Islam in America

Islam in America

By Kathy Shaidle

RightSideNews Copyright © 2009

January 27, 2008

Part One: An Overview of American Islam

Imagine a Super Bowl with all male cheerleaders and half-time prayers. In that America, they drink Jihad Cola instead of Coke and thank Allah when they win an Oscar.

Luckily, that America is fictional, one vividly described in Robert Ferrigno's 2006 futuristic novel,Prayers for the Assassin, set in 2040. But is it really so hard to imagine, in a world in which a man named "Barack Hussein Obama" can get elected President just a few years after Muslim hijackers destroyed the world's tallest buildings in the heart of New York City?

Today many Americans are either blissfully ignorant of, or simply indifferent to, the slow, incremental growth of radical Islam in their midst.

We sometimes hear about terrorist cells or suspicious Muslim "compounds" on the news. However, these stories represent merely the tip of an Islamic iceberg that could very well doom America. Not today or tomorrow. But in our lifetimes? That is a real possibility.

And don't shrug off Islam as "just another religion." Muslim sharia law deems women to be inferior to men, and allows husbands to "lightly" beat their wives. Polygamy and child bride marriage are condoned and encouraged, due to the example of Mohammed himself, whose many wives included a nine year old. Anti-Semitism and slavery are enshrined in the Koran, as is exploitation of and even violence against all "unbelievers."

Radical Muslims have learned they don't require bombs or hijacked airliners to destroy America.They can just use America's own ideological infrastructure against itself.

Using a kind of ingenious political jujitsu, radical Muslims rely upon everything from the rights to freedom of speech and worship enshrined in the U.S. Constitution to the current atmosphere of hypersensitive political correctness to push their agenda.

For example, the "Islamification" of the educational system is now underway. Textbooks whitewash Islam's bloody history. Public school children forbidden to pray or recite the Pledge of Allegiance are, however, obliged to play "Muslim for a Day." Meanwhile, universities eagerly introduce footbaths, Muslim prayer rooms and hallal cafeteria food.

Increasingly, Muslim employees are suing companies for the "right" to refuse to handle "unclean" pork or alcohol, or the "right" to wear headscarves. It is no coincidence that these companies include household names like UPS, Wal-Mart and McDonalds's - radical Muslims are sending a message to smaller firms who won't have the means to fight similar suits in the future.

These demands for accommodation extend even behind prison walls, where Muslim prisoners (indoctrinated by Muslim chaplains trained by foreign extremists) insist on getting special treatment as well.

"Lawfare" is on the rise, too. Muslim groups now file expensive, time-consuming lawsuits against critics of Islam, and while these suits are currently confined mostly to Canada and Europe, they have a "chilling" effect on American publishers, writers, journalists and filmmakers. Last year, it only took a couple of threatening emails to persuade a major U.S. publisher to cancel an upcoming novel about Mohammed.

Few Americans realize that their neighborhood mosque was probably built and financed by well-heeled terrorist sympathizers abroad. In fact, 80% of American mosques are Saudi-supported, and serve as safe gathering places for radical imams and dubious "charities" with anti-American agendas.

Islamic terrorism has also found a home on the internet, where (according to one UK think tank) a "virtual caliphate" (or Muslim supremacist empire) thrives, beyond the reach of authorities. The web has become an invaluable arena for radical Muslim recruiting, training, communication and organizing.

Americans looking to the government to protect them from these threats don't realize thatfederal agencies in the thrall of political correctness actually undermine the war of terrorism. Few Muslims currently hold public office in the United States, but this may change if Democrats begin to view them as a new source of donations and votes.

Over the next few months, I'll be your guide to the growth of radical Islam, both at home and abroad. You'll learn about "moderate" Muslim spokesmen who turn out to be anything but, and meet writers and authors censored by their governments for critiquing the Koran.

I'll be talking to experts in the fields of intelligence, religion, crime and foreign policyand sharing their insights with you.

Many Americans have already forgotten what happened on 9/11, or simply don't want to think about it anymore. Our fear, disgust or indifference is exactly what radical Muslims are counting on. As exhausting and demoralizing as it can be to educate ourselves on the facts, we must remember that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
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February 10, 2009
Part Two: Islam in American Prisons
"One in 10 inmates behind bars turns to Islam."

It was small story in a local newspaper called the Daily Herald out of Everett, Washington, but it spread quickly around the internet, thanks to that startling claim.

The paper's February 2009 investigation declared that so-called "prison Islam" was the fastest-growing religious group in U.S.correctional facilities.

Some of those worshippers claim affiliation with the Nation of Islam (NOR), a black separatist movement that was launched and promoted by two convicts, Elijah Mohammed and his protégéMalcolm X. Strictly speaking, however, NOR has little in common with orthodox Islam; it is more accurately described as a political pseudo-religion, held up to African-Americans as an alternative to "pacifist" "Eurocentric" Christianity.

However, Lawrence Mimiya told the Daily Herald that most Muslims in prison today are Sunni converts. Mamiya, a professor at Vassar College who studies Muslim prison ministries, says that "just one in five who convert to Islam while in prison continue on in that faith once they are released." (Note: the number of Muslims in the U.S. population at large is estimated at one percent, or 8 million individuals.)

Some experts question the importance of such "1 in 10" statistics, however. For example, by their own admission, many inmates convert to Islam merely to receive special perks, like prayer rugs, incense and superior halal food.

However, that fact should still give readers pause: after all, these endless "religious" demands demonstrates radical Islam's innate sense of superiority, and its demand to be seen as "special." It doesn't help matters that groups like the ACLU file lawsuits to guarantee such special treatment to Muslim inmates. After a 2008 suit, for example:

"U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer approved an agreement on Wednesday that allows [Wyoming] prisoners receiving religious meals to keep their meals in their cells until the next meal is served. It also requires the prison to install a new microwave for inmates that won't be used for pork, which is forbidden to Muslims and members of some other religions."

In another lawsuit settled in November 2008, a California jail was ordered to allow female Muslim inmates to wear "county-issued" headscarves - and to pay $45,000 in "damages" to the aggrieved prisoner.

Robert Spencer of JihadWatch notes the ironic insanity of such lawsuits:

"Once again a Muslim in America demands that non-Muslims accommodate his particular practices and beliefs, rather than considering that he has to adapt his own behavior to American mores -- especially since he is in prison!"

Indeed, Islam teaches that "infidels" are obliged to pay the "Jizyah" - an onerous tax/ransom - to their Muslim superiors. Many radical Muslims view the booty won in such parasitical lawsuits as a variety of "jizyah" - a "ransom" they are forced to extort surreptitiously until they can establish their worldwide "caliphate."

However, in some ways, ACLU collaboration with our enemies is a laughable sideshow when compared to more serious implications. A highly regarded 2006 study called "Out of the Shadows"simply states the obvious: that "tight-knit communities of Muslims in prison are ripe for radicalization, and could easily become terrorist cells."

Stephen Schwarz of the non-profit group Islamic Pluralism explains why:

"Radical Muslim chaplains, trained in a foreign ideology, certified in foreign-financed schools and acting in coordination to impose an extremist agenda have gained a monopoly over Islamic religious activities in American state, federal, and city prisons and jails."

Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber" and Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber", are two of the most famous Muslim convert/prisoners turned would be terrorists.

If captured and incarcerated after committing or plotting terrorist acts, Muslim radicals create further problems within the international prison system, according to a 2008 report by the NEFA Foundation.

"While in prison," according to the report, "jihadists have caused officials fits by radicalizing fellow inmates, planning jailbreaks, distributing propaganda to associates, continuing to exercise operational control over their organizations, and plotting attacks."

Change has been slow in coming. Only recently has the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) begun conducting more thorough background checks on religious "service providers" such as Muslim chaplains. According to the 2007 research paper "Radicalization: Behind Bars and Beyond Borders," the FBOP has relied on "just ten Muslim chaplains for the entire federal prison system. These ten chaplains were responsible for vetting and endorsing contractors and volunteers who enter prisons to provide religious services, a Herculean task when one considers the thousands of contractors and volunteers who enter prisons each month."

Encyclopedia of Terrorism author Harvey W. Kushner is an internationally recognized authority on the subject. His first hand experience running educational and vocational programs at New York's Rikers Island prison has given him a unique perspective into the way the system operates.

He explains that, along with political correctness and the constant threat of costly, frivolous lawsuits, the prison system's entrenched bureaucracy and "culture" make reforms difficult. Overstretched administrators sometimes find it beneficial to permit gang activities - Islamic and otherwise - because that way inmates will "police" themselves, albeit crudely.

Kushner adds that given the current economic climate, anti-jihadist prison reforms will now be even lower on the list of priorities than ever before.

Clearly, Americans have reason to be concerned. In some respects, the very institutions intended to keep the public safe are instead serving as accidental breeding grounds for violence and radicalism. Since large bureaucratic institutions like the Federal Bureau of Prisons are notoriously slow to evolve, it would be unrealistic to expect this situation to change in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, after being released from prison, Muslim felons return to the community and attain employment in Muslim run businesses. Along with halal food restaurants, these businesses (according to Harvey Kushner) include Nation of Islam security outfits, employed by local law enforcement to keep order in largely African American communities.

Some ex-cons even drift towards so-called Muslim compounds also see todays press release on 35 compounds in the US, where they may have access to firearms. This phenomenon will be the subject of the next installment in our series "Muslims in America.
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February 24, 2009
Part Three: Islamic Compounds in America

Rumors of Islamic terrorist training camps operating within the United States and Canada have been making the rounds ever since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A new film is re-focusing attention on the subject, but authoritative proof of their existence - at least in the numbers being claimed - can be difficult to acquire.

The documentary, called "Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Camps Around the U.S," was produced by the Christian Action Network (CAN). The filmmakers claim that dozens of radical Muslim terroristcompounds currently exist across America, basing that claim upon a mysterious, untitled 2006 Regional Organized Crime Information Center report prepared for the Department of Justice marked "Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement."

RightSideNews attempted to acquire a copy of this document, through both the Department of Justice and the Christian Action Network, without success (at press time.)

Ryan Mauro, the founder of WorldThreats.com, is also a national security researcher for the Christian Action Network; he explained to RightSideNews that the document "is not publicly available" and that CAN's "copy is kept in a lockbox."

CAN also acquired a copy of a confiscated terrorist training video called "Soldiers of Allah," which features prominently in the new documentary. In the training video, Sheik Muburak Gilani, the founder of Jamaat ul-Fuqra (aka Muslims of America) declares, "We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America." The video, according to the CAN press release, "teaches American students how to operate AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, and machine guns; how to kidnap Americans and then kill them; how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations; and how to use mortars and explosives."

The office of the Colorado Attorney General has been investigating Jamaat ul-Fuqra since 1989, after discovering that members of the community had defrauded the State of Colorado of approximately $350,000 in workers compensation and other benefits.

The investigation concluded that, at the time, there were approximately 30 different Jamaat communities in the United States, mostly in rural areas. Some of these communities have been designated "covert paramilitary training compounds."

According to the Colorado Attorney General's office:

"FUQRA or its members have been investigated for alleged terrorist acts including murder and arson in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Toronto, Denver, Los Angeles and Tucson. UL FUQRA is suspected of more than thirteen fire bombings and, at least, as many murders within the United States."

Ryan Mauro provided RightSideNews with a list of Jamaat ul-Fuqra's criminal activities dating back to 1979, when the group bombed a Hare Krishna temple in San Diego. Many of their crimes have targeted Hindus, and even other Muslims, presumably those not considered "orthodox" enough. In the 1990s, Jamaat ul-Fuqra turned its attention to American law enforcement and infrastructure, plotting to bomb sites such as New York FBI headquarters, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.

Significantly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency even linked Jamaat ul-Fuqra to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Despite this, says Ryan Mauro, Jamaat ul-Fuqra is still not listed as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization" by the State Department.

In an interview with RightSideNews, Mauro explained that "the authorities simply do not have the power to shut down the compounds. They are forced to prosecute each individual engaged in criminal and/or terrorist activity separately, rather than tackling the organization as a whole. The individual members living on these compounds are protected by the Constitution, and thecompounds are privately owned, so there is no consistent police presence."

Mauro says that Christian Action has developed model legislation designed to make it easier for authorities to search these compounds, but so far, not a single state legislature has passed such a bill.

"Such legislation wouldn't permit the police to search your home if your neighbor is found guilty of terrorist activity," says Mauro, "because this only applies to closed communities owned by one group. This would not permit the authorities to search different pieces of private property; just the entire amount of one individual piece of private property. After all, Sheikh Gilani and his ‘Muslims of America' front own the entire land so it isn't a license to violate the rights of those unconnected."

Yet civil libertarians' concerns about unwarranted searches aren't the biggest problem facing those who are trying to raise awareness of these compounds. Much of the evidence of their very existence has been discovered by independent investigators, published on websites rather than in the mainstream media, and is shadowed in secrecy. Unfortunately, this leaves the impression that these compounds may be no more real than Bigfoot, and can be dismissed as just another alarmist conspiracy theory.

Even when the evidence is irrefutable, the media and the American public seem reluctant to respond as one would expect. In recent years, for example, the "Fort Dix Six" were convicted ofconducting paramilitary training in the Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains; meanwhile, seven Muslim "extremists" were arrested in 2006 for planning attacks on the Sears Tower in Chicago and other targets.

It's regrettable that it may take a successful "homegrown" terrorist attack of catastrophic proportions to force the authorities, the media and the general public to reveal the truth about these compounds.

Below are various links from Hezbollah cells in NC to Muslim Compounds in the USA

The next installment of this series of articles will explore the phenomenon of 'lawfare', in which radical Muslims use lawsuits, frivilous 'human rights' complaints and other tools to undermine America.

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March 10, 2009
Part Four: Lawfare

Military strategist Karl von Clausewitz famously said, "War is merely politics by other means."

It could just as easily be said that "lawfare" is war, politics and religion by other means.

What is lawfare? Lawfare is sometimes known as "stealth jihad," "soft jihad," "legal jihad" or "creeping sharia." In the same way that Muslim terrorists hijacked American planes and flew them into American buildings on 9/11, some Muslims are hijacking the West's freedoms and legal system to undermine civilization itself. The strategy might even be called "jihadist jujitsu." (also see parts 1-3)

As expert Brooke Goldstein of the Legal Project of the Middle East Forum) explains in a new report in The Counter Terrorist (Feb/March 2009), in the last decade, lawfare involves Islamist activists,

"Filing a series of malicious lawsuits in American courts and abroad, designed to punish and silence those who engage in public discourse about radical Islam. (...) The lawsuits are often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning, and undertaken as a means to intimidate, demoralize, and bankrupt defendants.

"Claims are often based on frivolous charges ranging from defamation to workplace harassment, from ‘hate speech' to ‘Islamophobia,' and have resulted in books being banned and pulped, thousands of dollars worth of fines, and publishing houses and newspapers rejecting important works on counter-terrorism out of fear of being the next target."

Twenty years ago, the West was shocked when Muslim leaders issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Today, the West itself permits Muslims to issue virtual fatwas of their own, in the form of lawfare suits that chill freedom of speech just as effectively.

Islamists have had mixed results with the lawfare strategy. Sometimes they drop their suitswhen they realize the discovery process will expose their ulterior motives and troubling financial ties to the world.

In other cases, their targets are so intimidated that they capitulate without a fight. Saudi businessman and terror financer Khalid bin Mahfouz boasts on his website that he has "coerced more than forty retractions or judgments against those who linked him to terrorism." In 2007,Mahfouz merely had to threaten to sue a prestigious British book publisher to get his way. At Mahfouz's insistence, the four-hundred year old Cambridge University Press took their new bookAlms for Jihad out of print, pulped all unsold copies and even ordered libraries to remove the book from their shelves.

Mahfouz also went after author Rachel Ehrenfeld, after she wrote a book which, like Alms for Jihad, detailed his financial links to Al-Qaeda and Hamas. Using a strategy known as "libel tourism," he sued her in the UK, even though neither he nor Ehrenfeld lived there. The UK's plaintiff-friendly libel laws helped Mahfouz win the suit against Ehrenfeld in 2004, and she was ordered to pay a large fine and apologize.

Rather than do either, she countersued Mahfouz in a New York court. She lost, but shortly thereafter, the state legislature unanimously passed the Libel Terrorism Protection Act to help protect American authors from enduring a similar legal ordeal. This in turn spurred Rep. Peter King (R-NY) to introduce the Free Speech Protection Act in the House of Representatives earlier this week, to make "Rachel's Law" truly national.

Phyllis Chesler has been writing about the subject of Islamist lawfare for years. She explains the thinking behind the strategy:

"We have been protecting intolerant hate speech and Big Lies as free speech under First Amendment guidelines. Simultaneously, Islamic jihadists and Muslim-American religious separatists have been adopting and aggrieved ethnic' point of view to press for separatist rights under American civil rights law and under the First Amendment.

"At the same time, any critique of their doing so is quickly labeled ‘racist' and marginalized by the mainstream media and by politically correct progressives -- as well as by Muslim-Americans. Similar, such trends are even more advanced in Europe which

has led Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders to call for a First Amendment for all of Europe. However, such an amendment would have to be enforced and in the current climate, this is doubtful."

In other words, lawfare could never have succeeded without the pressure of political correctness, which has been established and enforced throughout the West by atheist, secular, "free-thinking" liberals - the very people one would expect to rise up against stealth jihad.

Someone who knows about this firsthand is Canadian Ezra Levant. He is the only person in the world to face prosecution for publishing the so-called "Danish Mohammed cartoons." After a three year fight, he won - in the sense that he was found "not guilty" of "Islamophobia" by a Human Rights Tribunal -- but the battle cost him his magazine, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

Levant, who has written about his experiences in a new book, aptly titled Shakedown, explains:

"Lawfare doesn't work without collusion of what Vladimir Lenin called ‘the useful idiots of the West.' In Lenin's day, those were Western ‘intellectuals' who willingly, even eagerly, engaged in anti-Western propaganda, espionage and sabotage for the Soviet Union, usually withoutcompensationexcept for their own misguided feelings of moral righteousness. In today's lawfare, the foreign-born jihadis are aided by domestic leftist busybodies, usually in the ‘human rights' industry."

Daniel Pipes has established The Legal Project to raise awareness about, and fight against, the Muslim lawfare phenomenon.

The Legal Project "works in four distinct ways to counter the Islamist threat:"

1) Fundraising for an Escrow account to supplement the court costs and litigation fees for victims of Islamist lawfare - all funds raised go directly to lawfare victims,

2) Arranging for pro bono and reduced rate counsel for victims of Islamist lawfare,

3) Maintaining an international network of attorneys dedicated to working pro bono in the defense of free speech and,

4) Raising awareness about the issue. Efforts include briefings by legal experts on how to avoid libelous statements, and consultations with libel lawyers before publishing on certain topics

Along with brave politicians like Rep. Peter King, The Legal Project is leading the counterattack against Muslim lawfare.

However, this fight is an uphill battle, because the West's enemies are using its cherished freedoms against it. Do we have to abandon our liberties and legal system to fight our enemies, and if so, some critics ask, what would that make us?

While attempting to silence others, radical Muslims use the internet to recruit members and spread propaganda. That's the subject of the next installment in this series.
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March 23, 2009
Part Five: Internet Jihad
During the Islamic terror attack in Mumbai, India last year, tech-savvy terrorists used BlackBerries and Google Earth satellite-imaging to plan and carry out their atrocities.

Once again, the West's enemies were employing 21st century technology to spread its dangerous 8th century ideology. Since September 11, 2001, experts have been increasingly concerned about the rapid growth of the "internet jihad." (also see the homepage for the Islam in America Series)

The SITE Intelligence Group monitors YouTube, which has become a favorite platform for the disseminate Islamist propaganda and terrorist how-to videos.

For example, a password-protected forum run by Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra ("Knights in Support of the Invasion") offered step-by-step instructions to radical Muslim sympathizers on how to post videos to YouTube. The same radical group has called for an "invasion of Facebook", the hugely popular social networking site.

Facebook and YouTube have strict terms of use allowing them to remove videos and sites that advocate violence, racism and the like. However, given that Facebook's membership is over 175 million and rising, constant monitoring is simply impossible. Banned users can set up replacementwebsites under false names. By stripping out trigger words like "terrorism" that will get their sites banned, they can outrun the YouTube and Facebook monitors a little longer.

The web's international reach means that online jihad has no boundaries, making it even harder to police. A recent study by the UK's Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), called "Virtual Caliphate," revealed that British Muslim radicals are using Internet tools for recruitment, training and propaganda.

Particularly revealing was the revelation that well-known spokesman Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a regular media guest and "moderate" Muslim, was using Facebook to "openly glorify terrorism" and post anti-semitic screeds.

Other experts warn of Hezbollah's use of Israeli soldiers' Facebook account information as a source of intelligence, and a possible way to trick soldier's into meeting a Facebook "friend" in person who turns out to be a Hezbollah terrorist.

Meanwhile, a pro-Israel Facebook group page called "I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel," was hacked and defaced by a pro-Hizballah group calling itself "Lebanese Shee'a Hackers."

Because Facebook is so ubiquitous, it has actually been used by investigators to track down jihadists. Earlier this month, the FBI looking for a group of Somali immigrants to who left Minneapolis to join an overseas terrorist group were tracked down through their Facebook pages.

As one expert told FoxNews.com, sites like Facebook can help spread radicalism, but that shouldn't "overshadow all the ways it has helped to stop radicalism. The benefits far outweigh the risks, and we are doing all we can to [mitigate] the risks."

Marc Lynch agrees. The author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today) blogs at Foreign Policy Magazine online, and is an expert on the use of moderninformation technology by Islamic terrorists.

He believes that the same information technology trends that enable terrorists to carry out attacks - as occurred in Mumbai - can also diminish their ability to spread their propaganda, because the technology is available to its enemies: that is, us.

Lynch also points out that debates between radical Muslim members on online forums and chat rooms can actually "undermine moral or turn into open dissent, to the dismay of movement leaders." ("Plus," Lynch adds, video download sites "often feature ads for pornography (...) while you're waiting... I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a glitch or a feature for the jihadists downloading their bin Laden videos.")

Perhaps to get around these and other drawbacks, Hamas actually tried to start their own version of YouTube.com last fall.

The site, called AqsaTube, came complete with a ripped off version of the American site's famous red logo. But instead of the cute cat clips and stealth campaign videos you'll find on YouTube, however, AqsaTube was "devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement," according to the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (IITIC).

As the IITIC report explained, "the new AqsaTube website is another example of how Hamas, like other terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, have learned to exploit the information revolution to wage the battle for hearts and minds."

Israeli journalist Amir Mizroch noticed the troubling fact that AqsaTube was generating revenue byselling ad space through Google's ubiquitous AdSense program - including ads for Israeli companies. He confronted Google via email and a few days later, Google removed its ads from the Hamas site.

Then, after Mizroch's story eventually appeared in the Jerusalem Post and was picked up by other news outlets, AqsaTube website, then reappeared online looking very different indeed, its violent videos (and its stolen YouTube logo) nowhere to be seen.

Yet for every site that is pulled down by its service provider, many other Muslim terrorist websitesremain online. In fact, those same websites and chatrooms were rife with speculation that the FBI had been behind the AqsaWeb takedown, when the real culprit was one curious Israeli blogger and his subsequent newspaper story.

Terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere "don't exist without the Web and the Net," explained Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla in Technology Review. "A networked insurgency doesn't have anything like a traditional leadership. Most of the leadership they get is by going onwebsites, where they share information very quickly" - especially, it should be emphasized, among populations in which illiteracy is rampant.

Similarly, the Virtual Caliphate report also maintains that "extremists are shifting their operations away from high-profile mosques" and placing "increasingly emphasis on attending private study circles" and holding meetings in private homes, restaurants and community centers. "This development," says the report, "may make it increasingly difficult for [British] security services to monitor extremist networks and teachings."

As well, sites like Islambase emphasize the need to "pass on extremist interpretations of Islam to" children, through "home schooling and after school classes, and training them to love martyrdom and to hate non-Muslims."

So what, if anything, can be done to counteract online jihad?

Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.com told RightSideNews that counterjihadists, including bloggers and mainstream journalists, need to keep "shedding light on what [the online jihad] is, so as to try to alert people to the reality and magnitude of what is going on."

John Arquilla has a particularly interesting suggestion. He told Technology Today that since the United States is,

"...spending so much on military affairs, maybe some of that should be directed towards technologies that will break our opponents' communications. In World War II, there was aninvestment in creating the first high-performance computers, for that very purpose. Today, it may be an investment in creating the most effective quantum computing or figuring out how to structure the vast ocean of data that masks the movements of al-Qaeda on the Net and the Web. We need a new Bletchley Park [the country house where the German WWII codes were broken], if we're going to win this war."

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April 7, 2009
Part Six: Education
Did you know that Muslims discovered America? Or that "ancient Jewish civilization contributed very little to the arts and sciences"?

According to a recent study by Institute for Jewish and Community Research, millions of American public school students in all 50 states use textbooks that contain such erroneous "facts." Of the 500 historical errors uncovered by the study, hundreds of them tout a blatant agenda of Islamic superiority.

Even more shockingly, U.S. taxpayers are the ones footing the bill. It's all part of a worrisome trend within the American educational system: the apparent spread of radical Muslim propaganda under the guise of "education."

Pamela Geller has reported on the story for years. She says that the influence of radical Islam spreads beyond K-12 into colleges and universities.

"No one knows how extensive Saudi funding of U.S. schools is," Geller told RightSideNews, "but since Saudis control 80% of US mosques financially, it's very likely that they control the same percentage of schools."

She cites "$20 million dollar gifts from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, to top U.S. universities like Harvard and Georgetown," adding that the impact of such gifts flows all the way "down to the kindergarten level."

Under Title VI of the 1965 Higher Education Act, Harvard and seventeen other universities only qualify for special funding provided they conduct "outreach" to K-12 teachers, helping them shape lesson plans. And naturally, those lesson plans include laudatory information about Islam and the Middle East...

In one notorious instance, outraged parents protested in 2002 when they discovered that their children were learning about Islam in a California public school by praying "in the name of Allah."

As one parent, who also happened to be a teacher in the same Byron Union District, was quoted as saying, "Can you imagine the barrage of lawsuits and problems we would have from the ACLU if Christianity were taught in the public schools? But when it comes to furthering the Islamic religion in the public schools, there is not one word from the ACLU, People for the American Way or anybody else. This is hypocrisy."

Similar "acting Muslim" projects and programs have been reported in public schools in Texas, Florida and New Hampshire.

Daniel Pipes has been following this development for some time, looking at instances in which adding Arabic language instruction to public school curriculula has raised concerns about a hidden agenda of covert "Islamization".

Not surprisingly, some charter schools Pipes investigated have ties to dubious groups and individuals. For example, the International Academy in Columbus, Ohio had connections to radical CAIR activists. (Reporting on that same school, Patrick Poole observed that most of the students were Somali refugees - who were now, tragically, being instructed by the same variety of radical Muslims their parents had come to America to escape.)

Another Islamic school in Ohio, the Sunrise Academy, boasts an unindicted co-conspiracist in the first World Trade Center bombing as one of its star fundraisers.

Asked about the current state of affairs, Daniel Pipes told RightSidenews:

"Without having done an exhaustive study, I would say that the high-profile controversies over schools in New York and Minnesota have somewhat set back the hitherto steady growth of Islamist influence in US public schools. But I expect this to be only temporary; given the resources and passions that the Islamists bring to this cause, their influence will grow over the longer term."

Speaking of "high profile controversies," the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Virginia has been in the news recently, due to their plans to expand their campus.

Pamela Geller says the Saudi-funded Academy, "has been investigated for teaching hate [against Christians and Jews]. They promised they would revise their [text]books. They used white-out and called it revision."

In fact, Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) just asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to re-investigate the school, after one media report claimed their new textbooks "still contained questionable material."

Even more troubling is that fact that one of the Academy's graduates was convicted in 2005 of plotting with al-Qaida to assassinate President George W. Bush.

Pamela Geller live-blogged the March 2009 hearings regarding the school's proposed expansion, which includes a new 100,000 square foot building.

"Concerned parents came out and fought on an unlevel playing field. The Saudis jammed the hearing with 600 Muslim ‘supporters.' Parents that spoke were heckled and jeered."

Geller says the proposed expansion will proceed as planned. This, in spite of outspoken opposition from everyone from local taxpayers to columnist Cal Thomas, who wrote boldly: "One would be hard-pressed to find a greater threat to public health, safety and welfare than this training ground for a new generation of jihadists."

Despite the endless and seemingly futile battle against these schools, Geller insists that "we must fight back. But non- Muslims are so misinformed, they barely take notice until it hits home. You can talk and you can talk and you can preach to people, but in the final analysis, people have to feel it on their bodies and in their daily lives.

"The leftist/Islamic alliance is well organized," adds Geller. Like them, "We need structure. We need organizations. We must stand up to this and expose the real objective of Islamic supremacism."

(Next: RightSideNews will explore the radical Muslim infiltration of American universities.)

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April 20, 2009
Part Seven: Islamification of our Colleges and Universities

In our last installment, we looked at the spreading influence of Saudi money and ideas throughout the American K-12 educational system.

The Muslim Students Association (MSA) offers would-be activists free guides on "How to Achieve Muslim Holidays," "Set up Prayer Rooms" and "Achieve Halal Food" on campus. American college professors and administrators, who typically chant "separation of church and state" at everyopportunity, find themselves speechless when the petitioning believers are Muslims rather than Christians.

Among the MSA's many victories was the construction of two $25,000 footbaths at the University of Michigan at Dearborn (devout Muslims are required to wash their feet before praying).

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told reporters that the footbaths mark the start down "a slippery slope of preferential treatment of one religion over another," which the First Amendment was established to prevent.

"These baths exert a monetary cost upon publicly funded institutions which by our Constitution should not appease the financial demands of one faith group over another," he said. "Every other faith group on campus should be demanding that they be provided equal funding and space - which basically demonstrates how outrageous these accommodations are."

Besides undermining the Establishment Clause, radical Muslim students also pose an uncomfortable challenge to the average liberal university's championship of feminism and racial integration. One area in which Muslim students have made significant inroads is the seemingly trivial yet highly significant area of "women's only gym times" - which should more accurately described as "Muslim women-only."

Last year, Harvard announced new women-only access times at the student gym, to "accommodate religious customs that make it difficult for some students to work out in the presence of men."

This decision came one month after men were banned from the athletic center during certain times, following successful petitions from the Harvard Islamic Society as well as the Women's Center.

Needless to say, politicized Muslim students play a major role in annual "Israeli Apartheid Week" events on college campuses across the country. Last year, UC Irvine hosted a series of events provocatively titled "Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust." While videotaping one of the keynote speeches, two students were approached by the Dean of Student Services, who told them that, "on behalf of the male students, we would have to stop filming the female [Muslim] activists, or as she called them ‘the sisters.' Aware of our rights, we refused her orders and continued covering the event."

Last month, journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote that:

"During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

"Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber. (...) These groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don't like to hear."

Dirty tricks combine with ignorance to create an atmosphere of intimidation at campuses across the nation. One depressing example comes from Brett Cohen, a campus coordinator with the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs. When his group organized an event last March to publicize Israeli casualties in Sderot during the recent war in Gaza, a rival group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) "circulated a letter condemning the event. It was signed by several campus organizations, including the College Democrats and Amnesty International. Shamefully, several of the signers have admitted that they never read the letter, and had no idea where Sderot was."

Author and expert on radical Islam Robert Spencer has been sounding the alarm about this sort of "sharia creep" for years at his website JihadWatch.com. In an exclusive interview, Spencer reflected on whether or not his efforts to warn the public were paying off:

"I think we may be getting through to a very small number of people, but Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the U.S. are still making tremendous headway by portraying these Sharia-creep initiatives as simple matters of civil rights, and playing on fears among public officials, and the public at large, of being seen as racist and bigoted.

"It is getting worse, because there is a concerted effort by the MSAs on various campuses and other groups to push Muslim accommodation issues aggressively, but this effort is relatively new. We didn't see it on this scale ten or even five years ago. I think it is a natural outgrowth of the post-9/11 anxiety on the part of government and media not to appear ‘Islamophobic.' As long as that continues to be a matter for concern, there will be continued accommodation of Muslim practices and Islamic distinctiveness, which only aids and abets the Islamic supremacist agenda.

But the "level of awareness right now is so abysmal," continued Robert Spencer, "that I think the main thing people can do is try to call attention, via letters to the editor, contacts to their elected officials, the blogsophere, etc., to the explicit campaign being undertaken here. The idea would be to awaken as many people as possible to what is going on here -- who the groups are that are pursuing this agenda, and what the agenda really is, behind all the talk of ‘hate speech' and accommodation of cultural practices in the name of multiculturalism and diversity."

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Part Eight: The Workplace

Last month, the longtime owner of a Chicago Dunkin' Donuts was forced to give up his franchise.

Dunkin' Donuts had willingly accommodated the owner's faith based restrictions over the course of their twenty-year partnership. But in 2002, the chain issued a sudden ultimatum: offer your customers every Dunkin' Donuts product -- or none at all. Seven years later, the fast food giant won the case, and the owner lost his store.

Increasingly, large companies like Swift, UPS and McDonald's have been sued by Muslim employees demanding the right to wear religious garb, pray on company time and refuse to handle pork. These expensive legal battles do more than just raise prices for customers and drain company coffers. Employee morale suffers (and with it, productivity) as workers view each other with suspicion and resentment.

The number of such cases accelerated in the 1990s, according to an exhaustive 2007 survey by Jeffery Breinholt at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Historically, he explains, Arabs had been considered "Caucasian", but in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court "established that Arabs were an ethnic minority for purposes of our federal anti-discrimination laws."

Brienholt notes that Muslim employment discrimination claims increased after the first World Trade Center attacks in 1993. He proposes two theories to explain why: the "Innocent Bystander" theory (Muslims felt distrusted and uncomfortable in American workplaces after both WTC attacks); and the "Political Islam" theory (Muslim activists are exploiting U.S. civil rights laws to push an extremist agenda).

He believes the "Political Islam" theory is the correct one, and that many Muslims are engaged in a non-violent campaign to spread extreme Islam through American workplaces as a sort of"stealth jihad" (to use scholar Robert Spencer's expression for the phenomenon.)

In one extraordinary case, the Saudi government tried to force a pilot working for an American company to convert to Islam if he wanted to keep flying over Saudi airspace!

In an exclusive interview with RightSideNews, Ann Corcoran of Refuge REsettlement Watchshared her insights about this phenomenon. Her group has been chronicling the spread of "workplace accommodation" for some time. Her comments reflect this expertise and are worthquoting at length.

"At some point," says Corcoran, "big businesses like meatpackers discovered they could keep wages low by using immigrant labor. During the Clinton Presidency, the State Department's Refugee Resettlement Program brought in over 100,000 Bosnian Muslims" who ended up working in Midwestern meatpacking plants.

"Somalis are the most obvious group demanding workplace accommodation," Corcoran points out. "We have brought to the US over 80,000 Somali refugees in the last 25 years. The State Department has cut off all family reunification because they found through DNA testing that a very high percentage of Somalis lied to get into the US."

Corcoran points to well publicized disputes between Somali Muslim workers and meat packing plants in Shelbyville, Tennessee, and Greeley, Colorado.

In Grand Island, tensions led to interracial conflict. In 2008, "about 500 Swift workers, all Muslim and most Somali, walked off the job and marched a mile to Grand Island City Hall to protest for religious freedom," according to a news report.

"They wanted prayer time during the holy month of Ramadan.

"The plant's attempt to accommodate the requests led to counter protests staged by Caucasians, Hispanics, Vietnamese and African-Americans."

In St. Cloud, Minnesota, Somali Muslim employees were awarded $1.35-million for "discrimination" when a meat packing plant refused to let them pray during work hours.

Is this sort of civil unrest, resentment and disharmony among neighbors really worth the dubious monetary benefits of "cheap labor"?

Ann Corcoran wonders who is behind it all.

"Some one or some group is organizing the Somalis," she says. "There is no way on earth, they became that savvy in organizing without being taught the fine art of ‘community organizing' using the Saul Alinsky playbook. Is it a coincidence that in Greeley and Grand Island, well-educated, English-speaking Somalis, just happened to arrive in those towns and get hired by Swift & Co. in the weeks prior to the demonstrations and walkouts?"

Echoing observations by others that the late Saul Alinsky's radical theories have shaped the thinking of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others currently weilding power in the political realm, Corcoran explains that Alinsky, "taught that you must create chaos to bring about change. A good agitator eventually wears people down. They don't have to win this year or next, it's the wearing down process that will ultimately succeed if we don't counter it.

"And, the Somalis are really good at it because they have an ‘in your face' personality and they are very very smart."

Corcoran warns that the Muslim holiday of Ramadan in August may see another upsurge in workplace demands and unrest, given the daunting requirements placed upon Muslims during that celebration, such as dawn to dusk fasting. In the U.K, some organizations have tried to impose Ramadan fasting rules on non-Muslim employees.

Lately, Muslim demands for workplace accommodation have met with increasing resistance, such as that seen in the Dunkin' Donuts case. Last autumn, Somali Muslim cab drivers serving theMinneapolis airport lost an appeal in their ongoing campaign for the right to accept passengers who were carrying alcohol. (The city's cab drivers have also caused controversy over refusals to accept blind passengers traveling with guide dogs.)

Ann Corcoran believes such developments demonstrate what can happen if non-Muslims vocalize their opposition to "stealth jihad" in the workplace.

"As for what people can do," she says, "when Tyson's dumped the Labor Day holiday at the chicken plant in Shelbyville in favor of giving the entire plant off for Eid last year, the publicity came out very negative and very quickly. As a result hundreds of calls of complaint went into Tysons and the plan was modified---negative publicity is very important. These big companies can be swayed by negative publicity."

Related: Islam in America Series by Kathy Shaidle and The Evils of Islamic Political Ideology by Alyssa Lappen
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Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book, The Tyranny of Nice: How Canada crushes freedom in the name of human rights - and why it matters to Americans, features an introduction by Mark Steyn. Shaidle is also an advisor for the International Free Press Society