. HELP ME DO IT TODAY!!

I am honored and grateful to have your support,

E. W. Jackson, Sr. 

HELP ME TO SEND A MESSAGE TO CONGRESS AND TO THE PEOPLE IN KEY DISTRICTS THAT NOW IS THE TIME TO TAKE A S.T.A.N.D. FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. HELP ME SEND FAXES TO CONGRESS AND WRITE, CALL OR VISIT KEY LEADERS IN THE SWING DISTRICTS.

Make a difference - Take a S.T.A.N.D. - a donation of only $59 will enable us to fax ALL 261 Democrat/Independent U.S. Representatives - that is only $.23 cents each.  While we know that they are not worth $.23 cents each, OUR health care and our effort to save it IS valued at a lot more!

Our efforts are paid for and sponsored by your donations only.  Your donations will make all the difference in the world in these last few days and hours.  Please consider donating what ever you are able.  

MAKE A "LAST STAND"!

Staying True to America's National Destiny - S.T.A.N.D.
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Abdul-Malik issued a statement acknowledging criticism of his invitation. In it, he dismissed critics as "voices of intolerance and divisions" that are undermining the interfaith effort of delegates Kaye Kory and Adam Ebbins:

"We therefore should not allow voices of division and hate to go unchallenged. We differ on some [of] our basic beliefs and practices but we hold in common our commitment and love of God, a God of mercy and compassion."

The record of Abdul-Malik's statements suggests that his beliefs are more nuanced than he presents here. At a 2001 conference hosted by the Islamic Association of Palestine, a now defunct propaganda branch of the Specially Designated Terrorist organization Hamas, he called for attacks against Israeli infrastructure to show Muslim displeasure with Israel's treatment of Palestinians:

"I am gonna teach you now. You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work. You can blow up power supplies... the water supply, you can do all forms of sabotage and let the world know that we are doing it like this because they have a respect for the lives of innocent people."

This is not his first statement that was devoid of tolerance and compassion. Abdul-Malik has predicted a Muslim majority in America, as he did in a November 2004 Friday Khutba, or sermon:

"Alhamdullilah [Praise to Allah] and we will live, will see the day when Islam, by the grace of Allah, will become the dominant way of life... I'm telling you don't take it for granted because Allah is increasing this din [religion] in your lifetime. Alhamdullilah [Praise to Allah] that soon, soon... before Allah closes our eyes for the last time, you will see Islam move from being the second largest religion in America - that's where we are now - to being the first religion in America."

In addition, Abdul-Malik has openly expressed support for some very radical individuals.

His defense of convicted terror facilitator Ali Al-Timimi, an extremist cleric who stated "mujahideen killed while fighting Americans in Afghanistan would die as martyrs," is a prime example. According to court documents, Timimi recommended that his followers "obtain jihad training from Lashkar-e-Taiba because its belief system was good and it focused on combat." Abdul-Malik told the Times Union, on July 16 2005, that Timimi's conviction was "like being convicted of murder, even though you haven't killed anyone." He also told the New York Times about his concern that the conviction would "chill free speech." As the newspaper reported:

"There is a view many Muslims have when they come to America that you could not be arrested for something you say," said Imam Johari Abdul Malik, outreach director at Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church. "But now they have discovered they are not free to speak their minds. And if our opinions are out of vogue in the current climate, we feel we are all at risk."

Just last month, the mosque hosted a fundraiser for Sabri Benkahla, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury for statements he made before a Virginia grand jury investigating the "Virginia jihad" terror cell inspired by Timimi.

Abdul-Malik is on record about the moderation of Anwar al-Awlaki, a previous spiritual leader at Dar al-Hijrah who went on to become an al-Qaeda affiliated radical fighting America from Yemen. Abdul-Malik falsely claimed that Awlaki was not extremist during his time at Dar al-Hijrah, when he stated:

"Let's be clear when Anwar Al Awlaki was at Dar Al-Hijrah, he was articulating the same message that I articulate today in Dar Al-Hijrah, a very open, a very engaging, a very community wise and contemporary understanding of the faith within the framework of its traditionalism."

However, while he was a prayer leader at Dar al-Hijrah, Awlaki declared that Palestinians who killed Israeli civilians were freedom fighters, claimed that the 9/11 terrorists were actually "victims not hijackers," and accused the FBI of pinning the blame on Muslims for the 9/11 attacks.

Abdul-Malik is not the only leader of his mosque to have defended violence or known terrorists. Several of Dar al-Hijrah's leaders have themselves been connected to, or convicted for, providing financial and logistical support to terrorist organizations. A former member of Dar al-Hijrah's Board of Trustees, Abdulhaleem al-Ashqar, brought together Hamas members and their U.S. contacts at a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia designed to discuss ways to thwart U.S.-led Middle East peace efforts. Ashqar also directed the Al Aqsa Educational Fund, a Hamas-linked group. Likewise, Ismail Elbarasse, a Dar Al-Hijrah founder, worked for Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and wired $735,000 to Hamas operative Mohammad Salah.

Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh, Dar Al-Hijrah's imam from August 2003-May 2005, was the Baltimore regional director of the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), a U.S. designated terrorist organization. Mohammed Al-Hanooti, Dar Al-Hijrah's imam from 1995-1999, was the former director of the Islamic Association for Palestine, which, as mentioned earlier, was an American front for Hamas.

Even Shaker El-Sayed, the current imam at Dar al-Hijrah, has a record of support for radical ideologies. He has written admiringly of Hasan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The terrorist organization of Hamas was founded as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the pamphlet, Jihad, Banna states:

"Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim and cannot be ignored nor evaded. Allah has ascribed great importance to jihad and has made the reward of the martyrs and the fighters in His way a splendid one. Only those who have acted similarly and who have modeled themselves upon the martyrs in their performance of jihad can join them in this reward."

Moreover, in 2004, El-Sayed told the Chicago Tribune that Al-Banna's ideas are "the closest reflection of how Islam should be in this life."

Johari's statements and Dar al-Hijrah's extremist past run contrary to the spirit of cooperation which the mosque attempts to express today. There's nothing wrong with seeking leaders of many faiths to address the delegates. There certainly are better candidates.

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The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. It is recognized as the world's most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups. For more than a decade, the IPT has investigated the operations, funding, activities and front groups of Islamic terrorist and extremist groups in the United States and around the world. It has become a principal source of critical evidence to a wide variety of government offices and law enforcement agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress and numerous public policy forums. Research carried out by the IPT team has formed the basis for thousands of articles and television specials on the subject of radical Islamic involvement in terrorism, and has even led to successful government action against terrorists and financiers based in the United States. 

Baran is the editor of an important new book, which goes on sale March 16, entitled "The Other Muslims: Moderate and Secular" - a compilation of personal analyses from 10 American and European Muslims who warn of the danger posed by radical Islamism.

The Islamist agenda includes a belief that Sharia (the legal code of the Quran ) reigns supreme over democracy and individual liberty. Islamists portray themselves as victims and demand special treatment for Muslims in the West.

The 2006 "Danish cartoon crisis" is an example cited by Baran. After riots broke out across the Muslim world following the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed, authors and playwrights withdrew their works from publication and persuaded publishers to reject submissions for fear of triggering more violence.

Multiple Islamist movements have been funded for decades by oil-rich nations like Saudi Arabia. One is the Wahhabists, Saudi radicals who seek to impose a form of Islam analogous to that practiced on the Arabian Peninsula 14 centuries ago. Another is the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, whose members helped found the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) . (Another major group, prominent particularly in Europe and parts of Asia, is Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which seeks to establish a global caliphate.)

For several decades, Wahhabists and Muslim Brotherhood groups have been courted by Western governments and treated by the media as representatives of a near-monolithic "Muslim community."

But an alternate narrative has emerged in the Muslim world - one that rejects the Islamist worldview as anti-democratic. Baran, director of Hudson's Center for Eurasian Policy, minces no words in describing the danger.

"Islamism has much [in] common with totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism, Fascism, and Marxism-Leninism, including anti-Semitism, ethno-religious hatred, ambition to restructure the world, and an embrace of violence," she writes in the introduction to the book. "However, unlike purely political totalitarian movements, Islamism has a profound and deeper appeal that derives from its claim to stem from the will of God."

At a March 3 Hudson Institute forum launching The Other Muslims, Baran, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and Hedieh Mirahmadi, an Iranian-American lawyer and activist, said that officials in Western democracies mistakenly try to promote nonviolent Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as "alternatives" to violent Islamists like Al Qaeda.

But the real differences between these organizations are tactical in nature. Both believe that Islam is superior to other religions and seek to impose sharia law in order to regulate virtually every aspect of life. "The West has lost sight of a fundamental truth: empowering Islamists, regardless of whether or not they are violent, sows the seeds for future radicalization that undermines our civilizational structures and breeds terrorism," Baran writes. "It is difficult to understand that 'nice people' who may even share an outwardly secular lifestyle still firmly believe that their lives should be governed according to a legal code of seventh-century Arabia."

The book's other contributors are Muslims from a wide variety of backgrounds who also oppose Islamists. Some are devoutly religious, while others are relatively secular. They are united in the belief that Islam is fully compatible with Western liberal democracy, and that Western governments should not be yielding to Islamist demands for the creation of "parallel societies," where they will be forced to live under Sharia.

How Islamists Work to Infiltrate the West

The authors provide concrete illustrations of the danger that Islamism poses to the West. In his chapter entitled "Americanism vs. Islamism," Jasser recalls being asked by his superiors at Bethesda Naval Hospital to present a paper at the Islamic Medical Association. The meeting in the early 1990s was held in conjunction with ISNA's national convention.

The keynote address was delivered by Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who said he was asked by a Jewish passenger sitting next to him on an airplane whether the Quran would replace the Constitution if Muslims became a majority in the United States. Wahhaj laughed and said: "Can you imagine someone wondering if a document made by humans would be superior to a document like the Quran, made by God?"

But Wahhaj's public suggestion that the Quran trumps the Constitution is more the exception than the rule. Wahhaj's comment (and others like it) could be very dangerous to the Islamist cause because it illustrates that the Islamists are not seeking equal protection of the law, but supremacy.

In the video below, Jasser recounts his public confrontation with Wahhaj.

As The Other Muslims makes clear, the Muslim Brotherhood has made inroads in the West by eschewing Wahhaj's approach in favor of softer tactics.

In the second chapter of the book, Yunis Qandil, currently a lecturer on Islamic studies at a Beirut think tank, provides a cogent analysis of the Brotherhood's successes in Europe. Qandil, a former Muslim Brotherhood activist, shows how the group has pushed aside moderate Muslims, monopolizing power and positioning itself as the "authentic" voice of the umma (the Muslim community) in numerous European countries.

Qandil, a native of Jordan whose parents were Palestinian refugees, writes that under the leadership of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Brotherhood moved away from its formerly "isolationist" approach and now actively works to "infiltrate...their ideology into Western society and building their organizational infrastructure in the very heart of the West."

Since 9/ 11, he writes, the Brotherhood "has appointed itself chief mouthpiece for and coordinator of 'moderate Islam,'" utilizing rhetoric often found in the writings of leading figures such as Tariq Ramadan.

(Ramadan the grandson of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood - has denied being a member of the group. But like the Brotherhood, he also has a history of statements that appear to justify violence, including attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, the killing of civilians in Israel and subway bombings in Great Britain. Ramadan has also made statements suggesting that he agrees with the Brotherhood's all- encompassing form of political Islam, for example, when refusing to condemn the stoning of adulterers.)

But despite its tactical flexibility and willingness to adapt to local conditions, an internal Brotherhood document reveals that the organization has a clear strategy that is hardly moderate. Qandil writes: "...first, win over the individual; second, ensure the spiritual education of the family, third, Islamize the society; and finally, seize power."

Unfortunately, as the book makes clear, Western democratic governments and politicians lack coherent strategies of their own to deal with the danger. Instead, they take a lowest-common-denominator approach - engaging with virtually any Muslim organization that is willing to "condemn terrorism," even if that organization ultimately seeks supremacy over non-Muslims. The strategy plays into the hands of Islamists who are prepared to use the rhetoric of nonviolence as a tactic to advance their political agenda.

But the news is not all bleak. The Other Muslims provides readers with numerous first-person accounts of how individuals triumphed over Islamist attempts to radicalize them.

In Chapter Five, Cosh Omar, a British actor and playwright of Turkish Cypriot descent, explains how he was recruited into Hizb ut-Tahrir, led by Omar Bakri Mohammad, in the 1990s. Cosh Omar later broke with HT when the group told him acting was a sin. He later realized that HT had tried to manipulate him in order to infiltrate Britain's Cypriot community through his father, a Sufi Muslim religious leader.

In Chapter Six, Samia Labidi, a French author, writes about growing up in Tunisia. Born in 1964, she was living a peaceful, happy childhood in an observant Muslim home until her sister married an Islamist who attempted to radicalize the family. Labidi's father adopted his son-in-law's oppressive views. But her mother refused. So she divorced her husband and moved to France.

Samia, left behind in Tunisia, was forced to wear a veil. She found herself trapped in the house and cut off from friends who refused to support an Islamic revolution in Tunisia. She moved to France in 1982 to join her mother, thinking she had left Islamism behind. But shortly after she got there, Islamists based in France (including her exiled brother-in-law) attempted to overthrow the Tunisian government. The coup failed, and many radicals fled to France and obtained "political refugee" status, creating new cadres for Islamism in Europe.

For more than a decade, Samia Labidi has been sounding the alarm about the danger posed by radical Islam in France, and to that end she founded an organization known as AIME, dedicated to fighting the spread of the Islamist ideology.

In Chapter Seven, Mostafa Hilali - a Moroccan immigrant to the Netherlands who serves as a major in the Netherlands Army - credits his parents' teachings about Islam for his ability to fend off radical recruiters. Hilali (who grew up just a few steps away from Mohammed Bouyeri, a second-generation Muslim immigrant who murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh) successfully withstood the mistreatment that can radicalize lesser men. This included a brutal beating by Dutch thugs who objected to his dating a Christian woman.

During his service in his nation's army, Hilali was involved in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Bosnia, where he helped his Dutch military colleagues better understand local Islamic cultures.

Some of the best material in the book appears in its final chapter, a must-read essay by Jasser. In it, he covers a tremendous amount of territory, including his childhood in Neenah, Wisconsin, where he was raised in a traditional Muslim home and imbued with a love of America and the freedoms Americans cherish.

Jasser makes a strong case that dictatorial Arab regimes in countries like Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have close, albeit perverse, relationships with Islamist organizations. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, he writes, "are but two of the most malignant and metastatic examples of how a secular fascist dictator or an autocratic tribal monarchy can exploit a direct relationship with radical Islamist groups and institutions to keep the 'moderate' masses at bay."

"The dictators' love-hate relationship with radical Islam creates an environment where voices of reason are incapable of surviving amid this clash of evils," Jasser adds. That was particularly true, for example, when Syrian dictator Hafez Assad destroyed the town of Hama in 1982 (more than 30,000 Syrians were killed) in order to make an example of the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is much, much more food for thought in this very important, timely book.

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Read more at:  Investigative Project on Terrorism

   .

He expressed "sincere alarm" that the University of South Florida was treating Sami Al-Arian unjustly because of his views and urged the school's president to reconsider. The 2002 letter, obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, has become a hot-button issue in the California Senate Republican primary campaign this year.

At the time, Al-Arian was under investigation for his ties to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). He was indicted a year later, but his 2005 trial ended in a mix of acquittals and deadlocked counts. Evidence in the case showed Al-Arian served on a PIJ governing board.

In 2006, he pled guilty to providing goods and services to the terrorist group.

Campbell's opponents say his letter stands among many signs that indicate he may be soft on terror or hostile toward Israel. Campbell has expressed regret over the letter, but claimed he was not aware of incriminating facts about Al-Arian when he wrote it.

"None of that had come out," Campbell told the Los Angeles Times last week.

In the 2002 letter, however, he described how he got to know Al-Arian working to stop the use of secret evidence against non-citizens in immigration court. He described the professor as someone who "staunchly supported the principles of the United States Constitution."

In their interactions, Campbell wrote,

"I never heard Professor Al-Arian utter a single word disloyal to the United States. Nor did I ever hear him say anything anti-Semitic, or racist, or religionist against any group. He did express the wish that America's foreign policy in the Middle East would tilt less discernibly toward Israel. Whatever you or I might think of that view, it is one to which Professor Al-Arian is entitled, well within the scope of free debate in our country."

He then urged USF President Judy Genshaft to reverse course in the name of academic freedom and free speech: "What a tremendous victory it would be for those freedoms, for the reputation for fairness of your University, and for our country."

USF did not fire Al-Arian at the time. It did terminate him in February 2003, after he was indicted and arrested.

As we noted last week, a lot of information about Al-Arian's terror support had come out before Campbell wrote to USF. For starters, a former director of Al-Arian's think tank was appointed PIJ General Secretary in 1995, after the terror group's founder was assassinated in Malta. Federal agents raided Al-Arian's home and offices weeks later.

Closer to the Campbell letter, though, was the airing of a national television report which offered a detailed look at Al-Arian's terrorist connections. NBC's "Dateline" program devoted a segment to it on October 28, 2001.

The segment, called "The Enemy Within," included video excerpts of Al-Arian loudly proclaiming:

"Those people [Jews], God made monkeys and pigs. Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel." And "Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel. Let us damn their allies until death."

It also showed a fundraiser where Al-Arian spoke, and where the host imam urged people to give to Al-Arian's charity for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad:

"Donate to the Islamic Jihad! One of them would leave his house with a knife to stab the Jews. Five hundred dollars! Who would add to $500?"

The 2001 program prompted the St. Petersburg Times, which had not yet reported many of these facts, to publish an editorial headlined, "Behind Al-Arian's Façade." In it, the newspaper cited a fundraising letter, seized from Al-Arian's home in 1995 and highlighted in the Dateline report, as

"direct evidence of his active support for terrorism. When Al-Arian is seen and heard saying 'let us damn America' and calling Jews 'monkeys and pigs,' no one needs to rely on his critics to interpret his remarks. And when he puts his signature on a letter soliciting funds for terrorist operations, his involvement isn't subject to misunderstanding."

After Campbell co-sponsored legislation to end the use of secret evidence in immigration court, Al-Arian donated $1,300 to Campbell's unsuccessful 2000 Senate bid. Al-Arian's brother-in-law, Mazen Al-Najjar, had been jailed in Florida as he appealed a final deportation order. Immigration officials used secret evidence that tied him to the PIJ to argue he should be held without bond pending that appeal.

During Al-Arian's trial, exhibits showed Al-Najjar, like Al-Arian, had served on the PIJ governing board.

In a recent interview, Campbell denied accepting campaign contributions from Al-Arian during his unsuccessful 2000 Senate bid. He later issued an apology, admitting he misspoke, but that "I did not realize that Sami Al-Arian had contributed himself. It was an honest mistake, with no attempt to mislead."

In the letter to USF, Campbell mentioned that Al-Arian "helped me raise funds" for the campaign but did not mention a direct contribution. He also indicated he had been in Africa for the previous month and learned about USF's intent to fire Al-Arian upon returning.

If he really didn't know about his colleague's terror support, Campbell would have been out of touch for much, much longer. See the letter here.

SOURCE: IPT NEWS

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) is a non-profit research group founded by Steven Emerson in 1995. It is recognized as the world's most comprehensive data center on radical Islamic terrorist groups. For more than a decade, the IPT has investigated the operations, funding, activities and front groups of Islamic terrorist and extremist groups in the United States and around the world. It has become a principal source of critical evidence to a wide variety of government offices and law enforcement agencies, as well as the U.S. Congress and numerous public policy forums. Research carried out by the IPT team has formed the basis for thousands of articles and television specials on the subject of radical Islamic involvement in terrorism, and has even led to successful government action against terrorists and financiers based in the United States.

That Empire was built through the ideology of Islam, that provided a manifest destiny to the quarreling Arab tribes who had already begun to overrun the region. Islam began by giving Mohammed and his followers the right to loot and enslave anyone who did not obey them, and ended by turning his cult into a fanatical worldwide movement bent on doing what they had done to the Middle East... to the entire world.

The worldwide spread of Islam has been aided and enabled by the First World's love of multiculturalism and diversity. But as history shows, there is no surer way to destroy cultural and religious diversity, than by introducing Islam in to the mix. The idea that Islam can be an ingredient in a multicultural society is as foolish as the idea that adding a tank full of piranhas to an aquarium will result in species diversity. Because Islam does not participate in the ecology of a multicultural society, it is a predator consuming and destroying cultures and beliefs... and leaving only corpses and frightened victims in its wake.

The Middle East which was once home to Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Gypsies, Nabateans and Persians, and where Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism-- has been reduced to Islamic Arabia. Mosques have been built over the demolished ruins of churches and synagogues. Entire populations have been forcibly converted to Islam, their children raised to hate and kill their own brethren. The survivors were compelled to pledge allegiance to their new masters, to keep their heads down and wear badges of inferiority. To pay tribute and always remember that the Arab Muslim was now the ruler here.

To understand the mad hate that Muslims have for Israel and their obsessive need to wipe it off the face of the earth, understand this. To the Arab Muslim, Israel represents a successful slave rebellion. A rebellion in which the former slaves, the hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries who fled there, not only bested their masters but repeatedly proved themselves their superiors. That is something the Arab Muslim has never been able to accept, vowing to pay any price to destroy Israel.

The rise of Israel threatens Arab Nationalism because it threatens the return of the region to its Pre-Mohammedan state. As mercenaries of Rome, the Arabs had razed Jerusalem and put an end to even the fiction of a Jewish state that had been maintained under the dominion of Edomite Roman appointed kings of   the Herodian dynasty. The Mohammedan ideology united them into a powerful force that swept through the power vacuum created by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. That ideology swept around the world, appealing to tribal thugs and tyrants because it replaced the complexities of Judaism and Christianity, with the story of Mohammed's rise to power and his subjugation of his enemies. And so it went until the sick man of Europe died, and the Middle East was parceled out into European colonies.

But the end of European colonialism did not restore the region to what it had been, instead it ended the New Colonialism in favor of the Old Colonialism. Once again the region was divided into Arab Muslim states with everyone else reduced to vassal status. European colonialism departed and restored the Arab Muslim colonialism which had turned the Middle East into such a hopelessly backward place to begin with. And faced with the same arrangement of tribal states fighting amongst themselves, those Arab Muslims who dreamed of ruling as a Master Race again, once more turned to the ideology of Islam to unify them in their war against the rest of mankind.

Israel's existence is a thumb in the eye of Islam. It mocks the Koran's pretenses that Islam is the inheritor of Jewish history and Jewish prophets. Thus is undermines Mohammed's status as the final prophet to mankind. Any rebellion by non-Muslims against Muslim rule is considered blasphemous, but one that also undermines the Quranic revelation, endangers the entire theology of Islam. And so adding to the humiliation of the Middle East's "Master Race", is that the creation of the modern day State of Israel was also a sharp tug on the Prophet's beard. 

The rise of a New Middle East that would have the religious and cultural diversity of the Pre-Mohammedan era would mean the end of the Arab-Islamic empire, an idea that threatens the heart of their identity and ambitions. As the harbinger of that New Middle East, Israel represents an existential and historical threat to that dark empire. It betokens a world in which the slaves will be free, in which men will no longer be compelled to be Muslims. In which the peoples of the Middle East will be able to reclaim their freedom again.

And indeed today, Israel is the only country in the region that offers religious freedom. As a result even an Islamic splinter group such as the Bahai, make their base in Israel, because they are not safe anywhere else. The Bahai represent exactly the sort of dangerous evolution of Islam, that centuries of Sharia law and the headman's ax had been geared to prevent. Islam has remained as static as it has, primarily because it only permitted reform movements have sought to drag it away from any innovations and back to the time of Mohammed. But in a New Middle East, Islam itself might change and become something else. And that is something its leaders will never tolerate.

Yet the very same American and European leaders who have made "diversity" into their bible and "multiculturalism" their scripture, howl against Israel, while importing Muslims into their countries by the planeload and the boatload. And unsurprisingly, Europe is experiencing exactly what the Middle East has. European cities are being overrun by gangs of thugs, little changed from those who looted caravans and raped their captives as followers of Mohammed. Blasphemy laws are being enforced by force and by threat of force. Ignorance is replacing knowledge. And once great cities are turning into dungheaps simmering with hate.

Europe's greatest cities are turning into the Middle East. And this should surprise no one at all. Once upon a time, Alexandria, Damascus, Constantinople and Jerusalem were cosmopolitan centers of culture and learning. Today only West Jerusalem amounts to anything, precisely because it is the only one of them not under the boot of Islam.

Islam destroyed the Middle East. And now it has its sights set on Europe and the rest of the world. While First World politicians may preach diversity, the flood of Islamic migrants washing up on their shore are not interested in diversity, their culture, law and religion is Islam. They want no others... and more importantly they will tolerate no other.

The bearded piranhas have been tossed into the European aquarium where they are now proceeding to reproduce in large numbers while devouring the other fish. Given some time, the tank will consist of piranhas fighting each other, and a handful of smaller fish who have survived mainly because they are of some value to the piranhas. Namely the small yellow Dhimmifish. In other words the European aquarium will come to look exactly like the Middle Eastern aquarium, made of equal parts rubble, dirt and hate. A region where the literacy rate is lower than Sub-Saharan Africa. Where women are property. Where there is no constitution or law, only the will of an Imam or a tyrant.

That is the Europe that the advocates of diversity and multiculturalism are speedily bringing about. That is the Europe, the America, the Australia and the Canada that their grandchildren will have to live in. It will not be a diverse place, except in the diverse numbers of slaves. There will be no culture, no freedom, no knowledge and no truth.

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From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Count on European "intellectuals" to come up with new devices to encourage children to freely engage in sex.

The latest gimmick comes from a study conducted by something called the Federal Commission for Children and Youth. The "study" concluded that boys between the ages of 12-14 don't use sufficient protection when having sex.

Instead of discouraging underage sex, the morons running the commission are proposing distributing small condoms to these kids. The new condom, known as the Hotshot is marketed by Lamprecht AG, a condom company in Switzerland.

The age of consent in Switzerland is 16, but never mind. If the difference in age between kids is not more than three years, no one will get prosecuted for statutory rape or child molestation. Young adults who are under 20 can also get off the hook if they "thought" the person they were seducing was 16.

It's now open season on underage girls in Switzerland and the condom company plans on targeting the UK for sales of its kiddie condoms. Pedophiles can now freely target boys as young as 12 without much fear of legal consequences.

One can only wonder how long it will be before Switzerland begins to see a dramatic rise in oral and anal cancer, and venereal diseases among grammar school children - thanks to the false security provided by kiddie condoms. Apparently sexual depravity is a bottomless pit.

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 Named by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the political "heavyweights" working the Congress, Andrea represents the Judeo-Christian worldview of morality and beliefs that many seek to silence. Even those with unvarnished contempt for Andrea's worldview acknowledge her "ability to disarm - and even to charm." As Executive Director of the Traditional Values Coalition, she is a voice both on Capitol Hill and in the media.